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  295 Epilogue [We] found the architects and planners of Czechoslovakia very sure of what they were doing. They were convinced that their vast [apartment]-building program was the best and most urgent thing for them. Preston Benson, 1961 By May 1961, when a twenty-two-member delegation from Britain arrived in Czechoslovakia to view the country’s achievements in architecture and urban planning, it had been more than fifteen years since the establishment of the Block of Progressive Architectural Associations (BAPS) and the creation of a broad coalition of architects who saw their future in collective work.1 There had been surprises and disappointments that few had anticipated. The personal and professional difficulties faced by many should also not be forgotten . Yet in the terms set out in 1945 by the initial leaders of BAPS, the building industry in 1961 looked remarkably like what they had first proposed. Czech and Slovak architects found industrialization, typification, and standardization to be the best methods for achieving the goals set out for them by the architectural administration and the political elite. Many also found personal satisfaction in providing housing for a population that had long suffered housing shortages. Their objectives—to build as many housing units as quickly and economically as possible, to make buildings that celebrated the national heritage, to change an architect’s role from that of artist to technician —were logical and even admirable in the terms of postwar Europe, where all countries, capitalist and communist alike, faced war damage, housing and labor shortages, uncertain political alliances, and the threat of corporate and cultural imperialism, whether American or Soviet. Zarecor third pages.indd 295 2/24/11 2:55 PM 296  Epilogue From the perspective of architectural history, the transition chronicled here, from an artistic model of professional practice to one reliant on technology and industrial production, is a critical aspect of the history of modernity that needs more scholarly attention. Architectural historians have long espoused the belief that once architects lose a direct connection to art, and all of the accolades and creative power that go with it, the results can be written off as mere “building” instead of architecture with a capital A. Not only has building, in this sense, been less important to the discipline, but it is also perceived to require little analysis or exploration, since economic and technological determinism are its primary characteristics. The unique building—the ultimate manifestation of the artistic will of the architect—will likely remain the most alluring topic for architectural historians , although fewer are built every year. As this study shows, architecture is much more driven by manufacturing processes, production capacities, and the limitations of materials than most of architectural history allows. This was true not only after World War II in the Eastern Bloc but for the whole of architectural history since the Industrial Revolution and maybe even before. The assumption that these processes are self-evident and fixed ignores the many ways in which ideas about what constitutes architecture are themselves produced by their cultural and temporal context. The serial building, the building type, design as research, and the mechanical application of ornament are all crucial topics for an expanded history of architecture. In fact, the relevance of the discipline in the twenty-first century will be determined by its ability to see the field in these broader terms. In the past twenty years, architects and designers have understood and embraced this change much more readily. Technologies that far surpass the capabilities of the human hand, such as digital fabrication and building information modeling (BIM), have revolutionized design practice. Rather than being scared by the loss of individual artistic control that these technologies represent, some firms have adopted a new model of practice based on interdisciplinary and research-oriented collaboration between architects, landscape architects, planners, and engineers. Although particular personalities may be the public faces of such practices—Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry , Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron may come to mind—these offices are in fact massive global operations spanning continents and employing hundreds of people. It is a situation much like what was represented by the label “and team” associated with many Stavoprojekt designs. In positioning the architect as one actor in a complex network of people working toward the construction of a building, a series of buildings, or even a city, this book provides one of the first historical perspectives on a transformation that is occurring around the world at this...

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