BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2018

FREESPACE

Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia 

Project/ Research

Location/ Venice-Skopje

Year/ 2018

Status/ Pending

Photography/Private archive, Zoran Shekerov, Pero Lazarovski

Team/ Authors: Dejan Ivanovski, Filip Jovanovski

Collaborators: Sanja Avramovska, Valbona Fejza, Miroslav Pejovski

Curators: Slobodan Velevski, Marija Mano-Velevska

The focus of this architectural research ‘experiment’ is detecting and freeing up the captured public space on a piece of territory in the central area of the city of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia and creating a new spatial concept on this location which was destroyed by the SK2014 “project”.Everything which was built in the period from 2010 until today in the center of the city of Skopje, and especially between the two bridges (Stone Bridge and Freedom Bridge) is mostly built on public space. For a long period of time this space was a square/pedestrian zone which formed a unity with the surrounding buildings. Unfortunately, with the changes of the detailed information urban plan this space was treated in a wrong manner.On this space five inhuman voluminous structures have been built: Archeological Museum of the Republic of Macedonia together with the State Archive of the Republic of Macedonia and the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia, the Agency for Electronic Communications (AEC), the ‘Independent Macedonia’ Colonnade, Public Prosecution Office of the Republic of Macedonia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia.

The pedestrian zone as a defined urban space is composed of the areas of the city which are isolated from automobile traffic and it is reserved for pedestrian-only use and recreation of the people. This is what this part of the city should be – public space belonging to the people. This architectural experiment is a result of a research process which through a systematic spatial and content analysis of the above mentioned five buildings, built on the Vardar riverbank, attempts to rethink the current purpose of these structures which only serve to violently introduce content packages into disproportional and naïve volumes.

This proposal for re-programming (which is a key tool in architecture) of parts of the ground and upper levels of the buildings is an attempt to open them, free them up and re-use them through the introduction of new content which corresponds with the context in which they are located. Currently, part of the spaces which are subject to this research are closed and unused by the institutions incorporated in the buildings and are inaccessible for the citizens who could be their potential users.The process of creation of this experiment encompasses the following three key procedures:#OPENING of the non-functional space in the five buildings, #CONNECTING the opened space with the surrounding through vertical and horizontal communication, #UNCOVERING the buildings by removing any kind of decoration (sculptures and ornaments), including the domes which now lose their purpose and #REPROGRAMMING of the freed space. The last process should be further developed in the later stages of this architectural research project/process which according to its method foresees active participation/inclusion of various stakeholders (from experts to passersby) and the users of the city.