After World War II, the Soviet Union became a global power and its changing approaches to the architectural symbolism, the housing problem, the modernization of urban fabric and the territorial planning profoundly influenced multiple countries around the Eastern Bloc and the developing word. Standardization, the industrialization of construction and long-term planning were in the center of its approach to the built environment, while aesthetic concerns played a relatively minor role. The story of Soviet architecture, explored in this class, was that of depersonalized institutions funded and run by the state and working in collaboration with the government planning authorities. Striving to achieve and economic autarky, the USSR was however open to borrowing technological solutions from across the Iron Curtain, which extended to architecture and planning: the dynamics of exchange under the Cold War conditions will be an important focus of this course.
Semester: SoSe 2021
Semester: SoSe 2021