The Biography of a Building: Runik’s House of Culture by Hajde! Foundation and Petrit Halilaj with Ars Atelie

What does it take to bring a cultural space back into collective life? This question is at the heart of Hajde! Foundation’s work around the House of Culture in Runik, Kosovo. For years, the House of Culture was the social and cultural heart of the village, hosting theater performances, concerts, celebrations, public meetings, and everyday encounters. Like hundreds of Houses of Culture built across former Yugoslavia during the second half of the twentieth century, it was conceived as a civic space where culture and public life could unfold beyond the country’s major cities, becoming an important center of cultural life for Runik’s Albanian community. However, its activities were curtailed by the censorship and repression of the Milošević regime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the building was subsequently impacted by the violence of the Kosovo War. Bullet holes remain visible on its facade, while its interior gradually fell into ruin.

In 2018, artist Petrit Halilaj, who grew up in Runik, returned to the abandoned building to present Shkrepëtima, a one-night performance inspired by historical plays once staged there. For the first time in decades, the House of Culture was filled with people from Runik and neighboring villages, offering a glimpse of not only what it had been, but of what it could become. That evening marked the beginning of a longer process. Founded by Halilaj in 2014, Hajde! Foundation is an independent cultural organization working to support the House of Culture’s return to collective cultural life, alongside the ongoing public reconstruction of the protected building and in collaboration with government and cultural heritage partners. What began as a performance gradually became a collective endeavor to imagine a new future for the House of Culture, one that could once again host the stories, encounters, and cultural life of Runik and its surrounding communities.

This exhibition spans two sites. In New York, Storefront traces the “biography” of Runik’s House of Culture through archival materials, oral histories, and documentation of its ongoing transformation. It brings together objects rescued from the original building, books collected by Halilaj for a future library, and everyday cultural objects like teapots and rugs that speak to the House of Culture’s social function. Following an international architectural competition organized by the Hajde! Foundation, Ars Atelie—an architecture practice from Kosovo—was selected to lead the restoration of the building. Their proposal, also on view in the gallery, reimagines the House of Culture as a living institution, rooted in its history while responding to the needs and aspirations of the community today. 

In Runik, a simultaneous exhibition space and Welcome Center invites local residents to learn about the House of Culture’s history and to consider how its renewed life might support collective activity. In anticipation of the reopening of the House of Culture in 2028, Hajde! Foundation will use this space to continue the conversation about what the community wants from such a center, and how its spaces and programs can support the possibility of imagining and building a shared future together.

The Biography of a Building also reflects Storefront’s longstanding interest in how artists can open up new possibilities for public life through architecture. With our own history as an artist-founded institution, Storefront considers how an artist’s sustained engagement with a place can mobilize architecture not simply to restore a building, but to reactivate the social and cultural relationships that give it meaning.

Petrit Halilaj develops bodies of work that explore how life is sustained through relationships—between people, other species, architecture, memory, and place. Working across sculpture, drawing, installation, text, and performance, he approaches exhibitions as living environments where forms of affection, imagination, and coexistence can emerge. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Institut Giacometti, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; Tate St. Ives, UK; Palacio de Cristal, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; New Museum, New York; Fondazione Merz, Turin; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn; Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, among others. Halilaj is the 2027 Nasher Prize Laureate and will be featured in Counterpublic Triennial, St. Louis (Sept–Dec 2026). He received the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) in 2018 and completed the MAK-Schindler Scholarship Program at the Mackey Apartments, Los Angeles (2016). In 2013, Halilaj represented Kosovo for the country’s first appearance at the Venice Biennale. In 2017, he was invited to participate in the 57th Venice Biennale, where he was awarded Special Mention by the Jury. He lives and works between Germany, Kosovo, and Italy.

Hajde! Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Kosovo that supports art and culture in the region through production grants, an artist residency program, a multiuse space in the Grand Hotel Pristina, and the revival of the House of Culture in Runik—a community arts center where artist Petrit Halilaj spent much of his childhood before it was destroyed during the war.

Founded in 2014 by Halilaj together with his sister, curator Hana Halilaj, Hajde! believes that a thriving artistic community in Kosovo can enrich daily cultural life while also amplifying the country’s presence on the international stage. The mission of Hajde! just like in the spirit of the word that carries weight, it believes in the uniqueness of spontaneity and in being responsible about how everything we have inherited is shaped, developed, and advanced, by creating genuine opportunities for artistic growth.

Ars Atelie is an interdisciplinary architecture and design studio based in Prishtina, Berlin, and Zurich. Founded in 2016 by Donika Luzhnica, Gresa Kastrati, Flake Zeneli, and Krenare Juniku—university colleagues with a shared vision—the studio is committed to exploring the intersection of architecture, research, and spatial practice. Their long-term collaborator, Lydra Hoxha, has been an integral part of this journey. With a practice rooted in social and cultural contexts, Ars Atelie engages in projects that span urban interventions, public installations, and sustainable architectural design. The studio’s work is driven by a strong research foundation, a commitment to environmentally friendly design practices, and a deep interest in the politics of space, memory, and identity.