Located 250 kilometers from the Serbian capital Belgrade, the city of Bor has been known as the "Town of Copper" for over a century. As such, Bor's urban fabric inherits much of its texture from post-war industrialization and socialist Yugoslav remnants of a major mining hub. Historically conceived as a series of sporadic settlements, the city of Bor has since evolved into an industrial sprawl while mining for its own identity. Less than 400 meters away from one of the four copper mining pits in the region, mostly senior residents of the Krivelj village are facing increasing environmental challenges. Due to their proximity to the extraction site, ground vibrations from mining activities produced severe cracks within the walls of their homes and rendered their homes uninhabitable. As these residents continuously demand relocation to the city of Bor, an influx of Chinese workers have migrated to the city for employment opportunities due to the expansion of mining practices. Engaging these two groups of new residents of Bor, this thesis grapples with existential crises and foregrounds citizenship in the collective interest of survival via new urban, architectural, and social housing types.

Lifeline investigates an incomplete and forgotten construction as a test-ground for adaptive urbanism at the threshold of industrial East Serbia which indeed is indicative of the post-industrial, post-socialist world at large. Housing displaced local residents and migrant workers from abroad, this proposal confronts the realities of aging population, home displacement, memory of land, and declares the rights to collective living through restorative and additive interventions at the border of the city of Bor.