Manufacturing a socialist modernity: The architecture of industrialized housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945--1956

Although it is difficult to see the crumbling, gray facades of the former Eastern Bloc as great testaments to the potentials of modern architecture, these buildings did reflect a dedication to technological innovation, social equality, and formal clarity unrivaled in the twentieth century. Built in an era that the West has commonly portrayed as one of rupture, isolation, and deprivation, socialist architecture in Eastern Europe was in fact connected to contemporary experiments in the West and to the specific legacies of the region's interwar years. Focusing on the intersection of architects, housing design, and the state apparatus between 1945 and 1956, this case study seeks to understand the development and deployment of modern mass-housing types in Czechoslovakia from the avant-garde-inspired projects of the immediate postwar era to the industrialized panel buildings of the 1950s.; The dissertation also examines the organization of design practice in the aftermath of World War II and the creation of Stavoprojekt, the state-run architectural offices in 1948. The chapters show the extent to which the postwar government and its architectural leadership adopted and carried forward already established models of architectural modernity as the basis of their claims to legitimacy. Through a detailed study of the housing types and production methods employed by architects at Stavoprojekt, the dissertation expands our understanding of the early years of communism in Czechoslovakia by emphasizing the fluid and negotiated relationships between architects and the political structure. The project questions the image of the oppressive Communist Party imposing itself on unwilling architects and shows that in the early years of communism, there was genuine support for the new system. As part of a reassessment of the timeline of transformation and change in the postwar period, the project proposes 1950, rather than 1945 or 1948, as a turning point in the history of postwar modernism.