Session details
Organizer(s)
Petr Roubal (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences) and Csaba Jelinek (Periféria Policy and Research Center)
Keywords
Socialism, Housing, Planning
Abstract
State-socialist era prefabricated panel-housing has recently gained considerable academic attention not only from urban historians, but also from art historians, sociologists or social anthropologists. They also became a focus of a number of political conflicts, most notably in the case of large-scale demolitions of Moscow’s “Khrushchevka” flats. This new political and academic interest in socialist era panel housing, merits revisiting some of the old historiographical questions of socialist cities, such as: What makes a socialist city socialist? Does socialist city equal the Soviet city? Is socialist city inhabited by socialist citizens?
Iconic panel buildings with their specific state-socialist aesthetics, however, do not represent the entirety of a much broader field of state-socialist housing, which aimed at the complex redesign of entire cities. Besides the spectacular panel-developments, we should also look at state socialist urban redevelopment and renewal projects, which had to cope with the heritage of pre-communist industrial-era housing. These moments, when modernist urbanism had to relate to heritage values and the ‘genius loci’, are especially good examples to analyse the different periods of state socialist urbanism and housing issues. Thus the main aim of the panel is to overcome the usual Cold War binaries through departing from the issues of state-socialist urbanism, housing and its archetypical physical manifestation of the prefab panel building, and then rewrite the history of these into the global economic, social, cultural and intellectual history of the era.
We especially welcome papers that address the following broad themes:
- State-socialist panel housing estates as part of broader global post-war urban development.
- Socialist housing as part of dynamic field of urban planning expertise.
- Socialist housing as an export to the “Third World”.
- Heritage preservation efforts and socialist housing.
- History of urban regeneration during and after state socialis
- Resilience of socialist housing during and after the state-socialist era.
- Socialist housing as part of history of architecture (incl. current regimes of heritage protection)
- Comparative studies of ‘socialist’ and ‘non-socialist’ urbanism.
Papers
The Ideological and Cultural Practices of Soviet Yerevan Housing Landscapes Formation. Narrative Semiotic Analysis of Residents' Experience
Author(s)
Harutyun Vermishyan (Yerevan State University)
Keywords
Ideological and Cultural Practices, Housing Landscapes, Experience
Abstract
The paper observes housing space as being quintessential for the changing context of urban development. As a combination of private, public and hetero spaces with a unique integrative essence, housing involves a whole package of localization and environmental opportunities signified by symbolic characteristics. Therefore, this paper discusses Soviet Yerevan (The capital of Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic) urban development in the changing context of the Socialist housing space. It focuses on the social practices later conceptualized through the experience of Yerevan residents. Housing is viewed as a space for status groups and their lifestyles, as well as a space for exploitation of socially legitimized practices and day-to-day strategies. A qualitative research (both archival data analysis and forty-two biographical interviews with Yerevan citizens were conducted) is reported with the aim of revealing the ideological and cultural practices of Soviet Yerevan housing landscapes formation. Based on findings from narrative interviews explicating Soviet Yerevan residents’ experience are subjected to narrative semiotic analysis. In the context of contradictions of socialist and capitalist ideologies the discrepancy of cognitive and pragmatic foundations of Soviet Yerevan housing space (re)production will be discussed through summary of research findings.
The Cyclical History of State Socialist Housing Cooperatives in Hungary – A Historical Sociological Approach
Author(s)
Csaba Jelinek (Periféria Policy and Research Center, Budapest)
Keywords
Housing Policy, Housing Finance, Housing Cooperatives
Abstract
While housing cooperativism is a specific form of collaborative housing, which has been cyclically reappearing on the political agenda at crisis periods in the last 150 years, there is a lack of empirically grounded, longue durée, historical sociological analyses of this phenomenon, especially in the Central Eastern European context. This research aims at filling this gap through a historical sociological study of Hungarian housing cooperatives from the 1870s. The research covers four historical periods (the fin-de-siécle, interwar, state socialist and contemporary ones) through three analytical dimensions (housing cooperatives and the market; housing cooperatives and citizens; housing cooperatives and the state). While housing cooperatives are usually advocated for as specific tools to decrease different forms of social and spatial inequalities, there is a considerable variety within the discourses and practices connected to different historical eras. The research shows how monetary and financial processes, shifts in public policy and wider trends of social stratification affect the form and content of housing cooperatives as alternative solutions to the housing crises of different periods. Through this research state socialist housing cooperatives can be analysed from a wider historical perspective, which helps us to see how – and to what extent - seemingly “state socialist” housing policy tools are rooted in previous eras, and how they have survived the regime change.
Technical, Social and Urban Experimentation in the "Maribor- Jug" Neighborhood (1973 -'82) in Maribor, Slovenia
Author(s)
Raimondo Mercadante (Politecnico di Torino)
Keywords
Jugoslav Modernist Neighborhood, Prefabricated Techniques Slovenian, Industrial Towns
Abstract
The Maribor-Jug residential complex, designed to solve the housing needs of the second largest city in Slovenia, then in strong industrial expansion, represents a turning point in the history of Slovenian contemporary urban planning for various reasons. While its master plan was developed by the Slovenian Urban Planning Institute (UI SRS) in 1973, by a team of architects composed of Vladimir Braco Mušič, Zdenka Goriup, Lojze Gosar, Leon Lenarčič; the executive project was elaborated between 1976 and 1978 by Vladimir Braco Mušič, Lučka Rozin - Šarec, Marjan Cerar, Mladen Treppo. Finally, a reductive update of the town plan was launched by the Slovenian Town Planning Institute in 1982. The settlement, built according to the neighborhood models practiced by the Ljubljana school of architecture, inspired by the teaching of Edvard Ravnikar and executed with methods of prefabrication in reinforced concrete, can be considered as a decisive advance over local examples of the previous decade, such as the Jugomont district (1965): while the latter limited itself to applying prefabrication with efficiency and economy criteria, Maribor - Jug stood with the ambition to apply the theories of Kevin Lynch on the image of the city, creating a human-scale living environment and envisaging a reconstruction of urban lifestyles. Located in the area of Tabor, on the southern bank of the Drava, the residential complex should have housed 26,000 inhabitants. What makes it particularly interesting for the history of social housing in a socialist country like Yugoslavia is the combination of attention towards technological, social and urban aspects. On the technological side, for the innovative system of prefabricated cells with partitions, which allowed to freely modulate the apartments and for the use of prestressed concrete panels, made in various colors, on the facades. On the social side, for the care with which the collective spaces and the areas for shops were conceived and the attention to place the buildings in proximity to schools and sports facilities. On the urban planning matters, thanks to its new concept of the project, linked to a dynamic and evolutionary idea of planning, in relation to not statically determined needs. Divided into the building complexes S-23, Nova vas I, Nova vas II, Maribor-Jug was conceived aiming to complete the ancient core of the city, located on the other bank of the Drava, and with care for the landscape values. Its towers were pictured as the modernist skyline of the new neighborhood.