Скопје 2014

You’re welcome to Build.mk city of Zagreb. Have you visited Skopje before this project started and let say in the last 4-5 months? Skopje’s center has changed dramatically. I cannot say that I like the project in general, but I must admit that some of the buildings/monuments came out much better that I expected. However, from citizen perspective, Skopje has very diverse architecture and styles mixing in it. Some of the buildings from this project will fit well in what used to be vast open space in the city center, especially the buildings under the Kale fortress like the theater, the museum of VMRO, or some of the buildings around the square Macedonia. On the other hand the building of the Constitutional court and Archeological museum, is a building that by my opinion doesn’t fit the small area between Komercijalna banka and the banks of the river Vardar. And as a citizen who is not an architect I wouldn’t dare much of criticizing the architectural styles chosen, but would prefer contemporary architecture like the new buildings in Berlin, Barcelona and so on. However, the project is more than 60% completed, and criticizing it now won’t do any good. We’ll have to accept it as it is, like the previous generations have accepted the brutalist concrete structures, the sterile apartment buildings built in the 50s, or the Ottoman buildings and mosques that were built by the Turks etc.