DOMESTICATING GARDENS. Excavating New Patterns of Growth for the City

Abstract

Urban growth is a generic condition inherited in contemporary metropolitan reality, embracing various programmatic constraints: from housing and the very idea of domestic space to the public realm and urbanity as a practice of collective experience. In the prevailing ongoing discussions around urban growth, space is generally perceived through its built structure, whereas the empty (un-built) space is rather neglected or misused as mere building asset. Acknowledging the urban consequences and the spatial effects that urbanization and globalization have on the public space and life in the contemporary city, we call for a critical reassessment of city’s unbuilt resources and potential. Therefore the task of this paper is to reveal the hidden dimension and potential of gardens as resource for urbanity, juxtaposing the notion of architecture and dwelling with cultivated landscapes, both being seen as interwoven experiences that create the beauty of living. In order to challenge the perpetually accelerated building activity on the territory of the city of Skopje, we examine the relationship between the built and the un-built space by exploring new narratives that emerge in re-appropriation of the concept of a garden as urban entity and the potential of the productive landscape as a collective endeavour.