Colloquium: Makers of Modernity. Modernist Architects and Socio-Political Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. 1920s-1950s KU Leuven, Irish College, November 30-December 2, 2017 Organized by Martin Kohlrausch in collaboration with Daria Bocharnikova with the support of Research Unit Modernity & Society, KU Leuven and Volkswagen Stiftung PROGRAM: Thursday, November 30, 2017 / the day of arrivals 18.00 Introduction by Martin Kohlrausch (University of Leuven) 18.30 Keynote address by Philip Wagner (Martin Luther University Halle), The Political and the Professional: Reinterpreting the Internationalism in Urban Planning 20.30 DINNER 1
Friday, December 1, 2017 09.00-12.30 PANEL 1 ENVISIONING MULTIPLE MODERNISMS András Ferkai (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design), Modernity in the wilderness? Attempts at developing the countryside in Hungary 1930-1950 Tamara Bjažić Klarin (Insitute of Art History, Zagreb), Constructing the world of equal opportunities the case of architect Vladimir Antolić 11.00-11.30 COFFEE BREAK Agata Abramowicz (Gdynia Сity Museum), What did it mean to be an architect in Gdynia in interwar and postwar era? Discussant: Hilde Heynen (University of Leuven) 12.30 13.30 LUNCH 13.30 15.00 Lecture by Lukasz Stanek (University of Manchester) Architects from Socialist Countries in Cold War West Africa: The Worlding of the Eastern European Experience 15.00 18.30 PANEL 2 SHAPING THE ARCHITECTURAL AND PLANNING PROFESSION Christina Crawford (Emory University), Constructing the Educated Socialist Planning Client Elitza Stanoeva (European University Institute), State Protectionism, Technocracy or Bureaucratic Command: Bulgarian Architects Societies from the Interwar Period to the Stalinist Era 17.00-17.30 COFFEE BREAK Kimberly Zarecor (Iowa State University), The Architectural Working Group and the Pre- History of the Communist Future in Czechoslovakia Discussant: Jens van de Maele (University of Ghent / University of Antwerp) 18.30 19.30 Evening lecture by Veronique Boone (Free University of Brussels), Filming modern architecture. Another way of interchange between the East and the West and back. 20.00 DINNER OUT IN LEUVEN 2
Saturday, December 2, 2017 08.00-09.00 Working Breakfast: Project Remembering 1918: European Dreams of Modernity at the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, BOZAR 09.30-12.30 PANEL 3 NEGOTIATING SOCIO-POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS Marija Dremaite (Vilnius University), Lithuanian Modernists of the 1930s and their Survival Strategies in the 1950s Marcela Hanáčková (ETH Zurich), On a Search for True Socialist Architecture: Helena Syrkus between Modernism and Socialist Realism in post-war CIAM 11.00-11.30 COFFEE BREAK Daria Bocharnikova (University of Leuven/Centre for Fine Arts BOZAR), In Search of Socialist Modern: Major Trajectories of Soviet Architects after 1932 Discussant: Andreas Kalpakci (ETH Zurich) 12.30-14.00 LUNCH Departures and/or tour on interwar Belgian architecture in Brussels 3
ABSTRACTS: Christina Crawford, Emory University (Atlanta, USA), Constructing the Educated Socialist Planning Client This is not an individual work, but a seriously collective work Many were involved, especially in the Baksovet Department of Municipal Improvements (Bakkommunkhoz), who undertook so much of the research for the plan. I feel myself to be a worker of the Bakkommunkhoz if not forever, at least for the past five years I feel very gratified when I come to Baku and see what is being done here. Aleksandr Ivanitskii, 1930 This paper follows the early stages of the 1927 Baku Plan, the first major general planning effort undertaken in the Soviet Union that took three years to develop and five to reach ratification. Over the course of that half-decade, an established planner from Moscow, Aleksandr Ivanitskii, became conversant in local issues by engaging in intense place-based research helping to pioneer the role of socialist research and planning expert exported to non-aligned states after WWII. Gathering and deployment of expertise was, however, a multivalent process in Baku. While Ivanitskii gained deep knowledge about his object of study to craft a sensitive plan, municipal administrators at Baksovet gained proficiency in the concerns of modern city planning. Like the planner, the members of the Baksovet client group are actors in this story. They were not faceless bureaucrats standing in the way of effective planning, but rather acquisitive participants in the establishment of Baku s first Soviet era general plan. Through their interactions with Ivanitskii, and his targeted guidance, Baksovet committee members were taught how to become good planning clients. Fruits of their education included awareness of core planning issues, competence to ask relevant questions, and knowledge of when the planning process had run its course and needed to be finalized. Which is to say that in Baku, Ivanitskii produced much more than diagrams and projective maps. He built a cadre of planning-savvy local administrators. Kimberly Zarecor, Iowa State University, The Architectural Working Group and the Pre- History of the Communist Future in Czechoslovakia In this paper, I will explore the 1930s texts of the Architectural Working Group (PAS, Pracovní architektonická skupina), an interwar avant-garde collective formed around 1930 under the influence of critic Karel Teige. Steeped in dogmatic Marxism and the ethos of Czech scientific functionalism, the members of PAS, Karel Janů, Jiří Voženílek, and Jan Štursa, promoted their agenda through both architectural imagery and texts promoting the re-organization of professional practice and the construction industry. After World War II, the members of PAS were among the vanguard of communist architects, becoming high-ranking administrators and designers in state-run architectural practice. As I wrote about in my book, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity (2011), these high-profile post-1945 positions for the members could never have been predicted or planned for, especially given the turn against Stalin in Prague intellectual circles in the 1930s. In taking a closer look at these interwar texts, this paper asks if it is possible 4
to find within them a speculative and as yet unanalyzed vision of a Communist future that situated architectural practice at the center of the complete social and economic transformation. The paper starts by questioning this statement by Rostislav Švácha from his edited collection, Form Follows Science (2000): "Most of the Architectural Working Group texts appear to be the work of thinkers lost to technocratism, superficial mechanical materialism and vulgar sociologism, precisely the kind which asserted itself in the thirties in the Soviet humanities. The pataphysical character of Janů s, Štursa s and Voženílek s writings was reinforced by various diagrams, drawn charts and graphs, with which the architects wanted to reinforce the exactness and objectivity of their scientific deductions. Is this a critique of Marxism itself (within the context of post-1989 cultural history) or is this a true reflection of their flawed and derivative architectural thinking? This analysis may show that the texts can be understood as operating in both realms simultaneously, and therefore reinforcing architecture's central role in the implementation of communism in postwar Europe. Łukasz Stanek, Architects from Socialist Countries in Cold War West Africa: The Worlding of the Eastern European Experience. In 1969, the authorities of the city of Calabar in eastern Nigeria organised a press conference to present to the public the new master plan of the city, designed by a team of Hungarian planners headed by architect Charles Polónyi. In his memoirs, Polónyi recalled the first question posed to him: You are Hungarians. You never had colonies. You don t have any tropical experience. Do you consider yourselves competent to prepare a master plan for a city in West Africa? This talk is an extended response to this question. I will argue that architects from socialist countries substantiated their work in Nigeria by drawing parallels between the historical experience of Eastern Europe and West Africa. They argued that both regions shared the experience of being underdeveloped, colonized, and peripheral. This worlding of the Eastern European experience its projection as shared by the whole ( Third ) world allowed these architects to drew upon their previous work in Europe in order to respond to the tasks in West Africa. In this talk, I will show how architects from Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia working in 1970s Nigeria used specific design tools which were developed in Central European architectural culture since the late 19 th century in response to the condition of underdevelopment, colonization, and peripheriality. I will show the application of such tools in three projects: the Calabar master plan; the survey of vernacular architecture in Nigeria by the Polish architect and scholar Zbigniew Dmochowski; and the International Trade Fair in Lagos by the Yugoslav company Energoprojekt. At the same time, these engagements will demonstrate the limits to the analogies between Eastern Europe and West Africa, and I will argue that the travels to Nigeria confronted the protagonists of this talk with the ambiguities of the historical past which they claimed to have shared with Africans. 5
Agata Abramowicz (City of Gdynia Museum), What did it mean to be an architect in Gdynia in interwar and postwar era? Gdynia, the modernist city and harbour built in 20 s and 30s by the new polish state. The maritime capital and beloved child of the Second Polish Republic. Ground of all kinds of experiments as commentators of the time were saying. It was the place where both young, avantgarde and older, more classical architects could realize their projects and create modernist city from the scratch. Great plans and the dynamic growth of Gdynia were terminated by The Second World War, and the post war era knock the city off the pedestal and put the architects in the different role. This is the common knowledge about Gdynia and its builders. But what were the real conditions and circumstances the architects were facing during their work in interwar Gdynia? What was the role of the state and investors? Was Gdynia to become a modernist dream and fine example of modern city planning? I would also like to have a closer look on the post war era and present how the conditions of architect s work changed. What was the new status of an architect in Gdynia and his main duties? Can we trace the continuity of prewar ideas? Elitza Stanoeva, European University Institute, State Protectionism, Technocracy or Bureaucratic Command: Bulgarian Architects Societies from the Interwar Period to the Stalinist Era This paper explores the positioning of the professional organizations of Bulgarian architects visà-vis the state from the 1930s until mid-1950s, thus highlighting continuity and breach across the threshold year of 1944 when Bulgaria embarked on its socialist path. In the interwar period, capitalizing on the emerging chauvinist turn in politics, the societies of Bulgarian architects actively pursued state protectionism by lobbying for legislature that would limit the involvement of their foreign colleagues on their home turf. Paradoxically, while these organizations were hubs for import of modern styles and construction techniques from across Europe and most of their members enjoyed the credentials of European diplomas, they also initiated the first steps to isolate Bulgarian architecture from outside influences. In continuity with their prewar efforts, in the aftermath of the war the architects societies embraced the new political order with the expectation that it would give rise to a true technocracy and it would be professionals from among their circles that would ultimately take the steering wheel of the national economy. This optimism was soon replaced by despair over the gradual loss of professional autonomy up until 1949 when all independent architectural organizations were disbanded and their members reorganized in a state-run creative union and various bureaus within the state administration. Alongside a series of legislative steps enhancing centralized bureaucratic control over the newly formed bureaus, Bulgarian architects found themselves in the unexpected situation to be civil servants with not much of a societal role. While struggling to find their way in the new administrative setting, they also struggled to comprehend their new political mandate. Confusion over the assignment to create "socialist architecture" went hand in hand with a sense of loss regarding the professional input into this endeavor. Tamara Bjažić Klarin, Senior Research Assistant, Institute of art history, Zagreb, Constructing the world of equal opportunities the case of architect Vladimir Antolić 6
In the period from 1930 s up to 1950 s Croatian salaried architects working for municipal, county and state authorities in Zagreb were the active participants in society s modernization. Before the WW2 they had a unique opportunity to deal with urban planning and social standard buildings. Aware of the major social problems, housing crises and the lack of the most basic infrastructure, they introduced socially responsible approach in architecture understood as a means of constructing a more just society. Unfortunately, its work was limited due to the social and political conditions in the totalitarian Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After the WW2 in the new socialist Yugoslavia the circumstances radically changed. Architects get a chance to participate in the post-war reconstruction, intensive modernization and massive society transformation. Eventually, together with new challenges and opportunities the creation of the new socialist society physical environment brought new limitations difficult material conditions, short deadlines, rigid functionalism etc. The subject of this paper is the particular case of Vladimir Antolić, city of Zagreb salaried architect, whose actions were more of an exception than a rule at the time. The focus is on his work on Zagreb regulatory plan and public engagement from 1932 until 1953 when he left Croatia because of disagreement with city urban planning politics. He was dedicated to his belief and brave enough to oppose the political establishment in order to provide the implementation of Zagreb regulatory plan, that is, reconstruction of pre-war slums. Marija Dremaite, Vilnius University, Lithuanian Modernists of the 1930s and their Survival Strategies in the 1950s The period from 1930s to the 1950s is well known because of its socio-political turbulences, however for Eastern European countries the WWII also resulted in a radical political change. Communist power affected architecture and architects not only ideologically, but socially as well since it eradicated the tradition of private practice, forcing all professionals to be employed at State design and planning institutions. The generation of the 1930s modernists, mostly educated in Western Europe, met this change with different responses. As many newly established States in 1918, Lithuania met its independence with little practicing architects and the new generation of professionals had to be raised with the help of the State scholarship program. This need was especially fostered by the construction of a new capital city Kaunas in 1919-1939 (the former capital Vilnius in this period was taken by Poland). The first modernists started to return home with their western school diplomas in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1935 Kaunas was blooming with architects who developed their own school of National Modernism. It is very interesting to follow how architects collectively as well as individually reacted to political changes, such as the first communist occupation of Lithuania in 1940, followed by the Nazi occupation in 1941, and the return of the Red Army in 1944, when most of the architects with private offices emigrated to the West. Those who stayed started working at the State institutes (mostly in engineering) or preferred working at the University of Kaunas, which was surprisingly not closed during the WWII and postwar years. The talk in Leuven will be focused on the formation of the collective architectural force in the 1930s Lithuania, its disintegration after 1944, and survival strategies of different architects in postwar years in the soviet Lithuania. Marcela Hanáčková, In Search for True Socialist Architecture: Helena Syrkus in-between Modernism and Socialist Realism in post-war CIAM 7
Organized only half a year after the Communist coup d état and under a close watch of communist leaders the First Assembly of Polish Party Architects took place in June 1949. This gathering is viewed as a milestone in Polish architecture given that it strongly differentiated between the old true socialist architecture: modernism that was practiced under already leftists Provisional Government of the post-war in the years 1945-1948, and the new true socialist architecture: socialist realism that was practiced under the Communist regime in the years 1948-1954. This conversion of political situation and architectural ideology was also reflected in the CIAM s activities of Polish architect Helena Syrkus. It is the ambition of this paper to interpret Syrkus s impact on the post-war CIAM in both: her modernist and socialist realists times. As for the formal, Syrkus, who was soon appointed a vice-president of the organization for Eastern Europe, became a new vanguard of radical left-wing architects who demanded an establishment of socialism and socialist society for which modernists architects would create an environment of equality and communality. This concept, which very much corresponded with the ideology of first Warsaw reconstruction plans and was elaborated under the Provisional Government, Syrkus introduced to CIAM as socialist architecture" and argued that the CIAM should be renamed and hold a new title: Congrès Internationaux d'architecture Social. As for the later, the paper will discuss the provocative speech of Helena Syrkus in defense of socialist realism that was given in Bergamo, Italy, in 1949. Thought this talk has been often interpreted as a demonstration of the Cold War in architecture, and thus as a juxtaposing of socialist realism and modernism, the paper will try to bring somewhat different perspective on the matter. This perspective is of Helena Syrkus s individual understanding of socialist realism, which appeared to differ from Soviet eclectic architecture, and of internationally reforming modernism that showed, at some points, discursive overlapping with socialist realism. András Ferkai, Department of Design and Art History, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Modernity in the wilderness? Attempts at developing the countryside in Hungary 1930-1950 By modern architecture, we usually mean urban or rather metropolitan structures built for contemporary purposes with new materials and the latest technology. However, in several countries of East-Central Europe, where a considerable part of the population lived in villages and small towns before and even after World War II, architects had specific tasks and obligations towards rural areas. Indeed, this was the main reason for forming the CIAM-East with the participation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia. Although underdevelopment of rural territories was a serious problem in Hungary, most modern architects disregarded it for a long time. The development of the countryside only appeared in the agenda of the Hungarian Cirpac group in 1936, when the preparatory committee of the 5 th CIAM congress recommended working parties the issues of Landesstruktur and Rayon im Lande. Farkas Molnár submitted a national and a regional plan to the 1937 Paris congress that he prepared with the members of the Hungarian group. This large scale work led them to the scale of the yeoman house they designed for a village in the South region of Hungary. In the same year, a model peasant house was built at the Budapest Autumn Fair by a young architect who happened to be the leader of a nationalist group. Cirpac and the Friends of the Hungarian House represented alternative visions of rural life and accommodation, in fact, divergent models of modernization as it later turned out when the two sides got into public debate at the beginning of the 1940s. 8
My paper will investigate why these young people, members of the same generation and equally sensitive towards social problems, suddenly found themselves on opposite sides of the barricade. To apprehend this, it is necessary to enquire their class backgrounds, social networks, mentalities with the underlying ideologies. Their relations to the establishment strongly affected their chance to get commissions and realize their ideas. Although the nationalist group was favoured and radical modernists neglected before WW II and the situation got reversed after the war, some continuities are to be discerned. Extensive rural housing programs in the first and second halves of the 1940s were directed by almost the same architects, while formerly underprivileged modernist could occupy after 1945 key positions of the higher planning or building administration. I will present case studies with standard house projects, new villages, as well as technical innovations and new construction technologies from both periods. 9