EDUCATING FOR A DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

This contribution will discuss the shared educational project for the city of Skopje, North Macedonia, by two European graduation studios of architecture, as a shared ambition to develop educational methods for a more democratic practice of architecture. Conquered by the Ottoman Empire, inscribed within a kingdom after World War I, within a socialist republic after World War II, and currently tense between global economic interests and regional political power struggles Skopje also bears the scars of a massive earthquake and copes with ethnic and religious tensions fueled by the rise of divisive and dissociative political initiatives. It is against this background that special attention has been given in the studio to three aspects that define built environments in which all citizens can thrive together. Firstly, citizens should be able to find meaning in and convey meaning to the spaces they use and inhabit. Secondly, they should be able to appropriate those spaces, by being able to project their hopes and feelings onto them. Finally, they should be able to integrate with others based on their ability to imagine and project visions of possible futures for the city in which they all live. Rather than defining a specific brief or site, the studios promote an ambition for intervention in the built environment. Against the rise of divisive and dissociative political initiatives, students are encouraged to envision possible futures for more meaningful, appropriable and integrating built environments; where a diversity of citizens can understand the meanings contained in built form, project their hopes and ambitions on it, and integrate with others as an inclusive, democratic society. As a laboratory, the city of Skopje and the many tensions that define it are fertile grounds for the exploration, examination and discovery of architecture as a democratic practice.