Reconstructing Skopje, Macedonia, after the 1963 earthquake: The ...

Papers in Land Management: No.7Reconstructing Skopje after the 1963 earthquake:The Master Plan forty years on5: Emergency wooden prefabricated housing from the immediat epost-earthquake period, Taftalidze district. Source: The authorestimated to have contributed as much as the Yugoslav government itself.British involvement included a visit by the UN adviser Kenneth Watts in late1963 7 , professional advice from a specialist in repairing blitzed buildings 8 ,and expertise in prefabricated housing. A nine-ton block of Skopje marble wasshipped from Liverpool to become the altar-stone for the new Roman Catholiccathedral.In the early months there was debate about future options - whether the riskof another earthquake justified abandoning Skopje altogether - but thecapital investment in the city infrastructure was considered too great to writeoff. Also the city was seen as ‘a symbol of the brotherhood and unity of theequal and free peoples of Yugoslavia’, and soon also a symbol of internationalfellowship:‘Skopje’s symbolic significance, for Macedonia, for Yugoslavia and for atroubled world, had become so great that the basic decision to rebuild itas a model of all that city planning could be was a foregoneconclusion.’ 9Among the monuments proposed was one to ‘Liberty and InternationalFellowship’. Determined to promote the appliance of science to earthquakes,Skopje became home to a new International Institute of Seismic Engineering,supported by the United Nations. Within a year this was soon offering a twoyearpostgraduate course in earthquake engineering, and producing modelstandards for earthquake-resistant building. 108