The Telecommunication center is located in the center of Skopje and is one of the most important buildings built in the period of post-earthquake reconstruction of the capital.
The author of this building is the Macedonian architect Jordan Konstantinov (1926) known for his brutalist style. He is the author of several other buildings in Skopje in a similar style: the Medical School, the High School “Nikola Karev”, the Protestant Church, also some buildings in the United States, Sweden, etc.
The project commenced in October 1968 and by 1972 it was developed in three variations. The project was completed in several phases. In the first one, the Tower (height of 7 floors) and the block (height of 4 floors) housing the telecommunication equipment were built.
After that the “Counter hall” was built, which is located on the west side, near the boulevards “Goce Delchev” and “Ilinden”.
It is recognizable by its circular shape and is a complement to the figurative game of the elements – the vertical line of the telecommunication tower, the rectangular telecommunication block and the planned administrative building (in a square shape). Murals were set up in the hall with motifs from the National Liberation War designed by the famous Macedonian academic painter Borko Lazeski (1917-1993). These were destroyed in a fire in 2013.
The telecommunication center is built in natural concrete. Facade canvases lay out wide strokes, and concrete surfaces are explicitly shown. Popularly known as the Skopje “Post Office”, the Telecommunications Center is one of the most successful local interpretations of the brutalist narrative and a symbol of Skopje’s modern architecture. The biggest part of residents in Skopje consider this center to be the pride of the city and a building before its time.
The model of this building was also presented at the exhibition “Towards the concrete utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948 – 1980” at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York in the period 2018 – 2019, as well as at many other exhibitions around the world.