The divergent legacies of the Yugoslav architectural heritage: The afterlives of “mesna zaednica” in Taftalidže, Skopje

Post-WWII Yugoslavia adopted socialist modernism as its dominant architectural style (Mrduljaš and Kulič 2012). Previously, during the interwar period, the Kingdom of SHS – afterward the Kingdom of Yugoslavia – had a mixed stance on which architectural influences should be adopted in establishing the system's ideology. By promoting several styles, such as academism, national-romanticism, and interwar modernism, the state institutions furthered an agenda of legitimizing the Serbo-Byzantine narrative of history (Ibragimova 2021). Ignatović (2007) points out that the constant reuse of these stylistic expressions tends to portray the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as a young progressive state with both an ancient past and vital national prospects. The beginning of the 20th century was also marked by extensive architectural production, opened to both Western and Eastern influences in the architectural context. After WW2, the influence of modernist movements was stronger and found its place in the New Socialist Yugoslavia. Following the break with the Soviet Union and Stalin in 1948, Tito's Yugoslavia developed its model of socialism, in which architecture would follow the path of modernism (Babic 2013).

Architecture in both cases was used as an institutionalized tool, to make a transition from one state to another, more perfect state. However, this represents only a change from one state to another, and does not always mean it is a rule that the next state will be better (Zinoski 2019).

In the 1950s, the influence of the “international” style was particularly evident, resulting in autonomous architectural structures being brought to life by many local architects who had had the opportunity to work and gain experience abroad (Popovski 1981). Moreover, Yugoslavia was put at the center of many debates at the Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM), which opened the path for many Yugoslav architects to be part of and contribute to official architectural debates.

The Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM), or International Congresses of Modern Architecture, was an organization founded in 1928 by a group of 28 European architects. The main founders were Le Corbusier, Hélène de Mandrot and Sigfried Giedion. CIAM's aim was to spread the principles of the Modern Movement, and advance the cause of architecture as a social art, focusing on all its main domains. The group was disbanded in 1959.

The role of institutional practices affecting the architectural form is often complex, and a unified system ideology may be reflected through architecture on different levels (Rakatansky 1991). Socialist Yugoslavia's political doctrine is transcribed in various architectural forms and programs, all over the region. In any case, these practices derive a great influence from social changes, no matter how successful they are on the level of a single building, or on a bigger scale.

Yugoslavia changed direction regarding politics after its break with the Soviet Union, which was a turning point in Yugoslav architecture and art. Yugoslavia was placed in a new geopolitical position between East and West, and in a global context, between two intensely polarized ideological blocs. Yugoslavia chose a third option through the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 in Belgrade, building its allies in Third World countries, and focusing on relations based on peace, tolerance, and partnership (Ivanovski et al 2014). However, Yugoslavia remained a socialist country constituted around its working class. In the immediate post-WWII period, the state launched a modernization project that sped up industrialization. This, in turn, facilitated rural-urban labor migrations, a process that significantly altered the state's demographics (Trajanovski 2021). Simultaneously, as a socialist state, Yugoslavia invested in its welfare system. The citizens were given access to the political system and access to the benefits it provided. This was referred to as an open political system of self-management that aimed to avoid “alienation” and get closer to the “collective” (Zukin 1975). Architecture had its chance, with the increasing need for structures that would grow with the speed of industrial development (Mrduljaš and Kulič 2012).

However, the most drastic shift in the realm of architecture happened in the wake of the catastrophic 1963 Skopje earthquake. The earthquake resulted in over 1,070 civilian deaths and more than 3,300 injuries, while also making 150,000 people homeless. More than 80% of the city's built environment was destroyed. Emergency committees took immediate action, and the Yugoslav Army moved in, while humanitarian aid arrived from all the continents (United Nations, 1970).

When the ground settled, debates emerged over whether Skopje should be rebuilt in the same location. In several weeks, a group of foreign and domestic experts sent by the UN determined that Skopje could be rebuilt as the new capital of the federal state in the same spot. The Yugoslav political context at this time, during the Cold War, was also focused on easing strained international relations (Kulić 2017), and the rebuilding of Skopje was seen as a great chance to realize this project. This process focused on cooperation between countries toward the city's rebuilding, which later would make Skopje a symbol of international solidarity.

The first phase of restoring the destroyed city's morphology was the restoration of existing built structures. It had been established that 85% of the residential buildings needed demolition. The second phase of the restoration was to establish a new master plan for the city, taking into account the old town's situation as well. A detailed plan of the city center was developed, where the regulation of the Vardar River posed the main challenge (United Nations, 1970).

Ernst Weissmann, an architect of Yugoslav origin, a former student of Le Corbusier and member of CIAM, was appointed as the Head of Housing, Town and Country Planning, while the Master Plan Manager was Adolf Ciborowski, who had been the chief architect of Warsaw and planner of its post-war reconstruction (United Nations 1970; Tolic 2017). Many local and international architects were involved in the process. During this period, serious studies were undertaken, resulting in the master plan. This plan established a new methodology, with a great emphasis on housing but also a focus on the development of public program, such as cultural, trade, institutional, and administration buildings (Ivanovski et al 2014).

At the beginning of 1965, a competition for the Reconstruction of Skopje's city center was published. This was a competition that was open only to a limited number of entrants, half of them selected from Yugoslavia and half selected from the international field. The selection process was coordinated by an international jury, under the chairmanship of Ernest Weissmann. The proposals need to follow the parameters given in the competition call. They were mostly focused on developing the public space with integrated pedestrian paths for the free circulation of people. The final parameters emphasized local development, embracing the natural features and topography of the city, and increasing green areas, with consideration toward further development and expansion (United Nations, 1970).

The winning prize was split between (60%/40%) the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange and the collaborative team from Yugoslavia, which included the Croat architects Radovan Miscevic and Fedor Vencler. The final project for the city center diverged from Kenzo Tange's winning proposal, owing to a switch in authority. At this point, the responsibility of devising a new plan went to the Skopje City Council's Institute of Town Planning and Architecture (ITPA). The decision by the ITPA was for a more detailed approach, and therefore the plan was better adapted to the morphology and existing structure of the city (United Nations, 1970).

Nevertheless, Kenzo Tange's plan offered a new methodological approach, revising the functionalist approach developed in urban planning by CIAM. It would offer the futuristic methods of implementing the Japanese concept of “metabolism”, proposing an open city structure with an ever-growing tendency. This would be an ambitious plan, future-oriented, and it would be overwhelmingly geared towards the city's needs, as well as the technical and financial capacities of the country (Ivanovski et al 2014).

Kenzo's proposal defined the city in autonomous zones, the City Gate and the City Wall, that would work as a social system of their own, enabling communication between the architecture and its users

See more: Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory (2012).

The concept of communal places was also integrated into the residential areas, with defined semi-public centers for socialization inside the residential blocks. New terminology was created to describe and reference the new zones. The previously-mentioned Old Axis, which contained the old town structure, would connect to the new part of the city through the Old Stone Bridge in a north-south direction. The New Axis, which comprised the newly developed centers alongside the River Vardar, began at the west relative to the entrance of the city, and ended in the east with the residential block (Tange 1971) (Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Despite the great challenges that occurred with this almost-utopian approach, the plan would dictate the path of urban development, ironing out the national identity of Skopje at the time as a modern city. Some of the best examples of “brutalist” architecture and Modernism found their way to rise to new heights in the Skopje architectural scene. An archipelago of architectural artifacts would follow, designed by many national architects. Macedonian architects have had a great contribution to the international architectural collection (Ivanovski et al 2014) (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Another aspect of the Yugoslav political project was focusing on residential architecture in Skopje, due to the need for quick and efficient accommodation for citizens that had lost their homes in the earthquake. For that purpose, entire neighborhoods were built consisting mainly of houses or collective buildings made from pre-fabricated materials. The standards for equality that the Yugoslav socialist ideology strived for were now adopted in reality. Thirteen different suburban zones were built through the process of defining urban plans for housing for every part of the city. This was the fastest way to populate the post-earthquake Skopje (Gelevski 2014)

See also Milan Mijalkovic, Katerina Urbanek, “PRE/FABRIC: The Growing Houses of Skopje” (Wieser 2018).

The modernization of Skopje was developed in phases, implementing the main features of Tange's plan for the city center as well as the planning tendencies for the development outside the central area. However, the plan was never fully completed in its total capacity, leaving the city layering in fragments that later would become empty – “gray spaces” (Janev 2017). Several discourses interrupted its finalization over time. A critical point was in the 1980s, when, due to political tensions in the state, the dominant paradigm was lost and replaced by an ethnocentric one. The 1980s provides an example of the way state institutions were involved; the authors of post-earthquake Skopje were criticized for the “modernist and functionalist” planning, and a bigger emphasis was put on the reconsideration of the traditional city's legacies. These discourses contributed toward a greater departure from the “brotherhood and unity” ideology (Trajanovski 2021).

Furthermore, with Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s, the former federal units started to gain independence. The loss of institutions, followed by great system changes, means the loss of the value system and its misuse by various actors both formal and informal. After the wars of the 1990s, most of the Yugoslav architectural legacy vanished and a big part is left in a state of limbo, forgotten and not properly known by newer generations. Until 1991, this heritage never received proper treatment from scholars, and long after the breakup, it continues to be ignored by the authorities (Trajanovski 2021).

The complex reality of Yugoslav architectural heritage is too difficult to be reduced to a simple statement. It is very problematic to navigate the newly established context of the ex-Yugoslav countries, yet the difficulties of their past and present are too important to be neglected (Babic 2013). Many countries in Europe have implemented programs of artistic regeneration to meet the expectations of the contemporary world without deforming the inherited identity, but many of the former Yugoslav countries haven’t, and that is also the case with Skopje.

Amid the collective labor of rebuilding a city that had suffered a catastrophic hazard, the political system of Yugoslavia developed a strategy to involve citizens in the process of building the city. Self-management in Yugoslavia is a feature of socialist doctrine, where the citizen is given access to the political system and its benefits in a balance between authority and community (Zukin 1975).

With the constitution of Yugoslavia in 1963, a decision was made for creating local communities of interest to the citizens. One of the basic forms of self-management is the voter's meeting, held every other month in the local community (mesna zaednica) (Deets 2022). The local community was a unit in a precise territory, where the working class and citizens played a significant part as a result of their living together in a particular place. Working-class people and citizens founded local communities as part of one settlement or several related settlements. They made their influence and decisions through different forms of self-rule; thus, the local community was exclusively social rather than political. Working-class people and all other citizens participated in the decisions of the local community, in the process of urban planning, infrastructure, child and social protection, education, culture, physical culture, consumer protection, protection and promotion of the human environment, national defense and social self-protection, and any other issues related to life.

According to Sharon Zukin (1975, 33): “[t]he local community (mesna zaednica) is the first level of territorial community in whose framework citizens can directly decide or primarily influence decisions which regulate communal questions”. This was a concept, also adopted in Skopje, which successfully functioned in Yugoslavia, and for some time after the breakup of the Federation. Together with its habitants, it greatly contributed to the process of rebuilding and the future development of the capital city of Macedonia.

The local communities were accommodated in already existing buildings, but in the spirit of modernization, many new ones were also built. Later on in ex-Yugoslav countries, practices of the local community were affected by the transition from one political system to another, with the main political aim of decentralization. City governments shifted their focus from management to post-industrial economic development. The new Law on Local Self-Government, adopted in the Republic of Macedonia in 1995 and revised in 2002, abolished the mandatory existence of local communities. This Law regulated the competencies of the municipalities, which gained more power and independence as well as financial autonomy to manage their funds and coordinate local culture, education, health, and public service programs, as well as gain greater control over urban planning. Local communities weren’t needed anymore, along with their physical premises, so immediately the various facilities and their land became private property owned by private investors.

These shifts have been a concern for democratic theorists. With local governance, in theory, the citizens can directly connect to local officials and discuss their issues. In practice, however, these arrangements involve a variety of actors, requiring strong social capital and civic activism, and individual citizens face barriers to effective participation (Deets 2022).

These subsequent actions shook the fragile state of the city and created a solid foundation for further uncontrolled urban development in individual municipalities and settlements, visibly changing the urban morphology and architectural features to meet private rather than collective interests.

The following is a case study of the “mesna zaednica” building in Taftalidze, Skopje (Figures 4 and 5) in order to demonstrate the significance of the Socialist architectural heritage.

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

The architectural object does not only represent the final result, but it also leaves marks in the process. A critical view of architecture can be established by reading those marks (Eisenman et al 2003). The building becomes essential, articulated, and transparent through multi-layered decomposition of the architectural structure and observing it in several respects (Rowe and Slutzky 1997). Therefore, this case study is based on a method that decomposes an architectural object into several levels to point out its complex programmatic, spatial, and structural features.

The building in question was designed by the Macedonian architect Kiril Muratovski in 1971 (Konstantinovski 2001). It is located in the neighborhood of Taftalidze in Skopje, and it was built as a local community for the local citizens. Later on, it would serve the needs of a broader community.

The analytical approach uses a procedure that enables building decomposition, allowing for the observation of several architectural aspects (Figure 6): A1, formal aspects: spatial structure; A2, program aspects: program and circulation; and A3, structural aspects: material, design, and color.

Figure 6:

Decomposing the constituent volumes of the building reveals regular geometric volumes, dominated by the rectangle. The geometric volumes intertwine with each other and form clearly defined centers, positioned asymmetrically around a central axis, where the rhythm of the composition is achieved. The harmonious definition of the composition as a whole is achieved through local symmetries of individual volumes and the harmonized scale levels.

The program in the building is divided into two complementary program blocks (A and B). One is a larger space for public meetings – the public hall. The other one is divided into smaller spaces, mostly for administrative work. The building is predominantly developed on the ground level but also contains underground technical rooms (B’). The floor plan is distributed mainly horizontally. Vertical communication enables direct relation with the basement. The building allows for uninterrupted circulation of visitors through the main entrance on the ground floor.

The public hall rises above the standard height on the ground floor and resembles a three-aisled basilica in the floor plan. This solution contributes to better lighting, and also gives the space a spiritual monumentality that, in communication with its users, reflects a powerful meaning.

Each of these blocks accommodates a program that is appropriate for a specific activity following the necessary capacities and parameters for its successful function. The functionalist approach is expressed in the program distribution, and the needed functions are accommodated rationally.

Each indoor space is naturally lit through appropriately dimensioned facade openings and additional roof lighting in the public hall. This way, the building absorbs a large amount of light, which contributes additionally to the ambiance and creates spatial harmony in the building.

The building is an embodiment of “brutalism,”

Brutalism, among the numerous styles from the period of Modernist architecture, takes a special place in the Yugoslav city morphology. Even if the term sounds brutal, the architectural style offers a sculptural expression of form and uses simple materials. Brutalism as a style is part of the Modernist architecture movement that developed at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, but reached its culmination in the 1950s into the late 1960s.

The appearance of the building is enhanced to the level of expressionism, achieved through the facade's sculptural decoration, which has no load-bearing capacity. Each element, separately and in a group, evokes emotion, provoking various ideas and thoughts in trying to interpret it. The object is built of concrete, where the material, in combination with the structure, creates “brutal” forms.

The building's architectural composition integrates contemporary architectural styles and trends that influence the basic concepts of form articulation. With expressive use of concrete, architect Muratovski achieves clear programmatic and formal units. On the other hand, by examining the multiple layers of the structural aspects, we are talking about homogeneous structures with a narrative that does not directly reference tradition, but allows for a free way of interpretation.

Through an abstract representation of the individual layers, the building achieves a system of references that are not only limited to form, program, and structure. An important notice is that the building gained meaning that is a reminiscence of an architectural theme (Schultz 2007).

Today, these aspects lose their meaning as the building slowly decays, and it is much more difficult to understand them. As a place where working-class people and all other citizens participated in making decisions about the local community, the memories of it are preserved for as long as people remember.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the shift in the political system contributed to a painful transition, one of the main focuses of which was the privatization of the land and inherited buildings. The privatization process put much of the city's architecture in the hands of various private proprietors, which made positioning it within future city development more difficult.

Nowadays, the building of the “local community” is privately owned by the Socialist Party of Macedonia (SPM). The circumstances of this building coming into the ownership of the Party in the 90s, and whether the Party had the right to own it, was decided in court. The final decision was in favor of the Party as a suitable successor, having previously owned property rights as one of the organizational structures in the Assembly of the Municipality of Karpos. With the privatization of space and new laws for local self-government, the functioning of the building stopped. The Party's intentions in the following 30 years were to remove the existing building and build new housing facilities on the property. Changes in the urban plan by the local government in 2012 opened up opportunities for the realization of these Party tendencies. These activities caused dissatisfaction among the local population. Later on, in 2018, the newly established local government decided to temporarily stop the construction process and the building's demolition was a positive outcome of the local's demands (Dimkovska and Arsik 2021). However, uncertainty over the building remains, and all these subsequent decisions further compromise its physical condition.

Today the building is out of use due to the lack of quality analysis of public spaces and proper urban planning. The building is abandoned and in awful physical condition. Its formal aspects and its architectural expressions are preserved, but broken windows, garbage, and space buried in darkness and silence are the new characteristics of the building. Nowadays it is a place that becomes invisible and very soon forgotten.

The building may still exist, but aggressive intentions toward its erasure put it in a state of limbo. Many unsolved political issues are continuously contributing toward its worsening physical situation. On the other hand, the building still lives and functions in the collective memory as a symbol of a place of solidarity, a place for decision-making processes, and a symbol of an architectural style with spatial qualities, all followed by cultural and spiritual uplift. Therefore, the citizens constantly reopen the question of its existence.