from Polis – a collaborative blog about cities across the globe.

3.01.2012

How Architecture Students Became Activists in Macedonia

Reconstruction plan for Skopje

In January 1965, Kenzo Tange received a telegram from the United Nations asking if he would be interested in participating in an international planning competition for the reconstruction of Skopje, the regional capital of the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. A severe earthquake hit the city in July 1963, kiling more than 2,000 people and destroying roughly 65 percent of the buildings in the city. Reconstruction following the earthquake was carried out by the Yugoslavian government with support from foreign countries and international organizations. The United Nations set up a special fund for preparing a master plan for the city. The Greek architectural firm Doxiades Associates and Polish architect Adolf Ciborowski drew up a regional plan for Skopje in 1964, but they left its center city – an approximately two-square kilometer area – open, with the intention of undertaking a more detailed study through an international competition. Tange considered this project significant not only for its international influence, but also because it would make “a model case of urban reconstruction,” so he accepted the invitation.

The competition involved eight design firms, four of them from Yugoslavia and one each from Holland, Italy, Japan and the United States. The Jury awarded the first prize to Tange and the second prize to Yugoslavian architects Radovan Mischevik and Fedor Wenzler, but proposed that the two winning firms work together to develop a final plan. The architects were Kenzo Tange (Japan), Van den Broek and Bakema (Holland), Luigi Piccinato (Italy), Maurice Rotival (USA), Aleksandar Dordevik (Yugoslavia) , Eduard Ravnikar (Yugoslavia), Radovan Mischevik and Fedor Wenzler(Yugoslavia) and Slavko Brezorski(Yugoslavia). The other architects from Tange’s office included Sadao Watanabe and Yoshio Taniguchi.

Therefore a design team was formed, consisting of both Japanese and Yugoslavian architects as well as engineers. Arata Isozaki led the architects team from tange’s office. Tange’s proposal was based on two metaphorical concepts, the “City Gate” and “City Wall.” They referred to the two major elements of the city with distinct characters. The proximity of residential areas to the business district was expected to bring vitality back to the city. The plan for Skopje demonstrated the remarkable continuity of Tange’s approach to city design. The concept of City Gate was based on a linear axis concentrating all urban functions related to communication and business operation. In the middle of this stretch was gigantic gateway structure resembling incoming traffic from regional highways. The axis ended at Republic Square, Skopje’s principal civic space on the River Vardar and surrounded by state and municipal facilities.

The City Gate literally a gate into the city, would be put in the area where a new train station and gateway structure for highway entries to the city would be build similar to the composite transportation center in Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine, the City Gate was characterized by the convergence of all traffic systems – rail, car, bus and pedestrian movement – and served as the point of transition between regional traffic and local traffic. The railway terminal was designed as an underground structure. Occupying different levels above it were automobile parking decks, transit terminals, and pedestrian zones. The transportation center was joined by a central business district known as City Gate Center, to form the city main axis. Along the axis were clusters of buildings include a number of office towers, a library, banks, exhibition halls, cinemas, hotels, shops and restaurants – all connected to the railway and bus terminals with elevated motorways.

Skopje linear axis stared from the transportation terminal also linked central business district and civic square that formed the backbone of the city. Like Tange’s previous urban projects, the plan for Skopje granted the city infrastructure . monumental scale and sophisticated details, organizing various transportation modes on a three-dimensional system. Following the prototype developed in Kofu, architectures in both the City Gate and the City Wall were characterized by the repetitive pattern combining cylindrical towers housing circulations and services and horizontal inhabitable spaces for residential or business uses. What distinguished the Skopje projects from Tange’s earlier schemes, however, lay in the symbolic meaning of the the urban structures, which the architect had started to explore in his Tokyo Bay project but had not fully developed until the Skopje project. The entire city was bound together with the symbolic concepts of its “gate” and “wall,” serving both as programmatic features and metaphors for the urban form. In fact, these metaphors constituted the springboard for the whole design. Tange recalled: We made ample use of this [symbolic] attitude at Skopje. For instance, in applying the name City Gate we not only gave ourselves the hint that we should use something physically gate-like in this area, but we also planted in the mind of the people the understanding that this is the gate through which one enters the city of Skopje. If the design is false to the name, the citizens will reject it.

The City Wall, too, gained fame, and even though at one point the opinion emerged that perhaps the Wall was an obstacle that we should abandon, the people of the city were opposed to doing away with it. They understand the city wall, and it became the center of our image of what symbolizes the city. Now we are told that we definitely should not abandon the Wall. We learned through experience that it is necessary for a variety of symbolic processes to emerge during the operation of structuring.

Tange contended that, through the metaphors of a city with traditional constituents, his plan conveyed meaning beyond the level of physical form and enabled communication with residents and visitors in order to recover the vitality and humanism of the city. Tange’s symbolic return to the classical vocabulary of urban form recaptured some characteristics of Louis Kahn’s 1961 plan for Center City Philadelphia. Kahn called his project “Viaduct Architecture.” The plan developed from his studies of traffic patterns and earlier projects for Philadelphia, and it envisioned that the whole city would be surrounded by a multilevel highway loop (the “viaduct”). The concept of viaduct reflected an abstract mastery of Roman forms, as Kahn wrote: “This architecture of movement may be compared to the Viaduct architecture of Rome which was of a scale and consistency different from the architects of of other useful buildings. The viaducts in his plan for Philadelphia, carrying high-speed automobile traffic, defined the boundary of the modern city while allowing unencumbered connection between areas on both sides of the boundary. Several gigantic parking towers standing beside the viaducts served as gateways to the city. Kahn believed that the city would flourish with the viaducts serving automotive traffic and protecting downtown from the invasion of incoming traffic flows. Like Kahn, Tange used the metaphors of classical form to to reinterpret modern infrastructure, providing those large- scale constructions with legibility and cultural significance. Transitions in Tange’s attitudes toward historical context and locality can be detected between his two monumental plans: the 1960 Plan for Tokyo and the 1965 Plan for Skopje. The Tokyo project was dominated by a strong forward-looking aspiration. Tange criticized the city’s existing organization as a “closed structure” which belonged to a “medieval town,” obsolete and dysfunctional for a city of Tokyo’s magnitude. In Skopje, the architect turned to the construction of a “City Gate” and a “City Wall,” seeking to recover the meaning of a traditional town. The urban scene in Skopje after the violent earthquake could not be less chaotic than the urban scene in Tokyo in 1960. However, instead of rebuilding the city, Tange tried to preserve the remaining structures in Skopje and used the City Wall to frame the historic areas. He also treated the city’s geographical characteristics in a delicate manner.

In fact, the competition jury applauded Tange’s scheme for its successful “incorporation of Kale Hill into the composition of the center” and the “integration of the left and right banks of the Vardar [River] by their development with public buildings, shops, bridges, and pedestrian squares and platforms.” Tange’s transition to a more sophisticated approach to history and local conditions could be justified by the fact that the Skopje plan was proposed for actual implementation, rather than being a theoretical project like the Tokyo Bay Plan. It was also certain, however, that by turning to historical metaphor and localism, Tangedemonstrated his awareness of the cultural implication of urban structures and attempted to expand his language of urban design through employment of methaphorical and symbolic elements.

In Tange’s vision, Skopje remained a planned city under an architect’s complete control. He later recalled that, when working on the Skopje project, he had to make a decision between two approaches to formulating the building guidelines. The first approach would “lean strongly in the direction of allowing the city to grow and alter in a dynamic and recurrent pattern;” the planner’s responsibility would mainly involve “establishing space usage and wall lines that guarantee open spaces and flow,” leaving other things for free construction and urban growth. With the second approach, “an ultimate form for the whole is designed on a virtually constitutional basis and all development is made to agree with this form;” this method would “make it possible to produce a total image. Tange chose the second approach because he felt that the Skopje project was less about stimulating the growth and redevelopment of a living city than it was about establishing a total image around which a devastated city could be resurrected.

Political factors in Skopje also influenced Tange’s decision. The architect later wrote: “Yugoslavia is a Socialist country in which land is not privately held, the city government had sufficient power to make it possible to introduce our total plan.” He believed public land ownership was on his side in realizing his grand plan . Tange’s comment to a certain extent echoed Le Corbusier’s admiration of the authority of the Soviet Union in the interwar period, to which he dedicated his Ville radieuse. In Japan, dispersed private land ownership made it difficult to carry out large-scale urban redevelopments within existing political parameters. Tange’s and the Metabolists urban projects thus remained theoretical speculations. Just as Le Corbusier had turned to Soviet Russia.

Tange found Skopje a promising land to realize the idea of a total plan that he had put toward theoretical proposals for Tokyo. Tange concepts of City Gate and City Wall persisted in all.

Tange noted that the urban planing authority of Skopje required architects of individual buildings to abide by the master plan and the building guidelines even in building designed by Tange. This gigantic building included a railway station with a vast elevated platform fifteen meters above the ground. Underneath was a bus station. It became a landmark of the new Skopje, but it was often criticized for being too grand for a relatively modest city of only 430.000 residents. Nevertheless, Tange’s plan played an important role in guiding the process of Skopje’s reconstruction, which was a remarkable success in terms of its efficiency and international cooperation. The city soon regained its vitality and enjoyed an economic boom. Under the guidelines framed by the planning team, the new buildings tended to be “progressive” in design style, a tone set by Tange’s response to the demand of “a new architecture for a new revolutionary society.”

И годинава организираме изложба на најинтересниот градски изложбен простор.Повторно ќе ги употребиме металните панели од градилиштето на нашиот плоштад за да укажеме дека процесот на планирање треба да се отвори и да овозможи натпревар на идеи и слободна авторска мисла.

Ќе бидат изложени проекти на студентите по архитектура. Овие проекти покажуваат дека Скопје има студенти кои размислуваат современо.

Ќе ја презентираме и публикацијата „ПРВА АРХИ БРИГАДА- Најнекомплетна архива“.

Уште нешто важно што ќе претставиме е иницијативата за основање на Архитектонски центар.

Зошто на Скопје му е потребен Архитектонски Центар?

Задачата на еден Архитектонски центар е:

- да го архивира архитектонското минато (преку библиотека со публикации, перманентна изложба за архитектонската историја на градот, архива на видеа, мапи, планови, макети, фотографии итн.),

-да ги регистрира, презентира и анализира тековните настани во архитектурата (преку објавување на активни урбанистички планови, фотографии од актуелни проекти и објавување на архитектонска критика)

-да ги разгледува можните идни архитектонски правци. (преку презентирање на сработени истражувачки проекти за различни аспекти кои го засегаат градот и конкретни визии за градот инциирани од граѓаните или професионалците и дебатирање на одредени теми)

Поради одредени случувања како на пример големата градежна активност за време на османлиската окупација, обновата по катастрофалниот земјотрес во 1963-та, проектот „Скопје 2014“… нашиот град е честа тема на интерес на многу научни истражувачки проекти од  целиот свет. Секојдневно дознаваме за нови статии, публикации, конференции и трудови кои се посветени на нашиот град. Со основање на Архитектонски центар би се овозможила подобра соработка со колегите од надвор и презентирање на овие трудови посветени на Скопје,но најважно од се е што ќе се придонесе и кон унапредување на изградената средина кај нас, вистинско вреднување на добрата архитетура од минатите периоди и отворено планирање на иднината.

Архитектонскиот центар ќе биде место каде ќе се сретнат интересите на професионалците од архитектурата и урбанизмот, градските власти, граѓаните, истражувачите. Резултатот кој се очекува е подобрување на состојбите во архитектонската професија во Македонија и подобрување на квалитетот на живеење во градовите тука. Центарот истовремено ќе служи и како информативна точка за сите граѓани, но и туристите за архитектонските аспекти на градот.

Скопје заслужува и има потреба еден добар Архитектонски центар.

‘Preservation’, OMA’s exhibition at the 12th International Venice Architecture Biennale

A collection of critical preservation stories of the 20th and 21st century organized under five themes: the increasing territorial claims of preservation, the arbitrary morality of what is preserved and what is not, notalgia vs. memory, the preservation of the future, and the ‘black hole’ of preservation.

Embedded in huge waves of development, which seem to transform the planet at an ever-accelerating speed, there is another kind of transformation at work: the area of the world declared immutable through various regimes of preservation is growing exponentially. A huge section of our world (about 12%) is now off-limits, submitted to regimes we don’t know, have not thought through, cannot influence. At its moment of surreptitious apotheosis, preservation does not quite know what to do with its new empire.

As the scale and importance of preservation escalates each year, the absence of a theory and the lack of interest invested in this seemingly remote domain becomes dangerous. After thinkers like Ruskin and Viollet-Le-Duc, the arrogance of the modernists made the preservationist look like a futile, irrelevant figure. Postmodernism, in spite of its lip service to the past, did no better. The current moment has almost no idea how to negotiate the coexistence of radical change and radical stasis that is our future.

As we head towards a climax of preservation, ambiguities and contradictions build up:

• Selection criteria are by definition vague and elastic, because they have to embrace as many conditions as the world contains.

• Time cannot be stopped in its tracks, but there is no consideration in the arsenal of preservation of how its effects should be managed, how the ‘preserved’ could stay alive, and yet evolve.

• There is little awareness in preservation of how different cultures have interpreted permanence, or of the variations in material, climate and environment, which in themselves require radically different modes of preservation.

• With its own undeclared ideology, preservation prefers certain authenticities. Others – typically, politically difficult ones – it suppresses, even if they are crucial to understanding history.

• Through preservation’s ever-increasing ambitions, the time lag between new construction and the imperative to preserve has collapsed from two thousand years to almost nothing. From retrospective, preservation will soon become prospective, forced to take decisions for which it is entirely unprepared.

• From a largely cultural concern, preservation has become a political issue, and heritage a right – and like all rights, susceptible to political correctness. Bestowing an aura of authenticity and loving care, preservation can trigger massive surges in development. In many cases, the past becomes the only plan for the future…

• Preservation’s continuing emphasis on the exceptional – that which deserves preservation – creates its own distortion. The exceptional becomes the norm. There are no ideas for preserving the mediocre, the generic.

In a global groundswell of revulsion, one particular genre has escaped the embrace of preservation. Open season has been declared on postwar social architecture. At its zenith, a strong public sector created the conditions in which architecture as a social project could flourish.

At its nadir, a public sector, debilitated by the market, destroys it. There is now a global consensus that postwar architecture – and the optimism it embodied about architecture’s ability to organise the social world – was an aesthetic and ideological debacle. Our resignation is expressed in the flamboyant architecture of the market economy, which has its own built-in commercial expiration date.

Modern buildings have somehow escaped the collective body’s embrace of preservation, becoming a generation’s embodiment of an opportunistic financial envelope.

Just like modernization – of which it is part – preservation was a western invention. But with the waning of western power, it is no longer in the West’s hands. We are no longer the ones that define its values.

The world needs a new system mediating between preservation and development. Could there be the equivalent of carbon trading in modernization? Could one modernizing nation ‘pay’ another nation not to change? Could backwardness become a resource, like Costa Rica’s rainforest? Should China save Venice?

The march of preservation necessitates the development of a theory of its opposite: not what to keep, but what to give up, what to erase and abandon. A system of phased demolition, for instance, would drop the unconvincing pretence of permanence for contemporary architecture, built under different economic and material assumptions. It would reveal tabula rasa beneath the thinning crust of our civilization – ready for liberation just as we (in the West) had given up on the idea.

AMO’S CONVENTION CONCERNING THE DEMOLITION OF THE WORLD CULTURAL JUNK >

There exists two conflicting ideologies when it comes to the subject of preservation: ‘ruin’ vs. ‘restoration’.  Many times, a ‘restoration’ project will gut the building in question, resulting in a sort of farce, where the ‘historical structure’ is an entirely new building in and of itself. bureaucratic envelopes  of preservation in fact promote radical transformations. Their language and codes are too blunt and
primitive to serve their stated aim: to generate a ‘fit’ between what exists and what is ‘renewed’  (but what is in fact very often entirely rebuilt). They produce an entirely new architectural language  of disguised consumerism.

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OMA’s preservation projects in the past illustrate that the core aim of ‘preserving’ should be
to negotiate between both the old and the new in an active and engaging manner,
siding with neither ‘ruin’ nor ‘restoration’ but establishing a new architectural configuration altogether.
OMA has conducted extensive studies on a number of urban and cultural frameworks to retrofit
the present time for the coming years.

‘beijing preservation’, 2003
diagram showing possible ‘preservation make-ups’ for beijing
(exhibited post card)
image © designboom

if the point of preservation is to identify and maintain elements that make a city unique, beijing contains
a vast arsenale of relatively new architecture and urban situations that deserve the same consideration as
the old centre and the hutongs, the generic substance of the chinese city most characteristic of beijing’s ‘past’.
rather than a seemingly inevitable focus on the centre – the oldest, the most beautiful, the most historic
part – different models of preservation can be imagined: a wedge could record, systematically and without
aesthetic bias, all the developments that have occurred in an urban system over time; a point grid could act
as a form of sampling, a statistical preservation model capturing every urban condition. instead of a temporal
monolith – a permanent centre and an ever changing periphery – the city will be defined and enriched by phasing:
older and newer will be in permanent dialogue.

‘beijing preservation’, 2003
grid formation
(exhibited post card)
image © designboom

‘mission grand axe,’ OMA
la défense, paris, france
competition, 1991
(photograph of exhibted panel)
image © designboom

‘what happens if all architecture older than 25 years is scraped? an entire territory is liberated
as a strategic reserve. the city can think of itself in terms of creative transformation.’

la défense is a strategic reserve in paris which has acted as a privileged expansion zone during when
the city was going through the transformation of modernization. the first sector now full–and with
europe’s opinion that everything historic should have the right to eternal life–OMA looks at ways to
create ground for new architecture while still preserving the ‘theatre of progress’.

this competition entry proposes to project a grid across the entire area including la défense and
to gradually expose this new system as ‘modern’ buildings meet their successive expiration date.
the design is both conceptual and operational; it will not subject everything in its way to its discipline
but will act as a filter to absorb those entities whose right to survive is not contested.

rendering of apraksin dvor, st. petersburg, russia
2007 competition entry
(exhibited postcard)
image © designboom


consisting of multiple freestanding buildings arranged within a market yard, apraksin dvor represents
a unique urban typology in the historic centre of st. petersburg. OMA takes the uniqueness of the site,
which makes it prime for preservation, and uses it instead for development.

the design proposes to keep 50 per cent of the area in its current state while the other 50 per cent is demolished
and treated as the site for new buildings. the old and the new are organized in to a checkerboard: a co-existence
of two uninterrupted conditions, creating both a relationship of maximum contact and maximum independence
while avoiding the subjective evaluation of the historic merit of each existing individual building. the old and
the new can either be experienced in extreme juxtaposition or as independent parallel experiences,
creating simultaneously an illusion of complete preservation and perpetual newness.

masterplan apraksin dvor, st. petersburg, russia
2007 competition entry
(exhibited postcard)
image © designboom



mass rendering of apraksin dvor, st. petersburg, russia
2007 competition entry
(exhibited postcard)
image © designboom

‘zollverein kolenwasche’, essen, 2006
(exhibited postcard)
image © designboom

the ruhr, an area undergoing transition after the decay of its major industry, coal mining, elects to preserve
a mining site shut down in the 1980s. the zeche zollverein, designed in the 1920s by students of mies using
industrial architecture as a vehicle of ambition, is granted UNESCO world heritage status in 2001 – prompted
by an OMA masterplan to preserve and reactivate the site. OMA collaborates with UNESCO on installing,
around a tangle of original machinery, a visitors centre and ruhr museum inside the kohlenwasche (coal refinery).
after persuasion, UNESCO agrees to a rebuilding of the crumbling walls on the exterior of the building,
thus prioritizing the authenticity inside. preservation takes place through a variety of tactics, including pure
simulation: a 48-metre free-standing escalator mimicking the site’s sky bridges for transporting coal provides
sympathetic public access to the renovated kohlenwasche.

‘zollverein kolenwasche’, essen, 2006
48 meter free-standing escalator
(exhibited postcard)
image © designboom

‘in 2006, with zeche zollverein’s kolenwasche, we nearly achieved the utopian ambition of doing
‘nothing’: no stripping, no sublimity, no ruin, just nothing… we were very proud.’
(photograph of exhibited panel)
image © designboom

‘in 1995, reluctant to imagine an ‘iconic’ airport (the competition was won with an airport in the form of a bird wing),
we identified in the existing structures of ZRH-enough abandoned or under-used sections to accommodate the entire program;
all we needed to do was to stitch the ‘found’ spaces together with infrastructure in a sequence that accommodated the intended flows…’
image © designboom

‘the found spaces had more complexity and interest than any architect could typically justify for a new airport…’
image © designboom

LINKS:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/11248/oma-at-venice-architecture-biennale-2010.html

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/11395/rem-koolhaas-cronocaos-preservation-tour.html

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/11424/rem-koolhaas-oma-cronocaos-preservation-tour-part-three.html

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/11428/rem-koolhaas-oma-cronocaos-preservation-tour-part-four.html

http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=1260&Itemid=10

Предавања и панел дискусија

Замисли град

Разговор за (отворање на) процесот на планирање на град

четврток // 20.01.2011 // 19:30 // Центар за конференции и студии, Национална и Универзитетска Библиотека „Св. Климент Охридски“- Скопје

»Замисли град« се фокусира на теми кои се важни за урбаниот развој на градот. Поради значителната урбана трансформација на Скопје во последнава декада, делува неопходно да се отвори разговор за процесите на планирање на градот и значењето на архитектурата во него. Затоа поканивме говорници од врвни институции кои ќе ги претстават нивните искуства и согледувања за можностите и потребите од стратешко планирање неопходно за одржлив развој и непречено функционирање на градот.

Со овој разговор ќе се обидеме преку конкретни примери да ги разгледаме можните насоки кои во иднина би го подобриле урбаниот развој на Скопје, кој освен тоа што е секојдневна реалност за неговите жители, е дел и од потесниот и поширокиот контекст на проток на луѓе, капитал информции, знаење… Градот секојдневно се гради, но доколку на таа активност, како условно трајна, не и претходи стратешко планирање, изградените ткива можат да станат сериозна пречка во неговото функционирање. Битката за соодветно место во современите градски текови, може да се избори само ако, меѓу другото, се отвори процесот на планирање.

Целта на настанот е да поттикне доближување на разни фактори во процесот на планирање: урбанисти, архитекти, социолози, образовните институции, локалната власт, инвеститорите и граѓаните. Резултатот што се очекува е формирање на мрежа што ќе работи на реобмислување и отворање на процесот на урбанистичко планирање кон граѓаните и сите засегнати локални фактори, но и кон на интернационалното знаење и искуствата од регионот.

Lectures and panel discussion

Imagine a city

Discussion on (opening up) the process of city planning

‘Imagine a city’ is focusing on subjects that are important for the urban development of a city. From the background of the radical urban transformation that Skopje has undergone in the last decade, it seems necessary to open up a discussion on the process of urban development and the relevance of architecture in it. Speakers from major Dutch institutions will therefore present there views on the possibilities and necessity of good urban design for the future of the city.

This discussion should try to offer concrete examples for the possible directions which could advance the future development of Macedonia’s capital city. Skopje is everyday reality for its citizens and is also part of a broader context of a flux of people, goods and knowledge. The city is being built daily, but unless this practically irreversible activity is strategically planned then new city tissues could become a serious functional obstacle. The battle of participatory practices in contemporary urban projects can only be successful if the process of urban planning is open. With this event we want to contribute to this openness and we want to help people imagine Skopje as a city where citizens, authorities and professionals are equally active creators of its urban future.

This panel’s goal is to bring together all the different actors in the process of city planning: planners, architects, investors, educational institutions, municipalities, citizens. The result we are hoping for is a network that will interact by rethinking and opening up the urban planning procedures, not just to the local factors but also to the international knowledge and experience of our partners.

Говорници:

Vedran Mimica моментално е директор за настава на Berlage Institute, каде претходно по покана на Херман Херцбергер станува проект координатор. Работи како предавач во посета на многу школи за архитектура во светот. Организатор е на серија изложби и работилници во многу градови во земјите на поранешна Југославија, како придонес во нивниот развој во поствоениот период. Се смета за одличен познавач на процесите на Балканот. Особено се прослави во јавноста како советник на градоначалникот на Тирана при спроведувањето на интернационалниот конкурс.

Активно пишува за архитектурата и архитектонската едукација за списанија како: Domus, Abitare, Hunch, Architectur Aktuell, Architecture-Seoul, Man and Space-Zagreb, AB-Ljubljana, Oris- Zagreb. Учествува во бројни комисии за национални и интернационални натпревари, како и за доделување на награди од областа на архитектурата и урбанизмот.

http://www.nextroom.at/data/media/med_binary/original/1265129693.pdf

http://www.archined.nl/interviews/2007/who-is-vedran-mimica/

http://www.dugirat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6594&catid=76:gospodarstvo&Itemid=428

http://www.sponsoring.erstebank.at/report/stories/Interview+Vedran+Mimica/en

Ole Bouman е директор на Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). Претходно бил главен уредник на списанието Volume (кое го формирале заедно со Rem Koolhaas и Mark Wigley), а редовно пишува за списанија како: De Groene Amsterdammer, The Independent, Artforum, De Gids, Domus, Harvard Design Review, El Croquis, Arquitectura & Viva, и Proiekt Russia. Бил куратор на серија од јавни настани за реконструкција на јавниот домен во градови што биле погодени од катастрофи, како Ramallah, Mexico City, Beirut и Prishtina. Предавал дизајн на Massachusetts Institute of Technology во САД. Коавтор е на енциклопедијата:  The Invisible in Architecture(1994) and Al Manakh (2007),како и на манифестите RealSpace in QuickTimes (1996) и De Strijd om Tijd (2003). Најновата негова публикација е Architecture of Consequence (2009) Активен е и како куратор и на многу изложби.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/agitation-power-space-interview-with.html

http://www.olebouman.net/archief/en/the-invisible-in-architecture/

http://www.olebouman.net/archief/category/publications/

http://www.olebouman.net/archief/category/volume-editorials/

Модератор:

Kai Vöckler по вокација е урбанист и уметник. Зад себе има богато професионално искуство како планер, архитект и дизајнер, автор и куратор на бројни изложби и професор. Работел на Bauhaus Dessau и на други универзитети. Тој е еден од уредниците на списанието Volume и еден од основачите на Archis Interventions, а и програмски директор за Југоисточна Европа. Последните години активно работи на истражувачки проекти врзани со Балканот. Автор е на книгата: Prishtina is everywhere. Turbo Urbanism: The Aftermath of a Crisis” како и на многу други публикации.

Локален модератор:

Драган Крстевски е претставник од Прва Архи Бригада. Тој е апсолвент на Архитектонски Факултет- Скопје. Завршил Меѓународна матура (International Baccalaureate) во Гимназијата „Јосип Броз Тито“ – Скопје, со матурска тема „Мастер планот на Кензо Танге за центарот на Скопје по земјотресот 1963“. Бил учесник и организатор на повеќе домашни и интернационални работилници и проекти кои се занимаваат со архитектурата, урбанизмот и градот. Пишува  за електронскиот магазин „Репер“,  кој покрива тековни случувања во архитектурата, ликовната уметност, литературата и изведувачките уметности.

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Симултан превод на македонски, англиски и албански ќе биде обезбеден.

Разговорот е дел од интернационалната програма Debate on Tour на Холандсиот Институт за Архитектура и програмата Archis SEE network.

-поддржано од ERSTE Foundation и Амбасадата на Кралството Холандија во Скопје, Македонија

Настанот ќе биде видео документиран од страна на Cr8ive8.