In 2012 Kotor APSS has been established by DVARP, as part of Kotor ART. We have invited architecture professionals, students, and admirers to join us in an Old Austrian Prison in the Old Town Kotor.

The idea of Kotor Summer School has been rolling over in our heads for a while. There are many reasons for this kind of project and despite the fact that there are many summer schools and workshops all over the world, that practice has not been very well established in Montenegro. But there are many other more important reasons for gathering great minds of architecture in Kotor.

Big voids in planning legislations and turnovers in social, political and economic circumstances have lead to major space misuse in many coastal towns along the Adriatic. Looking for a quick return, housing and tourism oriented projects seamed to be the easiest and the most profitable opportunity. Apart from the profit lead reasons and legislation created environment, there was an obvious deficit in these categories, especially in popular touristic destinations in Montenegrin coast. Popularity of towns such as Kotor, Budva, Petrovac, Bar and other has been rising and there was a big demand for new spaces. And while Budva has been destroyed in urban and architectural terms, there are towns, such as Kotor that somehow managed to keep form, spirit and charm it always had. Of course, this town will spread and develop as well and we want to be there, as architects, scholars and thinkers.

There are two main parts of Kotor APSS:
- Summer school workshop with final work exhibition and student presentation,
- Final conference ”APSS talk” and Panel discussion based on the workshop Topic and Conclusions. Final conference is open to wider public

Dijana Vucinic, architect
Founder and Program Director of Kotor APSS

Kotor Art

Kotor art is an independent initiative in culture, initiated in 2001 with the idea to define and promote the initiatives from the field of culture to domestic and world cultural public. At the beginning our wish was to become a company with the mission of the national and local cultural promotion, and international cultural exchange. Idea was to organize high artistic values and educative programs of both domestic and world production.

Today there are many programs that operate under Kotor Art: Don Branko’s Days of Music, Kotor APSS (Architrectural Prison Summer School), Kotor arTheatre, Town writing (Theater workshop), The Kotor Festival of Children’s Theatre, Philosophers’ piazza.

“I am writing from cold Germany, although July has arrived. I remember the day I saw Kotor for the first time in 1979, running after my impatient guide Danilo Kis. We spent the night at the hotel “Fjord”, ate at the “Carampana” restaurant and visited every alley and every corner of the town. Those were unforgettable times, and it all happened in an exciting atmosphere.

“Look ahead, turn your back to the walls,” I remember Danilo saying at one point, “Look at Prcanj, that perfect line in the rock, created by the sea, the houses and the churches!”

This line is no longer there. There are too many houses now, and unfortunately not only those made of stone. But the town of Kotor shows its heroism even nowadays. It still resists, despite everything. But what exactly does Kotor resist, and what can we defend it from? We can defy human stupidity and an urge to go numb. We must warn against incompetence and primitivism, which are most frequently hidden behind an alibi of development and new prospects, and wrapped under a shiny ribbon like a gift. In that way, development and degradation go together, hand in hand. That enables our time to become unique for a retrograde formula – development alongside destruction. But Kotor resists, despite all outside pressures. It is nobody’s property, because it belongs to everybody – representing Montenegro in the world by belonging to that world. And we are, finally, on the right territory here – Kotor Art is an extraordinary idea for Kotor’s defence. Kotor Art is a departure from the obscurity of everyday life focusing solely on tourism, an open war against triviality and empty commercialism. Kotor Art is a fight for the promotion of beauty among those who are able to understand it and willing to love it.”

Paolo Magelli, Creative Director of Kotor Art

KOTOR APSS Team 2013

KOTOR APSS 2013 BROCHURE (download .pdf 16.1MB)