People around the world protest different things. You wouldn't believe what they are protesting in Macedonia. It's not government cuts or violence against women; in Skopje, the capital, people are protesting urban beautification.
In recent weeks, thousands have formed a human chain, in sub-zero temperatures, to protest planned improvements to a beloved but ugly mall in the heart of the city. The mall, built in the 1970s in a nondescript postwar bunker style, is called the GTC shopping centre, and local officials decided to make it a little more appealing. They planned to cover up the plain grey concrete facade with a neo-classical one, adding some columns and some faux-baroque statuary, including some sculptures representing national heroes such as Alexander the Great. The makeover is part of a larger project to improve the dreary look of the whole downtown, a project called Skopje 2014.
This is the kind of initiative many urbanists support in principle. Who would oppose government spending on the beautification of urban eyesores? Why oppose spending on historical monuments? And don't we all, like Prince Charles, prefer the soothing rhythms of classical arcades to the concrete blocks of the 1960s and 1970s? Skopje already has some awesome faux-old architecture, including a reconstructed medieval fortress, since much of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1963. Wouldn't it be better off without a Brutalist mall?
Yet there are many objections to the planned GTC renovations, including criticisms of how the contracts were awarded, and disputes over how many exits and transit routes would be blocked off by the new facades. But the primary objection seems to be aesthetic; critics complain the improvements are tacky and fake. The protest is led by an association of Macedonian architects, but it seems to have united much of the city's population. A petition to keep the mall as is has garnered more than 10,000 signatures.
This is an interesting conflict that is being played out in other countries too. In Britain, Prince Charles recently issued another call for nostalgic architecture, with a list of 10 principles for new buildings. They include vague but seemingly innocuous guidelines such as a respect for nature, a respect for building codes, a respect for a "human scale" and a wide use of enclosed public spaces and pedestrian streets. The Prince also calls for limits of the use of "bland" materials such as glass and steel, for fewer high-rises and for less signage and visible lighting.
It all sounds perfectly reasonable, but architects hate it: They see it as conservative and cutesy, and point out that many of the buildings that have tried to avoid modernism in favour of Prince Charles's principles have instead embraced a gaudy postmodernism – that style that pastiches archaic vernaculars, sticking useless arches and cupolas and variegated colour onto otherwise functional buildings. It's really difficult to go back in time without making your landscape look like a jokey Disneyland. This is the obvious objection to the Skopje project as well.
Across the world, people are re-evaluating ugly concrete. It is too simple to say, as Prince Charles does, that ancient vernaculars are timeless. People can feel sentimental about concrete too. Ugliness itself can have historical significance. And what is beautiful is rarely defined by the best-intentioned of municipal committees.