Infrastructural Thinking: Urban Housing in Former Czechoslovakia from the Stalin Era to EU Accession

In contemporary conversations about urban housing, the cities of the former Eastern Bloc rarely come to mind as potential models for future development. Images persist of vast, grey, treeless expanses of space occupied by repetitive apartment blocks that dwarf their human inhabitants. This view does capture something about the experience of living in what came to be known as the “socialist city,” yet the cities had many other kinds of spaces—older urban fabric, small apartment blocks, green spaces, village remnants, and neighborhood shopping corridors. Often the existing and the new were integrated into a synthetic whole. The ambitious master plans for cities across the region included large swathes of housing provisioned with services such as schools, retail stores, cultural centers, utility services, and public transportation networks.[1] Labor and material shortages meant that the final results usually deviated (sometimes significantly) from these initial plans, leading in part to the bad reputation of socialist construction. Yet over time, some of the missing components have materialized and gaps have been filled. This process of completion and change continues even today. [1] These units were known as mikroraions (microdistricts) in Soviet parlance, although the term was not typically used in Czechoslovakia. On the Soviet case, see Smith 2010

Review of Blagojevic, Ljiljana, Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941

In the introduction to her beautifully illustrated and well-written history of interwar modern architecture in Serbia, Ljiljana Blagojevic remarks that the architects of Belgrade\u27s modernist circles were neither friends nor disciples of any of the masters of the European modern movement, they knew not their \u27gods\u27 in person, they followed only reflections and translations (p. x). Working with the themes of marginality, authenticity and identity formation, Blagojevic argues convincingly that modernity in Serbia was expressed formally through a borrowed, western European style that masked traditional building methods and spatial arrangements behind fashionable facades

Book Review: The Prefabricated Home by Colin Davies (London: Reaktion Books, 2005)

In this easy-to-read and provocative little book, architecture professor Colin Davies sets out to do no less than “shed light on the true nature of modern architecture” (7) by placing the prefabricated house at the center of a reconceptualized history of twentieth-century architectural production. Borrowing the term “field” from Pierre Bourdieu, Davies describes the architecture field as “broader and vaguer” than just “the design of buildings”(7), but narrow in its reliance on star personalities, professional jargon, excessive publicity, and the mythologization of its own history. Davies argues that adherence to this position has left the profession unable to assimilate popular notions about architecture and types such as the single-family house; most which, he reminds us, are now designed by non-architects in styles that architects find unappealing. He proposes that the “key to the reform” is an understanding and appreciation of the “non-architectural history of the prefabricated house”(7). This book represents Davies’s attempt to provide this history and to begin bridging the gap between architecture and the consumer-driven home building market

Book Review: Long, Christopher. The Looshaus. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012.

In this generously illustrated study of the Looshaus in Vienna, Christopher Long presents a multifaceted account of this once controversial and now widely admired building. Situated on Vienna’s Michaelerplatz, opposite an entrance to the Hofburg Palace, Adolf Loos’s Looshaus was completed in 1911 for the elite Goldman & Salatsch tailor and outfitting firm as a showroom, business office, and work studio on two floors with rental apartments on the upper four floors. Long presents his findings in fifteen short chapters that offer a chronological narrative of the project’s development, while also following Loos’s personal life as he struggled emotionally, physically, and professionally to get the project built to his design. The chapters zoom in and out of the building itself to encompass not only its design principles and the local debates surrounding it, but also his close friendships with Viennese culturati, including Peter Altenberg, Karl Kraus, and Oskar Kokoschka. Long is able to knit all of this together convincingly by always keeping Loos and the building at the center of his story

Solidarita Housing Estate in its European Context

Europe just after World War II was a damaged environment. Many of its cities had been devastated and people suffered tremendously across the continent. Millions were dead, millions displaced or sick, and millions more were being forcibly relocated to new territories during waves of expulsions. According to United Nations figures, more than 8.8 million housing units had been destroyed in eighteen European countries during the war; at least another 5.6 million units were uninhabitable. This represented one out of every nine units extant in 1939.2 By 1947, the Cold War was underway as the United States and the Soviet Union became global adversaries in their attempts to win the loyalties of the region\u27s liberated countries. Stalin rejected the offer of United States Marshall Plan funds to aid in postwar reconstruction and recovery. He convinced the countries that would soon be known as the Eastern Bloc, including Czechoslovakia, to do the same and created Cominform as an alternative alliance to consolidate his power

Socialist Neighborhoods after Socialism The Past, Present, and Future of Postwar Housing in the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic’s socialist-era neighborhoods are largely intact twenty years after the end of Communist Party rule. These buildings will be rehabilitated, but not replaced, because of financial and logistical constraints. In the context of the country’s accession to the European Union in 2004 and the recent global economic crisis, this essay questions what can and should be done in an effort to make these neighborhoods better places to live in the present and the future. It starts with a brief history of postwar housing construction and socialist-era design methodologies, exploring postwar architectural practice and innovations in construction technology that were connected to the industrialization of housing production. The role of the Baťa Company in the development of panelák technology is described. In the context of post-socialist rehabilitation efforts, the discussion addresses current housing policy including regulated rents and the shift in emphasis from renting to ownership. Government subsidies and grant programs are considered, as well as problems such as physical degradation and social segregation. The essay proposes that for the future the social and spatial ideas that were part of the original designs may be more important than the architectural style of individual buildings

Book Review: The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc. Edited by Lewis H. Siegelbaum. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.

In this exemplary volume, edited by noted Soviet historian Lewis Siegelbaum, the seemingly narrow topic of automobility in the Eastern Bloc becomes a window into aspects of history as varied as factory production, Communist Party politics, urban planning, and the domestic lives of women. Like most edited volumes, there are stronger and weaker chapters, but taken as a whole the collection is much more than just a sum of its parts. The everyday experiences of European socialism really come alive in these pages as the singular attention on the car allows the era\u27s larger social, economic, and political issues to be highlighted and interrogated in multiple, convincing ways

Architecture in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are often associated with grey, anonymous, and poorly constructed post-war buildings. Despite this reputation, the regional architectural developments that produced these buildings are critical to understanding global paradigm shifts in architectural theory and practice in the last 50 years. The vast territory of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union covers about one-sixth of the world’s landmass and currently contains all or part of 30 countries.[i] Since 1960 other national boundaries have existed in this space, including East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. Given the region’s large size, numerous languages, and tumultuous recent history—communist and authoritarian regimes, democratic revolutions, civil war and ethnic strife, political corruption, prosperity, EU accession, and economic instability—a comprehensive summary of 50 years of architectural developments cannot be achieved in one chapter. Rather than survey individual architects or projects in depth, this chapter instead explores the shared transformation in architectural discourse and practice that resulted from the region’s political and economic shift to communism after World War II, and the changes that followed the fall of communism in the 1990s.[ii] [i] Countries include Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, East Germany (now considered Western European as part of a unified Germany), Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. [ii] Scholars use the terms communism, socialism, and state socialism to refer to the systems in these countries. For clarity, communism will be used here. Political scientist Andrew Roberts describes communist countries as “ruled by a single mass party that placed severe restrictions on all forms of civil society and free expression … [had] almost complete prohibition of private ownership of the means of production and a high degree of central planning … [and] were committed to revolution and the massive transformation of existing society.” Andrew Roberts, “The State of Socialism: A Note on Terminology,” Slavic Review 63/2 (Summer 2004): 359