Architecture as an Evolving Infrastructure: Adaptability and Exaptation in Southeastern European Socialist Mass Housing
This paper reframes socialist mass housing in Southeastern Europe as a dynamic, evolving infrastructure by applying the concept of exaptation to demonstrate how residents in Skopje have informally adapted modular designs to meet neoliberal housing pressures, ultimately advocating for incremental, community-led transformations over demolition to address contemporary affordability crises.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the natural world, evolution often works not by designing perfect new tools from scratch, but by repurposing what already exists. A famous example is the giant panda, which evolved a "false thumb" not as a new finger, but by enlarging an existing wrist bone to help strip bamboo leaves. This biological trick, known as exaptation, shows how structures built for one purpose can be co-opted for a completely different use when circumstances change. This same principle is now being applied to the built environment, suggesting that cities are not static monuments to be preserved or demolished, but living systems that constantly adapt. In the rapidly changing cities of Southeastern Europe, where the transition from state-controlled economies to free markets has left many people struggling to afford homes, this idea offers a new way to understand how people are reshaping their neighborhoods. Instead of viewing the massive apartment blocks built decades ago as outdated relics, researchers are seeing them as flexible frameworks that residents have quietly modified to survive and thrive.
A new study by Ludovica Rolando from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje explores this phenomenon by looking at the mass housing estates of North Macedonia. These neighborhoods, built between the late 1960s and early 1980s under the socialist system, were designed as efficient, modular homes for the working and middle classes. When the country shifted to a market economy in the 1990s, the state stepped back from housing provision, and ownership of these apartments was transferred to the families living there. However, the rules for maintaining or changing these buildings were never clearly updated. As housing prices soared and new construction became too expensive for many, residents found themselves trapped in homes that were too small for their growing families, yet unable to afford to move.
To understand how people navigated this crisis, the researcher focused on two specific neighborhoods in Skopje: Karpoš and Aerodrom. She combined a deep dive into old city archives and planning documents with on-the-ground visits and interviews with residents, architects, and local officials. What she found was a complex, bottom-up process of adaptation that had turned these rigid apartment blocks into something entirely new. In the Karpoš neighborhood, where buildings were constructed using large, prefabricated concrete panels, residents and developers began adding new structures to the outside of the existing buildings. Some added a full external skeleton of concrete columns and beams that encased the original structure, allowing them to add entire new floors or expand balconies into full rooms. These additions created a distinctive shape where the buildings became wider at the top than at the bottom, a form locals and researchers have dubbed "mushroom houses." In other cases, residents simply enclosed their balconies with glass and brick to gain extra living space, or added pitched roofs to create habitable attics.
These changes were not random acts of chaos, but rather a series of negotiated solutions that operated in a legal grey area. The study reveals that residents and developers exploited gaps in the city's planning laws. For instance, a specific type of urban plan, intended to define the maximum size of a building if it were ever demolished and rebuilt, was repurposed to allow for the expansion of existing structures without demolition. Similarly, a law passed in 2011 to legalize illegally constructed buildings was used not just as a one-time fix, but as a routine tool that allowed people to build first and pay a small fee to make it legal later. This created a cycle where construction generated value, which in turn encouraged more construction. The research shows that these transformations were driven by a network of actors: residents who needed space, architects who knew how to navigate the permit process, and municipal officials who often chose to negotiate rather than enforce strict rules.
Inside the apartments, the changes were just as significant. In one case study of a building in the Partizanska neighborhood, a family removed the walls separating the kitchen from the living room to create a large, open space, and enclosed a balcony to gain a new bedroom. In another apartment in Aerodrom, a family enclosed a balcony to create a bedroom for their child, moving the living room into the space where the balcony used to be. These interior modifications were rarely registered with the city or permitted, yet they were widely accepted as a necessary reality. The study highlights a surprising finding: the original socialist apartments, with their high ceilings, large windows, and generous layouts, often offered a higher quality of life than the new, smaller, and cheaper apartments being built today. The very features that made these old buildings efficient in the past—such as their modular design and the ability to easily enclose balconies—made them perfect candidates for this kind of adaptation.
However, the paper also points out the costs of this informal adaptation. Because these changes were driven by individual needs and private profit, they often came at the expense of the community. Shared spaces, like fire escapes and common areas, were frequently enclosed or privatized, creating safety risks and eroding the sense of collective responsibility that once defined these neighborhoods. The researcher notes that while residents were able to stay in their homes and avoid the high cost of moving, the lack of coordinated governance meant that safety standards were often compromised, and the visual unity of the neighborhoods was lost in a patchwork of different additions.
The study concludes that while these informal strategies have kept people housed, they are not a sustainable long-term solution for the whole city. The author suggests that the skills and capacities residents have developed—knowing how to negotiate with officials, how to modify buildings, and how to work together—could be channeled into a more organized form of housing. She points to the emerging cooperative housing sector in the region, which aims to create affordable, collectively owned homes that avoid the speculative nature of the current market. By bringing together the adaptability of the old buildings with a new model of collective ownership and democratic decision-making, it might be possible to transform these neighborhoods into sustainable, affordable communities. The paper argues that the future of these cities does not lie in demolishing the past or freezing it in time, but in recognizing the potential for these buildings to evolve, guided by a shared vision of the common good rather than individual gain.
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