For Macedonian architect Georgi Konstantinovski, Prishtina’s architecture reveals a city whose identity has been lost. He sees the alterations to the former Press Palace, which he designed in the early 1970s, as evidence of that loss.

More than four decades after designing it, Konstantinovski stood in front of the building. It took him a few seconds to recognise the structure he had first shaped on paper.

“Oh, this is my building,” he said during his visit to the former Rilindja Press Palace. His initial reaction was not negative. “But the building I designed is not the one I am looking at,” he added.

The former Press Palace acquired a different appearance through a renovation inaugurated in November 2009. State institutions moved into it afterwards.

“The interventions made to this building have erased part of history,” Konstantinovski said during a Tuesday lecture at the Faculty of Architecture’s Modelarium. Urbaniak organised the event with the Association of Architects of Kosovo and the Department of Urbanism and Spatial Planning, Koha.net reports.

He presented some of his best-known projects, built from 1966 onwards. A year before completing his first project, he earned a master’s degree at Yale University. His early work was associated with Brutalism, an architectural movement from the 1950s to the 1970s characterised by massive forms and walls. In 1971, he designed the Rilindja Press Palace.

“One characteristic of this building was that services were incorporated into details such as the triangular elements on the façade. Ventilation worked through those details, those boxes,” he explained as images appeared behind him.

He said the ventilation idea was borrowed from American architect Paul Rudolph, with whom he studied in the United States, alongside Russian-born British architect Serge Chermayeff.

“You can see how it has changed. It has been clad, and its significance, the weight of its history and its modern architecture of the 1970s have been lost. It bothers me because part of history has been erased,” he said.

The building was conceived in the 1960s and completed in 1978. It has 18 storeys and an area of 50,000 m². Since their removal from the building in 2002, former Rilindja employees have sought a 20 per cent share associated with it. The Kosovo government spent approximately €15 million on renovation.

“If the government needed an administrative building of this kind, it should have chosen a new site and built according to those requirements. This building should have been preserved because it embodies history, the spirit of the place and the spirit of Prishtina,” Konstantinovski said.

Returning after several years, he felt little remained of the city he remembered.

“There is modern and contemporary architecture, which pleases me. I do not know how urban planning functions, because that is the main weakness of the Balkans generally. There are individual buildings whose beauty gives me goosebumps, which means there are good architects,” said Konstantinovski, then 85, who graduated from the University of Skopje’s Faculty of Architecture in 1956.

Yet, he argued, that was not enough. “Prishtina’s identity has been lost entirely.”

He expressed a similar view of Skopje, opposing the Skopje 2014 project that had filled the city with statues.

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“With the foolish changes made to the city, and the cladding added to façades, Skopje has also lost its identity—perhaps even more than Prishtina. Streets have lost their identity through façades dressed in Baroque style,” he said.

Over his career, Konstantinovski completed more than 450 architectural and urban projects. His honours include the highest architectural award in former Yugoslavia, three Grand Prix awards at the Macedonian Architecture Biennale and the Andrea Damjanov lifetime-achievement award. He also taught at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje until retiring.

At the lecture, he shared that experience with Kosovo’s students. Presenting the Memorial House in Razlovci, designed in 1979, he offered advice.

“The most important thing is to visit the site first. You must experience how the building you design will fit into its surroundings,” he said. Visiting the village, he had noticed old houses with chimneys attached to the outside of their façades. “That was the first thing I saw. Then I began sketching.”

Another major project is the Goce Delcev student residence in Skopje, whose interiors have since changed. The institute he designed in 1978 has also been adapted for other uses. Its three pavilions now accommodate the French Embassy, the British Embassy and the institute itself.

Although his buildings differ, Konstantinovski identifies one recurring element.

“Light enters from the upper part of the building. You will experience this in almost all my projects because I use the same principle of lighting from above. I want spaces to be well lit, people to feel comfortable and the building to avoid unnecessary expenditure on artificial lighting,” he said.