Urban Practices vs. City Tissue: the Emergence of a New Historic Landscape.

Ref.: 269
Área temática: 03 Integridad visual de los paisajes urbanos históricos
Fecha de recepción: 15/11/2008

AUTORES (* Autor principal)

TOLIC, Ines * (Italia) - School for Advanced Studies in Venice,

ABSTRACT

Along the XXth century, the city of Skopje has undergone a series of ruptures, the most powerful of which was probably the earthquake of 1963. This natural disaster heavily destroyed the city tissues and, after three years of consultations, the post-earthquake planning activities culminated into the approval of a new masterplan. In other words, a brand new city tissue was superposed on the historical one.
Beyond any opinion about the masterplan itself, its quality or effectiveness, it can be said that this kind of planning process had understimated a very important element. Urban practices had not been taken into account then and, therefore, they are claiming to be recognized nowadays. In other words: when it comes to "landscape", we need to take into consideration both material and "immaterial" issues.
That "urban practices are claiming to be recognized" means that, in their everyday-life, city dwellers interact and modify urban landscape, both in city centres and in their fringes. This is the reason why it has become crucial to understand practices' meaning before undertaking any new planning project. Only in this way, identity and the communities' ways of life might be conciliated with the legitimate strive for modernization.
We would like to point at this concept as the New Historic Landscape, because it seems able to compromise a positive attitude towards the past with an historical perspective of what a city is going to become. Moreover, it refers to a very actual issue since it takes into account both native and acquired city space's uses.
In order to transpose those concepts in a plan, already known tools could be used, but in an innovative way. In Skopje, the effectiveness of the video as a planning tool was demonstrated both as a research tool and as a mean of interpretation. We applied it in city center as well as in the city fringes. Specifically, in the center we observed urban practices with the aim to discover to what extent city could change under the pressure of everyday actions. In fringes, the goal was to find out in which way it was possible to integrate those practices with contemporary architecture in a sustainable way.
In both cases, we identified what might be considered "conflictual places" inside and in-between different urban tissues, those being the outcome of the different views on the city along its history. It emerged that what gives them a meaning are just everyday practices, i.e. people actually using, changing, adopting these spaces by their only presence and experience.
Therefore, the concept of "heritage" needs to be extended if practices are to be considered. But, if practices are to be included, what has also to be acepted is change: thus, heritage is not a static object, it is a dynamic concept that only visual approaches can help us to understand.

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