Fig 3 - uploaded by Florina Jerliu
Content may be subject to copyright.
Modern city centre of Prishtina, built on the foundations of its historic centre: a) Marshal Tito Street and its surrounds (photo source: Mekuli E. and Cukic D. eds. The Prishtina Monograph, 1965); b) Urban architectural structures destroyed during the 1950s and 60s to make space for Marshal Tito Street. Top row, from the left: Lokac Mosque; the Catholic church, the River Prishtina. Bottom: view of the boulevard with Lukac mosque on the left and 20 th-century architecture on the right. (Photo source: Facebook community page "Prishtina e Vjetër": <https://web.facebook. com/PrishtinaOLD/> (accessed January 24, 2017)
Source publication
This study introduces the contextual history in which socialist modernization was accomplished in Prishtina, the capital city of Kosovo. It explores the changing image of the city through interpreting the temporal and spatial forms of urban and architectural contributions that occurred between late 1940s and 1980s. Our analysis classifies six types...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... Old Bazaar, historically known for craft fairs and commerce. This street, which as early as 1947 was named after Marshal Tito (today it is known as Mother Teresa Boulevard) was redeveloped into the city's main artery, along which new state edifi ces were built. Apart from institutions, apartment housing blocks were built in the surrounding area (Fig. ...
Context 2
... shopping mall; the River Prishtina (Serbian: Prištevka) was also buried in this very location. The western side of the boulevard, which contained two historical layers from the past -Ottoman style two-story houses with a commercial ground fl oor and early 20 th -century edifi ces erected under the western infl uence -suff ered the same fate (Fig. 3.b). The redevelopment of the north-south axis into Marshal Tito Street was a project that settled the new national iconography of socialist Prishtina. Its monumental and regularized fronts were designed to resemble the architecture of other European capitals, and used imported features found in other cities of Central and Southeastern ...
Citations
... From the works of Walter Benjamin, later Manfredo Tafuri (1979) and most recently Jacques Rancière (2018/ 2022), we understand that there exists a multiplicity of modernity that is related to different contexts and produces various types of urban products within modern architecture and city planning. Thus, modern architecture is not homogenous in the sense of perceived architectural and ideological rationality and functionality (Jerliu & Navakazi, 2018). In this context, different political programmesbased on the vision that different countries embraced after the Second World War -produced various approaches and solutions regarding architectural and urban aesthetics (Jerliu & Navakazi, 2018). ...
... Thus, modern architecture is not homogenous in the sense of perceived architectural and ideological rationality and functionality (Jerliu & Navakazi, 2018). In this context, different political programmesbased on the vision that different countries embraced after the Second World War -produced various approaches and solutions regarding architectural and urban aesthetics (Jerliu & Navakazi, 2018). ...
Architecture is not an isolated discipline but is one of the manifold manifestations of the human activity. It is effectively capable of transmitting different ideological and political meanings, using its formal and aesthetical modalities to participate in the organization of the city space and human life. Thus, architecture has always contributed as a signifier of the ideology of political power, embodying in itself the fundamental components of a political will. The organizational differences in left or right regimes are completely visible in the architectural discourse financed by political actions throughout the history. While in some cases there is a heteronomic component made possible by the openness and exchanges with the outside world, the main characteristic of architecture in certain states was formal and propagandistic autonomy, generating a strong self-referential style, outside the main stylistic debates of the time. This research aims to discuss architecture's implication with political discourses, power and ideology, within modernity. We presume that there is a certain line of political thought, which is elevated to an ideological level and produces an architecture that is referential to that ideology. But more than simply being a product of political decisions, different architectures emerging in different historical contexts, are also used as instruments to signify and determine future politics. In this context, this research renders architecture as a metaphor that facilitates communication between aesthetics and political power, as presented in the city space. The discussion is focused on the interplay of modern aesthetics and politics in the context of Eastern Europe, particularly Western Balkans. The objective is to trace in parallel the main architectural and urban peculiarities between countries that essentially shared very different ideas of architectural aesthetics and political ideologies. Using some key historical buildings of the respective regimes, the aim is to decipher the critical points where ideology marks alternative paths in such countries. Alongside historical studies we would question if the impact of these regimes, even after their end, still continue to determine the urban development and architecture of the respective cities.
... It is tempting to project the current ethnopolitical partitioning of the city back onto the sociospatial division between the 'Serb' new socialist part of the city and the 'Albanian' Ottoman-era neighbourhoods. Contemporary Albanian accounts of socialist urbanisation in Kosovo's capital Pristina, for example, interpret the deterioration and demolition of Ottoman-era neighbourhoods after the Second World War as an act of colonial aggression and control over the subjugated Albanian population (Jerliu and Navakazi, 2018). However, the superposition of Serb-Albanian ethnopolitical division on socialist urban development requires attention to nuance. ...
... Post-war city renovation happened in various ways both in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and elsewhere in Europe. In the southwestern part of the USSR, as well as Eastern European countries under USSR influence it sometimes occurred in spite of the existing urban fabric [1] destructing the remains of historic structures. In northwestern and midwestern parts of the USSR and Western neighbouring countries an overall more historic environment respecting approach was taken retaining the existing historic urban fabric. ...
Today’s European historical city centre streetscapes, many of which are designated cultural heritage sites, consist of a mix of urban and architectural housing heritage of different periods, including post World War II period buildings. Nevertheless, knowledge of history of historical centre post-war housing and their artistic and cultural-historical values of this recent past is still insufficient, to a certain degree contradictory, and in some cases even incorrect. This is particularly accurate regarding Modern Movement serial or type Soviet housing in former Soviet republics. This paper presents an ongoing research intended to identify valuable housing streetscape architecture and urban layout traits of post-war period in Latvia (1945–1990) in the environment of historic centre. The goal is to provide specialists in planning and heritage fields with appropriate evaluation criteria and correct know-how material on the theme, as well as general public with cultural historical information considering post-war housing heritage. In this study an example of post-war Modern Movement serial Soviet housing in the historical centre of Riga, the capital city of Latvia, and its protection zone is drawn. The research is based on mapping and auditing streetscapes using Maryland Inventory with this housing typology in historical built environment to identify most common characteristics and qualities of these buildings. The main conclusions are that historical street-scapes do not have significant qualitative differences from historical mixed with post-war housing streetscapes, whereas the quality of streetscapes with dominating post-war modern housing tends to differ from historical streetscapes, as well as has similar shortcomings to those of the large-scale housing block streetscapes.
The recent demolition of one wing of the Hotel Korali in Sutomore, Bar,
one of the awarded examples of coastal socialist architecture in Montenegro,
designed by architect Milan Popović, has caused strong public
disapproval and at the same time indifference of various state institutions
in charge of protection and management of the built heritage. Considering
that the process of establishing protection over architectural buildings in
Montenegro takes an extended period of time due to various stakeholders,
a significant legacy of socialist architecture has not yet been adequately
acknowledged, while only recently, it seems that the world is becoming
aware of its importance. Therefore, a lack of strategy in the planning documents
in the last decades has led to various forms of reconstructions,
extensions and upgrades in order to adapt those structures to capitalist
needs and ideas, while neglecting the value and original identity of these
buildings.
Following Walter Benjamin’s thinking of “the modern” – which is an important theoretical contribution to the study of form – one could understand that the term designates both a formal temporal structure and the diverse range of its historical instances, past and present, whose reinterpretation and critical reading can stimulate possible future scenarios for urban spaces, or the understanding of specific developments related to them. For Benjamin’s theory to be applicable in the discipline of architecture, particular knowledge and methods are required, through which unfold the processes of modernity in relation to the temporal and formal phenomenon. Thus, the aim of this essay is to re-read Benjamin’s modernity within the discussion on temporality, by using architectural form and language as tools. Temporality and modernity are widely discussed topics of scientific research, particularly linked to the tradition of the Frankfurt School. However, we are interested in deciphering these two topics through a historical category, as an object through which the scientific architectural research is crafted. And in order to connect this category to a practical level contextualized within an urban setting, this essay studies the urbanization of modernist cities, the historical events impacting it, and the stages of modernity, focusing on the city of Prishtina in Kosovo. Prishtina is used as a case-study on account of its particular history in the course of the twentieth and twenty-first century. It is the capital city of a post-socialist state that experienced a radical shift in ideological and political systems, characterized by a complex architectural and urban form with distinguished modern features. This paper will study the unfinished modernism in Prishtina (1945-ongoing), – interrupted by politico-ideological instances – which led to a fragmentation of the urban form and the presence of multiple urban realities. In so doing, this paper will decipher specific events from different time periods, to be defined as critical junctures of Prishtina’s modern history, which had a particular outcome in architecture and its urban setting. The study of the temporal and the formal in modern architecture and city planning will focus on two plans: 1) The political and economic context in Prishtina, within former Yugoslavia, which produces an ideological condition within which architecture becomes ideological; 2) The discipline of architecture, which impacts the form and aesthetics of buildings and cities through modern ideology and normativities.
La formazione della Pristina socialista in Jugoslava è stata influenzata da vari fattori politici, culturali e ideologici. Con il pretesto della modernizzazione, lo stato ha avviato massicce demolizioni, prendendo di mira i siti simbolicamente significativi dell'identità urbana della città durante l'epoca premoderna. L'urbanizzazione e la nuova architettura nella città sono state sviluppate attraverso frammenti che hanno visivamente inciso sul tessuto storico. Questo contributo esamina l'interazione tra le strategie di pianificazione e gli interventi urbani che hanno portato a tale frammentazione. Documenti e dichiarazioni ufficiali vengono esaminati, per esemplificare l'ethos generale del periodo e per contribuire così a una comprensione della urbanizzazione nella Pristina socialista.
This study examines the literature on social housing in Yugoslavia and Kosovo, and covers different topics and approaches. By combining findings spanning the periods of development, construction techniques, Yugoslavian particularities, social approaches, standardization, finance, and investment, it takes a comprehensive approach, hitherto missing. The literature review is conducted at two levels: the central level in Yugoslavia and the local level in Kosovo. While there is a massive gap in the local context, the aim is not to fill this gap but to demonstrate how one can begin to address and gain insights into social housing in 1970s Kosovo. The urban planning and design principles that influenced social housing in Yugoslavia were also present in Kosovo, as in other Yugoslav cities, but to varying extents and on a smaller scale.
This article is part of a research on concepts that belong to theoretical speculation sin the discipline of architecture. The main intention is to shed light on the relationship of these theoretical concepts with the construction of architectural form and the episteme of architecture itself. One such concept is the identity of architecture. In this context, this research aims to clarify the interplay between identity – as a theoretical concept that is directly related to the form – and the architectural discipline. The first hypothesis is that architectural forms do not have a particular identity detached from their formal essence, but have an identity expressed by morphology. Second, different architectures, being forms of representations, express an external identity depended on the historical, political, social or cultural conditions. This article defines three main plans through which the identity of an architectural work is manifested: formal, stylistic/linguistic, and technological. The followed methodological approach is based on a theoretical analysis of the concept of identity, its contextualization within the discipline of architecture, and the interpretation of the results of such analysis through the case study of the National Library of Kosovo, built in Prishtina during 1971-1982. The study of the National Library is conceived as an example where the results obtained at a theoretical level and which aim to further clarify the discourse on the presented concepts, are expected to be verified.
The objective of this study is to involve architecture and its planning abilities, to face the irregularities that have proliferated over the current geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and to grow and evolve together with the rest of the disciplines who tackle its actual problems. By embarking upon the duality that architecture is constantly involved in relations with the physical environment and repetitively reassembled into a social construct, it seeks to portray a grounded reciprocal dialogue with the agencies of these two systems in order to create a sustainable habitable environment for nonhumans and humans. This premise is backed by two essential theories which each describe one constituent of the above-mentioned duality. The Gaia theory, of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, which shares a novel knowledge upon the animate beings and the physical territory of our planet, and the Actor Network Theory (ANT), mostly in accordance with Bruno Latour’s work, which describes the social or natural world as a world assembled of constantly, ever changing, in associations, actors. Furthermore, the following research is applied on two selected urban spaces of the capital city of Kosovo, Prishtina. The first territory is the old Bazaar of the capital, and the second space is the Railway Station of Prishtina and its surrounding territory. Additionally, the existing state of these case studies aims to inform, through the systemic knowledge of the two theories, the architectural decision making, in order to generate a striving, livable atmosphere for all beings.
