The Socialist Design: Urban Dilemmas in Postwar Europe and the Soviet Union

The New Socialist Man in the Plattenbau: The East German Housing Program and the Development of the Socialist Way of Life

“…Technical exchanges and trips to visit Western models were part and parcel of the East German (and, indeed, more broadly Eastern European) field of building techniques and construction methods. 58 Architects studied Western European models, such as those in France and Austria, and even beyond in Canada, to learn about new technologies and methodologies. 59 When Soviet architects and urban planners embarked on their housing program in the 1950s, they were just emerging from Stalinism and looked upon Western ideas with a great deal of suspicion.…”

Visual Representation of Urban Environment: Microraioni of Riga in Soviet Cinematography

“…In the early 1960s the use of new and more advanced construction materials, for example pressed stone and steel-reinforced concrete, was on the rise. Consequently, brick houses were replaced with large-scale panel constructions [5], [17], [24], [27]. The necessity of combining new production methods with residential typologies and importance to accelerate the building process led to a change in the settlement model [5], [17].…”

The intellectual heritage of the 1917 Revolution: Reflection and negativity

“…Indeed, in the evolution of Soviet Union, the humanist turn played a fatal role. In the 1960 and early 1970s it coincided with an embourgeoisement of society decisively expressed in the mass relocation of families from communal to private apartments, as depicted in many seminal Soviet artworks from the period, from Yuri Pimenov's painting to Eldar Ryazanov comedies (Glazychev, ; Mëhilli, ; Smith, ).…”