ABSTRACT

Architecture and Revolution explores the consequences of the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe from an architectural perspective. It presents new writings from a team of renowned architects, philosophers and cultural theorists from both the East and the West. They explore the questions over the built environment that now face architects, planners and politicians in the region. They examine the problems of buildings inherited from the communist era: some are environmentally inadequate, many were designed to serve a now redundant social programme and others carry the stigma of association with previous regimes. Contributors include: Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, Laura Mulvey, Helene Cixous, Andrew Benjamin and Frederic Jameson.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

IHistorical perspectives

chapter 1|25 pages

Sources of a radical mission in the early Soviet profession

Alexei Gan and the Moscow Anarchists

chapter 2|15 pages

The Vesnins’ Palace of Labour

The role of practice in materialising the revolutionary architecture

chapter 3|9 pages

Notes for a manifesto

chapter 5|12 pages

History lessons

chapter 6|11 pages

Policing the body

Descartes and the architecture of change

chapter 7|20 pages

The state as a work of art

The trauma of Ceausescu’s Disneyland

chapter 8|15 pages

Architecture or revolution?

chapter 9|3 pages

Traces of the unborn

chapter 11|7 pages

The humanity of architecture

chapter 12|4 pages

Disjunctions

chapter 13|13 pages

The dark side of the domus

The redomestication of Central and Eastern Europe

chapter 15|11 pages

Totalitarian city

Bucharest 1980–9, semio-clinical files

chapter 18|7 pages

Rediscovering Romania

part |2 pages

VTombs and monuments

chapter 19|10 pages

Berlin 1961–89

The bridal chamber

chapter 20|9 pages

Reflections on disgraced monuments

chapter 21|6 pages

Attacks on the castle