Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making of Postwar Identities

Introduction (Vladimir Kulic)

8 INTRODUCTION vladimir kuli D uring the two decades following World War II, various political entities across the world adopted modernist architecture in its different guises both for representationalpurposesandasaninstrumentofmodernization . The period thus stood in contrast with the interwar years, when modernists struggled to attract official support, especially after the turbulent alliance between the avant-gardes and the varied central and local governments of the 1920s dissolved under the rising totalitarian forces. It was only in a few places such as Czechoslovakia and Turkey that architectural modernism before World War II was consistently accepted as the “official style” of political representation.¹ By the late 1950s, however, states worldwide discovered that their own interests aligned with the logic of what historian James C. Scott called “high modernism”: “a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress.”² The most poignant product of such an alignment, according to Scott, was the modern clean-slate city, laid out in accordance with the principles formulated by the gurus of modernism like Le Corbusier . Indeed, from Brasilia to Chandigarh and from New Belgrade to Albany, “high modernism” became the architecture 9 introduction of choice for state representation, as well as a device through which vastly different modernization projects were carried out. There was, however, nothing inherently natural about this alliance, as it was forged through a variety of specific dynamics and for a range of motivations, often dictated more by circumstances and pragmatic concerns than by the ideal principles. Fragments of this complex history are already known: most notably, recent scholarship has uncovered how modernist architecture and design became enlisted in the “cultural Cold War,” especially on the Western side of the confrontation.³ The story, however, is far from complete even if one limits the perspective to the developed capitalist countries; when the view expands to the so-called second- and third-world countries, the dynamics appear to be almost completely unknown.⁴ Of course, modernism was by no means a monolithic phenomenon either, and it acquired a particularly rich repertoire of forms after World War II, making the story of its mobilization for political purposes even more complicated. The chapters that follow in this section focus on the politically complex region of east-central and southern Europe, which comprised countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain , including one, Yugoslavia, which straddled that divide. These countries shared many historical commonalities yet occupied very different positions on the geopolitical map of the Cold War, making them particularly suited for comparison . At the same time, the case studies explored here also highlight the fact that architectural modernism had many facets that cannot be reduced to a single monolithic description . Instead, the modernist paradigm comprised a great variety of expressions, motivations, and connotations, thus defying the stereotype of a universally applicable and politically neutral “International Style.” If Italian architects sought to 10 modernism and the state maintain a vital link with vernacular traditions as a way to elude rationalism’s prewar association with the Fascist state, in Romania architects severed any connections with the past in order to signify the establishment of a new society. If in Czechoslovakia the state aspired to efficient standardization and typification of architecture, in Yugoslavia it embraced diverse modes of representation to buttress its internal and external legitimacy. The following four essays explore these diverse meanings of architecture as a way to problematize the complex relationships between modernism and the state after World War II. notes 1. On Turkey, see Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001). On Czechoslovakia , see Rostislav Švácha, The Architecture of New Prague, 1895–1945, trans. Alexandra Büchler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). 2. See James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 4. 3. See, among other titles, Jane C. Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, 2nd ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010); and Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 4. For a pioneering effort on the mutual dynamic in the use of design in the ideological battle between the Soviet and American blocs, see Greg Castillo...