Kenzo Tange's Forgotten Master Plan for the Reconstruction of Skopje

Abstract

After the 1963 earthquake, which is said to have destroyed seventy-five per cent of the urban fabric, Skopje, capital city of the Republic of Macedonia (then in Yugoslavia) became a centre of architectural activity. The United Nations held a limited competition for the reconstruction of Skopje, inviting four foreign firms and four Yugoslavian firms to participate. Tange's submission received sixty per cent of the first prize, co-operating with Yugoslav architects to develop the design idea. What can this project tell us about modernism re-inscribed in Japan, and the kinds of internationalism that the United Nations constructed? Japanese Metabolism, of which Tange was a pioneer, heralded Japan as a new centre for innovation in architecture; a new nationalism re-oriented the suffering after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tange developed and realised in Skopje the striking planning ideas he began in his Tokyo Bay proposal. This article examines Tange's master plan for Skopje. It argues that his key elements, the City Wall and the City Gate, exemplify Tange's drive for a new vision in the context of destruction, and that these remain definitive elements today even in the context of a messy transition from a communist to a capitalist society.

Author's Note

I would like to thank the UN publishing department, especially the branch of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for giving me permission to reproduce the photographs from the publication, Derek Senior, Skopje Resurgent: The Story of a United Nations Special Fund Town Planning Project (New York: United Nations Development, 1970). I would like to thank colleagues at the Faculty of Architecture, St Kiril and Methodius University in Skopje for their assistance and support, especially Professor Dr Minas Bakalcev, who found some rare documents; Prof. Goce Adji-Mitrevski, who put me in contact with architects who worked on the project; and Domenika Boskova, who found information on the 1960s and 1970s architecture in Macedonia.

Notes

^1. The term Balkanology preserves a structural divide between Europe and the Balkans. See Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). For present discussions see Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, “Skopje Scomparirà” [Skopje will disappear], Abitare 504 (July–August 2010): 82–95; Vladimir Kulic, “East? West? Or Both? Foreign Perceptions of Architecture in Socialist Yugoslavia,” Journal of Architecture 14, no. 1 (2009): 129–47; Maximillian Hartmouth and Ines Tolic, “Turkish Coffee and Beton Brut: An Architectural Portrait of Skopje,” EAHN Newsletter 4 (2010): 22–36. See also Swiss Architecture Museum, SAM Balkanology series of conferences and exhibitions, http://www.sam-basel.org/home.html.

^2. The International Board of Consultants (IBC), formed by the Yugoslav government and the United Nations, made two recommendations at its first meeting in March 1964: first, to develop a regional plan, and second, to establish an international competition for the city centre.

^3. Derek Senior, Skopje Resurgent: The Story of a United Nations Special Fund Town Planning Project (New York: United Nations, 1970); Institute of Town Planning and Architecture, Skopje, Skopje: Summary of the Report on the Master Plan 8 (Skopje: Institute of Town Planning and Architecture, October 1965); Ines Tolic, Dopo il Terremoto: La Politica della Ricsotruzione Neglianni della Guerra Fredda a Skopje (Venice: Edizioni Diabisis, 2011).

^4. Kenzo Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” Japan Architect (May 1967): 27.

^5. Udo Kultermann, Kenzo Tange, 1946–1969 (Zurich: Verlag für Architektur Artemis, 1970); Zhongjie Lin, “City as Process: Tange Kenzo and the Japanese Urban Utopias 1959–1970” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 267–75; Sarah Deyong, “Planetary Habitat: The Origins of a Phantom Movement,” Journal of Architecture 6, no. 2 (2001): 113–28; Tihomir Arsovski, Cκonje Уpбaнuэaм u Apxumeκypa 1945–1985 [Skopje: Urbanism and Architecture 1945–1985] (: Kniga III, Union of City of Skopje, 1989).

^6. Robert Home, “Reconstructing Skopje, Macedonia after the 1963 Earthquake: The Master Plan Forty Years On,” Papers in Land Management 7 (Cambridge and Chelmsford: Anglia Ruskin University, 2007); Ian Davis, “Skopje Rebuilt: Reconstruction Following the 1963 Earthquake,” Architectural Design 45 (November 1975): 660–63.

^7. Jack Fisher, “The Reconstruction of Skopje,” American Institute of Planners Journal 30 (February 1964): 46.

^8. Tom Avermaete, “Coda: The Reflexivity of Cold War Architectural Modernism,” Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 475–77.

^9. Interview with Mimoza Tomič, and Rafel Vlukovski, two architects who had worked on the Skopje reconstruction project at Skopje Institute of Town Planning Authority (Skopje ITPA), stated the significance of Rotival's sketches (June 2012).

^10. Kiro Škartov and Trajko Stojkov, “Reconstruction and Construction of Skopje after the Catastrophe July 26, 1963 Earthquake,” Edlizia Popolare. Skopje: Reconstruction and Development 1963/1985 187, special issue (November–December 1985): 4. Doxiadis was represented through Ekistics, a journal with a focus on the science of human settlements. Polservice was the official Polish Agency for the supply of professional services in the field of land use and construction.

^11. Mirjana Lozanovska, “The Intriguing and Forgotten Exchanges in the Master Plan for the Reconstruction of Skopje,” in Hilde Heynen and Janina Gosseye, eds., Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the European Architectural History Network, KVAB, Paleis der Acadamiën, Brussels, Belgium, 31st May–3rd June 2012 (Brussels: European Architectural History Network, 2012), 436–41.

^12. “Official Portal of City of Skopje,” City of Skopje, accessed May 28, 2012, http://www.skopje.gov.mk/EN/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex = 0&tabid = 46. The official website for the City of Skopje has a detailed and scholarly summary of its history. Unfortunately it does not detail the impact on the city of the Serbian Kingdom in the period 1913–39.

^13. Until the recent changes for the Skopje Vision 2014, contemporary Skopje may have been interpreted through the “City of Possible Worlds”, which received a commendation at the 2006 Venice Biennale. Its authors Minas Bakalčev & Mitko Hadži Pulja (MBMHP) explore the same 2 × 2 km area as Tange, and propose how disparate fragments might be perceived as a series of co-existing worlds.

^14. Miles Glendinning, “Cold-War Conciliation: International Architectural Congresses in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s,” Journal of Architecture 14, no. 2 (2009): 197–217.

^15. Senior, Skopje Resurgent, 365.

^16. Senior, Skopje Resurgent, 370.

^17. Kenzo Tange, “Recollections: Architect Kenzo Tange,” Japan Architect (6 September 1985): 6–15.

^18. Individual discussions with Mimoza Tomič, and Rafel Vlukovski, June 2012.

^19. L. M. Boschini, “Il concorso per il centro di Skopje,” Casabella 30, no. 307 (July 1966): 24–26; and M. Mitrovic, “La eliopolis di Tange,” Casabella 30, no. 307 (July 1966): 26–27. See also the special issue, “The Replanning of Skopje, Yugoslavia,” Arhitektura Urbanizam 7, no. 39 (1966) 7–28, for a discussion and representation of all the competition entries.

^20. Živko Popovski, “Die Stadt, die in Spiel war… oder ein Fall der Kontinuität,” Architekt 11 (November 1986): 478–81; Mirjana Lozanovska, “Tange's Masterplan for the Reconstruction of Skopje: An Exception to Familiar Exchanges,” in Julia Gatley, ed., Cultural Crossroads: Proceedings of the 26th International SAHANZ Conference, University of Auckland, New Zealand, 30 June–2 July (Auckland: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2009), 1–20; and Arsovski, Cκonje Уpбaнuэaм u Apxumeκypa 1945–1985.

^21. Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing to Building,” AA Files 12 (1986): 3–18.

^22. Lin, “City as Process,” 273.

^23. Home, “Reconstructing Skopje,” 7.

^24. Minas Bakalcev, “Principles of the Formation of Housing Entities in the Example of Skopje” (master's diss. (Arch), SS. Kiril and Methodius University, Skopje, 1991) [in Serbo-Croatian].

^25. Tange was associated with the CIAM; he speaks of the crucial eighth conference in 1951 (meeting Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Gideon). While critical of the static nature of its agenda for the formation of a new and universal architecture, he was adamant that he did not want it dismantled and did not agree with Team 10's role in its collapse. Kultermann, Kenzo Tange 1946–1969, 8.

^26. Arsovski, Cκonje Уpбaнuэaм u Apxumeκypa 1945–1985, 46.

^27. Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” 33.

^28. Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976).

^29. Kenzo Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design,” Japan Architect 46 (September1971): 18.

^30. Robin Boyd, Kenzo Tange (New York: Braziller, 1962), 10.

^31. Boyd, Kenzo Tange, 10.

^32. Boyd, Kenzo Tange, 10.

^33. Arata Isozaki, Japan-Ness in Architecture, trans. S. Kohso, ed. D. Stewart (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006): 23–33.

^34. Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture, 247–69.

^35. Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture, 45.

^36. Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design,” 18.

^37. Kultermann, Kenzo Tange, 1946–1969, 262; Udo Kultermann, Kenzo Tange (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1989), 209.

^38. Udo Kultermann, New Architecture in Japan (London: Thames & Hudson, 1967), 9.

^39. Kenzo Tange Team, “Skopje Urban Plan 1965,” Japan Architect 130 (May 1967): 44.

^40. Kenzo Tange Team, “Skopje Urban Plan 1965,” 61.

^41. Georgi Konstantinovski, “Typology of Typified Residential Construction in Skopje,” Edlizia Popolare. Skopje: Reconstruction and Development 1963/1985 187, special issue (November–December 1985): xxii.

^42. Nova Makedonija. See Leonora Grcheva, “Reshaping the Skopje City Centre as a National Agenda: Skopje 1965 vs. Skopje 2014,” (master's diss. Human Settlements, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, 2011), 34–47.

^43. Grcheva, “Reshaping the Skopje City Centre,” 45.

^44. Kultermann, Kenzo Tange, 8.

^45. Vlatko Korobar, “The Skopje Plan and the Crisis in Urbanism of the Sixties,” ARSHIN: Architecture, Urbanism, Design 1 (1995): 20–21; Ian Davis, “Skopje Rebuilt,” 660–63; and Suzana Milevska, “Not Quite Bare Life: Ruins of Representation,” Beyond Culture: The Politics of Translation, accessed January 14, 2009, http://translate.eipcp.net/transversal/1206/milevska/en.

^46. Tomič, and Vlukovski interview, June 2012.

^47. Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” 44–47.

^48. This is evident in the Telecommunications Building by Janko Konstantinov, the new campus of the SS. Kiril and Methodius University (1974) by Marko Mušič, the National Hydraulic Institute (1972) by Krsto Todorovski, and the Bank complex (1970) by R. Lalovik and O. Papeš. See Georgi Konstaninovski, Graditelite vo Makedonija XVIII–XX vek, vol. 2 (Skopje: Tabernakul, 2004).

^49. Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” 31

^50. Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” 31.

^51. Tange, “Lineage of Urban Design,” 19. In his study of vernacular housing he developed the design theory of typification of space and form as a way of understanding the qualitative process of change and distillation within the vernacular.

^52. Kultermann, Kenzo Tange, 1946–1969, 9.

^53. Tange, “From Architecture to Urban Design,” 31.

^54. Lozanovska, “The Intriguing and Forgotten Exchanges,” 436–41.