[HN Gopher] Skopje's eccentric post office (2021)
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Skopje's eccentric post office (2021)
Author : throne-of-lies
Score : 39 points
Date : 2025-02-26 18:21 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.new-east-archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.new-east-archive.org)
| srmarm wrote:
| It looks a fantastic building, I managed sneak in for a look
| around a couple of years back when visiting Skopje, it was full
| of pidgeons and all that comes with it but didn't seem beyond
| saving.
| boomskats wrote:
| If you're into this kind of thing, B.A.C.U. (a Romanian org)
| published a really nice hardback book / photo album titled
| "Socialist Modernism in the Former Yugoslavia" back in 2020 or
| 2021.
|
| It looks like there are a handful of copies around, fwiw selling
| for about 40% more than what I paid back then.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Interesting to see this on the front page. I was in Skopje just a
| couple of weeks ago.
|
| As the article notes, a lot of it was destroyed in an earthquake
| in the 1960s, so the government seized upon the opportunity to
| rebuild several major landmarks (like the main post office) in
| the then-fashionable raw concrete brutalist style.
|
| That said, most of the post-60s residential blocs are not
| identifiably "brutalist" -- it's not Belgrade -- they're just
| bland and basically built as functionalist housing in the unloved
| "Khrushchyovka" style.
|
| But that's not the interesting part. What's interesting is that
| since ~2010 the government has embarked on a "nation building"
| (and explicitly anti-Albanian) project with gaudy neoclassical
| buildings that are often likened to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
| Kitsch. See, e.g., the fake galleon and its background:
| https://ibb.co/LTGwYZs
|
| Much ink has been spilled on this matter.
|
| > https://rs.boell.org/en/2021/01/29/neoliberal-manipulation-s...
|
| Thing is, though, it looks good and Skopje is a very fun town to
| spend time in. The old market is great, the people are nice, and
| the much-criticized neoclassical buildings give the city a vibe
| that's both extraordinary (there are very few places like it) and
| coherent (the entire city is done up in just a small handful of
| architectural styles.)
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Call me unsophisticated but the building in that picture is
| beautiful. It won't win any awards, but the place as a whole is
| very pleasing to the eye.
| dangelov wrote:
| I find it odd to brand it as "explicitly anti-Albanian" when
| the very article that was linked says
|
| > _With the end of the "Skopje 2014" project, not only the
| Macedonian nationalist hungry spirit was fed. Its counterpart,
| Albanian nationalism, got its part of the city to ill-treat, so
| the neighbouring Skanderbeg Square was turned into a
| nationalist showcase for another actor of the Macedonian
| ethnocratic elite._
|
| But overall agree that it's over-the-top kitsch.
| rafram wrote:
| Anti-Albanian? Do you mean anti-Greek? There are tensions
| between Slavic Macedonians and some irredentist Albanians, but
| the big Alexander the Great appropriation project is explicitly
| an attempt to stick it to the Greeks for defining the word
| "Macedonian" differently.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Nah... See, thing is, there aren't a lot of Greeks in
| N.Macedonia -- but there's a huge Albanian minority, ~25%
| across the nation and presumably much more in Skopje. The
| "old city," not a ten minute walk from where that photo was
| taken, is practically a Muslim quarter, full of mosques. It
| feels more like Istanbul than Athens.
|
| The Skopje 2014 project is, in a way, an attempt at forging a
| national identity that's equal parts Slavic and neo-Ancient-
| Macedonian -- and the Albainans, feeling left out, have
| protested quite loudly about it. More on that here: https://w
| ww.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/soeu-2018-003...
|
| Also on the Wiki page:
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skopje_2014
|
| > _" Sam Vaknin, a former adviser to Nikola Gruevski, has
| stated that the project is not anti-Greek or anti-Bulgarian,
| but anti-Albanian. In an interview, he said "Antiquisation
| has a double goal, which is to marginalise the Albanians and
| create an identity that will not allow Albanians to become
| Macedonians.""_
|
| All very interesting, I think. It's a nation that's trying to
| find itself, trying to build up a coherent national identity
| in real time.
|
| As for the Greek thing, it's totally obvious that Ancient
| Macedonia is within the borders of modern Greece. Philip's
| palace at Aigai is a ~4 hour drive from Skopje, and indeed
| south of Thessaloniki. So the N.Macedonian position re:
| Alexander the Great is a little bit farcical. But I suppose
| they could say that they are inheritors, of sorts, to the
| _Roman Province_ of Macedonia...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Vaknin has quite a colorful history himself.
| _tariky wrote:
| Yugoslavian culture is amazing. My parents lived in Yugoslavia
| they and all other relatives that lived there say that it is the
| best times of their lives.
|
| It is called: Bratstvo i jedinstveno (Brotherhood and equality)
| decimalenough wrote:
| Surely that's at least in part just because of the contrast to
| the bloodshed and absolute savagery that followed when
| Yugoslavia splintered and the erstwhile Serb, Croat and Bosnian
| brothers started murdering each other?
| pvg wrote:
| No - it was an authoritarian regime but there was also a
| genuine belief in the Yugoslav project. It wouldn't have
| lasted as long as it did without that, it wasn't just
| sloganeering and coercion.
| elAhmo wrote:
| This has vibes of NLB Banka in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
| also part of former Yugoslavia.
| http://wikimapia.org/1740990/bs/NLB-banka-NLB-bank#/photo/77...
| justAnotherHero wrote:
| I'm from Skopje myself and I see this building often as I bike to
| work or go anywhere near the center.
|
| As you get closer to it, the post office stands out and the tower
| is the one thing that always catches my attention in a sea of
| blandness (not to complain as these old apartment blocks are nice
| to live in, I live in one myself).
|
| The windows become orange and it feels like a villain is plotting
| his world domination somewhere up there. The type of villain
| whose plans never succeed and his tower is beginning to crumble.
| input_sh wrote:
| Obligatory link: https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/
|
| It's a very thorough compilation of all brutalist buildings
| across former Yugoslavia built between 60s and 90s.
| saturn5k wrote:
| The post office building had a fire in 2013:
| https://sdk.mk/index.php/kultura/izgorenata-kultna-shalter-s...
|
| To this day it's closed and without any signs of life.
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(page generated 2025-02-26 23:00 UTC)