Tactics for Transforming the Housing Structure, New Housing Models Incision of the City, Connecting the Urban Fragments of the City of Skopje

Abstract

As witnesses of the dynamic and increased extension and densification of the development of our urban spaces, we need a re-qualification of the values that we as members and professionals create in the urban environment in which we live in.
Skopje is a fragmented city, consisted of a diverse morphological and social context and the permanence and transformation of the urban structure is in a constant conflict. Defining new tactics for transformation of the housing structure and presenting new models for housing is the new challenge that the city will be facing in order to create a homogeneous morphological and ideological identity. The research of the possible transformation offers a method which can be applied and adapted on versatile urban contexts and provide upgrade and integration of the program and volume of the city.
In this research, the linear structure is chosen as a basic morphological element. Towards a better understanding of this formal act of positioning an axis, we first have to understand the political and social events from historical, social and cultural aspect. In the first part, the research is based on examples of the historical genesis of linear structures and examples regarding the research of linear structures or cities and in the second part, closing in on the study area of the city of Skopje and the east-west axis of development and growth of the city (the master plan of the architect Ludek Kubes in 1948). The method of incision is presented in the third part, incision or cutting through, from a theoretical aspect and superposing a linear structure as a tactic for transforming the urban morphology. The urban fragments are a distinctive phenomenon of the city of Skopje; the principals of informal transformation may offer a strategy that will succeed to unify and connect the contradictory condition, which is a consequence of different ideas, implementations and non-realization of plans and also of political, economic and other social factors.