Mirjana Lozanovska

Children and university architecture students working together: a pedagogical model of children's participation in architectural design

Increasing efforts have been made to engage children in the design of the built environment, and several participatory models have been developed. The aim of this paper is to propose a pedagogical model for childrens genuine participation in architectural design, developed in an architectural education context. According to this pedagogical model, children (primary school students) and youth (university architecture students) work in teams to develop the architectural design proposals. This model was developed through a joint educational project between Deakin University and Wales Street Primary School (both institutions are based in Victoria, Australia). In the four-week duration of the project, first year architecture students worked with Grade 3 and 4 primary school children to design a school playground. The final product of the project was a 1:20 scale model of a playground, which was installed and presented at the end of the fourth week. The project received positive feedback from all the participants, including children, architecture students, university lecturers, primary school teachers and architects. In addition, it achieved a high level of childrens genuine participation. This model can be refined and applied in new situations, and potentially with other primary schools working with Deakin University.

Architectural Frontier/Spatial Story The Problematic of Representing the Everyday

The “tools” of architectural discourse—maps, plans, sections, elevations, photographs—are one way of representing an architecture of the everyday. In this article, the theoretical problematic of representing the everyday is investigated through a specific site, Zavoj, a village in the Republic of Macedonia. How do we look at, document, and analyse a place that is outside the map of western architectural interest? The tools of architecture are staged as the mechanics of an architectural frontier against the narratives that describe the processes of dwelling, the spatial stories of the inhabitants of the village. Stories and words of a fictive reality intervene in the clear geometry of architectural representation and thereby produce a complexity to the representation of the everyday. The article, however, does not settle within this hypothesis; rather, it invests the siting of a particular place as a struggle for the discourse.

The design philosophy of Edenic gardens: tracing ‘Paradise Myth’ in landscape architecture

ABSTRACT This paper explores the Eden mythology in both western and eastern cultures, and its reflection on people’s perception and use of nature. It aims to examine how cultural ideologies and systems of beliefs in relation to Eden have affected landscape making and how landscape icons influenced other cultures subsequently. This study describes how narratives of Eden evolved and influenced landscape design by explaining the narratives of Paradise and Arcadia in eastern and western cultures as two distinct landscape narratives, with a brief history of their emergence and evolution. It discusses the ways in which landscape architecture reflects the prevailing attitudes towards nature in a society by studying the ancient world’s philosophies and ideologies as a starting-point for this investigation. The paper then focuses on the Persian paradise garden and explains the notion of iconography, as a visual explanation of an idea in landscape design. It projects the transformation of Persian paradise gardens’ icons and patterns in landscape architecture through historical and spatial explorations.

The social life of commercial streets

The social life of cities is a key concept related to social cohesion, which has been the subject of extensive studies in several disciplines including sociology, psychology and the built environment. Social life studies conducted in the built environment discipline have mostly focused on city centres; while the significance of neighbourhoods as integral elements have been sometimes overlooked. As a result, this research will specifically explore commercial streets in residential suburbs. Suburbs are frequently perceived to be lacking in vitality and street life. The method of inquiry in this research investigates how the physical characteristics of commercial streets can either promote, affect or mitigate the social life of neighbourhoods and generate a sociable environment. Therefore, this study captures the social behaviour of three commercial streets in Geelong, Australia. This paper utilizes a qualitative approach to the study of the social life of commercial streets. The primary methodology used in this research is recording, documenting and mapping users’ activities through behavioural observation. The observations have been conducted in four days (on two weekdays and two weekends). The case study has been divided into eight sections that are similar in length. Short movies of 30 seconds have been recorded from each section, every two hours from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm. Afterwards, the movies have been transmitted into street mappings, documenting the type of activities, placement of activities, gender and approximate age by exploiting suitable pictograms. There are several physical characteristics that are believed to be contributing to the social life of commercial streets. This study utilizes a bottom-up approach to evaluate the complexities of the role that built environment plays in terms of vitality through the three selected characteristics, including typomorphology and street layout, diversity of uses, and soft facades. Better understanding of how neighbourhood environments influence the social life of neighbourhoods can provide academics and professionals in architecture and urban design with sound evidence on which to base future research and design.

Brutalism, Metabolism and its American Parallel: Encounters in Skopje and in the Architecture of Georgi Konstantinovski

Massive, raw concrete structures – the likes of the Telecommunications Building (1972–81) by Janko Konstantinov; the campus of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (1974) by Marko MušiČ; the National Hydraulic Institute (1972) by Krsto Todorovski; and the Bank Complex (1970) by R. Lalovik and O. Papeš – have led to the production of an enduring monumental presence and helped inspire Skopjes title as the “Brutalist capital of the world”. These works followed Kenzo Tanges introduction of Japanese Metabolism to Skopje through his role in the 1965 United Nations sponsored reconstruction competition. The unique position of a Non-Aligned Yugoslavia staged and facilitated architectural and professional exchange during the Cold War. Each trajectory and manifestation illustrates the complex picture of international architectural exchange and local production. Skopje and its numerous Brutalist edifices is an elucidative story, because it represents a meeting point between Brutalism, Metabolism and its American parallel. This article discusses, in particular, the Skopje Archive Building (1966) and the “Goce DelČev” Student Dormitory (1969) – two buildings designed by the architect Georgi Konstantinovski, realised on his return from a Masters program at Yale University and employment within I. M. Peis New York office. Their architecture illustrates the simultaneous preoccupations of leading architects at the time in regaining a conceptual ground made explicit through a complete and apprehensible image. From this particular position, the article explores the question of ethics and aesthetics central to Banhams outline of the “New Brutalism”.

Skopje Resurgent: the international confusions of post-earthquake planning, 1963–1967

ABSTRACT In the period of the Cold War, architecture became a critical medium of knowledge transfer, facilitating the processes of modernization. The Cold War protagonists, the USSR and the USA, vied to gain the political allegiances of third world nations of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. This was done through development and aid programmes that offered to lift nations out of poverty, and thereby also deliver them into political commitment to one side or the other. The destruction of Skopje, capital of Macedonia, in 1963, along with the subsequent efforts to replan and rebuild the city, brought with it a significant disruption to the Cold War dynamic. For one thing, Skopje happened to sit within Yugoslavia, a non-aligned country. For another, the winner of the competition to rebuild Skopje was a Japanese, Kenzo Tange. Moreover, the rallying efforts of the United Nations to bring people and resources from around the world to the aid of Skopje managed to transcend much of the partisanship characteristic of international politics. This paper explores the actors, networks, and mechanisms that came together from both sides of the Cold War divide to deliver one of the most defining trans-national urban projects of the 1960s.

A report on the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation Symposium on Migration and Architecture

The Symposium, Aesthetic Anxiety or Performative Subjectivity: national narratives encountering migrant architecture in Australia focussed on drawing together scholars of migration and architecture...

Europe, Le Corbusier and the Balkans

The Balkans have been mythologized as the “non-European part of Europe,” their edge geography exploited as a barbaric outpost against Europe’s foundational myth as “civilization.” Balkanism as a synonym for backward, tribal, and uncivilized reappears in the tragedy of Yugoslavia, generalized by the West as a brutal Balkan War. Narratives of industrialization, modernization, and urbanization have defined twentieth-century Europe, but in Imagining the Balkans, Maria Todorova reminds us that mod...

Ethno-architecture and the politics of migration

Cities have been substantially affected and many transformed by increasing cultural diversity resulting from waves of migration. The central role and dynamism of cultural diversity evident in retail and commercial streetscapes has dominated the debates on global and contemporary urban culture (Sandercock 2003). Architecture has been implicit as the background to these debates, but restaurants, residential, religious, institutional and community buildings, ethnic clubs and reception centres, constructed and adapted by migrant communities, provide evidence of the material change of the architecture of localities and neighbourhoods.Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration explores the interface between migration and architecture. Cities have been substantially affected by transnational migration but the physical manifestations of migration in architecture and its effect on streetscape, neighbourhood and city – have so far been under-studied. This contributed volume examines how migrants interact with, adapt and construct new architecture. Looking at the physical, urban and cultural impact of these changes on a variety of sites, the authors explore architecture as an identity category and investigate what buildings and places associated with migration tell us about central questions of belonging, culture, community and home in regions such as North America, Australia and the UK. This book makes an important contribution to debates on place identity and the transformation of places as a result of mobility and globalised economies in the twenty-first century.

Consciousness and Amnesia The Reconstruction of Skopje Considered through “Actor Network Theory”

After the decimation of the urban fabric resulting from the 1963 earthquake, Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, became a center of town planning and architectural activity. The aftermath response was unprecedented, with eighty-five countries offering aid and thirty-five nations raising Skopje to a priority status within the United Nations (UN). The acclaimed Japanese architect, Kenzo Tange, was awarded first prize in the subsequent UN competition for the reconstruction master plan and was asked to work with the second prize winners, Zagreb firm Miscevic and Wenzler. The design and rebuilding produced one of the greatest collaborative and visionary realizations of a complete city concept undertaken in history. Yet, the significance of Skopje’s reconstruction has slipped from architectural consciousness. “Actor network theory” (ANT) offers insights into the social dynamics of large-scale projects and provides a lens by which to investigate five features of the reconstruction of Skopje: (1) the social process, including problematization, interessement, enrollment, and mobilization; (2) the key participants; (3) the project scale; (4) artifacts; and (5) project duration. ANT proves to be a useful tool for understanding both the heroic achievement and the subsequent neglect of Skopje reconstructed.