Towards an "Open City" prospective for cross-border landscapes: From confined settlements to Ambiguous Edges - the case of Prespa Region

While government policies intended for cross-border landscapes across the Balkan countries aim at maintaining a national equilibrium, their individualistic over-determination has broadly nourished a self-centred model of development. In the case of Prespa Lakes Region, state-commissioned strategic plans regularly elaborate on the basis of promoting the countries’ own interests but perpetually fail to comprehend the collective regional concerns. Collages of multinational design inventory unceasingly overlay the natural landscape producing innumerable solutions frequently incoherent and ephemeral. This article discusses the historical trajectory of the architectural presence in the region, its non-linear form of development and its ability to combine elements of chance mutation. As confined settlements separated by political decisions, Pustec and other Albanian villages have been enjoying the attributes of a closed system, but, however, the contemporary challenges put forward by the rapid globalization and the accession of Albania and North Macedonia to the EU are questioning these settlements’ ability to adapt and economically sustain themselves. In order to reevaluate the region’s possibility for international accessibility and exchange while acknowledging its dichotomy as a cultural archipelago spanning three different countries, the Richard Sennett thesis on ambiguous edges will be tested. Rather than entirely refusing the political borders in favour of creating a borderless society a speculative answer for the region as a whole will develop on the Niklas Luhmann hypothesis of autopoiesis, suggesting an open-ended form of coexistence which maintains itself by promoting its own parts.