Architectural History and Criticism Commons^™

Manufacturing A Socialist Modernity: The Architecture Of Industrialized Housing In Czechoslovakia, 1945–56, Kimberly E. Zarecor

Kimberly E. Zarecor

Although it is difficult to see the crumbling, gray facades of the former Eastern Bloc as great testaments to the potentials of modern architecture, these buildings did reflect a dedication to technological innovation, social equality, and formal clarity unrivaled in the twentieth century. Built in an era that the West has commonly portrayed as one of rupture, isolation, and deprivation, socialist architecture in Eastern Europe was in fact connected to contemporary experiments in the West and to the specific legacies of the region's interwar years. Focusing on the intersection of architects, housing design, and the state apparatus between 1945 and …