Visualisation of the Skopje wheel.

Construction workers started laying the foundations on Wednesday for the giant observation wheel that will stand on top of a bridge on the Vardar River in central Skopje.

The Skopje ‘eye’ will have a diameter of 57 meters. Along with the pedestrian bridge on which it will stand, the entire structure will be 73 metres high.

The wheel will have 30 passenger cabins capable of transporting 300 people, and a nearby cafeteria and souvenir shop will also be built.

Construction is set to go on for five years.

Although it was originally slated to cost some 12 million euro of budget money, last year the Skopje authorities agreed to pay 18.3 million euro to the local Beton construction company, the lowest bidder in the tendering procedure, raising the price by nearly a third.

The city has already spent another 500,000 euro on the plan and design of the wheel, which was entrusted to two Austrian companies, a2 Hotelconcept GmbH and Massabni architects GmbH.

Mayor Koce Trajanovski’s office has insisted that the wheel will bring great benefits to Skopje as “another star attraction in our city”, but it has been widely criticised by the architectural community as an extravagance.

The Association of Architects of Macedonian has complained of a lack of proper consultation with architects. Its objection mainly concerns the wheel’s location, which critics say will turn central Skopje into an amusement park.

The cost for a city that barely manages to raise 70 million euro for its annual budgets is also seen as high.

The big wheel forms part of the ongoing government-sponsored project, ‘Skopje 2014’, which has clad much of the city centre in styles inspired by Classical antiquity. The wheel will follow the same style as well.

Since ‘Skopje 2014’was unveiled, the project has attracted controversy. Supporters say it will transform the image of a city blighted by decades of dreary Socialist architecture and neglect, restore a missing sense of national pride and create a more metropolitan atmosphere.

Critics complain about the cost of the job and the transparency of the contracts given to the architects and designers. Some say a relatively poor country should spend its resources more prudently.

Many architects are unhappy with the aesthetics of the project and would have preferred a more contemporary approach.

The price tag of Skopje’s new look has meanwhile also shot up, far surpassing the initially announced figure of 80 million euro, to around 560 million euro, a BIRN investigation has shown.