Russian Architecture Between Anorexia and Bulimia

The Russian visual sensibilities (if there is such thing) are formed by two contrasting influences. On the one hand, there is a natural attraction to decorative surfaces, to richness of colors and shapes. Historians tell us that in the 10 th century Prince Vladimir decided to convert to Christianity mainly because of the visual experience his emissaries had had in Constantinople: “The Greeks led us to the building where they worship their God,” they wrote to the Prince, “and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it.

Messages of Peace. Images of War: Architecture at Great Exhibitions 1937-1959

The book is a collection of nine essays analyzing major European international and national expositions, such as the International Exposition in Paris, 1937; the VSKhV (the All-Union Agriculture Exposition) in Moscow, 1937; the EUR exhibition in Rome, 1942; the London South Bank Exposition, 1951; and Expo 58 in Brussels. The book emphasizes architecture and exhibition planning as a form of diplomacy. With its focus on the years between 1937 and 1959, the diplomacy discussed in this book was inextricably connected to the Second World War and to the beginning of the Cold War, the creation of the European Union and the Soviet Bloc. The choice to focus on the European expositions is dictated by an intention to investigate the effects of war tensions on the planning of the events and on its representation in the architecture of individual pavilions. The book contributes to the history of World’s Fairs and of exhibition design, a field of research that has proved to sustain a high level of interest among architectural historians, scholars from other academic disciplines, and a larger audience beyond academia. It also re-investigates the history and historiography of twentieth-century architecture in general. The complex relationship between architecture and war is a major theme that spans the entire book (preface, introduction, 9 chapters and epilogue). This theme is related to another theoretical issue: representation and representativeness in architecture, planning, and design. While focusing on exhibition architecture, these two themes allow for a new perspective on the evolution of modern architecture, its oft-mentioned transitioning from the radical and contested stand of interwar Europe to the so called “permissiveness” and “omnipresence” of the 1950s.0info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Messages of Peace and Images of War: Modern architecture as Diplomacy

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Architecture of Great Expositions 1937-1959: Messages of Peace, Images of War

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