Miastoprojekt goes abroad: the transfer of architectural labour from socialist Poland to Iraq (1958–1989)

Abstract

When in 1962 Miastoprojekt-Kraków won the international tender for the master plan of Baghdad, this initiated two decades of intense engagement in Iraq of this architectural and planning office from the People's Republic of Poland. By choosing an office from a socialist country, Iraqi governments from Abdul Karim Kassem to Saddam Hussein not only responded to the specific geopolitical conditions of the Cold War in the Middle East, but also aimed at drawing on the Polish experience of post-war reconstruction, with the state taking an active role in the processes of urbanisation. The lessons learned from the reconstruction of Warsaw and the construction of new towns such as Nowa Huta, designed by Miastoprojekt, reverberated throughout its two master plans for Baghdad (1967, 1973). Its numerous projects in Iraq focused on the distribution of welfare (housing and education) on a territorial scale and included, in particular, the General Housing Programme (1976–1980). The attempt to mediate between the ambitions of modernisation and attention to local specificity required extensive research. This study links the increasing role of research in the Iraqi projects of Miastoprojekt both to its previous contributions to architectural culture in Poland and to the political economy of architectural labour in the Cold War.