ABSTRACT
The Czechoslovak state-socialist housing estates built by the prefabricated panel technology on a massive scale were a result of a specific mix of interwar intellectual tradition, Soviet influences and tactical decisions of Communist Party officials. The following text outlines the six-decade-long evolvement of the idea of the industrialization of the construction industry and the scientification of architecture from its avant-garde origins in the 1930s to its deep and very public crisis in the 1980s. It studies the unintended consequences of the gigantic housing program and its implications for the complex interaction between the architectonic profession and the Communist Party. While the Communist Party found in the housing program a key legitimization tool, the architects that once promoted the idea were increasingly critical of their own creation and its implications for urban planning.
