Скопје од идолумот на архитект Живко Поповски

Abstract

“Idolum” is the inner world, the world of ideas, where the idea is understood as to belong in the subjective, spiritual domain, domain of the fantasies and believes, rationalizations and anticipations. “Idolum” by its meaning is close to “utopia”, because it offers us similar (if not the same!) escapism from the real world. When the reality becomes too complex and overwhelming to be able to face it, we seek escape in our inner worlds; in our inner worlds we also collect and sort facts from the everyday life filtering them to project a new and better outer world. Inspired by the “The Story of Utopia” by Lewis Mumford, this paper summarizes the depictions of the city of Skopje in the theoretical work of architect Zivko Popovski, which from today’s point of view carry the overtone of utopia. We can grade the philosophical stance of Popovski on Skopje and architecture in general as highly humanistic, because it outlines ecology and health, human rights and freedom as the most important among all other systems of our civilization. The main goal of this paper is to precisely and comprehensively draw out the contours of the possible city of Skopje from the idolum of the architect Zivko Popovski and to promote the important ideas for our city as: caring for the city’s naked body (understanding the natural laws of homeland, treatment of river waters, slopes and terraces, green belts, parks), care for the city's remembrance and the creation of memory landscapes, a necessary set of habits and values of the architects and citizens of Skopje, etc.