During the Christmas Holidays, I was trying my best to avoidwatching dull family movies on the couch. The ones I dislike most are adventure movies with heroic protagonists,like in Indiana Jones and The Mummy. What triggers me most in these movies isthe representation of the archaeologist as a handsome, tomb-discovering acrobat.In these movies, the archaeologist is combatting and unveiling the traces ofthe past, reading landscape, object and architecture like a true detective. Asdesigners of the built environment, our interest similarly lies in the readingof traces, albeit, gratefully not receiving the status of a pop-culture hero indoing so.

For a large majority of the student body of TU Delft, the four-year-long siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996), is a thing they might have learned from history books. However, for the inhabitants of Sarajevo, the small red-raisin-filled craters from mortar damage are a daily reminder of their tragic past and what became the longest siege of a city in the history of modern warfare.

A month ago, our beautiful building started becoming defaced with some slightly less beautiful TU Delft blue ‘no smoking signs’. Alas … they haven’t appeared to be as effective as whoever is responsible probably would have liked. The next move in this one-sided game of chess was to relocate the smoking pit at the East entrance, from under the sheltered entrance to out in the open between Bouwpub and the faculty building.