Socialist Networks and the Internationalization of Building Culture after 1945

ABE JournalArchitecture beyond Europe

6 | 2014 :Socialist Networks and the Internationalization of Building Culture after 1945Editorial

Socialist Networks and theInternationalization of BuildingCulture after 1945ŁUKASZ STANEK

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Figure 1: Supermen, poster by Roman Cieslewicz, Paris, 1968.

In 1968 the Parisian journal Opus International published on its cover animage of two mirrored supermen, differing only by the acronyms on their chest:that of the United States and that of the Soviet Union (fig. 1). Designed by thePolish artist Roman Cieślewicz, this poster, it has been noted, made the twopowers appear as twins, accused them of exercising a destructive influence on therest of the world, and suggested the impossibility, or futility, of choosing betweenthem.1

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However, in another way, the use of an essentially American icon suggested afundamental asymmetry, as if the only visual language in which the conflict couldbe expressed was provided by just one of its sides. As is well known, the claimabout the symmetry between the US and the Soviet Union was part of the ColdWar discourse,2 and it helped the “superpowers” to discipline their populations

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and their allies, with, for example, the CIA’s Handbook of Economic Statisticsconsistently overestimating the size of the Soviet economy. Yet it was precisely theeconomy where the American preponderance was most evident. As economichistorians have shown, Cold War rivalries were articulated within a global systemof financial and commercial exchange by and large defined by the United Statesand the former colonial powers in Western Europe, to which the Soviet Union andits allies could hardly present a viable alternative.3

It is this entanglement of politics and economy that conditioned the work ofarchitects, planners and engineers from socialist countries in Africa, the MiddleEast and Asia – the topic of three papers in this issue of ABE. Rather thandiscussing singular events that seemingly confirmed the symmetrical images ofthe “Global Cold War,”4 the three authors look at longer engagements of architectsand planners in what was at that time called the “Third World.” ChristinaSchwenkel studies the transformation of the city of Vinh in central Vietnam, towhich architects from socialist countries contributed in two phases, during thewars of independence against France and the United States. Vladimir Kulić showshow a blueprint of a hotel, originally designed in the early 1970s for the Adriaticcoast of socialist Yugoslavia, was built in Baghdad a decade later, to be operatedby the Indian luxury chain Oberoi. Alicja Gzowska discusses the reconstruction,restoration and conservation of buildings in North Africa, the Middle East andSoutheast Asia by the Polish State Workshops for Conservation of CulturalHeritage (PKZ) from the 1960s until the end of the Cold War.

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Together with a small, but growing, body of literature on the work of architectsfrom socialist countries abroad,5 this issue contributes to the larger debate on themobility of models, people, images, affects and norms in twentieth-centuryarchitecture, which the recent issues of ABE significantly advanced. The focus onsocialist countries extends the discussion about the networks that facilitated theacceleration of this mobility after World War II, including colonial institutionsand their postcolonial mutations; economic globalization; internationalorganizations such as the UN, UNESCO, and the institutions of the emerging EU;professional organizations such as the UIA; as well as technical assistanceprograms of Israel and Scandinavian countries.6

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This issue shows that architects and planners from socialist countries were partof these transnational processes of architectural exchange, and demonstrates howthe economic and political dynamics of the Cold War offered both opportunitiesand constraints to their practice abroad. In line with other studies of architecturaltransfers between the “Second” and the “Third” Worlds, these three essays make itclear that the Central European “satellites” were far from transmitters of Sovietorders, and that their partners in Africa and Asia were by no means “proxies” ofthe socialist bloc. This is not only because the “splits” between the Soviet Unionand Yugoslavia (1948) and People’s Republic of China (1960) left the socialist blocdivided and contributed to distinct flows of architectural transfers;7 but alsobecause of the differentiation and heterogeneity of Soviet-dominated CentralEurope. The shifts in Soviet policies were only one, among many, factors thatinfluenced the dynamics of Central European architectural exports, which wereoften more dependent on internal events and bilateral treaties, and on theopportunities created by partners in Africa and Asia.

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Notes

1 David CROWLEY, Posters of the Cold War, London: V&A, 2008, p. 50.

2 Odd Arne WESTAD, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making ofour Times, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.

3 Oscar Sanchez SIBONY, “Capitalism’s fellow traveler: The Soviet Union, Bretton Woods,and the Cold War,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 56, no. 2, 2014,p. 290–319.

4 Odd Arne WESTAD, Global Cold War, op. cit. (note 2).

5 See the papers in Łukasz STANEK and Tom AVERMAETE (eds.), “Cold War transfer.

This heterogeneity is particularly evident in the varying architectural mobilitiesamong Central European socialist countries that greatly differed in scales, speeds,modes of aggregation and rhythm patterns. No doubt the “family” of socialistcountries in Central Europe was characterized by a resemblance of political andeconomic trajectories that, in architectural terms, resulted in shared debates on“national style” since the late nineteenth century, and on the role of architecturein nation building after World War I, tackling underdevelopment (with theparticularly acute “rural question”), and state-led reconstruction and fast-trackindustrialization after World War II. Yet the responses to these shared challengesgreatly differed, both within these countries and among them. Within the Sovietbloc, they often led to specializations that were recognized within the bloc (even ifrarely coordinated within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, CMEA)and resulted, for example, in the export of GDR prefab technology to Poland; theactivities of Polish conservators in other socialist countries in Europe; or theadvisory and design work of Yugoslav and Bulgarian architects on touristarchitecture in the GDR.8 As the papers in this issue show, these specializationswere projected and carried out abroad. However, the discourse about specificnational competences, such as the “Polish school of conservation,” was often moreof a branding attempt than a common denominator for a coherent body ofexpertise, and many of the specializations aimed less at a “socialist division oflabor” aspired to by the CMEA, and more at a flexible identification of niches onthe international market of services.

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Given the scale of these projects and the breadth of their occurrences, what ismost surprising is the speed with which the contributions of socialist countries toarchitectural production and, more generally, urbanization processes around theworld, were forgotten after the end of the Cold War. This in spite of the familiaritywith these projects in socialist countries, stemming from their circulation in themass media and from an increasingly common experience of working abroad,shared by the urban, professional workforce. A similar familiarity can be sensedwhen talking today to the older generation of architects and planners fromAlgeria, Libya, Syria or Iraq, who knew professionals from socialist countries fromtheir cosmopolitan working environments, rather than as a parallel world ofarchitectural transfers, “symmetrical” to those of the West. By contributing to theundoing of this forgetting, this issue of ABE challenges not only Cold Warmirages, but also some more recent ones.

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Architecture and planning from socialist countries in the ‘Third World’,” theme issue of TheJournal of Architecture vol. 17, no. 3, June 2012. For bibliography, see Stephen WARD,“Transnational planners in a postcolonial world,” in Patsey HEALEY and Robert UPTON(eds.), Crossing borders: International exchange and planning practices, London; NewYork, NY: Routledge, 2010 (RTPI Library series, 19), p. 47 72; and Łukasz STANEK,“Second World’s Architecture and Planning in the Third World,” The Journal ofArchitecture, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2012, p. 299–307. See also Taoufik SOUAMI and EricVERDEIL (eds.), Concevoir et gérer les villes: milieux d’urbanistes du sud de laMéditerranée, Paris: Economica; Anthropos, 2006 (Villes); Péter BORBÁS, “A vidéképítésze. Értekezés a vidéki építészetről Reischl Gábor munkái kapcsán,” PhD dissertation,Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, 2014; Jennifer CZYSZ, “Urban designas a tool for re-imaging a capital city: planning Conakry, Guinea after independence,” MAdissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2001; YasserELSHESHTAWY, “City interrupted: modernity and architecture in Nasser’s post-1952 Cairo,”Planning Perspectives, vol. 28, no. 3, 2012, p. 1–25; Ákos MORAVÁNSZKY, “Charles Polónyiand the Art of Sailing with the Wind,” in Łukasz STANEK (ed.), Team 10 East. RevisionistArchitecture in Real Existing Modernism, Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art, 2014,p. 34–63; Christina SCHWENKEL, “Traveling architecture: East German urban designsabroad,” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity vol. 2, no. 2, 2014,p. 155–74. URL: http://www.history-culture-modernity.org/index.php/hcm/article/view/467/385#.VL97skeG-Cl. Accessed 20 January 2015; Łukasz STANEK, Postmodernismis almost all right. Polish architecture after socialist globalization, Warsaw: FundacjaBęc-Zmiana, 2012; Łukasz STANEK, “Accra, Warsaw, and socialist globalization,” in BennoALBRECHT (ed.), Africa. Big change, big chance, Exhibition Catalogue (Milan, Triennale diMilano, 15 october–28 december 2014), Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2014, p. 162–4;Łukasz STANEK, “Architects from socialist countries in Ghana (1957–1967): Architectureand mondialization,” forthcoming in December 2015 in The Journal of the Society ofArchitectural Historians; Łukasz STANEK, “Architectural globalization in the late Cold War:Techno-cultural transfers between socialist Poland and Kuwait,” forthcoming in 2015 in theInternational Journal of Islamic Architecture. See also the forthcoming publications byAndreas BUTTER (presentation with Christoph BERNHARDT, “Networking across the ironcurtain, competing for the Global South: The International Union of Architects (UIA) andthe export of East-German socialist architecture to the Global South (1949–1989)” at theconference “Alternative Encounters: The ‘Second World’ and the ‘Global South’,1945–1991,” Jena, 3–4 November 2014 ) and Nikolai BRANDES (presentation “Concreteutopia. Mozambican housing schemes between cooperative colonialism andafro-socialism,” at the 5th European Conference on African Studies, Lisbon, 27–29 June2013).

6 For an updated overview and bibliography, see Johan LAGAE and Kim DE RAEDT,“Editorial,” ABE Journal, no. 4, 2014, theme issue Global experts “off radar”. URL:http://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=743. Accessed 20 January 2015; recentcontributions to this debate include Benno ALBRECHT (ed.), Africa. Big change, big chance,op. cit. (note 5); Luce BEECKMANS, “The adventures of the French architect MichelEcochard in postindependence Dakar: A transnational development expert driftingbetween commitment and expediency,” The Journal of Architecture, vol. 19, no. 6, 2014,p. 849–71; Kim DE RAEDT, “Between ‘true believers’ and operational experts: UNESCOarchitects and school building in post-colonial Africa,” The Journal of Architecture, vol.19,no. 1, 2014, p. 19–42; Neta FENIGER and Rachel KALLUS, “Building a ‘new Middle East’:Israeli architects in Iran in the 1970s,” The Journal of Architecture, vol. 18, no. 3, 2013,p. 381–401; Regina GÖCKEDE, “Spätkoloniale Moderne – Vergleichende Studien zurGlobalisierung der Architekturmoderne,” ongoing habilitation project at the TechnischeUniversität Cottbus; Rachel LEE, “An architectural link between Masala Dosas and war.The unlikely potentials of Otto Koenigsberger’s shrinking heritage,” ABE journal, no. 3,2013, theme issue Colonial today. URL: http://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=395.Accessed 20 January 2015; Rachel LEE, “Negotiating modernities: Otto Koenigsberger’sworks and network in exile (1933–1951),” ABE journal, no. 5, 2014, URL:http://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=696. Accessed 20 January 2015; Tim LIVSEY,“‘Suitable lodgings for students’: Modern space, colonial development and decolonizationin Nigeria,” Urban History, vol. 41, no. 4, November 2014, p. 664–85; Itohan OSAYIMWESEand David RIFKIND (eds.), “Building modern Africa,” theme issue of The Journal of


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Architectural Education, vol. 68, no. 2, October 2014; Peter SCRIVER and Amit SRIVASTAVA,“Building a new university in Cold War Asia: The Colombo Plan and architecture at UNSWin the 1950s and 60s,” in Antony MOULIS and Deborah VAN DER PLAAT (eds.), Audience:28th Annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and NewZealand, Brisbane: SAHANZ, 2011. Recent exhibitions include: “Forms of freedom. Africanindependence and Nordic models,” The Nordic Pavilion, Venice, 7 June–23 November2014; “Africa. Big change, big chance,” Triennale di Milano, 15 October–28 December2014, Milan, Italy; “Architecture of independence: African modernism,” Vitra DesignMuseum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 20 February–31 May 2015.

7 Dubravka SEKULIĆ, Three points of support: Zoran Bojović (MSUB, 2013); Mojca SmodeCVITANOVIC, Igor EKŠTAJN and Marina SMOKVINA, “Naval bases as polygons for the newurbanity of African cities. Naval military base in Homs, Libya (‘Centroprojekt Zagreb’,1974),” presentation at the conference “Colonial and postcolonial urban planning inAfrica,” University of Lisbon, Portugal, 5–6 September 2013; Mojca Smode CVITANOVIC,Igor EKŠTAJN and Marina SMOKVINA, “The engagement of Croatian architects and townplanners in Guinea. The urban development plan of Conakry (1963),” presentation at theconference “Colonial and postcolonial urban planning in Africa,” University of Lisbon,Portugal, 5–6 September 2013; Cole ROSKAM, “Non-aligned architecture: China’s designson/in Ghana and Guinea, 1961–1992,” forthcoming in Architectural History.

8 See the ongoing habilitation project by Daniela SPIEGEL at the Bauhaus-UniversitätWeimar, “Ferienarchitektur der DDR im europäischen Kontext.”

List of illustrations

Title Figure 1: Supermen, poster by Roman Cieslewicz, Paris, 1968.

Credits http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2008/09/superman10mb.jpg

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ReferencesElectronic referenceŁukasz Stanek, « Socialist Networks and the Internationalization of Building Culture after1945 », ABE Journal [Online], 6 | 2014, Online since 30 January 2015, connection on 30January 2015. URL : http://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=1266

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Łukasz Stanek

The University of Manchester, United Kingdom

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Socialist Networks and the Internationalization of Building Culture after 1945

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