Macedonia at the Architectural Biennale in Venice

Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

The Macedonian participation at the the16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, entitled Freeingspace, identifies the concept of freedom and ethics as the discursive trajectory of architecture and space. The title itself embraces a double meaning: besides the one that sees freeing as an active form, or an act of operation, the prefix freeing– as an adjective describes and defines a space that sets free, indicating the immanent potential of space to create a sense of freedom.

Freeingspaceconcept departs from the processes of transformation that the city of Skopje has been subjected to in its encounter with the general concept of modernity.

The last one in the series -taking the shape of extensive construction activity coded under the name of Skopje2014 (SK2014) has been widely publicized, while the extreme controversy associated with it has become the subject of research and criticism in almost every sphere of the society reaching beyond local boundaries. Although multifaceted, its prime and final effect concerns materiality and space.

For that reason, Freeingspace is a story of liberating publicness where architecture takes the front role in reclaiming the spatial unity of the city. In the framework of the unsolicited call for ideas, key built interventions of SK2014 are being reviewed in distinctive fragments, contrary to the imposed comprehensive tendency to solidify space. Through a precise selection of this ‘spatial heritage’ and by deconstructing its notional pattern, the value of fragments is re-introduced, using architecture as a medium that retroactively regenerates the city collective.

The exhibited Freeingspace projects objectify the meaning of public buildings as public spaces. It takes four distinctive sites within the inner city area of Skopje exemplifying architecture as both a heroic outburst when originally builand as mere representational commodity in its recent recast.

The exhibition takes formation of four singular entities as informational solid that juxtapose memory, perception and representation of space. In such a multitude of meanings Freeingspace finds itself as a conceptual prosthesis, futurefragment that transcends repulsive contradictions by means of re-thinking instead of erasing.

Freeingspace – the Macedonian Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Arts – Skopje, with the support of Ministry of Culture, Republic of Macedonia

Commissioner: Zoran Petrovski

Curators: Slobodan Velevski, Marija Mano Velevska

Authors/Exhibitors: DejanIvanovski, Filip Jovanovski, BlagojaBajkovski, Marina Tornatora, Lucia La Giusa, Alessandro De Luca, GordanVitevski, Mila Dimitrovska, VladoDanailov, Aleksandra Shulevska, Slobodan Velevski, Marija Mano Velevska