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Todorka
SAMARDZIOSKA,PhD
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Civil Engineering
Skopje, Macedonia
t.samardzioska@gf.ukim.edu.mk
Summary
New governmentally financed project “Skopje 2014” with intention to “re-establish” the identity of
the nation through development of infrastructure and architecture in Baroque style has substantially
changed the urban, social, political and ethical context of the central area of the city.
The aim of our work is to present an open approach of form finding process as a result of
interaction of functional, engineering and social issues that is in contrast with fixed and
predetermined typology proposed by government. Our new pedestrian bridge on river Vardar in the
centre of the city creates new urban landscapes acting as a social attractor and urban infrastructure.
Its geometry and structure is a result of formal and functional concept generated as a complex
emergent property of the topologically based system expressing high level of social responsibility
of design and ethical and esthetical approach to complex engineering challenges in urban areas.
Keywords: Skopje, urban transformations, fixed typology, process, bridge, form finding, socially
responsible design
1. Introduction
Skopje, the largest city in the Republic of Macedonia, owes its present form to the process of
stratification of differentiated layers developed as a result of urban transformations. The process of
spatial and urban planning intensified at the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century as a result of
modernisation of the Ottoman Empire, emergence of new geo-political context within the region
and influences of new concepts and models of urban form. Development of the city of Skopje has
followed this path of dissolution and than reconstruction of the urban form through a process of
modernisation. Sequences of historic events and policies that have resulted from these events
generate the geopolitical and social context of the development of the city. These policies have
influenced the process of urban transformation of urban centres in Macedonia, and especially the
city of Skopje on conceptual level, as referential models for development of urban plans and
introduction of new ideas and concepts, but also as strategies for implementation of planning
policies in practice and within the urban fabric [1]. These conceptual and real urban transformations
have dissolved the conventional spatial models.
The historical cycles in urban planning of Skopje and the different level of realisation of conceptual
and real transformation within the urban fabric of Skopje resulted in a fragmented plan of the city.
These series of conceptually and morphologically different fragments of urban form coexist in time
and space as a collage of complex urban strata that creates the unique image of the city. The
differences between conceptual and real transformation of the urban policies and plans at one end
and transformation of the urban fabric at the other, reflects the frequent shifts in political order and
inconsistency of the political elite in the process of realisation of established concepts and ideas in
urban planning.
Regulation plan from 1914 developed by Dimitrije T. Leko is the first to introduce the unitary
model of the city with clear influence from Froster’s Vienna’s Ringstrasse and a work of Camilo
Site in “artistic creation of the cities”. With this model Dimitrija T. Leko introduces the European
city model for the city of Skopje. The urban plan of Dimitrija Leko promotes radical elimination of
traditional urban forms and the “Tabula Rasa” approach. But at the same time it introduces the idea
of rehabilitation of historic urban forms, the “picturesque” quality of street patterns and
fragmentation of the city space and green areas. This plan also introduces development of a public
domain through series of new public buildings as point elements of the plan, picturesque streets and
reconfiguration of the city block as a main urban field. The focus of Leko’s interventions are the
non-urbanised, peripheral parts of the city in order to develop large spatial compositions with
typical symmetrical arrangements of parks and more “free” form of the public buildings.
After the Earthquake in 1963, tremendous efforts were put into planning of a new and reconstructed
city. This process of rebuilding of the ruined city has been defined as a sort of paradigm for
reconstruction of a city. Skopje has been denominated as a city of solidarity and a special UN fund
has been used for its post-earthquake international planning and reconstruction activities. The result
of the international competition for urban design of the central city area was eight versions of
spatial and urban concept for the city of Skopje. Eight companies from Skopje, Belgrade, Zagreb,
Ljubljana, Rome, Rotterdam, New York and Tokyo developed eight models for the city central area.
The version of Kenzo Tange’s team was used as a base for the ninth final version. Further
development and planning of the dominant architectural and urban elements has been performed in
accordance with this final version in scale of 1:500, as well as physical models for fragments of the
city. Planning in details with respect to all specifics of the context and technical details before
development of actual buildings was in the essence of the process of reconstruction of the city in
Skopje.
Almost one century after the first urban plan for the city of Skopje, establishing a new European
identity of the city, a new governmentally financed project “Skopje 2014” has been promoted. This
government project promoted at the end of the first decade of 21st century with intention to “re-
establish” the identity of the nation through development of infrastructure and architecture in
eclectic Classical or Baroque style has substantially changed the urban, social, political and ethical
context of the central area of the city. Unfortunately, this plan acts more as a synthetic image of a
video game rather than a comprehensive and systematic consideration and plan which is necessary
when we think of a city [2]. Comparison of the planning activities in 1966 and in 2010 determines
“Skopje 2014” plan as a retro plan with its distinctive anti-modern approach.
This plan promotes a negation of all other architectural typologies and styles, objectionable and
unacceptable for the government’s project, which are determined as such by the virtue of their
ideological background and the time in which they were built. The erasure of the past and the actual
traces of different spatial concepts and images that took part in the creation of the urban form of the
centre of Skopje, results in previously determined and fixed stylistic and spatial solutions. This
situation which creates some sort of a utopian super-city aimed for super-humans, cleaned of all
spatial formations suspicious and unacceptable for the government, is being realised through
creation, designing and construction of buildings and spaces that are predetermined both on the
level of stylistic typology of the buildings and the spatial concepts. Such plan substantially changes
the urban, social, cultural, and ethical context of any future development of the central part of the
City of Skopje.
Shaping the space and architectural buildings according to a plan that is already spatially and
stylistically determined, without taking into consideration their spatial, functional and cultural
relativity and conditionality, creates solutions that are socially conflicted and unacceptable in a
democratic context. This fixed typology and previously determined solutions are in contrary to the
nature of creation of architecture and the city of Skopje as a system of fragments that testify of the
different processes and concepts that created this unique image of the city. This process which in its
essential nature is open to various influences is resulting in urban layers of a complex system whose
quality is based not only on social and cultural, but also on material relativity in respect to the
context and the process in which it is created
Fig. 2: Situation
With its geometry, the bridge opens and closes to the surroundings, supporting the space on the
quay, while always offering a different experience and contact with the river and the city. On the
places where the bridge opens to the surrounding it becomes a platform for observing the river and
the city, while on the places where it is oriented towards the interior it creates a place for meetings
and contacts. At both ends of the bridge the walking platform is developed in full width to meet all
users and is a continuation of the space on the quay, which is supplemented with side benches set.
The walking surface at the ends of the bridge is on the same level with the existing quay surface
which provides accessibility for disabled people. On the places where the bridge becomes introvert,
benches face the inside of the bridge and form a new square over the water (Fig. 3).
5. Conclusion
Our new pedestrian bridge on the River Vardar in the centre of the city creates new urban
landscapes on water, acting as a social attractor and urban infrastructure. It is developed as
continuous flow of public space. Its geometry and structure is a result of formal and functional
concept generated through continuous spatial manipulation of a discrete formal element as an
opposition to predetermined and fixed typologies. This procedure enables us to create a form and
structure as a complex emergent property of a topologically based system rather than as a
predetermined and fixed typology. The structure follows the complexity of the shape and is
developed as a structural concrete box shifting in shape and size as the bridge form develops. A
unique formal expression and distinctive structural geometry of the bridge, embedded and inherent
to the system, creates new urban waterscapes of the city of Skopje, expressing high level of social
responsibility of design and ethical and esthetical approach to complex engineering challenges in
urban areas.
Exhibiting this dynamic and open process of form finding as historically embedded process is a
beginning of construction of a model of dynamic development of the system of architectural and
urban form that should enable us for deeper insight into the process of morphogenesis, better
understanding of the phenomenon of architecture and cities, but above all, better understanding of
the results and consequences of our actions in the world that we live in.
[1] MARINA, Ognen; PENCIC, Divna, “Urban transformations of Skopje: fragmented city-
legacy of history”, Proceedings of International Scientific Conference “Spatial Planning in
the South Eastern Europe (up to the World War II), Belgrade, Serbia, 2009.
[2] An Interview with Minas BAKALCEV, Out of real time, in Globus Magazine, 24.02.2010.
[3] VIDLER, Antony, “The Third Typology”, Alexander R. Cuthbert, Ed., Designing Cities,
(Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 317.
[4] DELANDA, Manuel. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, (New York, Continuum,
2004), 10.
[5] HILLIER, Bill, HANSON, Jullienne. Space is the Machine– A Configurational Theory of
Architecture, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 45.
[6] HOLLAND, John H. Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity, (New York, Basic
Books, 1996), 3.