ARCHITECTURE OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN PRISTINA 1945 - 1990

"ARCHITECTURE OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN PRISTINA 1945 - 1990: SOCIAL AND FORMATIVE FACTORS" - A book by Arbër I. Sadiki

Reviews made by:

Prof. Assoc. Dr. Armand Vokshi

The dean of FAU | UPT | Tirana, Albania

"Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space."

- Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe

Is it time to highlight what ages have translated into space in Albanian cities? These thirty years of the postcommunist dictatorship, as well as the twenty years of peace, have not produced enough studies, research and unindoctrinated debates about architecture and urbanism in our cities. This general poverty of research studies and professional debate, puts us in inverse relation to our architectural and urban heritage, which previous generations have created for the generations to come. Shading these particular values, produced over different periods, regardless of the conceptual, ideological, religious or historical connection of the constructed opus, have already shown the fact that these architectures can be transformed from their original identity or lost forever. Cases of recent interventions in Albania, Kosovo and especially in North Macedonia with radical changes in the city of Skopje prove this. Research studies should serve, not only for the cognitive and documentary side of different ages, but also to feed the debate on the dimensioning of the relationship of our current behavior with these values, unique to the times when they were built.

Therefore, I received with great pleasure the publication of my colleague Arbër Sadiki, regarding the architecture of public buildings in Prishtina during the years 1945 - 1990. Historically these years coincide with the years when Prishtina was one of the important cities of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is already known that this particular part of architecture has remodeled the organic structure of the city and formed the modernist DNA of the city. The topic is quite complex, so this study is a very valuable contribution to the research of a period with a specific production in the territory of Prishtina. The complexity of this topic is especially related to the time proximity to this historical period, when the works were designed and realized - which often brings emotional loads, confusion of narrow ideological, nationalist or even political and cultural feelings of the present time - in relation to the times when they were built.

The topic selected by the author is presented as a research need on the strong occurrences of urban transformations in Prishtina, where the combination of the historical layers elements is already evident, especially of the totalitarian social-realist period and those of the Ottoman Oriental period present in Prishtina until those moments. Mentioning these contrasting phenomena, this study carries out a qualitative analysis of the conceptual formation of architecture and urban spaces, the evidence of their transformation, as well as the various architectural concepts of a very high compositional standard.

The purpose of this study is to decompose the public environment designed and built with modern and post-modern features. It is focused especially on the key interventions, derivatives of the study plans of various Yugoslav architects, during the seventies and eighties. Sadiki has the merit of being one of the first to concentrate on such a topic, deconstructing it both historically and chronologically, as well as urbanly and architecturally.

Sadiki has carefully delved into multifaceted analysis based on historical archival data, statistics, similar architectures, which carry within them various hypothetical functional spatial similarities - urban and architectural elements too - with those built in Pristina. They manage very well to stimulate our imagination on the progressive development that these organic parts of Prishtina, built or unbuilt, have had in time. It is clear that the main goal of Arbër is to focuse on the deepest possible knowledge of the urban and architectural conditions of these works, to achieve as close as possible, research breakdowns of brutal architectural and urban morphology. This is closely related to the study of all compositional, technical, constructive aspects of construction works and to the study of constructive systems or to the identification of specific architectural elements.

Initially, the preliminary work was based on an in-depth bibliographic analysis through large thematic groups, which are related to the architectural and urban development in general and in Prishtina in particular. After that, the architectural features of some construction typologies of public buildings of the totalitarian period are taken into account. For these, Sadiki focused on the specific characteristics of each typology presented, in accordance with the current stage of knowledge and studies for these buildings by combining them with the opportunities provided for direct field research.

The author has tried to connect the flow of thoughts as organically as possible by following the chronological or analytical sequence for each chapter. There is an extensive bibliography, suitable for the topic showing the capacity and seriousness of the candidate.

Based on these arguments, I think we are dealing with a publication with genuine research content and scientific value, not only for the abundant informative data that it has brought but also for the persuasive interpretations, a personal contribution of particular importance in research for the study of the aforementioned works in Prishtina. However, I personally hope that this research can be followed by other studies by the author, deepening the research in different aspects in other parts of the city, still incognito.