Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland

Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland
Author: Florian Urban
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2020-12-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000291979

Garish churches, gabled panel blocks, neo-historical tenements—this book is about these and other architectural oddities that emerged in Poland between 1975 and 1989, a period characterised by the decline of the authoritarian socialist regime and waves of political protest. During that period, committed architects defied repressive politics and persistent shortages, and designed houses and churches which adapted eclectic historical forms and geometric volumes, and were based on traditional typologies. These buildings show a very different background of postmodernism, far removed from the debates over Robert Venturi, Philip Johnson, or Prince Charles in Western Europe and North America—a context in which postmodern architecture stood not for world-weary irony in an economically saturated society, but for individualised counter-propositions to a collectivist ideology, for a yearning for truth and spiritual values, and for a discourse on distinctiveness and national identity. Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland argues that this new architecture marked the beginning of socio-political transformation and at the same time showed postmodernism's reconciliatory potential. In light of massive historical ruptures and wartime destruction, these buildings successfully responded to the contradictory desires for historical continuity and acknowledgment of rupture and loss. Next to international ideas, the architects took up domestic traditions, such as the ideas of the Polish school of historic conservation and long-standing national-patriotic narratives. They thus contributed to the creation of a built environment and intellectual climate that have been influential to date. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in postmodern architecture and urban design, as well as in the socio-cultural background and transformative potential of architecture under socialism.

Political Postmodernisms

Political Postmodernisms
Author: Lidia Klein
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2023-03-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000860213

Political Postmodernisms shows how sites outside of Western Europe and North America undermine an established narrative of architecture theory and history. It focuses specifically on postmodern architecture, which is traditionally understood as embodying the flippant and apolitical aesthetics of capitalist affluence. By investigating postmodern architecture’s manifestations in the unlikely settings of Chile during the neoliberal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and Poland during the late socialist Polish People’s Republic, the book argues for a new account that incorporates the political roles it plays when seen in a global perspective. Political Postmodernisms has three goals. First, it challenges the familiar narrative regarding postmodern architecture as following the “cultural logic of late capitalism” (Fredric Jameson) or as a socially conservative project (Jürgen Habermas). Second, it fills in portions of Chilean and Polish architectural history that have been neglected by Chilean and Polish architectural historians themselves. Third, Political Postmodernisms shows how architecture can work as a political form – serving propagandistic purposes and functioning as part of oppositional projects. The book is projected to be of use to students and scholars in global modern and contemporary architecture history, history of urban planning, East European Studies, and Latin American Studies.

Second World Postmodernisms

Second World Postmodernisms
Author: Vladimir Kulic
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-02-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1350014427

If postmodernism is indeed 'the cultural logic of late capitalism', why did typical postmodernist themes like ornament, colour, history and identity find their application in the architecture of the socialist Second World? How do we explain the retreat into paper architecture and theoretical discussion in societies still nominally devoted to socialist modernization? Exploring the intersection of two areas of growing scholarly interest - postmodernism and the architecture of the former socialist world - this edited collection stakes out new ground in charting architecture's various transformations in the 1970s and 80s. Fourteen essays together explore the question of whether or not architectural postmodernism had a specific Second World variant. The collection demonstrates both the unique nature of Second World architectural phenomena and also assesses connections with western postmodernism. The case studies cover the vast geographical scope from Eastern Europe to China and Cuba. They address a wealth of aesthetic, discursive and practical phenomena, interpreting them in the broader socio-political context of the last decades of the Cold War. The result provides a greatly expanded map of recent architectural history, which redefines postmodernist architecture in a more theoretically comprehensive and global way.

Day-VII Architecture

Day-VII Architecture
Author: Izabela Cichońska
Publisher: Dom Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9783869227412

Over 3,000 churches were built in Poland between 1945 and 1989, despite the socialist state's hostility towards religion. We call this Day-VII Architecture. Built by parishioners from scavenged or pinched materials, the churches were at once an expression of faith and a form of anti-government protest. Their fantastic designs broke with the state's rigid urbanism. Neither legal nor prohibited, the construction of churches during this period engaged the most talented architects and craftspeople, who in turn enabled parish communities to build their own houses of worship. These community projects eventually became crucial sites for the democratization of Poland. Unearthing the history of these churches through photography and interviews with their designers, this publication sheds new light on the architectural dimension of Poland's trans­formation from state socialism to capitalism.

Second World Postmodernisms

Second World Postmodernisms
Author: Vladimir Kulic
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-02-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1350014435

If postmodernism is indeed 'the cultural logic of late capitalism', why did typical postmodernist themes like ornament, colour, history and identity find their application in the architecture of the socialist Second World? How do we explain the retreat into paper architecture and theoretical discussion in societies still nominally devoted to socialist modernization? Exploring the intersection of two areas of growing scholarly interest - postmodernism and the architecture of the former socialist world - this edited collection stakes out new ground in charting architecture's various transformations in the 1970s and 80s. Fourteen essays together explore the question of whether or not architectural postmodernism had a specific Second World variant. The collection demonstrates both the unique nature of Second World architectural phenomena and also assesses connections with western postmodernism. The case studies cover the vast geographical scope from Eastern Europe to China and Cuba. They address a wealth of aesthetic, discursive and practical phenomena, interpreting them in the broader socio-political context of the last decades of the Cold War. The result provides a greatly expanded map of recent architectural history, which redefines postmodernist architecture in a more theoretically comprehensive and global way.

Architecture in Global Socialism

Architecture in Global Socialism
Author: Łukasz Stanek
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-01-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0691168709

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Introduction Worldmaking of Architecture -- Chapter 2 A Global Development Path Accra, 1957-66 -- Chapter 3 Worlding Eastern Europe Lagos, 1966-79 -- Chapter 4 The World Socialist System Baghdad, 1958-90 -- Chapter 5 Socialism within Globalization Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City, 1979-90 -- Epilogue and Outlook -- A Note on Sources -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Image Credits.

Resisting Postmodern Architecture

Resisting Postmodern Architecture
Author: Stylianos Giamarelos
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2022-01-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1800081332

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography.

Prussia in the Historical Culture of the German Democratic Republic

Prussia in the Historical Culture of the German Democratic Republic
Author: Marcus Colla
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2022-10-06
Genre: Germany
ISBN: 0192865900

No example demonstrates the fluidity of the past within the German Democratic Republic more powerfully than the history of the Prussian state. Initially attacked in East German official histories as the historical engine of German militarism and reaction, Prussia underwent a remarkabletransformation in official and public memory from around the end of the 1970s. This was the so-called 'Prussia-Renaissance', in which, for the first time, the East German state began to recognise and even celebrate figures from Prussian history who had not served a 'progressive' agenda. But the'Prussia-Renaissance' was also a political and cultural phenomenon with a wide public resonance. The 'Prussia-Renaissance' may have been a relatively short-lived phenomenon, but it evidently opened a deep vein in the historical memory of the German Democratic Republic that defied reduction to 'highpolitics' alone. This book asks why.Using the case study of Prussia, Marcus Colla presents a multi-perspective approach to the way that a distinctive 'historical culture' was constructed in the German Democratic Republic. It not only evaluates the roles played by political figures, historians, and cultural elites, but also heritagepreservationists, exhibition curators, heimat museums, television producers, novelists and playwrights, and singers - the purveyors of what we might more generally term 'popular culture'. In essence, Colla poses four fundamental questions for our understanding of life, politics and culture incommunist East Germany: how was history there made? How was it understood? How was it contested? And how was it used?

Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital

Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital
Author: Hilton Judin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2021-04-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000367118

This book is the first comprehensive investigation of the architecture of the apartheid state in the period of rapid economic growth and political repression from 1957 to 1966 when buildings took on an ideological role that was never remote from the increasingly dominant administrative, legislative and policing mechanisms of the regime. It considers how this process reflected the usurpation of a regional modernism and looks to contribute to wider discourses on international postwar modernism in architecture. Buildings in Pretoria that came to embody ambitions of the apartheid state for industrialisation and progress serve as case studies. These were widely acclaimed projects that embodied for apartheid officials the pursuit of modernisation but carried latent apprehensions of Afrikaners about their growing economic prospects and cultural estrangement in Africa. It is a less known and marginal story due to the dearth of material and documents buried in archives and untranslated documents. Many of the documents, drawings and photographs in the book are unpublished and include classified material and photographs from the National Nuclear Research Centre, negatives of 1960s from Pretoria News and documents and pamphlets from Afrikaner Broederbond archives. State architecture became the most iconic public manifestation of an evolving expression of white cultural identity as a new generation of architects in Pretoria took up the challenge of finding form to their prospects and beliefs. It was an opportunistic faith in Afrikaners who urgently needed to entrench their vulnerable and contested position on the African continent. The shift from provincial town to apartheid capital was swift and relentless. Little was left to stand in the way of the ambitions and aim of the state as people were uprooted and forcibly relocated, structures torn down and block upon block of administration towers and slabs erected across Pretoria. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of architectural history as well as those with an interest in postcolonial studies, political science and social anthropology.