"Urban regeneration through contemporary use of the past: A case study of the Skopje Aqueduct"

The city is a living organism whose continuity relies on constant transformation. In Skopje, this process is treated as linear, often excluding and erasing the physical traces of its past. A key cause of this condition is personal and collective apathy toward the city, shaped by subjective, social, and political factors. Conversely, cultural heritage protection can become so rigid that it detaches heritage from daily use, causing gradual decay within “protective” boundaries. This thesis views urban growth as a process of measured integration, not the destruction of history and past identities.

In addition to treating transformation as a spiral temporal process, the project responds to the need for re-examining and adapting the conceptual framework for cultural heritage protection. In the case of the Skopje Aqueduct, this framework often views it not as a living, functional structure but as a static relic of the past. As a critical reaction to this situation, three conceptual solutions are proposed, each engaging with the site differently. The first concept—Consolidation—addresses the aqueduct's physical condition within the primary protection zone. The second—Protection—forms a 'soft' wall at the boundary between the primary protection zone and the contact zone. The third—Revitalization—is a linear extension of the aqueduct in the contact zone. The second solution is chosen for detailed development. Designed as a physical and programmatic 'fortress', its purpose is to safeguard the aqueduct and its surroundings from current events while reintegrating them into the city's urban fabric. This 'fortress' features temporary, transformable architecture with a linear forest, stabilizing degradation processes without competing with the aqueduct's historical value. The project envisions a structural framework as a never-finished living machine where events and programs are created and transformed over time. The space within the wall is envisioned as an archaeological park, enriched with programmatically intensified traces mapped as micro-events across the site. Through programmatic layering and the emergence of new activities and events, along with modular, ever-transforming architecture, the project acts as an urban catalyst which offers an expanded, utopian vision that supports both the site's urban regeneration and the preservation of the Skopje Aqueduct.