WHAT'S NEW
COMPETITION ART Fortress KALE: AWARDED PROJECTS
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SKOPJE 22. 10. – 03. 11. 2019
The International Competition for Preparation of Preliminary Urban and architectural development design for arrangement of the Kale Hill in Skopje constitutes an integral part of the long-term project Kale – Cultural Fortress, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje with the support of the ROCK project. The goal of the Kale – Cultural Fortress project and the competition is to encourage the revitalization and spatial arrangement of the Kale Hill into an attractive and vibrant city attraction with various cultural, educational and recreational functions.
Two important cultural monuments dominate the Kale Hill: the mediaeval fortress Kale and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The exceptional historic and contemporary significance of these two imposing structures for the City of Skopje have been largely diminished due to many years of neglect of the broader location of the Kale Hill.
The potential of this space in possible support and expansion of the diversity and attractiveness of the city programs is enormous. Therefore, the team of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje announced this competition for preliminary design proposals that will initiate cultivating of the Kale Hill into a “cultural fortress” and a widely used public space.
The proposals were expected to consider and emphasize the natural advantages of the location and its terrain and in that sense its recreational capacities, particularly, its topographic diversity with multiple places that provide wonderful views of the city panorama and the landscape of the Skopje valley.
The second, equally important component of the project proposals, refers to the Kale Hill as a unique public space integrated with dynamic cultural content. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje is its primary program platform, including organization of artistic, sculptural, architectural, performance, multimedia, residential, educational seminars and workshops as well as other types of interdisciplinary or community projects and public events.
Seventeen works were submitted to the competition. Working in two separate sessions for evaluation of the received works, the jury decided to award two equal first prizes of 125.000 denars to the project under the code “SO 162” by architects Aleksandra Shulevska and Kristof Schlüβler, and “Modul”, the project of Ana Rafailovska, Marija Antic Nikolova, Lidija Ristovska, and Nevenka Mancheva Adzievska, architects from Skopje. The third prize of 50.000 denars was given to the work under the code “LOG 01”, the project of Aleksandar Vrangalovski and Eleonora Popovska, architects from Berlin, with collaborators Lazo Lazarov and Maja Boshkovich. The prize fund is provided by the City of Skopje from the budget of the ROCK project.
The exhibition titled Art Fortress: International Competition for Preliminary Urban and Architectural Development Design for Arrangement of the Kale Hill in Skopje showed resulting conceptual proposals in all of the 17 projects.
