Events
Zhivko Popovski: Life Dedicated to Architecture
03/09/2025 – 15/10/2025
The retrospective exhibition of Zhivko Popovski is the first comprehensive presentation of the work of one of the most influential Macedonian architects.
Based on years of research by Prof. Dr. Aneta Hristova-Popovska and Prof. Dr. Meri Batakoja, the exhibition illuminates his design oeuvre, presented with exclusive materials from his private archive. The audience will have the opportunity to see dozens of original projects, drawings, photographs and videos, which reveal for the first time the full spectrum of his authorial preoccupations.
All this documentary material paints a more beautiful reality for our cities and portrays Živko Popovski as a true lover of architecture, who dedicated his entire life tirelessly imagining and designing architecture with intimate dedication. Additionally, throughout this exhibition, Živko Popovski’s architectural imagination is revealed as exceptionally complex and dialectical — with preoccupations that range from modernist universality to strong cultural self-awareness and a deep concern for local continuities, from the ratio of the modern artifact to the eccentricity of artistic intuitiveness and postmodern textuality. His architecture is a living form — which, like life, is multi-voiced and constantly evolving. The curatorial exhibition follows this polyphonic trajectory through six thematic units:
• DUTCH EPISODE: The Architecture of the Open Society;
• FOCUS "GTC - SKOPJE CITY ASSEMBLY": Urban architecture in action;
• ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITIONS: Reflection on self-governance in architecture;
• OHRID ARCHITECTURAL SCHOOL: On critical regionalism and homeland places;
• TO SKOPJE, WITH LOVE! For the city that could have been;
• PATTERNS OF ARCHITECTURAL IMAGINATION: Authorial themes and semantic idiosyncrasies.
Instead of a linear biography, the exhibition is built as a space of resonances, where thematic units flow into one another, presenting the work of Živko Popovski as a lasting reminder that architecture can – and should – be both a deep authorial obsession and an intellectual position, while still remaining a cultural project with an unambiguous public responsibility.
Editors: Aneta Hristova – Popovska, Meri Batakoja
PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY: Zhivko Popovski was born on July 30, 1934 in Skopje. He graduated in architecture from the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Technology in Skopje in 1961. From 1963 to 1999 he worked at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje, at the Department of Design of Public Buildings. He was actively involved in architectural associations in Macedonia and Yugoslavia, was secretary and president of the Association of Architects of Macedonia, as well as president of the Coordination Board of the Association of Architects of Yugoslavia. He organized the first presentation of Macedonian architecture with the exhibition "Macedonian Architecture" (1974) and the first Biennial of Macedonian Architecture - BIMAS (1981) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje. He was the initiator and editor of the magazine "A:", as well as the founder of the subject Theory and Architectural Research, advocating for the mobilization of the Macedonian progressive architectural discourse. He was a long-time correspondent for the Yugoslav magazines "Man and Space", "Architecture" and "Architecture and Urbanism". He made several study trips, and his stay in the office of Jo Van den Broek and Jacob Bakema in Rotterdam (1964–1965) had a decisive influence on his work. He is the author of dozens of projects with numerous award-winning competition solutions. His implemented projects are the "Home for Retirees" and the reconstruction of the "Cultural Center" in Ohrid, as well as the "City Shopping Center" in Skopje, for which he received the October Award (1971) and the Battle Plaque (1974). He received several special awards from BIMAS (1981, 1991), as well as the "Andreja Damjanov" Lifetime Achievement Award (2002). Until the end of his life, he tirelessly defended the dignity of the architectural profession.
The exhibition is realized by the Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia as a project of national importance for 2025.
The Chamber of Certified Architects and Engineers of the Republic of North Macedonia and the KNAUF company generously contributed to its realization.
Friend of MCA - Skopje, Tikves
All presented materials are part of the private archive of Zivko Popovski.
