BEAUTIFUL MONSTER — Skopje Brutalist Architecture

‘I strolled around the building of Skopje’s main post office at various times of the day and night. My first association was of a space ship from some non-existent novel by H.G. Wells or Isaac Asimov; as if some huge machine from a 1970s sci-fi novel had docked on the bank of the Wardar. The earthquake of 1963 had destroyed almost 75% of the city’s fabric. Its reconstruction came at the peak of the popularity of the brutalist style in architecture. These unique futuristic buildings of raw concrete can still be seen in Skopje today. During my two visits to the Macedonian capital I took photographs with a large-format camera; the photographs in this publication are printed in a 1:1 scale in respect of the original 4 x 5” negatives.’

M. Korta