Fabrications

The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and

New Zealand

ISSN: 1033-1867 (Print) 2164-4756 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfab20

Brutalism, Metabolism and its American Parallel

Mirjana Lozanovska

To cite this article: Mirjana Lozanovska (2015) Brutalism, Metabolism and its American Parallel,
Fabrications, 25:2, 152-175, DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2015.1032482

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2015.1032482

Published online: 06 Aug 2015.

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Figure 1: Georgi Konstantinovski, Student Dormitory “Goce Delčev,” Skopje, 1969.

Konstantinovski Archive, Skopje.

152 LOZANOVSKA
 Brutalism, Metabolism and its
American Parallel
Encounters in Skopje and in the Architecture of Georgi
Konstantinovski
Mirjana Lozanovska

Abstract
Massive, raw concrete structures – the likes of the Telecommunications Building
(1972– 81) by Janko Konstantinov; the campus of Ss. Cyril and Methodius
University (1974) by Marko Mušič; the National Hydraulic Institute (1972) by
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Krsto Todorovski; and the Bank Complex (1970) by R. Lalovik and O. Papeš – have
led to the production of an enduring monumental presence and helped inspire
Skopje’s title as the “Brutalist capital of the world”. These works followed Kenzo
Tange’s introduction of Japanese Metabolism to Skopje through his role in the
1965 United Nations sponsored reconstruction competition. The unique position
of a Non-Aligned Yugoslavia staged and facilitated architectural and professional
exchange during the Cold War. Each trajectory and manifestation illustrates the
complex picture of international architectural exchange and local production.
Skopje and its numerous Brutalist edifices is an elucidative story, because it
represents a meeting point between Brutalism, Metabolism and its American
parallel.
This article discusses, in particular, the Skopje Archive Building (1966) and the
“Goce Delčev” Student Dormitory (1969) – two buildings designed by the architect
Georgi Konstantinovski, realised on his return from a Masters program at Yale
University and employment within I. M. Pei’s New York office. Their architecture
illustrates the simultaneous preoccupations of leading architects at the time in
regaining a conceptual ground made explicit through a complete and
apprehensible image. From this particular position, the article explores the
question of ethics and aesthetics central to Banham’s outline of the “New
Brutalism”.

Introduction
Many buildings erected in Skopje in the fifteen years following Kenzo Tange’s
post-1963 earthquake reconstruction masterplan are robust, massive structures
and have collectively produced a béton brut cityscape.1 Marked against a scene of
destruction, their erection, the sheer number of edifices constructed, their raw
concrete expression of structure and form and strong visual presence made it
distinct from the clean modernist language that had evolved in the Yugoslavian
avant-garde and early postwar period. Between Reyner Banham’s 1955 essay and
1966 book on the New Brutalism (the latter subtitled Ethics or Aesthetics?),2 the
case for Brutalist architecture had shifted, not least because numerous Brutalist
constructions proliferated in developing nations (often disavowed as just bad
architecture and cheap construction), but also due to the unique intersections of
Fabrications, 2015
Vol. 25, No. 2, 152–175, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2015.1032482
Ñ 2015 The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand

FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 153

 parallel international developments. Skopje represents a meeting point between
Brutalism, Metabolism and its American parallels, producing an elucidating case
for the current interest in, and discourse on, Brutalism. Due to the high standard
of their conceptual agenda, design development and standard of execution,
Skopje’s Brutalist buildings are a distinctive story of both presence and
presentation, providing the empirical landscape for one of Banham’s key
principles of New Brutalism on the significance of the image. Points of
coincidence between Brutalism, Metabolism and the architecture of Paul
Rudolph were occurring in the 1960s through, for example, the 1960 World
Design Conference in Tokyo, the international rise of Kenzo Tange and the
distribution of non-European journal publication in the 1960s – notably, Japan
Architect. The Skopje case brings these architectural agendas and experiments
into direct encounter and an exacting local architectural production in one
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small city.
Yugoslavia’s position as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in
the 1960s at the height of the Cold War provided the political background and
driving force that made Kenzo Tange and his Japanese team central to both
the reconstruction masterplan for Skopje and an established and strong
Yugoslav architectural modernism. Ernest Weissmann, Director of Housing,
Building and Planning for the United Nations Bureau of Social Affairs and a
Yugoslavian (Croatian) citizen, drew in experts from both sides of the Cold War
during the 1965 United Nations sponsored reconstruction competition.
Weissmann’s later implementation of United Nations Fellowships for
Macedonian architecture graduates to partake in advanced studies at
prestigious institutions in the United States of America have influenced a
whole generation of Macedonian architects.3 As one such recipient, the young
Georgi Konstantinovski completed an intensive one-year Master of Architecture
at Yale University from 1964 to 1965 under the tutorship of Paul Rudolph in
his first semester and Serge Chermeyeff in his final semester. By the 1960s,
previous political pendulum swings settled into a prosperous position and
leadership beyond the nation’s political and economic scale. Yugoslavia was
perceived as European and, along with NAM leadership, provided an expansive
international network of architectural and construction project work across the
Second and Third Worlds. Due to its political openness, the Yugoslav
architectural profession facilitated an exchange of expertise between the
various political factions and “effectively defied the seemingly insurmountable
divides of the Cold War era”.4
But the profession also experimented with the architecture of new institutions
that would define the socialist state. The period of the mid-1960s into the 1970s is
often recalled as the golden era of Yugoslavian architecture, when a confident
economy supported the avant-garde pioneers in the establishment of a number of

154 LOZANOVSKA
 significant educational institutions for a strong and growing generation.5 One
trajectory of this era was a Yugoslavian Brutalism and its dynamic expression
across a range of typologies, from resort architecture to serious institutional
nation-building.6 Banham notes that the New Brutalism had a direct relationship
with the end of Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), as new
ideas about materials and a socio-ethical approach to architecture caused internal
tensions.7 The period after the end of CIAM, or the end of modernism, in the
1960s was not one movement, but a multipolar series of parallel explorations.8
The escalation of travel and exchange of people, print journals and goods was
becoming a glacial force of a new era. The story of Brutalism in Skopje is a product
of this force.
Two buildings that have appeared in the current surge of scholarship
unravelling Yugoslavia’s modernism are the Archive Building (1966) and the
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“Goce Delčev” Student Dormitory (1969), both of which are located in Skopje
and designed by the architect Georgi Konstantinovski. Images of these two
buildings represent this revision of history: the latter was selected for the
cover of Kulić’s 2011 book on Yugoslavian architecture, Modernism In-
Between,9 as well as for the Balkanology Exhibition catalogue;10 while the
former is found in Tokarev’s 100 Years of Modern Architecture, Volume 3:
Contributions of Macedonia and Yugoslavia (1918– 1990). These are
intriguing selections, considering the political hierarchies that operate between
the former republics of Yugoslavia. While Konstantinovski did not directly
engage with the discourse of Brutalism in the 1960s or at present, his
buildings have been characterised as Brutalist, interpreted for their concrete
and structural expression, as well as for their sophisticated conceptualisation
(see Fig 1).
It is this reception and recognition of Konstantinovski, now in his eighties,
that makes his architectural trajectory and the two key edifices a perspective
that can point to the complex and broad international encounter of the
sentiments of Brutalism. In this article, Konstantinovski serves as the
architectural exponent that parallels, rather than reacts to, Tange’s urban design
model. Tange’s master design was finalised in 1966, and in the same year
Konstantinovski’s Archive Building set the standard for architectural
production. By 1967, Tange’s City Wall, translated by a Macedonian team, was
under construction and prepared the stage for the realisation of the
masterplan.11 With the design for the “Goce Delčev” Student Dormitory in 1969,
Georgi Konstantinovski’s place at the apex of what was possible by a local
Macedonian architect was confirmed, and Macedonian architecture entered
contemporary architectural discourse. These two projects illustrate Konstanti-
novski’s agenda to introduce the new ideas he had learnt in America. The visual

FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 155

 power of the Archive and Student Dormitory buildings exemplifies Banham’s
emphasis on image as conceptual architecture.
The existence of the many Brutalist structures in Skopje is a story about their
intriguing erection, their fragile endurance through decades of a lack of
maintenance and negativity and, more recently, destruction and even demolition.
The high standard of their design and execution produces a collective picture of a
peak in architectural production in Skopje and Macedonia. Despite this
retrospective acknowledgement, and a manifestation that might be associated
with philosophies of existentiality, a notable lack of published interpretation and
discussion can be perceived as the first phase of the demise of this architectural
expression. Only since the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the introduction of a
new political force that is radically altering the urban and architectural landscape
in Skopje have they attracted discursive interest.12 A renewed valuation of
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modernist and 1960s architecture has emerged, as many buildings – both

significant and ordinary – are undergoing fac ade treatments to suit the aesthetic
historicism of the new regime. Architectural and cultural battles are being fought
on building sites, in the media and through international academic interest, and
Konstantinovski, insisting on his marginal subjectivity, actively protests the
erasure of this heritage.13

Skopje Brutalism
In the fifteen years of urban development prior to the 1963 earthquake, Skopje –
and, indeed, Macedonia – was perceived as on the outskirts of the central
architectural activities of modernist architecture in Belgrade, Ljubljana and
Zagreb.14 A heterogeneous flow of ideas, cultures and practices, rather than a
homogenous set of traditions, argues Bogdan Ignjatović, set the Yugoslav avant-
garde and the modernist agenda.15 This multi-dimensional influence challenges
the perspective of an “in-between” framework.16 The inter-war structures were
critical to the modernist agenda in Macedonia, but a definitive change emerged
against the backdrop of the destruction of seventy-five per cent of the urban fabric
in Skopje, a post-earthquake tabula rasa and rubble landscape.17 The arrival of
numerous international experts and professional teams, the importation of
designs, protocols, prefabricated kit dwellings, factories, key buildings
(a children’s clinic and assembly hall, etc.) sent as gifts from numerous nations
and fellowships for Macedonian professionals counteracted the devastation with
the possibility of a new future. In the landscape of erased urbanity, Skopje became
a dynamic centre for the exchange of ideas, methods, models and references, while
new constructions created a powerful, visual presence.
A sudden erection of edifices in addition to Konstantinovski’s contributions
include the Contemporary Art Gallery designed by the Polish firm TIGRI (1966),
Alfred Roth’s Pestalozzi Elementary School (1967) and Janko Konstantinov’s

156 LOZANOVSKA
 Pedagogical High School “Nikola Karev” (1967–68) and Medical Centre (1968–
70) – all engendering a Brutalist urban landscape, which was to become
contagious in Skopje.18 Konstantinov’s school is expressionistic, where Roth’s is
restrained. TIGRI’s gallery, sited at the rear of the Kale Fortress Hill, is a refined
experiment of void and matter. Konstantinovski’s Archive Building has not been
surpassed in the articulateness of concept. In all, the planning is crisp. Alfred
Roth’s form of Brutalism evolves from his work with Le Corbusier and his later
collaboration with Marcel Breuer to develop and construct the “Doldertal” houses
in Zurich. These dispersed points produce intriguing traces of architects’/
architecture’s genealogies (see Figs 2 and 3).19
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Figure 2: Janko Konstantinov, Telecommunications Building, Skopje, 1979 – 81.

Konstantinovski Archive.

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Figure 3: Marko Mušič, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University Campus,

main entry, Skopje, 1974.
Photograph by Mirjana Lozanovska, 2007.

New large-scale developments continued in the 1970s. Marko Mušič’s Ss.

Cyril and Methodius University (1974) is a low-rise, large-scale assemblage of
expressive raw concrete components that transform the site topologically and
exceed the visionary capacity of béton brut. It is Brutalism on speed. A similarity
of plan and site footprint with Paul Rudolph’s design for the University in
Dartmouth suggests Mušič was interested in other, parallel developments of
Brutalism. The diagonal was explored in the plan of the National Ethnographic
Museum sited in the old Charishija (the design of which was led by Mimoza
Nestorova Tomić and Kiril Muratovski). Janko Konstantinov’s prominently sited
Telecommunications Building (1972– 81) is a large-scale structure that articulates
one of the four vehicular entries to the city, flanked on one side by Tange’s critical
masterplan element: the City Wall. Its elevations comprise ornamented structure,
mechanistic and regional, and complement the well-known cylindrical circulation
towers abutting a horizontal slab. Its domed interiors – in the context of 1960s
architecture’s fascination with space travel – contain phone booths and a series of
service points line the circular perimeter walls. Their grand and majestic
proportions invite a heightened sense of celebration of the telephone and
international mail. Konstantinov completed his degree in Belgrade under several
high profile educators and worked for Alvar Aalto. An earlier proposal for this
project, as illustrated in a 1974 sketch, is more futuristic and tied visually to
Isozaki’s 1960 City in the Air project, comprising horizontal bands supported on
giant core systems. Tracing Tange’s linear axis, the GTC (City Commercial Centre,
1971) by Živko Popovski (who was part of the team of Van den Broek and Bakema
in the Skopje competition) is an innovative model for a shopping centre,
developing an open horizontal spatial structure of platforms that allow flow and

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Figure 4: Živko Popovski, City Commercial Centre, Skopje, 1971.

Photograph by Mirjana Lozanovska, 2007.

movement, yet define the site. Banham’s emphasis on topology rather than
geometry as spatial affect is evident in three of the projects: the university as site
proposal, the museum as system of diagonal orientation and the GTC
conceptualised as horizontal field (see Fig 4).
Further along the river, the Bank Complex (1970) by R. Lalovik and O. Papeš
rises like a beacon (where Tange’s unrealised City Gate Centre was sited). Just
outside the city centre and sited on a hill is the National Hydraulic Institute (1972)
by Krsto Todorovski, the most constructivist edifice. Its pinwheel plan producing a
mechanical-like torsion is countered by a triangular geometry that connects the
three cylindrical circulation forms – all the more spectacular because it is viewed
from below.20

Georgi Konstantinovski: The Archive Building (1966) and Student Dormitory

“Goce Delčev” (1969)
In 1968, Konstantinovski established Atelier Underground in the basement of the
Archive Building, engaging a generation of architecture students and graduates
with a new orientation. This grew out of, and complemented, his work as an
architectural educator: in 1958, he was Assistant Professor in the Housing and
Hotel Studio in the Faculty of Architecture at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University
in Skopje; subsequently, he offered professorial leadership in the housing studio;
later, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture (1987– 88).21 Yet
Konstantinovski perceived himself to be outside of party politics and its
associative privileges, and his success in receiving a fellowship indicated more his
determination and commitment than a system at work. Born in Kragujevac,
Serbia, but spending his childhood in Bitola – a town that had lost its cultural
prestige to Skopje when the Serbian kingdom made that city the capital of

FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 159

 Macedonia – Konstantinovski and his two brothers rose as intellectual figures,
despite an absence of family connections.22 He graduated from the Faculty of
Technology in Skopje in 1956, undertook work experience in Israel in 1953 and
then in 1960 worked with Rajko Tatik in Belgrade. Resisting retirement, since
1995 Konstantinovski has focused on the production of a three-volume
encyclopaedia of Macedonian architects, collating and collecting information on
over 400 architects.23 While enjoying the reference to his work, he wishes to leave
both a legacy of built works and a self-referential oeuvre of architectural
explorations and texts of his views on architecture. He has single-handedly
archived all his work, redrawn plans and elevations, translated projects into
digital copies, documented awards received, written articles and published books.
Built on his return from the United States, Konstantinovski’s Archive Building
(1966) and Student Dormitory “Goce Delčev” (1969) are striking pieces of
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architectural work and site development. Banham did not know of the Archive
Building, but it captures his emphasis on the total and articulate image that he
argues is not merely Brutalist, but “presents brutality”.24 The Archive Building is
not a large-scale building and yet has a formidable presence on the site.
In contrast to the megastructure edifices that sometimes have a visual affinity with
Brutalism, but which Banham categorises separately, the Archive Building is
small. The design does not orient itself towards the corner site on Bulevard
Partizanski Odredi and Ulica Moskovska; its ground-level geometry, the
landscape and generous set-back from both wide avenues reinforce an object-like
character, more prominent in the empty context of that precinct in the 1960s.
Banham defines the “New Brutalism” as: an explicit honesty or exhibition of
structure and materials giving buildings an “as found” aesthetic; bi-axial
symmetry and formality in planning; an “immediately apprehensible visual
entity”; yet an “intuitive sense of topology”, rather than dominant geometry.25
How do Konstantinovski’s two buildings interact with these characteristics? The
composition of the Archive Building is assembled of separate components that
constitute a total image, immediately affective, even if complex. In the foreground,
one rectangular form is overlaid over another at right angles and at the rear a
vertical tower completes the image. Diagonal edges refine the totality of the edifice
as visual entity and reveal the consciousness of inscribing a conceptual presence
on the site. In the Skopje Archive Building, the total and articulate image can be
first understood as presence. Presence, in this context, equals existing – not
merely biological existence, but institutional legitimacy; a will and capacity to
manifest existence in concrete terms. In this sense, the program of the building is
also significant. Like many of the Brutalist structures that were erected in Skopje
during this period, the Archive Building incrementally adds to the institutional
infrastructure that constitutes its society. Following the earthquake, the Archive

160 LOZANOVSKA
 Building provided a structure for the safekeeping of the city’s documents and,
therefore, its historical development.
Recent developments, including a residential apartment block constructed
directly adjacent to the ‘stack’ section of the Archive Building (almost within an
arm’s length) and an amorphous, introverted shopping mall on the opposite
corner site, have added to the ad hoc suburban environment testing the endurance
of a protest position related to Banham’s principle that Brutalist architecture
presents brutality.26 While the Archive Building’s object-like character is
cramped, its present-day suburban context has more emphatically revealed the
chiselled precision of the image (see Fig 5).
The Archive Building’s presentation of Brutalism in Banham’s sense is also
associated with the architect, Konstantinovski. It is possible to perceive the
confidence, if not brashness, of Konstantinovski, who dared to propose such a
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strong conceptual agenda and spatial structure, and to realise a high standard
construction of in situ concrete and timber formwork not common in Skopje.
Konstantinovski is committed to contributing to architecture in Macedonia, from
a position of understanding architecture on both an international and national
level. The Archive Building is serious about the power of design, the value of the
design concept and the architect’s expertise; it is serious about the level of
painstaking work, effort and dedication required to follow through in the
production of a built work. The clarity of its architectural statement is a

Figure 5: Georgi Konstantinovski, City of Skopje Archive Building,

Skopje, 1966.
Konstantinovski Archive.

FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 161

 manifestation of this agenda and labour. It wants a dignified architecture to instil
new ideas about existing, not merely as belonging to a place, but a purposeful
presence and a new way of living. The Archive Building, and by extension many
other Brutalist structures in Skopje, do not fit Banham’s principle of “as-found”
sense, and yet their presence and design is directed towards an objective of both
ethics and aesthetics.
The “Goce Delčev” Student Dormitory, built in 1969, a few years after the
Archive Building, presents an image of permanence and monumentality that has
endured a severe lack of maintenance, new ad hoc structures and changes to the
site and context. Providing the south bookend to the Archive Building on Ulica
Moskovska, both its comprehensive appropriation of a much larger site and the
four residential towers result in a presence related to the power of design purpose,
highlighted in a sociopolitical local context that can easily elide disciplined
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commitment. Towers, bridges and the silhouette of balconies represent brutality

projecting a brave future and, at present, exemplify a precedent of significant
architectural lineage.
A larger-scale complex, the Student Dormitory has visual affinities with Paul
Rudolph’s Yale Art and Architecture School. Rudolph was Chairman of the School
of Architecture at Yale in the period from 1957 to 1965, with his building
completed in 1963, just prior to Konstantinovski’s arrival. Rudolph’s building is
clad in grooved cast-concrete panels that were hammered by hand to create a
rough “corduroy” texture that generates constantly shifting patterns of light and
shadow. The similarity between the construction and end result of both the
Archive Building and Student Dormitory (featuring an off-form concrete wall
made from a metal formwork with an oil surface to give it the required finish for
the latter) is unquestionable, and Konstantinovski speaks repeatedly about the
quality of light on the walls. Rudolph’s Yale building is exemplary of the
experimentation of an interlocking multi-storey space within a monumental
structure. Its famous sectional drawing illustrates the focus of the design process
and, with thirty-seven levels across seven storeys, is a compelling example of
spatial layering. Konstantinovski’s Archive Building, rather than the Student
Dormitory, announces a dimension of the spatial layering in the contradistinction
of form and its effect on the internal spatial geometry. Examples of
Konstantinovski’s closely spaced line drawings, produced by hand and likened to
Rudolph’s, illustrate his inspiration and model technique. While Rudolph fell out
of favour in architectural discourse, not unlike Brutalist architecture, he was a
significant figure in the 1960s.27 From Konstantinovski’s perspective, American
architecture in the mid-1960s was at a crossroads between the master Kahn, the
Brutalism of Rudolph – both important guides for his work – and the
postmodernism of Venturi, who was on the jury panel for his Masters project at

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Figure 6: Georgi Konstantinovski, examples of original drawings of various projects, Skopje.

Konstantinovski Archive.

Yale.28 On his return to Skopje, his aim was to introduce the new ideas he had
learnt from Rudolph, Chermayeff and Kahn (see Fig 6).
In that year at Yale University, Konstantinovski regularly visited Kahn’s Yale
Art Centre (1951) – a project Banham found difficult to position in relation to the
New Brutalism. In his 1955 essay, Banham outlines how, in respect to materials,
exhibition of the structural method and the bi-axiality of the plan, the Yale Art
Centre is aligned with the New Brutalism.29 Yet he points to the “arty” detailing and
the way that the building does not produce “a coherent and apprehensible visual
entity” as problematic in respect to New Brutalism. He then devotes a page to it in his
1966 book.30 Again, he comments that its architectural achievement – the explicit
and honest expression of structure and materials – is hidden from the street and,
therefore, the view of the public. This is disappointing for Banham. The image in
relation to New Brutalism is complex. While the Yale Art Centre as a whole has a
powerful image quality, Banham argues it is assembled from memory, rather than
immediately available. Konstantinovski orients his work towards Kahn and is
influenced by the Yale Art Centre.31 But the Archive Building as visual entity is closer
to Banham’s definition of memorability as an image that affects the emotions.
Chamfering is limited to the interior plan in the Student Dormitory, but axial
rotation drives the spatial structure of the Archive Building, producing a diagonal

FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 163

 effect indexical of bi-axiality and topology in the interior, which is in tension with
external formal geometry. Inspired by Kahn, Konstantinovski aims towards clarity
of the plan. The interlocking geometry of the Archive Building is prismatic and
objective, resonating with Kahn’s critique of steel and glass, to define structure
and space through mass and wall. This is achieved, but the interior develops a
more complex and layered spatial sensibility. The totality of the image comprises a
horizontal form of two components at right angles to one another and a six-storey
tower at the rear. This division reflects a separation of the functions: the entry and
administration occupies the lower horizontal rectangular space (broad on entry),
while the workshop area lies perpendicular to this in the upper rectangular space.
A bridge to the six-storey tower where the city’s archives are held links this
horizontal structure. A complex rotational geometry, whereby an inner envelope
of the tower structure is rotated at 45 degrees, but realigned on its outer layer with
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the geometry of the front form, reinforces two of Banham’s principles: a strong
and articulate totality and an emphasis on topology within the interior. The
chamfered corners on both the low and tower structures enhance it. This method
of the shifting plan and form, especially the cross-in-square layering, also
resonates with the complex geometries of Byzantine tradition, familiar to both
Konstantinovski and Kahn, but the external image is stripped of its cascading roof
structures and envelopes associated with that tradition (see Fig 7).
Kahn’s servant and served hierarchy of spatial organisation is a design
principle that Konstantinovski is committed to and is implemented in both the
Archive Building and Student Dormitory. Konstantinovski frames a discussion of
his work through Kahn, noting his modernist principle of the exterior expression
of the structure and functional planning, whereby the purpose of the building is
demonstrated through its form. The perimeter of the student dormitory weaves in
and out, articulating a distinct aesthetic related to the individual/collective
ideology of its socio-ethical program, abutted at each end by the vertical
circulation spaces. By 1965, Kahn’s Richard’s Medical Centre, built between 1957
and 1959, was well-known and publicised, and the elite women’s college Bryn
Mawr comes to mind when looking at Konstantinovski’s “Goce Delčev” Student
Dormitory. Konstantinovski knew about both and may have seen them on his
travels in the United States. After his graduation, Konstantinovski worked for
I. M. Pei in New York, who was also in awe of Kahn. This is not an exact logic or
trajectory regarding how Konstantinovski’s architectural ideas evolved, but an
index of interests and, as Banham points out, the Brutalist connections appear
because similar preoccupations and interests captivate architects, even if they are
in different parts of the world (see Fig 8).32
The Student Dormitory included four housing towers in a pinwheel layout,
connected by bridges at the sixth floor, with public facilities, including lounge
rooms, terraces with pools and fountains. In addition, separate structures for the

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Figure 7: Georgi Konstantinovski, plan of Skopje Archive Building, showing the complex geometry and
spatial layering, Skopje, 1966.
Konstantinovski Archive.

restaurant/cafeteria and sporting centre were built, while outdoor sporting areas,
an outdoor amphitheatre and a recreational park were organised on the site at a
later date. Linked to his final Masters project at Yale, and influenced by the socio-
architectural approach of Chermayeff, Konstantinovski’s Student Dormitory
produced a new social agenda in both plan and form. For example, we see how
four rooms come off their own corridors, creating social neighbour spaces.
The A & B blocks, which were built first, accommodated two students in each
room and provided a small kitchenette. The communal bathrooms punctuate
the corridors at the ends. Given the tiny dimensions, the geometry of each
room allows for a surprising level of privacy and relation to a window. This is
partly achieved by incorporating tiny but private study niches in the rooms, not
unlike Kahn’s articulation of individual library carrels. Rudolph’s ideas are
explored in the program hierarchy of rooms for couples, two individual
students or single-person rooms for Honours and postgraduate students.
Konstantinovski’s quirky sense of humour is revealed when he talks of the
next phase, when the director asks for individual bathrooms. The plan was
already such that there was not one millimetre to spare, but he took on the

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Figure 8: Georgi Konstantinovski, plan and elevation of the Student Dormitory “Goce
Delčev”, Skopje, 1969.
Konstantinovski Archive.

challenge with wit and made minor alterations to existing dimensions,

resulting in Block V and G (Cyrillic alphabet) with a bathroom in each room.
Such a preoccupation for the spatial program is part of the socio-architectural

166 LOZANOVSKA
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Figure 9: Georgi Konstantinovski, detail of room plans of the Student Dormitory “Goce Delčev”, Skopje,
1969.
Konstantinovski Archive.

intentions and contributes to the theories of ethics in relation to Brutalism in

Skopje (see Fig 9).
In contrast to this spatial program of modesty and restraint, the bridges
between the towers recall a glamorous and hedonistic side of Yugoslav resort
architecture in the 1960s.33 The political openness of Yugoslavia, its socialist
ideology of the healthy body, combined with efforts to shake off traditional moral
structures, developed into extensive implementation of hotel and resort
architecture.34 The bridges present structuralist dynamics and make for a new
type of socialisation in sculptural landscapes of concrete – that of sunbathing,
lounging by the pools, collective recreational activities and showering, all
organised in bays of concrete plinths and walls, fountains and pools. A lack of use
over the last two decades due to lack of management, poor maintenance and safety
issues has rendered these into landscapes of ruin (see Fig 10).35

Tange and Metabolism in Skopje

Largely due to the sensitivity of party politics and his continuing distrust of
authorities, Konstantinovski does not entertain the idea of Tange’s influence and
claims his disinterest in Yugoslavian architects, despite his education in Belgrade.
While not part of the design intention, both Konstantinovski buildings capture the
design philosophy of “spatial image” and “spatial structure” that Tange brought to,
and developed through, the Skopje reconstruction project. Konstantinovski noted
the influence of the Japanese architect Maekawa on Rudolph.36 Maekawa was
Tange’s mentor and worked with Le Corbusier. Seen through the lens of
Konstantinovski, exchange through travel and publication erupts in parallel, criss-

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Figure 10: Georgi Konstantinovski, aerial view of the bridge of the

Student Dormitory “Goce Delčev”, Skopje, 1969.
Photograph by Mirjana Lozanovska, 2010.

crossed trajectories, such that conventional narratives are bypassed by a web of

international and local opportunities and limits.
Tange was the winner of the 1965 United Nations international competition
for the reconstruction of the centre of Skopje.37 In the context of a chaotic,
devastated city, it is not difficult to imagine the impact of Tange’s winning model:
visionary, exquisitely packaged, complete and impeccably executed. While the
jury found it unrealistic for a small town lacking in infrastructure, they were also
tempted to dare to imagine such a new city.38 Such a moment can raise the dignity
of a whole nation of people.39 It came with Tange, the person, and the team of
Japanese architects and earthquake experts he bought with him. Recollections of
architects in Macedonia confirm Tange’s immense knowledge and his capacity to
listen and not impose through a sense of superiority.40 At the time, Tange was
treated like a hero: chauffeured in a Tito presidential limousine in a parade usually
confined to figures of national significance; awarded the Yugoslav star and given
Yugoslav citizenship.41 Skopje and Macedonia, subordinate even to the other
republics, gained a profile through the role of Kenzo Tange, and Tange’s Skopje

168 LOZANOVSKA
 project became a key reference for Yugoslavian architecture.42 Tange’s role
operated at the level of the nation and, it can be argued, at a metanarrative level,
resonating throughout Eastern and central Europe.43 Skopje, a pivotal project in
Tange’s and Japan’s architectural trajectory, signified Japan entering the
architectural scene in Europe and heralded Tange’s international work. Visiting
the firm of Doxiadis44 in Athens, who was also centrally involved in the Skopje
project, Tange’s large-scale urban project development work was instigated.45
Participating in the last meeting of CIAM in Otterlo in 1959, Tange was critical
of European aestheticism, because it lacked the vitality required to rise from
destruction. In the aftermath of World War II, Tange and Japan were confronted
by the reality that “nothing remained but a sparse scattering of scorched concrete
building”.46 The following year, the Japanese organised the 1960 World Design
Conference in Tokyo, reinstating an international forum, albeit outside Europe.
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Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn attended; and Aldo Van Eyck, Ralph Erskine and
the Smithsons were invited by Tange. This was the forum where the Metabolist
Manifesto was disseminated and where Tange introduced his manifesto for the
1960 Tokyo Bay project, announcing a society transformed by information
technology. Tange found influence in the European avant-garde movement,
through his friendship with artist Taro Okamoto, who, upon returning from Paris,
wanted to plan a utopian city like Jean Dubuffet (noted by Banham in relation to
the sophisticated dimension of the New Brutalism) or “Ghost Tokyo”, as a new
island in Tokyo Bay. The masses are the inhabitants of the modern city and nation,
but for Tange and the Metabolists, the role of the architect is critical to their
survival. In Skopje, this translates to a capacity to reinvent a city or nation after
devastation.47 Tange’s, and the Metabolists’, agenda was related to the perception
of the urban crisis in Tokyo (see Fig 11).
At this particular moment, Metabolism, like Banham’s principles for the New
Brutalism, is not aesthetic or stylistic, but develops a social and ethical agenda.
Noted in the 1960 Tokyo Bay project, his interest in the Jomon aesthetic – a
Japanese pottery tradition that is earlier, heavier and more archaic than the
elegant Yayoi and more highly regarded in foreign interpretations – becomes a
primordial reference that, for Tange, “inspires a greater feeling of the vital force of
the masses”.48 Jomon motivates Tange and Metabolism towards the resilience of
the “concrete building”; indeed, Tange believes that the defiance, robustness and
energy of the “richly ornamented Jomon pottery” is the key to this creativity living
again. Tange’s design philosophy translates this “vital force” into urbanism and
architecture, giving it shape, structure and form. A whole issue of Japan Architect
in 1967 elaborates on the Skopje project.49
Tange was informed by, and linked this motivation to, “the appearance then of
many brutalist elements all over the world indicate[ing] a similar tendency”,50 but
his articles written during the 1960s and 1970s do not engage in a discourse on

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Figure 11: Kenzo Tange and the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC), Skopje
reconstruction masterplan model, UN competition entry, 1965.
Reproduced from Derek Senior, Skopje Resurgent: The Story of a United Nations Special Fund Town Planning Project (New York: United Nations, 1970),
with the permission of the United Nations Publishing Department.

Brutalism with Metabolism. Banham includes Tange’s and the Metabolists’ work
in his discussion of Megastructures, rather than that of New Brutalism.51 Isozaki,
too, is critical of some of the Metabolist developments and determinations,
highlighting their belief in technology and mass production, and yet acknowledges
the complex references. Tange’s competition entry for the Skopje project is a
masterplan and certainly has megastructure scale, but his design position is a
protest against the two-dimensional approach that dominated British planning.
The principles of spatial image and spatial structure are exactly related to the
conceptual visual entity of Brutalism, and this is illustrated in the effort put into
the architectural design of the structures. Tange and the Japanese team were
frustrated at not having the opportunity to develop the architecture. But both the
development of the City Wall and the implementation and realisation of key
institutions, usually through architectural competitions, resulted in an
extraordinary sophistication of numerous buildings in Skopje.
Brutalism became a “pan Yugoslavian phenomena” in the late 1960s and into
the 1970s, argues Kulić.52 He presents competing definitions of Brutalism and
argues that buildings such as the Genex Tower by Mihajlo Mitrović illustrate the
transition between two different definitions of Brutalism: “from an ethic of
‘honest’ structure, ordinary materials and as-found components, to an aesthetics

170 LOZANOVSKA
 of expressive structural and sculptural effects”.53 He notes a different form of
Brutalism that is tied both to Kenzo Tange’s influence in Skopje and the influence
of Rudolph and Kahn on young Yugoslav architects during their studies in
America. His emphasis is that such a Brutalism is widespread within Yugoslavia
and yet takes a strong and particular, sometimes individual, new expression.
Brutalism in Skopje was also mediated by the memorability embedded in the
Yugoslav tradition of memorials, especially the poetic work of Edvard Ravnikar
and Bogdan Bogdanović.54 Ravnikar (who worked with both Plečnik and Le
Corbusier) was influential on the Yugoslav architectural scene and community, as
architect and teacher, and submitted an entry in the Skopje competition. The solid
but dispersed and weathered forms of his memorials built in the 1950s have a
profound and yet almost non-existent, as-found ruin presence in the landscape,
which, along with the more sculptural forms of Bogdanović and others, inscribe
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the Yugoslav landscape, both historically and through the memorability of their
image.
While a topic for another article, the examples of béton brut buildings throughout
Eastern Europe and the many central Asian parts of the then USSR outlined in
Kultermann’s publication are also integral to this exchange facilitated by the
Yugoslav architectural profession.55 Many Yugoslav architects were either directly
involved in the reconstruction of Skopje or were motivated by the formidable force of
Kenzo Tange, the 1960 World Design Conference and its introduction of
Metabolism. These references are mixed with other, yet diverse, trajectories, and in
Skopje, each possesses a strong purpose of concept and execution.

Conclusion
The massive Brutalist structures of Skopje were, until recently, silent and at risk of
disappearing from existence, and possibly from history.56 Tange’s Metabolism
and the Brutalist edifices constructed in Skopje illustrate a position that is serious
about the role of architecture. Each project plays a role in the incremental building
of a city and the institutional infrastructure of society. Against the post-
earthquake landscape, it is not difficult to identify that the challenge was to
capture the weight of the situation and yet also to offer both resilience and a way
forward.
Banham and the Smithsons promoted a discourse of Brutalism that
emphasised manifesto, ideology and the wishful language for an avant-garde.
Like the protest and position of Tange and the Skopje Brutalist architecture,
Highmore has argued that their work was also contextualised by trauma and
hope.57 But this is not the same protest position that Banham has identified as a
critique of social structures. In the mass and density of Skopje béton brut,
examples pronounced and highlighted that the visual edifice is integral to its
conceptual position. The edifices demonstrate a protest-type stance against

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 insignificance; a position in relation to a brave new world. Their seriousness
about existence is related to the desire for modernity and is detailed in their
complex trajectories. Does this position articulate their Brutalism as ethical,
rather than aesthetic?
If the Brutalism of Skopje architecture is a response to destruction, does it
resonate with a vitality that is also a form of protest? Is it protesting against
surrender, devastation, backwardness and annihilation, as well as death? Is the
different texture of Japanese Metabolism also a protest against the devastation
of Japanese cities after World War II, and in the 1960s against the urban crisis
of the economic growth of Tokyo?58 The objective of the protest position in
Skopje was towards implementation and realisation. Ernest Weissmann, the UN
figure operating behind the scenes, was key to preventing endless and impotent
bureaucratic procedures, managing the multipolar operations and funding
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experimental and innovative practices.59 Optimism was orchestrated. The

contribution of the international community was real, as shown in the extensive
records that Tito insisted on keeping.60 Aesthetics was not the agenda. The
Skopje edifices can be interpreted as weight, presence and brute defiance, with
an architecture oscillating between matter and purpose. But these ethics met the
aesthetic characteristics of the object and concept head on, not as style, but as
material provocation. Does this rethinking and reframing stage these structures,
like those of Japanese Metabolism (as Isozaki suggests), as the last avant-
garde?61
Many Brutalist buildings in Skopje have become memorial-like in their
abandoned and battered state, resonating the fragile power of Ravnikar’s
cemetery.62 Tange’s spatial image and spatial structure provided a conceptual
robustness and vitality for the city, rather than an aesthetic style or language. Over
the decades since their erection, the powerful presence of Konstantinovski’s
Archive Building and “Goce Delčev” Student Dormitory have transformed from a
position of protest to a sublime existence in the midst of a frenzy of messy
construction. Konstantinovski wanted to show the unsupportive local authorities
and Yugoslavia what he and a sophisticated architecture could have achieved,
wanting his architecture to stand among the great.

Author’s Note
This paper is dedicated to Professor Goce Adji-Mitrevski, my colleague at the Faculty of
Architecture, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, who passed away in November
2013. An inspired way of looking at the architectural world was matched only by his talent for
sketching and his readiness to assist others. My gratitude also goes to Professor Georgi
Konstantinovski, who introduced me to the Macedonian architecture field many decades ago
and who has generously shared his impeccable archives; and to the United Nations for
copyright to use the image of Tange’s model. In addition, I would like to thank Ana Ivanovska
and Josephine Le Clerc at Deakin University Library, for locating some plans relevant for my
work, the librarians at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje and Brandon Gardiner for his
invaluable assistance.

172 LOZANOVSKA
 NOTES
1. For the description of Skopje as the “Brutalist Capital of the World”, see Nate Robert,
“Communist Architecture of Skopje, Macedonia – A Brutal, Modern, Cosmic, Era,” Yomadic,
accessed December 2013, http://www.yomadic.com/communist-architecture-skopje-kenzo-
tange/.
2. Reyner Banham, “The New Brutalism,” Architectural Review, no. 118 (December 1955):
354– 61; Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (London: The Architectural
Press, 1966).
3. Weissmann founded the Zagreb Group as a national group of Congrès International
d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in 1932. Derek Senior, Skopje Resurgent: The Story of a United
Nations Special Fund Town Planning Project (New York, NY: United Nations, 1970); Mirjana
Lozanovska, “Kenzo Tange’s Forgotten Master Plan for the Reconstruction of Skopje,”
Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand
22, no. 2 (2012): 140– 63; Mirjana Lozanovska, “The Intriguing and Forgotten International
Exchanges in the Master Plan for the Reconstruction of Skopje,” paper presented at the EAHN
2012: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the European Architectural History
Network, Brussels, May 31– June 2, 2012.
4. Vladimir Kulic, Maroje Mrduljaš and Wolfgang Thaler, Modernism in-Between: The
Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2012), 32.
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5. Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post-Avant-Gardes in

Yugoslavia, 1918 – 1991, eds. Dubravka Djurić and Miško Šuvaković (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2003).
6. Impossible Histories, eds. Djurić and Šuvaković.
7. Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?
8. Lukasz Stanek, “Introduction: The ‘Second World’s’ Architecture and Planning in the ‘Third
World’,” The Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 299– 307.
9. Kulic, Mrduljaš and Thaler, Modernism in-Between.
10. Swiss Architecture Museum, SAM Balkanology series of conferences and exhibitions, Basel,
2011, http://www.sam-basel.org/home.html. Konstantinovski, marginalised in Macedonia, was
nominated for the Academy of Science and Art in Slovenia. Only two other Macedonian
architects are mentioned in Kulic’s book. Prior to these recent examinations, a key reference for
Eastern European modernism and Tange was Udo Kultermann’s Zeitgenössische Architektur in
Osteuropa (Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 1985); Udo Kultermann, Kenzo Tange, 1946-1969 (Zürich:
Verlag für Architektur Artemis, 1970). See also Robin Boyd, Kenzo Tange (New York, NY:
Braziller, 1962).
11. The architectural team for the low-level City Wall housing structures: Ǵyrik, Malenkova,
Kosevska, Bogačev, Serafimovski and Simoski.
12. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, “Skopje Scomparirà,” Abitare 504 (July – August 2010): 82– 95;
Leonora Grcheva, “Reshaping the Skopje City Centre as a National Agenda: Skopje 1965 vs.
Skopje 2014,” Masters Thesis, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, 2011.
13. Konstantinovski writes and publishes numerous newspaper and journal articles protesting
against the current erasure of modernist edifices.
14. Boris Čipan, “The Architecture of Nowadays,” in Македноска Архитектура [Macedonian
Architecture], catalogue, The Museum of Contemporary Arts in Skopje (1974). The influence of
Yugoslav modernism included the work of Plečnik; the first imported professors – Ulrih, Ancel
and Balej – from Zagreb to establish the architecture department in 1949; education in Belgrade
and Zagreb of the first architecture graduates; and key figures that visited Macedonia (Ravnikar
and Grabrijan).
15. Bogdan Ignjatović, curator, Contemporary Yugoslav Architecture, catalogue, travelling
exhibition (1959).
16. Kulic, Mrduljaš and Thaler, Modernism in-Between.
17. Notable inter-war works: 1928 City Hospital by Drago Ibler; 1937 Museum of Ethnology by
Milan Zloković. Post-war works: Brezovski’s Workers House (1958); Serafimovski’s three elegant
residential towers on the Vardar River (1958); the Palace Hotel in Ohrid (1955) by the acclaimed
Slovenian architect Edo Mihevc; and the Electro-Macedonia Administrative building by Branko
Petercic, 1962.
18. The Polish firm TIGRI included: Jerzy Mokrzyński, Wacłav Kłyszewski and Eugeniusz
Wierzbicki.

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 19. Igea Trioni, “An Architectural Genogram: Writing Architectural History Based on the
Transfer of Social Capital,” The International Journal of Social Sciences 5, no. 7 (2010): 347– 64.
20. Other structures belong to a group appearing like assembled/stacked containers or cubes,
including the Macedonian National Radio and Television Building (Kiril Acevski 1971 – 83) and
the News Publishing Agency “Nova Makedonija” Building, Blagoja Kolev (1981).
21. Three architects/academics that he mentored have succeeded in gaining key positions in the
Faculty of Architecture, and one, Professor Minas Bakalcev, is a leading architect in Macedonia,
and as Dean, is leading the Faculty.
22. One brother is the director of the Skopje Archives; the other, who has remained in Bitola, is a
highly respected historian.
23. This mammoth task has included seventeen non-Macedonian architects, who made
significant contributions, eleven architects of Macedonian origin living and working outside of
Macedonia, key organisations and institutions, a list of the presidents of the institute and major
architecture awards.
24. Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, 23.
25. Banham, “The New Brutalism,” 354– 61.
26. Konstantinovski’s reaction to the alterations and developments in relation to the Archive
Building and the “Goce Delčev” Dormitory is both frustration and a tragic realisation of the
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current context and attitude to the architecture of the 1960s in Macedonia.

27. Of note is the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje by Marko Music.
28. The examination panel for his final presentation included Robert Venturi. Following the
completion of his study, Konstantinovski worked in the office of I. M. Pei in New York.
29. Banham, “The New Brutalism,” 24.
30. Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, 44.
31. Venturi’s Vanna Venturi House and the Guild House had just been built (1964), and Kahn’s
Kimbell Museum and Salk Institute were attracting much international attention.
32. Conversation with Peter Kohane, July 2013.
33. Holidays After the Fall: Seaside Architecture and Urbanism in Bulgaria and Croatia, eds. Elke
Beyer, Anke Hagemann and Michael Zinganel (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2013).
34. Industries built their own hotels, and workers who were members of those industries could
gain subsidised resort accommodation at these hotels.
35. On a recent visit to the dormitory, Konstantinovski noted new pitched roofs on some of the
bridges, prompting him to discuss this issue for over an hour with the dormitory manager. His
main point of protest was why the architect had not been consulted about this repair/change to
the structure. Konstantinovski, workshop, June 2013.
36. Konstantinovski, workshop discussion, 2010.
37. The United Nations international competition, early 1965, invited four foreign firms – Van
den Broek and Bakema (Netherlands), Luigi Piccinato (with Studio Scimemi, Italy), Maurice
Rotival (USA) and Kenzo Tange (Japan) – and four Yugoslav firms linked to town planning
institutes – Slavko Brezovski (with Makedonija Proekt, Macedonia), Aleksandar Dordjevic
(Serbia), Eduard Ravnikar (Slovenia) and Radovan Misčevic and Fedor Wenzler (Croatia). The
jury announced the first prize was awarded to Kenzo Tange (sixty per cent) and Misčevic and
Wenzler (forty per cent).
38. Hélène Lipstadt, “Can ‘Art Professions’ be Bourdieuean Fields of Cultural Production? The
Case of the Architecture Competition,” Cultural Studies 17, no. 3 – 4 (2003): 390 –418.
39. Senior, Skopje Resurgent. The impact is similar to the role of Kahn in Dacca, Bangladesh.
40. Interview with Mimoza Tomić and Rafel Vlkovski, two architects who had worked on the
Skopje reconstruction project at the Skopje Institute of Town Planning Authority (Skopje ITPA).
Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist (eds); Kayoko Ota with James Westcott, AMO; translators:
Thomas Daniell, Wayne Lammers and Hiroshi Watanabe: Project Japan: Metabolism Talks
(Köln; London: Taschen, 2011). Interviews portray the characterisation of Tange as scholarly,
serious, shy and very quiet.
41. Senior, Skopje Resurgent; Kultermann, Zeitgenössische Architektur in Osteuropa;
Kultermann, Kenzo Tange.
42. Grcheva, “Reshaping the Skopje City Centre,” 34 – 47.

174 LOZANOVSKA
 43. Koolhaas et al., Project Japan.
44. Doxiadis was also centrally involved in the Skopje project, and had numerous large-scale
projects all over the world, which some have argued were instrumental in the Cold War, as it
was played out in the battle for the modernisation of newly independent nations. Stanek,
“Introduction: The ‘Second World’s’ Architecture and Planning in the ‘Third World’,” 299– 307.
45. Interview with Noritake Tange, November 2013.
46. Kenzo Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design,” The Japan Architect 46 (September 1971): 8.
47. Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design,” 18.
48. Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design.”
49. Kenzo Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” The Japan Architect (May 1967).
50. Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design.”
51. A gesture is made to Japanese architecture in the New Brutalist manifesto, as a key
reference for Le Corbusier’s béton brut of the Unité and the Smithsons. But Banham, focusing
on the Smithsons, dismisses this as a reference to the Maekawa/Tange architecture.
52. Kulic, Mrduljaš and Thaler, Modernism in-Between, 83.
53. Kulic, Mrduljaš and Thaler, Modernism in-Between, 83.
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54. Ravnikar: Memorial Complex Kampor, Island of Rab, 1953; Hostages Cemetery, Draga near
Begunje, 1952 – 53. Bogdanović: Jasenovac Memorial Complex, Jasenovac, 1959 – 66; Slobo-
dište Necropolis, Kruševac, 1960 – 65; Partisans’ Cemetery, Mostar, 1959 – 65; Prilip, 1961. It is
important to note that Ravnikar was also invited to enter the 1965 competition, but the story is
that his entry was enticing, but incomplete.
55. Kultermann, Zeitgenossische Architektur in Osteuropa. Until the new millennium, this was
one of the few publications that offered a study of Eastern European modernism, and to my
knowledge available only in German.
56. Weiss, “Skopje Scomparirà,” 82– 95.
57. Ben Highmore, “Rough Poetry: Patio and Pavilion Revisited,” Oxford Art Journal 29, no. 2
(2006): 269– 90.
58. Koolhaas et al., Project Japan.
59. Lozanovska, “Kenzo Tange’s Forgotten Master Plan,” 140 – 63.
60. Archives, Skopje City Archive Institute, June 2013.
61. Kurokawa has stated that everything begins with the destruction of Japan at the end of
World War II. Kisho Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture (London: Studio Vista, 1977). Isozaki,
remaining on the edges of Metabolism, alludes to a tension between optimism and the avant-
garde attitude.
62. Weiss, “Skopje Scomparirà,” 82– 95. Except for Konstantinovski’s Archive Building and
Student Dormitory, the association and aspiration to Kahn might be more about memorability
and articulation of the collective than an exacting of his principles.

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