RUSSIAN ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN SKOPJE AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

In the years after the First World War, in the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the need to rebuild the destroyed architectural fund in the cities was necessary. The intensification of construction activities to restore the city from the consequences of the war, as well as the initiation of the social colonization policy of the state, which led to a rapid growth of the population in Skopje, led to bold investments and construction ventures. This increased the rise of the economic power of a certain part of the population, as one of the most social elements that provoked the need for the engagement of a large number of educated professionals, architects and engineers, who were generally lacking in the Kingdom, and especially in Skopje. Builders with academic qualifications were necessary for the creation of the new visual and functional aesthetics, expressed through academicism, immediately after 1918, because educated designers and authorized engineers were lacking in Skopje at that time. In the production of residential architecture in Skopje in the period from 1922-1941, the architects and engineers, emigrants from Russia, who settled in Skopje during 1919-1921, left a special mark on the city.

Keywords: Russian architects; academism; urban development; residential architecture; builders.