Telecommunications Centre, Skopje

The earthquake of 26 July 1963 destroyed most of central Skopje, and the reconstruction that followed was run as an international project, with a United Nations competition, a masterplan by Kenzō Tange and buildings by architects drawn back from abroad. Konstantinov was one of them: he had spent the previous decade in Copenhagen, in Finland with Alvar Aalto, and in Victor Gruen's office in Los Angeles. What he built on the north bank of the Vardar over the following two decades is the most sculptural thing in the new city. Cylindrical drums of board-marked concrete carry vertical ribs like fluting; walls are punched with plain circles instead of windows; curved fins spread from the centre of the adjoining post office hall like petals. The complex went up in stages from the late 1960s to 1989. MoMA showed a model of the Telecommunications Centre in 2018 in its survey of Yugoslav architecture.