Skopje Resurgent: the international confusions of post-earthquake planning, 1963–1967

ABSTRACT

In the period of the Cold War, architecture became a critical medium of knowledge transfer, facilitating the processes of modernization. The Cold War protagonists, the USSR and the USA, vied to gain the political allegiances of third world nations of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. This was done through development and aid programmes that offered to lift nations out of poverty, and thereby also deliver them into political commitment to one side or the other. The destruction of Skopje, capital of Macedonia, in 1963, along with the subsequent efforts to replan and rebuild the city, brought with it a significant disruption to the Cold War dynamic. For one thing, Skopje happened to sit within Yugoslavia, a non-aligned country. For another, the winner of the competition to rebuild Skopje was a Japanese, Kenzo Tange. Moreover, the rallying efforts of the United Nations to bring people and resources from around the world to the aid of Skopje managed to transcend much of the partisanship characteristic of international politics. This paper explores the actors, networks, and mechanisms that came together from both sides of the Cold War divide to deliver one of the most defining trans-national urban projects of the 1960s.

KEYWORDS:

• Skopje
• Kenzo Tange
• urban reconstruction
• cold war architectural collaboration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Mirjana Lozanovska is Associate Head of School International at Deakin University. Her research deploys multidisciplinary theories of space to examine migration, identity and architecture, and the reinvention of the city. Her recent publications include “Performing Equality: the exceptional story of Mimoza Nestorova-Tomić in post 1963 earthquake reconstruction of Skopje.” She is editor of, Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration (Routledge 2016), and serves on the Editorial Board for the journals Interstices and Space and Culture.

Dr. Igor Martek is an academic at Deakin University. He has worked extensively in industry in evaluating, generating and managing large capital projects in various locations around the world. He has worked in Europe, including Eastern Europe, the Maghreb, Levant, China, Korea, and was managing director, Far East, of a British consultancy firm based in Tokyo, for some ten years. His research interests include the procurement and facilitation of capital projects as an instrument of national competitive strategy.

ORCID

Igor Martek http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6573-1291

Notes

1 Fisher, “The Reconstruction of Skopje”.

2 Davis, “Skopje Rebuilt”.

3 Skopje Institute of Town Planning and Architecture (ITPA), “Reports on the plan for the Reconstruction of Skopje”.

4 Ockman and Eigen, Architecture Culture 1943–1968.

5 Senior, Skopje Resurgent.

6 Tolic, Dopo il Terremoto.

7 Stanek, “Introduction”; Kulic et al., Modernism in-Between. Session at EAHN 2012 Brussels ‘“Development” from the periphery: Architectural Knowledge and Exchange Beyond Soviet/US polarity 1950s -1980s’ organized by L. Stanek and R. Kallus.

8 Senior, Skopje Resurgent, 52.

9 Senior, Skopje Resurgent, Annex 1: 357–366.

10 Senior, Skopje Resurgent, 365.

11 Kiro and Stojkov, “Reconstruction and Construction of Skopje”.

12 Senior, Skopje Resurgent, 345.

13 Lozanovska, “Performing Equality”.

14 Interview with Mimoza Tomić and Rafel Vlukovski, two architects that had worked on the Skopje reconstruction project at Skopje Institute of Town Planning Authority (Skopje ITPA) (2013, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia). Workshop with the late Goce Adji-Mitrevski discussing the professional environment at the time of the earthquake (2012, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia).

15 Tange, “Recollections”.

16 Beyer et al., Holidays After the Fall.

17 Home, “Reconstructing Skopje”; Kiro and Stojkov, “Reconstruction and construction of Skopje” in Raffuzzi, “Skopje: Reconstruction”.

18 Davis, “Skopje Rebuilt”.

19 Jarić and Maleš, New estates in Dračevo and Kozle.

20 Senior, Skopje Resurgent, 32, 152.

21 Grcheva, “Reshaping the Skopje City Centre”.

22 Tafuri and Dal Co, “Chapter IV ‘The International Panaroma’”; “Chapter V ‘The International Concept of Utopia’,” 383–390; “Chapter VI , ‘'The Experience of the Seventies’,” 391–410.

23 Senior, Skopje Resurgent: Map 3 Skopje general scheme of development; Map 16 Long Range Development Indications 1971 1981; Map 14 Proposed Land Use And Zoning For 1971.

24 Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design”. Lin, “City as Process”. Lozanovska, “For or Against Tabula Rasa”.

25 See Lozanovska, 2012, for a discussion of Tange's City Wall element in the masterplan for Skopje; Lozanovska: “Kenzo Tange's Forgotten Master Plan”; A discussion of Kenzo Tange's role in the collaborative design development process produces an alternative interpretation is in “Cold War Collaboration: Tange's Master Plan for the Reconstruction of Skopje,” forthcoming paper.

26 Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism. Mumford, “CIAM and the Communist Bloc 1928–59”.

27 Examples include Le Corbusier's Chandigarh Complex (1962) and Louis Kahn's Dhaka Parliament (1962–1982).