Geotechnics and architecture: true partnership or mutual sabotage?

Abstract

Even in the 21st century, the battle for better place of geotechnics in the range of technical sciences is still in progress. Most often, it is in the shadow of civil engineering, indeed - not that deep as it was decades ago. Anyway, it is often said that there is need of larger communication either between civil and geotechnical engineers or between gotechnical engineers and the society, which often can not recognize the values and importance of geotechnical engineering. So, it could be imagined how far is geotechnics, as a discipline, from architecture and what amount of work and energie is needed to establish good cooperation between them in order to avoid absurdly competition. The proposed paper aims to present two opposite cases from R. Macedonia: one positive, showing synergie between geotechnics and architecture on the example of retaining wall in the St. Jovan Bigorski monastery complex, and the other one not that bright, presenting the negative impact of geotechnics on architecture through the example of excavation pit protection in Skopje. The experience of the designers is going to be presented below.