Architecturally, the building of the Museum of the Revolution (History Museum) of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo is a showpiece of design in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and indeed in Yugoslavia as a whole, in step with European and world movements in the early years of the latter half of the 20th century. It was designed by three architects from Zagreb, Boris Magas, Edo Smidihen and Radovan Horvat.
The building consists of a basement with an inner garden, a high ground floor, and an upper storey. To the north, on a raised stone plinth, a skeleton system with nine bearing steel piers was erected on which an enclosed cuboid form measuring 27.85 x 27.58 m in plan was set. To the south, at ground-floor level, extends a transparent parallelepiped of 69.50 x 9.08 m, at right-angles to which is another section of the building lying east-west, measuring 16.38 x 10.60 m. To the west is the inner garden of 48.00 x 15.70 m, at basement level.
The museum was founded in 1945 as the Museum of National Liberation. It was housed in the Ethnographic Department of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina until 1950, when it was renamed the Museum of the Peoples' Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1956 it was moved to the City Hall, where it remained until 1963, when it was moved into the newly-designed building.
The museum's first permanent exhibition was ceremonially opened to the public on ZAVNOBiH Day, 25 November 1966, after which it was renamed the Museum of the Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1993 it had another change of name, to the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina..
Design concept
The ground and the sky materialize to form two large volumes; a plinth below and a large marble box above. The two sections are kept apart by a glazed wrapping moving in-between the volumes around their corners and continuing on away from the street.
The large cantilever of the museum's top volume extends far enough to block most of the direct light from entering the middle zone. The ambiance of the interior vestibule and entrance gallery smoothly transition out towards the exterior courtyard. The main gallery space located in the top volume is lit by overhead sky lights.
