Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity

Zarecor, Kimberly Elman

doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zw847

Cited by 67 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…14 Although the book does not name the authors of respective passages, they correspond closely with the vocabulary, style and arguments that Lakomý and Nový used in contemporary publications (e.g., Nový 1960;Nový 1964;Lakomý 1966;Lakomý 1973). 15 On inter-war and early post-war architecture in Czechoslovakia, see Zarecor (2011) and Miljački (2017). 16 On the Soviet Union, see the chapter ' Architecture and Stalin's Revolution, 1932-1941' in Anderson (2015.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automation or Meaning? Socialism, Humanism and Cybernetics in Etarea

Krivý

2019

Architectural Histories

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Designed in 1967 for a site near Prague, Czechoslovakia, and exhibited that year at the Montreal Expo, Etarea was to be a city of 135,000 inhabitants, where the conveniences of automated infrastructure would satisfy future socialist generations. Conceived by the architect Gorazd Čelechovský as the ideal communist city, the case offers compelling insight into the influence of Marxist humanism and systems theory on postwar and specifically post-Stalinist state socialist architectural culture. Informed by these intellectual currents, as the article details, Etarea placed the question of meaning at centre stage. Meaning in architecture was considered in terms of both cybernetic communication and existential phenomenology, and its function was no less than to advance the communist transition. Etarea was informed by Civilization at the Crossroads (1966), an influential policy treatise that emphasized the significance of the intelligentsia and the so-called 'scientific and technological revolution' to future communism. The article explores the function of the 'living environment' as a conceptual banner and link between the publication and the project. While Civilization argued that urbanization must be decoupled from industrialization, Etarea was to be a model 'post-industrial' environment. Three aspects to Etarea are analysed in detail: the territorial question of the city-country divide, the balance between automation and sociopsychological meaning and tensions between political emancipation and cybernetic control. Civilization at the Crossroads The Constitution of 1960 declared the socialist development of Czechoslovakia complete. 'We gather forces for the communist transition', the document proclaimed, in conformity with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's belief that communism was on the horizon (NACSR 1960). The teaching of 'scientific communism' was inherent to that transition, inaugurated under Party chairman, president and Khrushchev disciple Antonín Novotný (Sommer 2016). 3 Coming to grips with the Stalinist legacy of Klement Gottwald, under whose leadership the Communist Party seized power in 1948, and who died in 1953 only a week after Stalin, the scientification of communism was consid

show abstract

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automation or Meaning? Socialism, Humanism and Cybernetics in Etarea

Krivý

2019

Architectural Histories

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1 Among the recent publications, see Zarecor (2011), Kulić, Mrdulaš, and Thaler (2012), Molnár (2013), and Lebow (2013). Of the few publications treat postsocialism, see Bérard and Jacquand (2009) and Kliems and …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Disenchanted World? A Review of Holidays After the Fall: Seaside Architecture and Urbanism in Bulgaria and Croatia

Popescu¹

2015

Architectural Histories

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Combined with quantitative indicators of physical, emotional, and cultural needs, these housing techniques became critical components in a utilitarian architectural practice that demanded a "recalibration of the relationship between creative processes and technological determinism". 21 The science of urban architecture had a utilitarian imperative: to deliver the maximum number of modern accommodations to the greatest number of workers quickly and efficiently. This imperative resulted in a number of experimental housing typologies and construction techniques.…”

Section: The Architecture(s) Of Socialist Modernitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Kimberly Zarecor has argued, Czechoslovakians saw such planning techniques as Soviet impositions. 42 For Viet-namese, socialist urban forms, like their colonial predecessors, were the latest in a historical trajectory of non-indigenous architectures and foreign styles of dwelling. Though many contemporary residents nostalgically recollect Quang Trung as having once been the pride of the city and a symbol of postwar recovery, they also express ambivalence about the site.…”

Section: The Off-modern: Remaking Gdr Housing In Vietnammentioning

confidence: 99%

Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam

Schwenkel¹

2014

HCM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholars have long been interested in architecture and urban planning as a cultural battleground during the Cold War. What is less known, however, is how the ideological conflict over urban practices played out beyond the frontlines of Europe on other battlefields abroad. This paper transcends entrenched East/West binaries to examine socialist architectural forms and principles of urban planning that traveled overseas to create experimental cities with new urban morphologies. Based on long-term research in Vietnam and Germany, I focus on the city of Vinh in north central Vietnam, rebuilt after its destruction by US air raids as a "model" socialist city with the assistance of East Germany. My goal is twofold: to examine how GDR utopian designs were applied transnationally to build new urban futures in other geographies, and to examine how local cultural understandings of the city served to reconfigure GDR housing typologies and ideas of "socialist modernity".

show abstract

Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity

Cited by 67 publications

References 0 publications

Automation or Meaning? Socialism, Humanism and Cybernetics in Etarea

Automation or Meaning? Socialism, Humanism and Cybernetics in Etarea

A Disenchanted World? A Review of Holidays After the Fall: Seaside Architecture and Urbanism in Bulgaria and Croatia

Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About