Re-Humanizing Architecture

Moravánszky, Ákos; Hopfengärtner, Judith

doi:10.1515/9783035608113

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The transnational flows of ideas and knowledge, inter-war legacies, war destructions, ideological and socio-political tensions, state and administrative limitations all led to the emergence of novel planning concepts, in particular the formulation of Doxiadis' Ekistics, whose focus on settlements and housing developed in dialogue with the growing field of international planning expertise in the post-war era (Mehos and Moon 2011;Pyla 2013;Lagae and De Raedt 2014). By focusing on rural settlements and the Greek countryside, this article goes beyond the prevailing focus on town planning and the rebuilding of urban centers, thereby offering another perspective from which to revisit European reconstruction and its various policy-making legacies and planning trajectories (Lampland 2011;Clapson and Larkham 2013;Pendlebury, Erdem, and Larkham 2014;Diefendorf 2015;Moravánszky and Hopfengärtner 2016;Wampuszyc 2018;Kohlrausch 2019). Moreover, it highlights a crucial episode in the post-war architectural and planning histories, which became intricately tied to the geopolitics of the Cold War, the international and national agendas for the socio-economic development of rural-based societies that spread across the non-western world from the 1950s onward (see, for example, Muzaffar 2012;Phokaides 2018;Karim 2019a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Claiming the Countryside: Ekistics, Socio-Political Conflicts, and Emerging Cold-War Geopolitics During Greek Reconstruction

Phokaides

Samarinis

Triantis

et al. 2021

Architectural Histories

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This article investigates the complex ties between planning, socio-political conflicts, and emerging Cold War geopolitics during the post-war reconstruction period in Greece, by focusing on the years between 1944 and 1947. In these crucial transitional years, transnational flows of expertise, interwar legacies, and political, scientific, and ideological contestations gave rise to novel planning ideas and antagonistic visions for the country's reconstruction and its future development path. The article sheds light on how the architect-planner Constantinos Doxiadis formulated Ekistics as a spatial vision, a mode of central planning, and a technical guide, examining how Ekistics affected the shaping of reconstruction policies, particularly in the countryside. This analysis further exposes the way the Greek countryside became the locus of competing visions of spatial development, as well as contradictory state responses: from long-term housing policies and self-help practices all the way to ideological repression and population resettlement strategies, British interventionism, and Civil War conflicts that paved the ground to Greece's subsequent US-led recovery programs under the Truman Doctrine (1947) and the Marshal Plan (1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952). By focusing on the paradigmatic case of Greece, this article advances an understanding of European reconstruction as an uneven, contested, and transitional process and highlights the implications of architecture and planning discourses and practices amid ideological, territorial, and geopolitical contestations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Claiming the Countryside: Ekistics, Socio-Political Conflicts, and Emerging Cold-War Geopolitics During Greek Reconstruction

Phokaides

Samarinis

Triantis

et al. 2021

Architectural Histories

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“…Another possible way is to study the configurations of perceptions and conceptions of the urban space. Thus, architects tried to develop alternative strategies to address -among others -expectations of politics, their own professional vocation, and at the same time the challenges of modernity, while at the same time trying to define new forms and meanings of urban space (Hopfengärtner 2016). I would like to examine how changes in the interpretation of urban space will result in a new attitude towards preservation, development or modernization of 'historical neighbourhoods'.…”

Section: From Discourse On Compatibility To Resilient Urban Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

In search of resilient urban space : Pest’s city centre at the crossroads of tradition and innovation, 1928–1944

Oláh

2020

socio.hu

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In this paper my aim is to examine the Hungarian architectural discourse between 1928 and 1944, with special regard to the ‘historical’ centre of Pest. The observation is carried out through the review of architectural journals and theoretical essays. I undertake a historical analysis of the various uses and changes in the meaning of the concept of townscape. Analysis of the architectural discourse for this time interval might provide a better understanding of the transformation in the perception of urban space. The examined period can be boldly called the ‘dawn of urban heritage protection’, but also the age of a new urbanity that envisioned the rethinking of urban space through the reconstruction of complete urban areas. This paradox not only had a remarkable impact on rethinking of urban space, especially on determining values, but also led to experimental and hybrid spatial categories. My aim is to study this specific problem of social history, which not only made urban preservation part of the discourse but expanded it more and more as a continually growing ‘set’. This set captures and addresses the diverse aspects of urban life, making the concept of urban heritage even more complex. The fundamental questions of the study are how the discourse conceptualises urban spatial categories, more precisely, how the materiality of the built environment and representations of space are taken into account. The discourse on compatibility encompasses all strategic behaviours that seek to integrate the historic city and the new architectural solutions incorporating the needs of the present. In order to analyse the ways in which the city centre was constructed in the discourse, I incorporate the resilience model into the argument. Thus, the discussion may help understanding how changes in the interpretation of urban space result in a new attitude towards preservation, development or modernization of ‘historic’ neighbourhoods.

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Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism

Murawski

2018

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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A quarter century following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies, many of the dwellings, utilities, and public spaces built by these regimes continue to be cherished by their inhabitants and users. This has only increased as post-socialist urban landscapes undergo an ever-intensifying process of neoliberal “re-privatization,” de-planning, and spatial as well as economic stratification. Scholars, however, continue to produce accounts emphasizing how socialist cities and buildings, as well as the audacious social goals built into them, failed. This article provides a critical overview of recent literature on built socialism and identifies a tension between two parallel ethnographic and historical narratives. One argues that built socialism failed, because it was too obsessed with the economy and industry and neglected every other aspect of social life. The other pins the blame for failure on built socialism's alleged fixation with aesthetic or discursive realms and its corresponding neglect of the economy. The article closes by suggesting pathways for comparative scholarship that consider built socialism in terms of not only collapse and disintegration, but also success and endurance; not simply ofeithereconomyoraesthetics, but also of their reciprocal inter-determination and co-dependence. We must look beyond the lens of imported theories and consider “vernacular” or “emic” concepts rooted in the specificities and singularities of the socialist city itself.

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Re-Humanizing Architecture

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Claiming the Countryside: Ekistics, Socio-Political Conflicts, and Emerging Cold-War Geopolitics During Greek Reconstruction

Claiming the Countryside: Ekistics, Socio-Political Conflicts, and Emerging Cold-War Geopolitics During Greek Reconstruction

In search of resilient urban space : Pest’s city centre at the crossroads of tradition and innovation, 1928–1944

Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism

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