These past two decades of architectural experience in Skopje led the public opinion into a different direction, albeit the alleged knowledge from the western current had a dissimilar aim. The famous modernist movement from the first half of the 20th century influenced the arts into a new perspective, hence Skopje’s architecture under the socialist rule in that manner. However, in the 50ties, in the United States, a postmodernist movement came to existence. Rigidly opposing the modern movement, the new architects of the era started building ornamented structures, escaping the purist form of the modernists. The move away from Modernism’s functionalism is well illustrated by architect Venturi’s witty adaptation of Mies van der Rohe’s famous maxim “Less is more”. Venturi instead said “less is a bore”. Along with the rest of the Postmodernists, he sought to bring back ornament because of its necessity. He explains this and his criticism of Modernism in his `Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture´ by saying that:

“Architects can bemoan or try to ignore them (referring to the ornamental and decorative elements in buildings) or even try to abolish them, but they will not go away. Or they will not go away for a long time, because architects do not have the power to replace them (nor do they know what to replace them with)”.

The characteristics of Postmodernism allow its aim to be expressed in diverse ways. These characteristics include the use of sculptural forms, ornaments, anthropomorphism and materials which perform Trompe-l’œil. These physical characteristics are combined with conceptual characteristics of meaning. These characteristics of meaning include pluralism, double coding, flying buttresses and high
ceilings, irony and paradox, and contextualism.

This phase of eclectic architecture started to implement into our society, however later, and thus bearing many misconceptions with itself. As the time passed by, the architecture of the world changed and Skopje’s as well. The growth of this illusion of escaping the Miesian Form influenced our “new age architects” to subside to a Skopje related phenomenon called “The Cake Architecture”.

The concept of this year’s debate would give accent to the newest rises in the City Center, seen as antonyms to the Postmodern‘s philosophy. The subject of this year’s debate is set to be: “the Aftershock of the Postmodernism”