Skopje 2014: PATTERNS OF GROWTH

Design Studio ws 2014-2015

This volume presents excerpts from the work in the Design Studio entitled Skopje 2014: PATTERNS OF
GROWTH conducted during the winter semester of the academic year 2014-2015 with the students from
the ninth semester at the Faculty of Architecture, University St. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje.
Content

01 Skopje 2014: PATTERNS OF GROWTH Introduction to the studio theme

02 The Strategy of the CUT OUT: Studio work methodology

07 From Territorial Analyses to Spatial Imagination: Mapping

77 From SUPERNOW to FUTUREFRAGMENTS: Studio Projects

Skopje 2014: PATTERNS OF GROWTH
Introduction to the studio theme

The PATTERNS OF GROWTH studio aims to acknowledge the transformative

specifics of the urban conditions facing continuous quantitative changes on
the case of the city of Skopje. The focus is set on the phenomenon of growth
in terms of size, volume and density, seen through the dichotomy between the
city fragment and the city as a whole.
The growth is an inherent and vital feature of every city. But the question here
is how does the city grow? In the last hundred years the city of Skopje has un-
dergone three major events that have direct impact on the socio-spatial char-
acter: firstly, the extensive migration of people from the rural areas; secondly,
the strong urbanization of the city after the Second World War and especially
after the highly destructive earthquake in 1963; and the last marks the shift
of the political system and the change of the property ownership towards pri-
vatization.
Acknowledging the fact that the city is closely related to the conditions of the
society, the studio work revolves around their influence on the spatial struc- 1
ture of the city. In the case of Skopje that is notable in terms of typology (single
family houses turning into multistory buildings), morphology (houses with
yards turning into enclosed blocs), built structure (urban voids and green rap-
idly in filled with new buildings) changes driven mainly by the real estate log-
ics. Thus the focus of the Studio is set on the architectural effect in a reality of
omnipresent speculation.

Studio Skopje 2014: PATTERNS OF GROWTH investigates the architecture of

the city simultaneously on seven different sites- seven cut outs of the city of
Skopje, following the key attributes of the cityness: the house - dwelling as a
dominant substance; the void - the resources of the urban voids; and the dis-
tributive networks - the prosthesis of the infrastructure corridors as anchors
for the urban growth. These attributes are further related to the issues of pub-
lic, private and collective realm of the city.
The studio task is to reveal strategy of architectural urbanism and the concept
of operational territory as possible tools for producing contemporary urban
narratives. Therefore the outcome of the studio work is represented by the
autonomy and the symbolic value of the architectural artefact as cultural con-
denser creating the city-building as metropolitan effect.
The wholeness of the city is by all means important, perhaps even more im-
portant than the its fragmented cut outs, but at the same time the whole can
be recognized only if the architectural object, or the fragment, feeds back in
the integrity and the totality of the whole, embracing every aspect- from the
metaphysical, the individual and the identifying, to the everyday experiences…
In posing those issues lays the question whether the architecture we are build-
ing is just an image of pure self-indulgence, or there is a substance hidden be-
neath the imagery of the everyday that reflects the concept of the contempo-
rary city.
 The Strategy of the CUT OUT
Studio work methodology

The year 2014 marks significant anniversary in the urban history of Skopje.
It is one hundred years since the first plan (D.Leko, 1914) that has structured
the city of Skopje in many ways as the city is today. During this period there
were seven official documents that stand behind the articulation of growth and
the urban reality of Skopje- each of them based on their own social, political
and spatial ideology often neglecting or confronting the previous one. All these
different approaches have different ‘optic’ for tracing the city: from a scale that
is too specific and based on the ground where architecture directly reflects the
aspect of ‘experiencing’ the city, to a more generic approach of planning where
urbanism intervene many aspects of spatiality left for disciplines other than
architecture.
Nevertheless the Studio SKOPJE 2014: Patterns of Growth is not about the ur-
ban history (or the planning discontinuity) but about the need of juxtaposing
different scales when it comes to creating a strategy for the city. With an in-
tention to better understand the present and to clearly visualize the future,
this studio observes the city through spatial sequences, focusing on the distin-
guished fragments, or CUT OUTs of the city that resembles the overall vision,
the idea, the strategy and even ideology of the city. The notion of CUT OUT is
a specific piece of land that might be considered an urban island by itself (a
city within the city), but also refers to the whole (the city) understood as an
archipelago of islands that polemically establish relationships among them-
2 selves. The potential of the CUT OUT is recognized in the ability to embrace the
valence of the cross disciplinary reading of spatial assemblages that connect
architecture and urban scale and in that manner connect social aspects with
aesthetic values and pragmatic concerns of space.
Introducing the CUT OUT as an architectural item in the realm of urbanism and
superposition of scales are the guiding principles of the work conducted in the
studio Skopje 2014: Patterns of Growth. The aim was actually to bridge the gap
of different scales, not in terms of numbers but in terms of strategy for the city,
a way of looking, of exploring, and of tracing the challenges of urban space.
The studio follows distinctive patterns of growth as fundamental aspect of ur-
ban space in seven different parts – seven different cut outs of 1.5km2 of the
city.
Following the so called ‘strategy of the CUT OUT’, the studio research ex-
plored the public, private and collective domain of the city by identifying the
socio-spatial dynamics of existing build space, urban voids and distributive
networks of the city.
The project started with the territorial analyses of 1.5km2, the scale of the
city, but then moved into the architectural domain, on a site of 500x500 m, in
order to emphasize the value of the architectural assemblage for the whole
idea, the whole vision for the city, investigating the social aspects of specific
site and then it goes back in the city scale at the end positioning the whole idea
in a brother metropolitan context. Completing the loop of what architectural
urbanism might stand for, we can again speak as architects for the project of
the city as strategic determination.
The outcome of the studio represents an allegory of the retrospect city. Namely
it makes an attempt to foresee the ‘archaeology of the future’ by superpos-
ing the experiences of the SUPERNOW and the FUTUREFRAGMENT as distin-
guished features of contemporary metropolitan narrative.
What is SUPERNOW in the reality of mere speculation that produces excess
and novelty? SUPERNOW is alter ego of the ongoing superficial simulacrum of
the present; and foremost, SUPERNOW is accelerated, extruded and delirious
reality… The answer would be to go beyond, to exaggerate even more and to
amplify the excess - to produce ‘irrationally more’ because that way the ex-
aggeration becomes methodological tool in the effort to confront the present
and to create the idea for the future. SUPERNOW makes reference to the real
conditions we live in, their material and mental content. And mapping the ex-
perience of the SUPERNOW means to develop a side pathway for the vague
simulations of what a city is today.
The counterpart, the outmost compatible dream vehicle of the journey
through the SUPERNOW is the concept of FUTUREFRAGMENT or the search
and re-coding of the qualitative potential of the urban cut out.
FUTUREFRAGMENT represents dialectical amalgam able to establish a dia-
logue between the city and the architectural object; it is a concept able to em-
brace the challenges and the new role of the architectural artefact as a ground
that provides common good, and brings back the ethical dimension of the city.

STUDIO SKOPJE 2014: PATTERNS OF GROWTH | PEDAGOLOGICAL STEPS

Step 1:
Introduction to the studio task and location + field trip
Step 2:
Perceptive analyses of the city cut out (1.5km2): mapping-tracing
Typo-morphological and programmatic investigations of seven specific cut
outs of the city that provide the data base of actual transformative dynamics
happening in Skopje:
current situation | built structure: heights | built structure: program | land-
3
use: property ownership | border lines: fencing typology | transportation net-
works: grids and nodes | structural elements | voids | field conditions | neigh-
borhoods: extension of the home - territorial belonging
Step 3:
Conceptual analyses of the city cut out (1.5km2): mapping-relations
Mapping through conceptual symbolisms:
mental symbolism: emotions | operational symbolism: tactics | Architectural
symbolism | territorial symbolism: spatial strategies
Step 4:
Theoretical framework
Investigation into the symbolic value of architecture through reference works
in theory and practice:
Alison and Peter Smithson: Cluster City | Bernard Tschumi: Violence of Ar-
chitecture | Ignasio de Sola Morales: Terrain Vague | Collective space | Rem
Koolhaas: Las Vegas of the Welfare State | Junkspace | The Generic City | OMA:
Exodus, or voluntary prisoners of Architecture | Constant: New Babylon | Aldo
Rossi: The Architecture of the city | Alexander d’ Hooge: The Liberal Monu-
ment | New Monumentality | Sten Allen: Points and Lines. Diagrams and Proj-
ects for the city | Pier Vitorio Aureli: The Possibility of Absolute Architecture
Step 5:
Transdisciplinary Encounters Workshop
Joint workshop of the AF Skopje+TU Delft
Methods: close reading, narrative, character, scenario…
Step 6:
From SUPERNOW to FUTURE FRAGMENT
Developing a project of Architectural object as operational territory
Step 7: Top to bottom, left to right:
- project ‘Aerodrom’ model
Final project presentation: Skopje | Delft - project ‘Aerodrom’ SUPERNOW
-project ‘Hrom’ model
Exhibition: Faculty of Architecture Skopje | TU Delft - project ‘Rasadnik’ plan