Skopje - The Phoenix City
Divna Pencic & Jasna Stefanovska & Biljana Spirkoska
The urban structure in Skopje is a result of the struggle between the imported models and the specific conditions of the place. Given that the inspiration in urban modernization was always coming from abroad, one can easily distinguish a set of foreign influences in each period of the city’s development. Starting with the artistic project for the city in the first Regulation Plan for the city of Skopje in 1914 developed by the Serbian architect Dimitrija Leko which introduced the expansion of the city on the right bank of the river and marked the beginning of the modernism in Skopje, followed by the garden city movement introduced in the 1929 Regulation Plan by the architect Josif Mihajlovic, then the concept of the modern city (CIAM) introduced in the Master Plan of the Czechoslovakian architect Ludek Kubes, the imposition of the foreign influences, followed by local reactions, soared with the 1965 Master Plan that was prepared by a group of urbanists assigned from the United Nations uniting experts from all over the world.
The 1965 Master Plan was a reaction on the earthquake in 1963 which resulted with destruction of 80.7 per cent of the built city fund and left 75.5 per cent of the residents homeless, and gave the opportunity for radical re‐planning of the City’s layout to the highest possible standard. However, this enormous task of rebuilding the city had to be accomplished in the same time with the preparation of the plans which supposed to direct it, and in the context of a society that just suffered a major catastrophe. In consequence, even though the concept was well laid down by the experts, it matched more the economic realities and situation in their own country than the ones in Skopje for which the results showed that it was pure futurism. The realization of the plan was slim even while Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia and enjoyed the advantages from being de facto included in central transfer payments, living space for a spontaneous chaotic development happening at the same time, solving the pressing‐issues pushed by interested groups while leaving the most missionary and most important issues not properly addressed.
In favour of the previous argument an example can be made with one of the most notable post earthquake works‐ the project for a Cultural complex designed by the Slovenian team Biro 77.
A Quest For Public Space
Divna Pencic &Jasna Stefanovska
The transition from one organisational system to another fundamentally alternates the context in which the planning operates while leaving an undeniable mark on cities and their urban tissues. Parallel to the processes of transition from one system to another following the collapse of the socialist state there was a long and painful recession that affected the planning profession that had to operate in a context that was in making. The governments aimed at projects that are market driven and tried to initiate investments that did not necessarily protect the public interest. While promoting such projects beating primarily with the pulse of the capital, a fragmentation of the tissue of the cities was inevitable, the public space was ignored and the position of the planner was undermined.
The processes of urban change and restructuring had different dynamics and pace while remodelling the city and had a direct impact on the societal changes in the country. The public spaces and public life in the city of Skopje as a result of such processes are slowly disappearing and the newly proposed ones represent more of a left-over spaces designed to connect rather than to provoke interaction. Such spaces do not contribute nor enhance city’s qualities, but are empty and unarticulated spaces emerging in the in-between realm producing permanent strangeness questing for an immediate rethinking and action.
Urban (re)construction- case study Sarajevo
Research 04.2-B
Nina Ugljen Ademović, Elša Turkušić
After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina has suffered a high level of urban destruction. The period of building and reconstruction that followed after the end of war in 1995 can easily be compared to the one of intensive building and modernization in Yugoslavia after the World War II.
The aim of this research is to set a parallel between the urban and architectural achievements of these two periods with different economic, political and social systems.
The research will be conducted by way of identifying/mapping and comparing the main architectural achievements of the respective periods, the type and the amount of investments and the level of the project's realization. Furthermore, the analysis will focus on public opinion of the time in respect of the new architectural projects/buildings.
Sarajevo will be used as an example in the research, being the capital city and the city with the most investments. Some important parts of the city are still not urban finalized- for example the area Marin Dvor whose concept of development as a central city point shows discontinuity, incompleteness and illogicality.
Therefore, the research will include the historical analysis of development and spatial integration of (unfinished) architectural and urban projects after the WWII, as well as identification and valorization of all the main architectural objects built until 1990.
The aim is to establish the basis for constructive criticism of the present situation through which the practical and effective solutions for the existing problems could be found. The period of the architectural development of BH after the formation of Yugoslavia, and even before, has never been thoroughly researched and historically analyzed and valued. Yet, it should be considered as a basis for the future BH architectural and urban developments.
Croatian Architecture 1945-79: Towards an Architecture of Synthesis
Research 04.5-B
Institute for Contemporary Architecture (Nikola Polak, Vesna Milutin)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
We had everything before us, we had nothing before us...
(Opening lines of Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859 )
Within one century, three models of housing crystallized in Zagreb, having clear and defined standards: middle-class office-worker apartments of the lower town, socialist working-class flats of New Zagreb topped with USI, and finally POS as a single attempt to bring order into the legislative and normative interregnum of recent transitional period.
We can more easily define actual aims after a comparative analysis of norms, standards, design points, urbanistic elements and urban intentions present in these three models. Such an analysis could provide us with answers to the crucial ongoing issues: what housing means to individual and community, followed by – ways of housing today and proper standards and norms, followed by – the current relationship between public and private urban space, followed by – the way in which city and housing are built in the current flattened world.
A broader professional and social platform of education in terms of housing culture can be put in place, resulting in many benefits for individual and community. With norms and standards changed, new visions of directions and possibilities are opening up, ways of conceiving our housing in accordance with the time in which we live. It may finally be that not all is in the economy, that more likely, as Dickens said ... we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.
The Evolution of Tourist Landscapes: Hotel Solaris
Boris Magaš: Hotel complex Solaris, near Šibenik, first phase,
1967-68, Zablaće near Šibenik
1967-68, Zablaće near Šibenik
The Evolution of Tourist Landscapes: Hotel Libertas
Architects: Andrija Čičin-Šajn, Žarko Vincek, 1968.-1974., Dubrovnik
The Evolution of Tourist Landscapes: An ‘Affordable Arcadia’
Research 05-B
Analog (Dafne Berc, Luciano Basauri), Maroje Mrduljaš, Platforma 9.81
- Split (Miranda Veljačić, Dinko Peračić)
Tourism and leisure culture are among the leading phenomena which
reflect the in-between condition, specific mechanisms of economic and
spatial planning and high-quality architecture of after WWII
Yugoslavia.
During the 1950s Yugoslavia opened its borders to foreigners and soon
became a major tourist destination thanks to its beautiful landscapes,
especially along the Adriatic coast. Tourism industry flourished and
got incorporated into strategic economic planning as a reliable source
of income and employment. At the same time, the rising standard
enabled the domestic population to enjoy leisure culture as well.
Yugoslav Adriatic Coast became popular tourist destination and one of
the rare places where citizens from Western and Eastern Europe cold
freely meet in an “affordable working-class Arcadia”.
Quick development and the demand for modernization of the economically
deprived coastline area after WWII were one of the strategic
priorities in former Yugoslavia. One of the important steps in this
process was the development of complex spatial plans in cooperation of
local experts and UN’s multidisciplinary international team. While
these urbanistic projects were showcases of advanced “integral
approach” and tested concept of synthesis of urban end economical
planning, most of them left unrealized in their original form.
Importance of these planning proposals lies in their "methodology and
involvement of local municipalities in planning decisions which was
stimulated by the economical and political reforms based on ideas of
decentralization and self-management.
Hotels and tourist resorts emerged as one of the most exciting
investigative topics for architects, forcing them to respond to a
range of problems: the various natural and cultural contexts,
organization of complex functions, innovation in building
technologies, etc. Architects were enjoying significant freedom and
were not bounded to the strict rules of the tourist industry and
accompanying iconography typical for Western countries. Within rather
short period between mid-sixties and mid-seventies, a remarkably quick
evolution of typologies and concepts emerged: from international-style
modernism, to spatially more complex structuralist formations and
“soft” megastructures sensitively integrated into the landscape.
Entrance halls and interior public spaces of the more prestigious
hotels were designed and furnished by the leading Croatian artists and
designers in modern “socialist gesamtkunstwerk” style, very similar to
the interiors of communist party headquarters, city halls or federal
parliaments. Intentionally or not, tourist facilities were means of
representing iconography of progressive socialist culture to the
international audience.
