A book about architecture and Czech Politics 1945-1989.
Czechoslovak architecture underwent a radical transformation after the Second World War. New political and social demands were placed on it, its institutional structure was transformed and current themes and issues were reformulated in architectural circles. This book focuses on the transformations in the definition of “socialist architecture”, its main tasks, and ideas about the built environment of the communist “world of tomorrow” between the mid-1940s and the late 1980s. It traces how political representatives, architects themselves and representatives of other institutions, including construction companies, participated in this process and how they negotiated with each other. The focus of the authors’ individual chapters is not on the changing forms or design practices, nor on the fate of specific individuals, but on the ways in which architects responded to and attempted to actively influence changing social assignments.