As in the past several years, 2014 saw activists take to the streets in major protests around the world. Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement demanded open elections without new regulation by China, while Ferguson became the center of racially-charged demonstrations against police brutality. From New York to Venezuela to Palestine and Turkey, uprisings addressed serious issues. In Macedonia, however, protesters are taking on a more light-hearted — but not unimportant — cause. A group of citizens in Skopje have gathered around the GTC, a modernist shopping mall that has become a beloved part of their city. The GTC's Socialist architecture is being threatened by a government program to renovate it with a Baroque façade. The Skopje 2014 project would erect 20 new buildings in the Neo-classical style, in addition to nearly 40 statues. The overhaul is defended as a way to beautify the city, but it is decried as kitsch as regressive nationalism. Image via Vasilka Dimitrovska/Twitter The historicist revival is rooted in the country's long history as part of former Yugoslavia. The ancient city was almost completely leveled in a 1963 earthquake, and the frantic rebuild was mainly Soviet-style modernism. However, since the fall of Communism ...
As in the past several years, 2014 saw activists take to the streets in major protests around the world. Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement demanded open elections without new regulation by China, while Ferguson became the center of racially-charged demonstrations against police brutality. From New York to Venezuela to Palestine and Turkey, uprisings addressed serious issues. In Macedonia, however, protesters are taking on a more light-hearted — but not unimportant — cause. A group of citizens in Skopje have gathered around the GTC, a modernist shopping mall that has become a beloved part of their city. The GTC's Socialist architecture is being threatened by a government program to renovate it with a Baroque façade. The Skopje 2014 project would erect 20 new buildings in the Neo-classical style, in addition to nearly 40 statues. The overhaul is defended as a way to beautify the city, but it is decried as kitsch as regressive nationalism. Image via Vasilka Dimitrovska/Twitter The historicist revival is rooted in the country's long history as part of former Yugoslavia. The ancient city was almost completely leveled in a 1963 earthquake, and the frantic rebuild was mainly Soviet-style modernism. However, since the fall of Communism ...