Very early in the morning of July 26, 1963, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Skopje. It killed more than 1,000 inhabitants, injured between 3,000 and 4,000 others, and left more than 75 percent of people homeless. Almost 65 percent of housing was lost, and 80 percent of the city was destroyed. While only 2.5 percent of the existing buildings remained fit for occupation, the most severely affected by the disaster were the older mud brick and mixed constructions already weakened by the 1962 flood – most of which dated from the Ottoman era and unsurprisingly were concentrated on the left side
(figure 14). While this event was a catastrophe for Skopje and Yugoslavia, it was also a
great opportunity to reconstruct the city almost from scratch and give a fresh impetus for the capital of the federal republic.
Skopje’s earthquake occurred in a very specific context. The 1962 Cuba Crisis had just shown the limits of the East/West bipolarisation, Tito’s Yugoslavia was then a non-aligned country well-regarded by the international community, and the crisis happening in Congo was showing the limits of the United Nations peacekeeping action
Damage impact of the 1963 earthquake:
- Residential buildings: 42.2% partial or total collapsed apartments ; 32.9% heavy damaged apartments - Homeless population: 75.5% of total 178,600 inhabitants
- Primary and secondary schools: 27.5% partial or total collapse; 74.3% heavy damaged - Hosptials and clinics: 33.5% partial or total collapse; 66.5% heavy damaged.
Sources: Petrovski, 2004
Realisation: O.
amidst an event which was as much an anti-colonialist battle as a proxy war between the two superpowers. When the Skopje earthquake happened, the UN was therefore keen to show its potential for promoting international cooperation (Home, 2006). For the international community, the reconstruction of the Macedonian capital was seen as an opportunity for co-work in a divided world (Mijalkovic and Urbanek, 2011). For the Yugoslav authorities, Skopje became a symbol of brotherhood and solidarity.
Within the days that followed the earthquake, 35 nations requested that Skopje should be placed on top of the UN agenda, and relief was provided from almost 80 countries. While contacts had been cut between West and East in Berlin, Skopje was declared an ‘Open City’. This demonstration of international solidarity inspired Tito, who declared at the UN General Assembly in 1965 that the disaster ‘reflected the desire of the overwhelming majority of the people throughout the world to prevent the far greater catastrophe which a nuclear war would bring upon mankind.’14 The immediate reconstruction went very quickly thanks to the importation of temporary prefabricated houses – some of which can still be seen today. The planning process went almost as rapidly: only ten months were necessary to work on the General Plan, which was directed by the Office of Urbanism and Architecture of Skopje, but whose actual conception was split among a Polish company, Polservice, which had worked on the reconstruction of post-war Warsaw, and the ‘Doxiadis Associates’ company, led by the Greek architect Doxiadis, an old collaborator of the UN. As for the city centre, its planning was the object of an international competition which ended in July 1965 with two winning projects: the proposition of the Croatians Miščević and Wenzler, and that of the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. These propositions were fused into a single plan, the ‘ninth version’.
The general Master Plan for Skopje (figures 15; 16) was a synthesis of two different projects: the Greek team of Doxiadis was in charge of imaging the city’s areas, housing, traffic and transports, as well as its infrastructure, while the Polish team of Adolf Ciborowski, Warsaw’s chief architect, was responsible for the Social Review (an independent survey) as well as the General Plan and the Regional Plan. Doxiadis was a controversial figure: he was a well-regarded UN partner, but also a 15-year collaborator of the Ford Foundation, then directed by the former administrator of the Marshall Plan. During this period of Cold War, any means to export either socialist or capitalist culture
14 Official records of the UN General Assembly, Eighteenth Session, 1251th plenary meeting (cited in Mijalkovic and Urbanek, 2011, p.13).
a: A Master Plan perspective view on the Northern side from the city centre (foreground),with the railway station in the centre and the municipality of Aerodrom in the background
b: The standard local centre neighbourhood unit according to the Master Plan.
c: Perpective view on the city centre from the Northern side, with the GTC (City Commercial Centre) in the centre and the Vardar in the foreground.
Source: Home, 2003
Source: Master Plan 1965
Source: Master Plan 1965
Realisation: O.
was seized upon by the two superpowers. Architecture and planning did not escape this struggle; that they worked undercover rendered them all the more powerful as cultural instruments. From the 1950s onwards, the Ford Foundation invested a lot of money in urban projects around the world – ‘new cities’ which were meant to be ‘neutral’ in terms of planning, but also supposed to demonstrate an absolute faith in technology and to promote freedom, democracy and anti-collectivism (Mijalkovic and Urbanek, 2011). Among these projects to assure the loyalties of developing countries, those of Doxiadis were particularly appreciated.
Doxiadis’s conception of planning drew from functionalist doctrine, and especially Le Corbusier, for whom function predicated form (Gold, 1998). Functionalism, as formulated in the 1920s and 1930s CIAM (Congrès Internationaux
d’Architecture Moderne), placed rationality, standardisation and geometry as its main
pillars, and expressed an explicit concern for town planning as ‘the organisation of the functions of collective life’15. Doxiadis definitely belonged to the ‘old school’ functionalists, who supported a top-down conception of planning and for whom social and political issues ought not to appear in city planning. His newspaper ‘Ekistis’, dedicated to the ‘science of human settlements’, conceived planning as a highly rational study similar to ‘the work of a human computer, completely objectified, with no aesthetics or personal choices’ (Provoost, 2006). Doxiadis usually stood at the opposite side of socialist planning and architecture. His work left no room for urban imagery, such as the vista, the axis, the square and the monumental – all the elements of a repertoire aimed to be recognised by the common people. Ekistics promoted a completely new system of planning organised in grids and schemes designed for unlimited growth and change, following the belief (shared by Eastern European planners) that human needs and rights are the same everywhere and that planning should stick to a rational – hence ‘neutral’ – approach. Most of Doxiadis’s projects promoted the respect of individual property and opposed the informal, organic growth of historical cities – such as Skopje (Mijalkovic and Urbanek, 2011). For the Ford Foundation, Doxiadis’s projects were a way to educate non-Western people into becoming rational urban inhabitants – a much more powerful way to exert control than those of an old-fashioned empire.
On the opposite side were two different approaches, those of Weissmann and Ciborowski. A Croatian architect, at the head of the Department for Social Affairs at the UN and member of the CIAM, Weissmann had also worked with Le Corbusier but belonged to the ‘leftist’ wing of the CIAM, which vividly opposed the hyper- rationalisation of urban planning and the statistical division of the city and its inhabitants into abstract zones and variables. His emphasis on sociology and human dimension of planning placed him on the opposite side to Doxiadis, which enabled Skopje planners to focus more on human issues than would have been the case had he not been here. The second balancing factor was the presence of the Polish team. Due to the extent of the damage, post-earthquake Skopje had from the beginning been compared to post-war Warsaw. Yet, the approach chosen in 1964 was very different than the one employed in Warsaw, which was to rebuild the city centre after the historical one. Not all the existing stock had been destroyed in Skopje but many damaged buildings were removed without debate. The idea of rebuilding Skopje as it was before 1963 was not on the planners’ agenda. Skopje was seen ‘as an ideal surface, on which it was possible to build a different city: a brand new capital that had nothing to do with the old, modest and everyday city’ (Tolic, 2010:109). The ‘Open City’ myth was born.
Maybe more than the general Master Plan itself, what is usually remembered by Skopjani is the special plan for the city centre (figure 17). The project that was eventually adopted in 1965 was a compromise of two very different proposals, one of which came from Tange. A leading member of the Metabolist movement, Tange was also inspired by Le Corbusier. Published in 1922, La Ville Contemporaine presented the ‘city of towers’ – a geometrical, centralised and efficient organisation – as the ideal form of the industrial age – an appealing concept for Metabolism’s utopias. In Metabolism, society was seen as an object amendable to scientific study and rational construction. Taylor’s theory of scientific management was in everyone’s mind, and technology was seen as a social liberator which could change social structure. Faced with the paralysis of already existing cities, Metabolists dreamt of totally new urban structures – something post-earthquake Skopje could offer (figure 18). Yet, judged too unrealistic, Tange’s project was not adopted as it was. The judging panel was split between the ambition to satisfy post-1963 utopian hopes and a mediatic need for spectacle and the fears that such an inadequate and oversized project might never be realised. The ‘ninth version’ was eventually adopted as a combination between Tange’s
Realisation: O.
Véron January 2013
Photos: Museum of the City of Skopje
a: The Cultural Centre, a multifunc- tional building, including a theatre, an opera, a ballet, a music academy, some shops and a bank.
b: The urban plan for the city centre: in yellow, the apartment complex City Wall; in red, commercial and functional buildings; in blue, cultural buildings; in green, the Stara Čaršija and its historical buildings.
Photos: Architecture Brigade
Realisation: O.
Véron January 2013
a: A view on the South side of the Vardar: the Goce Delčev bridge, built in 1971; on the left, the most notable building of the socialist city centre, the Telecommunication Center and the Central Post Office, inspired either by the nearby medieval fortress or by an exotic flower; behind, the City Wall - an apart- ment complex drawn up by K. Tange to metaphorically ‘protect’ the heart of the city, as medieval walls used to do.
b: The Macedonian Radio and Television building, built in 1971-83 on the east-north side, delimitates the city centre.
c: The Catholic Church was built after Tange’s Saint-Mary’s Cathe- dral of Tokyo, as an homage to the architect who helped rebuild Skopje.
d: The Publishing house Nova Makedonija, built in 1981 with a pronounced ‘corporate’ stylistic identity, was recently transfor- med into an office building.
e: The Central Post office - close view. f: The Hydro-Meteorological Institute, built in 1977 in raw concrete, is the work of the architect Krsto Todorovski.
plan and the one advanced by the Town Planning Institute of Croatia. Tange’s project was largely retained, but in a slightly more modest and realistic way, as a hybrid between the functionalist and the socialist paradigms.
Skopje’s Master Plan was therefore a mix of different conceptions of urban planning: the socialist ideal of urban uniformity, the rational and standardised principles of functionalism, and the shared belief that everything was possible on this new space – balanced by a certain concern on human issues, but which was not predominant. Given these preconditions, to which extent Skopje’s planners took into account the pre- socialist legacy? Not all the city had been destroyed by the earthquake and entire neighbours remained standing, despite being sometimes seriously damaged. How could the principles guiding Skopje’s planning apply to these areas, most of whom being located on the northern side of the Vardar? I will now examine how the new planning was practically implemented on the city, and analyse how, from the ideal ‘Open City’, Skopje’s image ended up that of a ‘Divided City’.