\" CONTEMPORARY PAST, HISTORICAL FUTURE \"

"CONTEMPORARY PAST, HISTORICAL FUTURE"
By: Eliza Hoxha

I want to start this journey by using this provocative title of a recent art conference in Kosovo which I was a part of. It made me think of many dimensions of art, architecture, history and life in general and i think it can reveal a lot about all what's going on in our cities who during their modernization erased a lot of history and tradition. Personally I was raised in a socialist Prishtina and all my childhood memories were linked to it. Even while growing up and getting to know the city better some small traditional city houses (one of them Natural Museum) and mosques catch my eye… The structure, the street, the atmosphere, the smell, the life, everything was so different… It was like the city with two faces, another city that I never knew. It's was quite hard to understand it from the layers left in urban fabric. I chose to study architecture, and meanwhile learning and reading about the architecture and cities of the world, but very little about my city, and other cities in Kosovo, because there were very few documents about them. Even though I belonged to the generation that was a part of Albanian parallel system of education during '90s (out of public institutions – the appearance of a house as a school in Kosovo) which was quite limited for providing information's about the local contexts. I've managed to work during summer s at the Unit for Protection of Monuments in Prishtina and this is how I've discovered a new Prishtina, actually the old one. The whole picture of my city started to change on my mind. In the years to come it will become my main preoccupation. What is the city without a past? What are the citizen's? Mainly memories are linked to places and it's the physical evidences that give the power and the truth to memories even not everyone agrees or likes what is the city about, and why it is like that. Prishtina in this sense was like a broken mirror. "A city remembers through its buildings" Rossi argues therefore "the preservation of old buildings is analogues with preservation of memories in the human kind". Erasing the traces of the past is a memory loss and it produces identity crises, while the city itself cannot be seen as a book of the people living in it. But it's not only Prishtina. Modernism in general was a universal platform rejecting tradition, and what obviously modernity produced is a memory crisis that our cities face today.

PRISHTINA - CONTEMPORARY PAST – YU MISSION/VISION

One was sure; everything that reminds to the past had to go with the dust of revolution because "they were not installing a new tradition but a tradition of new". Everything was based on universal norms and standards and nothing was linked to the context almost with the view that this new architecture had itself an aim to dissolve the crisis which society was going through. Images of order in a still unordered society as desired were very artificial and abstract also. Those expression of the city of Prishtina started to have a universal character, as many others urban centers in the Yugoslavia at that time. To legitimize further the destruction while underlying public interest a new plan drafted in '50 besides many objections passed on the year 1953 in Belgrade. The plan brought new ideas about the "re model-ation" – "transformation" of the old center to a modern one. After the establishment of the political center with a square of "Unity and Brotherhood" in between, the construction of the north - south ax from these buildings was proposed as a new and the main boulevard called " Marshall Tito" - today "Mother Theresa". Followed by a housing estate projects with mixed use ground floors together with consumption and cultural places and green areas in front, it was just a step further in creating an environment for hosting the new comers to the city. This will be another arrogant act attacking not only the market area but also big part of a living neighborhood named "lukac" and fragments of other neighborhoods around. To enable the implementation of the plan further destructions had to come and many other local families had to live.( the second agreement between Yugoslavia and Turkey-1953)
The mysticism of old narrow streets obviously was not there anymore. The main boulevard "Marshall Tito" (Mother Theresa today) with stereotype buildings has taken their place as a new center to accommodate the programs of enlightenment and new life style of society in the city. Besides the nostalgia for the old part of the city Prishtina many citizens very fast become proud of their new boulevard because these new forms of buildings and spaces brought to them new events. A boulevard became a stage, a place where you go to see and to be seen especially in the evenings when the road became only pedestrian. The development of public life from now on took another dimension, looking also from the gender point of view. Traditionally women's were belonging to the house and their participation in the public life was absent, or if that so than it was done in certain hour and in separate functions and spaces from men's. Those also because of religion (Muslims) and also because a very little number of women educated at that time, their presence was very weak. The emancipation of society through these new forms of architecture brought to the question the Albanian family attitudes and their structures also. Living in communions 2-3 generations at the same place as they used to, was not able to continue because new housing typology was promoting something else. Small flats in the housing blocks were providing space mainly for one generation families (close families) which were migrating to the city because of work and education. The single house typology changed also. From inward oriented with high walls surrounded the house opens her views to the outward. "The drastic fast development of the city within a quarter of the century left to the new city many un harmonized and unfinished urban services". In the city center the plan that reshaped both side frontiers of the mayor boulevard and the perpendicular roads left some of the old houses immobilized within the new structures. This was not done with the aim of preserving them, but none of the projects was ever finished as it was planned with all necessary infrastructure (parking places ,playgrounds) and the public space in between buildings at their back. New heroes/monuments came into being celebrating freedom, celebrating and promoting unity and brotherhood.
Anyhow as a cityscape changed drastically physically and visually the same way society was changing physiologically and spiritually. The outdoor architectural revolution of the city from now on goes indoor to the family revolutions, where the fight between the tradition and modernity was specific in each entity. '70s were the golden years of the cities wealth and development, University of Prishtina opened, while many public institutions (University Library, Printing House, Youth center) were built during this time which still today marks the landscape of the city and a new memory. The Autonomy of 1974 gave more power to local people in Kosovo and the Urban General Plan of Prishtina drafted from 1975 (approved 1985) more space for local professionals to be involved and to decide for their own city. But besides all this, some parts of these projects remained unfinished such as a plato, swimming pools and playgrounds of "Boro and Ramizi" youth sports center, the extension of the football stadium with other contents, the building of a new television station and the linkage of all these buildings with the main public boulevard through platforms in levels will remain only in papers. All this because of increasing inflation and big economic crisis that not just the city but the whole country was going through. "The political crown of Yugoslavia finally admitted worldwide that the country was in deep crisis"

The socialism decline! '90s were years of struggle, resistance, war and division which lead to the fall of Yugoslavia.


SKOPJE – CONTEMPORARY PAST – GLOBAL MOBILIZATION

Skopje was a city that I visited the most since i was very little. It was the closest city for us outside Kosovo, easiest and fastest to get. At a very difficult time for me and others in Kosovo it became a home for three months – while being a refuge there. I heard many stories of Skopje and I've experienced also many one, but one of the most spoken is the one about how Skopje was destroyed by the big earthquake of 1963. "Over 1.000 citizens lost their lives, while around 4.000 were severely injured. The Skopje earthquake destroyed around 15.800 homes, and left over 200.000 people homeless" (see: www.yugotimes.com).David Binder "the first foreign journalist who arrived in Skopje to report on the earthquake was of the New York Times. As he watched Skopje from the plane, he commented that the city looked like it was bombed". The story of Skopje is a story with two sides of medal… It has a sad side of history of destruction, while it is the same moment that the city became a reason for global mobilization for helping new Skopje to come into being. Architects and urban planners of modern movement from all over the world will come together in a joint process to rethink and vision the contemporary Skopje. It was Tito's historical statement which was directed to the people of Skopje that their city will be rebuilt and will become "a pride and a symbol of the brotherhood and unity, symbol of the Yugoslavian and World's solidarity". Besides the cold war this was the year when east and west came together to help for Skopje together with UN. The master plan of the city was initiated in 1964 and along with that also many professional bodies such as Town planning Department and others were created to guide the working process. Recommendations from the international professionals for the master plan where focuses on some main elements of the cities landscape such as the river Vardar which was proposed to be seen as a unifying element, the fortress at the hill as the highest natural feature "not to be diminished by high rise buildings and Carshia (the bazar) not to become a tourist museum peace but to be integrated with the city center. (see: Papers in Land Management: No.7 Reconstructing Skopje after the 1963 earthquake: The Master Plan forty years on).
Besides the master plan the UN fund supported also special studies on infrastructure, transport and housing and three other surveys on building conditions, social and regional. As known worldwide the city center competition was wined by a Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. Skopje was practically a tabula rasa. And at this moment of emergency but also of opportunity for a new modern city - professionals didn't saw any "creative constrains or budgetary limitations" since over 77 countries were participating in the construction of the city besides Yugoslavia investments. Brutalist architecture was seen as a way of creating a city strong enough to sustain possible other natural disasters. "Kenzo understood that people were still traumatized by the earthquake and they wanted to see strength in their new buildings. They wanted buildings that would seem eternal. That's why the style of architecture known as brutalism was seen as appropriate because it communicated these qualities. The construction of the city lasted for 15 years and by 1980, the city was completed" (www.designonline.au). Different neighborhoods where designed by different architects, finish, Mexican, USSR, Japanese, etc…But also by local architects such as Student's Dormitory and Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology by Georgi Konstatinovski, The Central Post Office of Skopje by Janko Konstantinov, Saint Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje by Marko Music, Gtc Shopping Mall, Skopje by Živko Popovski, Skopje State Hydro meteorological Institute by Krsto Todorovski, and many more. Brutalist architecture was not a communist architecture. Bedsides Zagreb and/or Belgrade, you could find it anywhere… But most of all Skopje for sure could lead the list and brand itself as a Brutalist city. Or As Muratovski states: "One could also sense the influence of architects such as Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier throughout the city, because some of their former students have also left their mark on the city. As at the beginning of 80s Tito died also the shiny period of YU cities started to turn pale. As mention earlier political and economic crisis during 80s and the rise of nationalism will bring conflict and wars throughout Yugoslavia. Without anyone to push forward the Skopje vision the city will become "a shadow of itself".


HISTORICAL FUTURE : PRISHTINA - SKOPJE
"Memory is both a burden and liberation".

In Prishtina, the problem lies in the fact that the two cities are gone: the old one for the sake of the new (modern), and the new one once again for the sake of the new (postmodern). In postwar circumstances followed by all "post"-circumstances as modernism crisis, as regards to the type of city today in this transitional phase, we could hardly find an adequate grammar in both layers – physical and social. I could say that what Skopje is undergoing today is almost the same landscape. Only the approach is different.
After '45, private space became public and demolition and destruction was run by state. Today, it is us – individuals and the government – who do both: we destroy and build at the same time in a place where the public space is continuously vanishing while everything is being privatized. The economic sector crisis and the political collapse of ex Yugoslavia created circumstances where in 20 years no architectural style was put in place. But the postwar situation in Kosovo brought the "emergent architecture", produced as a need within the frame of reconstruction by international community. This phase was soon replaced by "turbo-architecture" developed by us as a conglomerate of various elements and shapes with high-tech materials without any logical coherence. Partial reconstruction that people undertook in residence buildings, with extensions and superstructures, started to change the image of stereotypical buildings of modernist times, but not in the good sense. Generally, postwar brought liberation from frustration, physical and emotional oppression piled in years, which is mostly reflected in physical structure turning the city into an open book of mental state of Kosovo society. The entire city turned into a construction site of its own, where each and every one builds what and how one wishes: buildings and kiosks, horizontal and vertical adding's on existing structures, poles and iron fences, colors and materials that are once again used with no certain logics and no cohesion point with the past or surroundings. Illegality and informality flourished in a city and territory ruled by UN resolution and with no local decision making institutions (1999-2002). Once again city was remodeled, in the name of war, in the name of peace, in the name of nation, in the name of culture, in the name of privatization and globalization – in the name of status! Everything that was socially owned and publicly own had to go under the process of privatization. All this led to a new momentum where main landmarks of the city that were privatized. A Printing House "RILINDJA" as the most significant brutalist sample in the city scape ( by Macedonian architect – Georgi Konatstinovski) was covered with a new façade. Eximkos, Bankos, Economic Bank where covered with a new face. The Bozur Hotel ( Iliria and now Swiss Diamond after being privatized) doubled the space using also the free space around, changed the face and erased many memories of us who spent time there, found or love there. While the big GRAND HOTEL at the end of the main boulevard, is the best and/or worst sample where the half existing face and half of the new face of the building live together in one single building. The main boulevard was transformed again with new materials, new monuments, new social settings… as no one wants to be identified with modernism, as something that doesn't belong to us, doesn't represent us. Whoever came into power brought its own heroes, style and put its stamp while erasing the existing as something unvalued. Once again, by killing the past, for a long time now Prishtina is being built by everyone, as if no one manages it. Prishtina belongs to everyone and at the same time to no one! The city architect Rexhep Luci who wanted to guide these development energies in other / better direction was shot dead in 2000 and since than the city became a site of self-realization of ambitious businessmen's and money laundry.
Historically for different identity groups in different times this city became different place.There was no compromise…it's like every winner did revenge, installing their history through renaming of streets and placing new landmarks. "The history within 400 km2" is what an Albanian journalist used to say about this phenomenon, as just in 20 years the names of the streets of Prishtina were changed three times. In the article about this issue Bradsley emphasize that "the names worn by its streets and public spaces say everything about who is in charge." Since Albanians had no chance of bringing back their erased city and its soul, after the war they strived to strengthen the link to the past through history "as a possession (ownership – proprietorship) where we feel safe", as Lynch put it. There is no certain logic about the way monuments were placed, since they occupied existing public spaces so as to just fill in the gaps. Three renowned personalities of Albanian history in three different points in the main boulevard will mark three different events. On November 28/2000, Day of the Albanian Flag, the monument of KLA commander, Zahir Pajaziti, was placed in the main street followed by a huge ceremony and manifestation. The monument was identified as a sign of the wing of war in order to show to whom the postwar power belonged. But a year later, on the same date, another wing known as the wing of nonviolent resistance, brought Skanderbeg "the pan-Albanian her" in Prishtina, an event that brought together double the number of people compared to the event of previous year. In the same street, which starts with a sword and ends with a gun, a monument of Albanian humanist, known worldwide as Mother Theresa, was placed, replacing it with a fountain of a statue of Dardan girl that once marked the time of an illuminist-emancipating city. Shrunk in a small space, under the shade of many trees, she looks somewhat unnoticed and, placed between two heroes; she also looks as a balancing and relaxing point in such a symbolic artery, in such a narrow and small space. Later on face to face with Skanderbeg the monument of first Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova will be placed.
It is as if our entire history and culture found its place in only one street. No one knows where and when one square starts and/or ends. Nonetheless, in spite of this, people of Prishtina call them "places with big names, but with small space," since none of the monuments dominate the space around it and none can be noticed from a farther distance or corner of the city. This fact places these monuments in the second category in spatial sense as noticeable only from a strict locality where they are placed and by certain approaches. Therefore, the slogan and the naive perception of citizens regarding these spaces appear to be true, with all due respect to the all these personalities of our national history. This is just one sample of the official line of moments for new monuments in the city. While parallel to that there is a private line of monuments and memorials, families who payed tributes to their relatives on their own way, with their own investments on their own land. There is no certain design language determining the materials, signs, colors and or other features that could lead to which period these monuments are. Who is really a hero and who a victim since there's was no official list of war veterans until this year. What is also important to highlight is that most of them are framed, fenced territories that are used only in the day when people go to tribute them and they remained empty for the rest of the year. Now one saw these histories, sites, stories, as something that could be a part of everyday landscape and life (except 3-4 official memorial sites). Socialist realism is back and no other forms of public art and culture are present. Monuments of Socialism are being erected and/or destroyed and replaced by the new ones. The main problem is that public spaces are mainly seen as a space to fill in an than to celebrate while there is a big need for celebrating openness and spreading additional public spaces throughout other new parts of the city as a new potential sites for other forms of expression, other voices, interpretations and generations.

On the other side, what's going on in Skopje is a grand political project to brand the new capital of Macedonia and national identity. The contemporary past (the modern city) is something that was seen as artificially constructed, something that ignored and/or neglected the lost memory from the earthquake, and now it has to pay back. Being backlashed from different sides and different entities, Macedonians wanted to dig to antiquity as what they say as "their foundation" to bring back "the forgotten and the lost past". But the question is whose past, whose history? The Greeks "are accusing them for stealing their identity", Albanians living there for not being represented as such, Bulgarians for the language similarities while Serbs about the religious identity. Even though it was "sold" to the population as something that will regenerate the city while generating also economic development it turned out Skopje into a theme park and a hot mess. There are many of the citizens and professionals opposing Skopje 2014… There are many local architects still alive – and their brutalist buildings are covered and changing faces in front of their eyes being powerless to do something about it. It is purely an orchestrated political strategy and narrative, a top down approach and instead of promoting and/or constructing a cosmopolitan present it turned to the historical future of Skopje. You cannot create a history by erasing the history said architect Konstatinovski while I met him for an interview. Even if someone did that before for any reason we should not do the same mistakes. Many people are protesting and complaining with the idea that, all this money could go to "education and infrastructure rather than in all these fountains and monuments". Skopje was named a Europan Capital of Kitch, it became a site for many tourists but at the same time a lost city for its people. I've met locals saying that they feel lost in their own city. Even my Skopje – as a refugee settler there is not there anymore. People couldn't believe that it will become real when they saw it. Today, while not having a say in the decision making process about their city besides their protests they also laugh an ironize the whole idea by advising you that "if you pass through the city centre, don't stop in one place for more than 5 minutes, others my think you are a statue and take selfie with you" …But god knows this historical future of Skopje like it or not might become a heritage and a collective memory for others to come. Up to then Prishtina will be all "privatised"!!!...Identity is a very complex and layered social and physical construct; it cannot be seen and fulfilled only from the prism of monumentality and past history. An approach like this could lead to more division, rejection, protests and other forms of recognition. A common contemporary past of our cities was never recognised as a value, respected and protected as something to serve us and learn from it. Modernism broke the chain of time in cities and if nothing for that should be kept as a physical evidence to create a new historical future for our contemporary cities.