The Relevance of the Street an Urban Integration Proposal Through a Reflection on the Web

The Relevance of the Street An urban integration proposal through a reflection on the Web

by: Andrés Stohlmann de la Iglesia / 4949803 Tutors: Jorge Mejía Hernández and Klaske Havik

The Methods and Analysis Chair graduation studio is called Positions in Practice, hence, it is a clear invitation to make a stance and define one profile as an architect. The second part of the title is related to the practice, the craftsmanship in architecture. Thus, the studio is an invitation to explore and define different positions in relation to our social and personal ideals, but always in relation to architecture: our ideas and ideals need to be reflected and translated in a project and space.

In the beginning of the studio three different concepts; meaningfulness, appropriation and integration were brought to the fore and framed the lens through which we investigated the capital of North Macedonia. The three concepts are definitely socially charged concepts, as they all relate to the way inhabitants engage to their urban environment.

Nowadays Skopje is better known by its new pastiche imprint rather than by its rich Ottoman and brutalist heritage. It is, most likely, the city with the highest statue-per-capita ratio in the world. The Skopje 2014 project aimed to establish a new State narrative, neglecting former Yugoslav heritage to give path to a new “European” architecture (or more precisely, a Potemkin-like architecture). Symbols multiplied in the city, and new, shallow gypsum façades with neoclassical motifs were attached to former Yugoslav-modernist buildings. Thus, the urbanscape was deeply modified, and with it, its former urban dynamics.

This change in the built environment posed questions on how this modification of the urban space changed the way the inhabitants of Skopje related and used the city and its spaces and the current health of the public spaces and characteristics of these places. In the seminar Probing into precedents we were starting to analyze the Old Bazaar of Skopje’s layered urbanscape, a representative Balkan Bazaar which followed the Ottoman urban planning strategy1 . We asked ourselves for a correlation between the depth of the public space borders and the performative depth of it, hence, what are the interrelations between the layers that compose the city and, do they have a direct impact on the public life? The work of James J. Gibson2 and the perception of the perceived environment constituted an important theoretical base that shaped our understanding of the public space, as surfaces and their allowances3 have a direct impact in urban life.

When starting to understand the city as a layered field, we started to realize that there are layers that are more permanent, them in relation to the morphology of the public space and the city, for instance, the urban tissue or buildings that are monumental artifacts. Other layers of the city are more ephemeral and directly related to human activity, for example billboards, terraces and public furniture. The Old Bazaar of Skopje, as it is the oldest area of the city, is a place where this layering of the city is clearly patent as it came to be through a series of iterations that last to this day. Former public buildings constitute a hard core of the urban block, surrounded by shops and workshops that have changed through time, shops that project towards public space in forms of terraces, stands and displays.

1. The Ottoman Empire created an important differentiation between a public part of the city, embodied in the bazaars, and the private part of the city, the mahalas which had an organic growth. In the bazaar, the implantation of the public buildings alongside commercial routes defined the morphology of an urban tissue that grew organically around those figures. 2. James J. Gibson, The ecological approach to visual perception (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979). 3. Ibid. 1/10 Understanding the urban fields as a layered environment foreground important information to intervene in a city, especially if one look to address topics such as appropriation: one can, as an architect or planner define more permanent layers (an urban tissue, important public buildings), and leave space for an organic growth that will take place planned or not. This defines an important role for us architects, in a call for a more inclusive and open city where we define urban strategies that will ensure cooperation, and encounter, shaking off modernism inherited constraints.

Despite the change that the modernist center of the city has undergone in recent times, the Old Bazaar of Skopje has not faced such an aggressive transformation. The historical commercial center of the city keeps its livelihood and social buoyancy. Change is somehow, inherent of this space, and its change did not make sense in the construction of this new State narrative that was intended to be shaped. There is another space that endured the pressure of change, the GTC4 . A social movement stopped the governmental initiative to change the social and commercial center’s facades. Thus, the importance of the meaningfulness emerges: a monument is such as it relates to social memories, and its appropriation is feeding those memories. Hence, there is an important reciprocity between appropriation and meaningfulness. Nevertheless, how is it possible to appropriate and live an urban space if it is not integrated, or it is unreachable to most of the population?

The river Vardar is the main body of water in Skopje, and also one of the natural borders of the city. During most of the existence of the city it was settled in the northern riverside, and it is on this side where we can find the most important historical structures in the city, most of them related to the Ottoman rule of the city in form of mosques, hammams or caravanserai. It was only in the late XIX Century and the early XX Century when the city started its expansion to the south. The earthquake of 1963, probably the most important event regarding the morphology and structure of the city given its magnitude, accelerated this growth. This growth, and the expansion of the settlements in the south riverside, the modern side, also determined a social division that is sustained to these days: a northern side of the city with a majority of Macedonian-Albanian (Macedonian born with a complete Albanian family and social structure) and a Slavic, Macedonian majority south. It comes with no surprise that most of the former heroic Yugoslav brutalist buildings are in the southern side of the city, in relation to the masterplan developed by Kenzo Tange and the UN led team of planners.

This urban and social division has derived in armed events, but more importantly to the urban realm, it has created a disruption and separation of the urban life and two parts of the city that sustain with little urban connection to the other side, thus, the city has a problem of integration that can be addressed in an urban architecture.

This integration of the two sides of the city was addressed by former architects and urban thinkers. The implantation of important cultural institutions in the northern riverside of the city was a way to integrate (or colonize?) that side to the urban dynamics. There is another important institution located further north of the river currently isolated from its surroundings: The Ss. Cyril University and Methodius Cair campus, campus that comprises the faculties of philosophy, laws and economics alongside with the rector offices. Given the importance of an institution such and the university, the urban possibilities and the architectural importance of the buildings, I decided to intervene in the campus

4. The GTC is an important multifunction center located in the vicinity of the most important square in the city, the Macedonia Square. It is often described as a modern reinterpretation of the Old Bazaar. 2/10 aiming for its urban integration. Thus, questions regarding the symbolic value of the university arise.

The University as a symbol

University buildings have had throughout our history (or at least, western history) an important communicative role. The universities were designed in form and figure of their goals and intentions. During academicism, the motifs of the ornamentation in buildings facades gave a hint of the research happening in those buildings. Historically, universities have been in relation to societal power spheres and the highest institutions. An early form of the universities can be found in the small cathedral schools, adjacent to the power of the Church, in the middle ages the real global power over the States. These cathedral schools were not only research (theological and philosophical) centers, but in many cases they acted as small communitary centers that in some cases were self sustained.

In the introduction of his work Bubbles (1998) Peter Sloterdijk posed the following regarding Plato’s Academy: “Tradition has it that Plato put an inscription at the entrance to his academy, reading ‘Let no one enter who is not a geometrician’. Were these arrogant words? A declaration of mind to the vulgar mind? Undoubtedly; for it was not without that a new form of elitism was invented at the academy. For one amazing moment, the school and the avant-garde were identical”5. In the golden period of Athens, the highest knowledge production center and the political power converged, thus making patent the relationship between academies and power. Also, this position clearly demarks the Acade- my as an elitist, exclusive center, a position that did not truly change until the emergence of modern universities.

With the rise of the New Sorbonne by the hand of Louis Liard, the modern university took shape. Universities shifted from the center of discussion to professionalization centers (the student number four-folded in the Sorbonne in line with the emergence of industrialization), a shift that still last to our current times. “The Universitas is always a State/state strategy. Perhaps it’s surprising to say professionalization – that which reproduces the professions – is a state strategy. Certainly, critical academic professionals tend to be regarded today as harmless intellectuals, malleable, perhaps capable of some modest intervention in the so called public sphere. But to see how this underestimates the presence of the state can turn to a bad reading of Derrida’s consideration of Hegel’s 1822 report to the Prussian Minister of Education. Derrida notices the way that Hegel rivals the state in his ambition for education, wanting to put into place a progressive pedagogy designed to support Hegel’s world- view, to unfold as encyclopedic”6. Louis Liard, well in line with the French revolutionary ideas, saw the university as a place for the spread of science. Thus the university changed from being a communitary center to a professionalization center, a place for the learning of a craft in service to the republic, the crown or, the merchants.

Higher education institutions were historically places for candid exchange of ideas. These institutions were refuges for thinkers, of discussion and of encounter; and in relation to the cathedral or church; they were inherently linked to the social and urban life of cities. Nevertheless, with the figure of the campus, a modern figure, the university was detached from the city to create an island, a bubble of research and innovation in a segregation that also looked for a broader control over the university community. This campus notion was inherent of the modern urbanism, as it segregated the cities in

5. Peter Sloterdijk, Bubbles (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2011) 9. 6. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten,The Undercommons: Fugitive planning and black study. (Brooklyn: Autonome- dia, 2013) 34. 3/10 a specific archipelago of functional islands. Regarding architecture strategies, in ‘The thick 2-D’ essay Stan Allen stated that there were two tendencies in modernism: on one hand the construction of iconic objects that symbolized the values of modernity (a thriving revolution that was to make humanity step up in an evolutionary ladder) or the constitution of spatial formations enrooted in social dynamics. There is a clear political and communicational under layer in all construction and architectures.

Hence, it seems necessary to revive the university as a communitary figure. Candi- lis-Josic-Woods, prior to May 68, already saw the importance breaking the isolation of Faculties, and the necessity for a new spatial formation that allow the university to return to the urban realm, given path to a new urbanity. Precisely, the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods serve as an important cornerstone to my project, a morphological and theoretical base on which I dwell. My work is an exploration into giving a new consistency7 to the models of the partnership and further exploration of concepts that I think important to foreground in the context of Skopje as they are very present despite they were built in a more organic way; the Stem and the Web.

The Stem and the Web: a theoretical base in the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods and the relevance of the street in Skopje

The work of the partnership can be understood as the research on the importance of the street as the most important public element of the city (and architecture). In both the stem, concept introduced in their competition entry for the city of Caen, and the web, introduced in the Frank- furt-Römeberg and built in the Free University of Berlin and Le Mirail University in Toulouse, the street as a meeting, public space in the city play a central role.

“The structure of the cities lies not in their geometries but in the activities within them. The clearest organization in the housing developments is the linear centre of activities – the Stem”8. The Stem was an organization principle, introduced in their Caen urban renewal competition entry, where alongside a public street, all public life emerged. All public functions converged in the street, creating the atmosphere of vibrancy described by Chombard de Lauwe in the streets of the French Capital in Paris et L’agglomération Parisienne. Thus, the stem looks for a high urban density, urban density not understood in floor-pro-area ratio, but by intensity of urban life9.

If the concept of stem aimed at the definition of a basic spine around which the different urban functions could aggregate, the web can be understood as the spatial evolution of the stem, the weaving of stems into a fabric: an urban tissue. “The web was intended to provide flexibility in planning to a range of functions over time, thus assuring its own longevity its very realization is spread out and subject to revision over time”10 . Another important characteristic of the work of the partnership comes from the incorporation of time into their work, measured in the speed of the pedestrian, hence

7. Juan Antonio Cortés calls for a new consistency in contemporary architecture, working in the development of “new operations to give corporeity to something that, in principle, does not have or taking out corporeity to something that have it in excess, elementary operations that are done to give a certain consistency and sturdiness to something that is flexible and inconsistent and, hence, to make it wrap or contain spaces that previously didn’t have”. Thus, Cortés, following the Six Memos for the Next Millenium of Italo Calvino, makes a call to modernize previous architectural models in a strive to move forward the field of architecture. 8. Special issue ‘Team 10/CIAM 10’,L’Architecture d’Aujourdhui, no. 177,January/February 1975, p. 45. 9. The Web is thus a function of architectural density, which is not, however, understood as a matter of building height or floor-pro-area ratio. With this Web metaphor Woods criticized the vertical density of the urban model of the slab-block and the limited points of connection between the different floors and programmes” 10. Tom Avermaete, Stem and Web: A different way of Analysing, Understanding and Conceiving the City in the Work of Candilis Josic Woods (Delft: TU Delft) 266. 4/10 determining distances and dimensions following the path and notion of users and inhabitants.

“We feel that web, by which word we mean to designate Stem to the next degree, may provide a way to approach the search for systems and, hence, for a true poetic discovery of architecture. (It is ridiculous and infantile to seek out the forms or a technique of the past, for their moment has gone with their society and can never return)”11. Despite the partnership Candilis-Josic-Woods valued the vernacular urbanism in North Africa, and the streets of Paris, they understood that replicating traditional urban models in the modern society makes little sense. They are useful in the back of the head, but a reinterpretation of those models and bringing them to contemporary times is the main work of the architect.

When looking at public space in the North Macedonian capital, the street as figure radically emerges. There is an important morphological difference in the city: A deeply modern south, partially product of the well known 9th masterplan developed by Kenzo Tange and overviewed by the UN, and a more sporadic and historic north, host of the Old Bazaar, historical monuments and historically inhabited neighborhoods. The Old Bazaar is without a question the most dynamic public space/ neighborhood of the city. Its dynamism doesn’t relate to the presence of “designed” public space, but a complex mixture of human and mercantile relations that take place in its streets.

The southern, more modern side of the city had a strong modernist influence in its planning and architecture. This translated into neglecting the traditional scale and vibrancy of streets. I do not intend to pose a harsh criticism on the planning as it was inscribed in the spirit of its time, the notion of industrialized progress and the birth of the universal man (inhabiting the universal space), nevertheless, the impact and contrast on the public space use was patent during our visit, and the urban morphology has an important role in this phenomena. A new city had to emerge from the rubbles of the earthquake, and Skopje was an experiment site for modern ideals.

Le Corbusier claimed “Il faut tuer la rue-corridor!” in the early modernist times. The street or the public street is to a certain degree an antagonist to the modern universal space. The infinite openness explored by Le Corbusier and Mies Van der Rohe in their architecture practices (especially during the pre-war times) contrasted the street in the traditional way. I would like to make a clear distinction between the urban approach of both masters: Mies did see a value in the ancient street, inspiring the urban approach to his courtyard houses exploration; Le Corbusier’s Plan Radieuse on the other hand, neglect the value of the street in the urban realm12.

The street as an urban figure

In her Thesis The street as a project (2014) Maria Giudici make a series of propositions 13 regarding the figure of the street in the public realm:

“ - Streets are architectures: They are urban spaces which cannot be reduced to their buildings,

11. Shadrach Woods, Web (Paris: Le Carré Bleu, 1962) s.p. 12. The street an important revival in Le Corbusier as he conducted a thorough visit of Venice when preparing the famous Hospital proposal. In 1962, he wrote a letter to the Mayor of Venice stating: “Mr. mayor, I could keep writ- ing you for a long time, but I am distressed thinking that Venice is able, through the invasion of excess, to become an atrocious swamp similar to all the cities of north America, south America, and, now, of Europe. Yes, I have created skyscrapers 220 meters tall, but I have placed them where they had to be placed. Don’t kill Venice, I beg you”. Hashim Sarkis and Pablo Allard, Case: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital and the mat building revival (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 23. 13. Maria Giudici, The street as a project (Delft: TU Delft, 2014), 9. 5/10 nor their overall layout. They are not the output of a single author or design, and yet they are projects insofar as they put forward a take on the life of their users and their interactions. - The street is a publicly owned, publicly maintained public space, bordered by plots which are, in principle, private. Its juridical status is complex, since its horizontal surface is controlled by the state, its facades by the citizens. It is therefore a space of transit, but also of representation. - The street is a juridically ambiguous, politically dirty, architecturally heterogeneous product. At the same time is a very simple void area, a very understandable theater for action. Its simplicity allows for its complexity. - Cities are not peaceful places. They cannot be reduced to smoothly functioning machines. Turning the street into a fluid circulation means to give up on the possibility for confrontation that animated social exchange in western cities.”

From her propositions it is patent the political ambiguity of the street, as well as its potential for encounter. The complexity of the city overturns into the street, where a dialogue that involves ownership, arises. In the Old Bazaar of Skopje, the small scale of the streets allow for a constant exchange between owners, making its streets a place for confrontation and exchange. I believe that the density of ownership has a direct relation with the performativity of the Bazaar as a public space. The streets are the place of the collective.

In the politically over-charged urbanscape of Skopje following the Skopje 2014 facelift, I find important to bring to the fore the political ambiguity of the street as a gathering space. Therefore, the project aims to explore this figure in relation to the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius university campus, a campus that was conceived as a place of encounter and exchange and which has slowly drifted into isolation from the urban life. The concept of street “remains quite vague and open to interpretations; it is often interchangeably used to describe the infrastructure, the urban layout, the social condition to be found in the space of transit. In most cases streets are considered as the bypass of other projects: building projects or city projects.”14

The Ss Cyril and Methodius University campus

After the devastating earthquake of 1963 that caused a wide destruction of Skopje’s building stock an important international reconstruction effort took place in the city. In an area previously occupied by a traditional mahala, specifically the residential settlement of Krnjevo by the foothill of the Sultan Pasha Mosque and the Clock tower (two iconic structures of Skopje) the new campus of the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius was erected following a local competition won by Marko Music. The architectural competition was called in 1967, followed by the beginning of the construction in 1970. Classes started in the new campus in 1975.

Architecturally, the campus was deeply inspired by Japanese architecture, with the figure of Kenzo Tange, winner of the competition for the urban reconstruction of Skopje widely present in the Macedonian architectural scene. Therefore, it is of no surprise the use of concrete as the main construction material in the University campus, as well as a subtle inspiration in metabolism.

“The campus is based on the concept of the Agora, as a common public space around which

14. Ibid. 20. 6/10 the individual buildings gravitate. The open public space in between is at the same time a square, an assembly point, a place for socialization and an external auditorium. The main axis of the complex connects the Faculty of Philosophy and the building of the office of the Rector, and the double-height pedestrian passage under the building of the Office of the Rector is a symbolic entrance into the complex. The building of the office of the Rector is detached from the remaining structures which makes the Agora irregularly elongated in that direction. The facilities of the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Law are placed transversally to this axis.”15

Following the spirit of his time and the influence of his surroundings the university campus, despite “dematerializing” towards the smaller urban grain of its surroundings, is composed by three freestanding structures, following a modernist approach of implantation. The main public square of the campus, the Agora, is defined by the mass of the three Faculties. The space is therefore, enclosed by the university buildings and, when used, it is used by the academic community, unrelated to its urban surroundings. The separation is enhanced by the recent erection of a verge surrounding the campus. This verge separates the faculty to a series of important public buildings in of the city. Thus, the project looks to integrate these public buildings to a new, vibrant, urban center.

Shadrach Woods stated that “when we determine points of maximum intensity – centers- it means that we are freezing a present or projected state of activity and relationships. We perpetuate an environment where some things are central and others are not, without however, any competence for determining which things belong to which category. The future is thus, compromised”16. Therefore, one can imagine that Woods would see with critical eyes the determinacy of a central common space around which all common life of the university gravitate.

Stan Allen asserted that “two opposing tendencies have coexisted since the earliest experi- ments of modernism. On one hand are iconic objects that register in a symbolic or metaphoric way the new conditions of modernity; on the other hand are the new spatial formations that enact the organi- zational and social dynamics of society”17. The implantation of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Faculties, standalone structures in the center of the plot surrounded by a perimeter road and parking, places the campus among the first group. This assessment is not a value judgment of the complex designed by Marko Music, as I believe that it is a great piece of architecture, nevertheless it doesn’t enter fit into the mat building canon.

“In mat building, function and events configure space, rather than the architectural frame, which remains relatively neutral. This is an austere, bare-bones architecture distinguished by new patterns of social association: ‘Mat-building can be said to epitomize the anonymous collective; where the functions come to enrich the fabric, and the individual gains new freedom of action through a new and shuffled order, based on interconnection, close knit patterns of association, and possibilities for growth, diminution and change”18

The intervention: a synthesis on the relevance of the street

The premise of my Graduation project is to aim for an urban integration of a previously

15. Nada Prlja and Daniel Serafimovski, Heroes for one day: Revisiting Three Urban Artifacts in Skopje by Slovenian Architects (Skopje: Goten, 2016) 133. 16. Shadrach Woods, Web (Paris: Le Carré Bleu, 1962) s.p. 17. Stan Allen, Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D in Hashim Sarkis and Pablo Allard, Case: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hos- pital and the mat building revival (Munich: Prestel, 2001) 121. 18. Ibid. 122. 7/10 isolated campus of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in the district of Cair. There are several ways to tackle this goal, for example the definitions of entry points in relation to the existing urban fabric, the opening of the campus with the tearing of the perimeter fence, or, a proposal for an urban continuity and thus mitigate the figure of the campus, challenging the fragmented modernist urban planning ideals. I incline myself to the latter, the dissolution of the campus into a continuous urban life.

The work of Candilis-Josic-Woods served as an important theoretical base, and the Free Uni- versity of Berlin constituted an important inspiration not because of it being a university, but because of the architectural and urban ideas that in its conception process converged. Candilis-Josic-Woods still saw the Free University of Berlin as a little city within a city, I believe that, when understanding the university as city, integrated to the urban life and dynamics, the possibility of general exchange opens up and allows new forms of knowledge to emerge, while allowing the city to be lived as a whole. Hence, this is a call for the introduction of a programmatic complexity beyond university related functions, diversity of functions that will also bring a gradient of ownerships such as the richness present in Skopje’s Old Bazaar.

It has been stated before that the work of Music in Skopje had a highly expressive character. “The large central masses to the periphery of the complex are cut up, fractionally divided as if they want to enter a finer measure, not for a moment making a compromise with the inherent structure surrounding them. This peripheral disintegration simultaneously gives the impression of openness of the structure and the possibility for smooth expansion”19. Therefore, the possible expansion and fragmentation of the mass into a smaller tissue was already preconceived. Hence the idea is welcomed and incorporated into the project. The geometry and direction from the office corridor of each Faculty determines a geometry, directionality and dimensions of the street/corridors of the proposal. This way, one of the two axes that compose the web relates directly to the intentions and logics already present in the Faculties. The contexts of Dahlem in Berlin, a suburban area surrounded by villas in the outskirts of the city and Cair in Skopje, a densely populated area in the North Macedonian capital, invite for a different urban response.

Candilis explained in 1974 that the intention of the partnership in the Free University project was the creation of an urban tissue, a tissue that will provoke the spatial unity, determining the dimensions and different academic fields within the university. They envisioned that this conception will derive in an open university that would either be inscribed or change the surrounding urban tissue. In the case of the Free University of Berlin, the abstraction of the generative geometry of the, a regular grid, and the enclosed presence of the volume with its corten steel façade modules clashed with its surroundings. Thus, my project consists in the creation of a new urban tissue in the existing plot of the university, an urban tissue that determines geometries and areas of action, but that allows flexibility in the further growth and change of the university.

Regarding the construction of the intervention, I am inspired in the modularity present in the Free University of Berlin, but looking for a light and homogeneous structure that contrasts with the expressive and sculptural Ss. Cyril and Methodius faculties. The figure of Tokobashira came to the fore in one of the discussions with my tutors, a way to enhance the uniqueness of an element. Thus, my proposal looks for simple, light, and homogeneous structures that will highlight the uniqueness of

19. Nada Prlja and Daniel Serafimovski, Heroes for one day: Revisiting Three Urban Artifacts in Skopje by Slovenian Architects (Skopje: Goten, 2016) 133. 8/10 the design of Music. Like the original architect, my architectural references are some of the outstand- ing contemporary Japanese architects, nevertheless, my inspiration come from a different generation of Japanese architects that base research in lightness, openness and spatial continuity such as Kazuyo Sejima or Junya Ishigami (the latter a former employee of SANAA).

The construction lightness is not only an aesthetic compromise; it is also a sustainable one. The economy of means relates with the conscious use of materials in a time where the human imprint in the world calls for a higher level of consciousness. The Free University of Berlin was built using prefabricated and modular systems, thus allowing an easy adaptation to the present needs the university community would need. The same principle is applied to the project, where all joints are bolted and hence load bearing elements can be easily assembled and disassembled, ensuring a degree of flexibility for a future appropriation of the university.

Lastly, during our excursion in Skopje we conducted a small research framed in a join work- shop with North Macedonian students investigating the impact of the Skopje 2014 in the city’s urban life. New “neoclassical” structures have not yet been fully erected in campus, thus the evaluation of the impact of Skopje 2014 in campus was topical. Nevertheless, students and members of the university community highlighted the fact that the university has little to none meeting areas, nor places to steam off in generally packed schedules that keep students in campus throughout most of the days. Thus it is my proposition to integrate the campus while also addressing an important programmatic im- provement, the introduction of halls with workshops for students, strengthening the community while expanding it to include the city as a whole.

Final observations and discoveries

The city of Skopje and the studio setting helped me to better understand the public life of cities. Prior to the studio, I would value a public space regarding its intensity of use. Nevertheless, the meaningfulness of a public space to its inhabitants go beyond this positivist approach, more in line to the modernist notion of density of persons-pro-area. There are several nuances to the performance of a public space, and in the end, it relates to its morphology, bringing to the fore the importance of our field in service to the urban life. We as architects have a voice in the stroll of the inhabitants through their cities, and hence, we have a voice in the narratives of the inhabitants in cities.

A more democratic society comes with the emergence of more public spatial formations. I found at times hard to separate from my personal thrive of coming with a great architectural piece, plastic or flamboyant to design the space for the anonymous collective, a mat structure, a structure that will serve for the integration I am looking for in my project. When in Skopje, we looked how spaces that have been meticulously designed, such as the Macedonia Square (after its Skopje 2014 transformation) shape people’s behavior acting in a prescribed way, meanwhile in the margins of those spaces, in the twilight of design, unprescribed and surprising events flourished. Designing a mat project has been definitely one of the biggest challenges I faced, as it can feel at times, ungraspable as a singular volume would be.

Prior to the beginning of the studio, if asked ‘what is the most relevant public space figure’?

9/10 I would have most likely answered ‘the square’. I ignored the potentiality of the street as a structural public space: I saw the street as a corridor, and streets are definitely, not only urban corridors. The street as a meeting point, the convergence of the public and the private, makes it a figure around which one can construct a more inclusive urban tissue. Squares are spaces of power, spaces that host large events and gatherings, but the everyday is truly reflected in the streets. It is not a surprise that markets are arranged as an extension of the urban tissue. Hence, grand gestures despite they are impressive and in many cases, important landmarks for progression, tend to derive into exclusive or prescribed spaces.

Questioning the idea of the university as a little city within a city posed an important lesson and reflection of integration. Despite being treated before, I would like to highlight its importance as it can be translated not only to universities but to other institutions or isolated spaces. Little cities within cities create islands, borders and, animosity towards the other. In cases, there is a language barrier between Macedonian-Albanian and Macedonians, nevertheless, how will they overcome it if there are no places for communal life? And, thinking in a capitalist way, Albanian-Macedonians constitute a third of the market in North Macedonia, hence, integration can derive in social and economic profit. In conclu- sion, integration is beneficial from all points of view.

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