The Historiography and Research on State-Socialist Housing: Prague’s Paneláky

Abstract

Communist-era apartment buildings (paneláky) in Prague are home to 40 percent of the city’s population. Since the 1990s, following the end of state socialism, they have almost completely fallen into private ownership in the all-encompassing process of post-socialist privatization. They served as a stage and conduit for socio-cultural and economic change and as such, they reflect the transformed and transformative relationship between architecture, capitalism, heritage, and state. By examining the scholarly discourse on state-socialist housing produced since the fall of communism in Europe in 1989 — which has grown steadily in the past decade — this position paper aims to outline the main trends, themes, and gaps in historiography and research into the paneláky in Prague and to suggest new avenues for inquiry into the urban and architectural heritage of state-socialist housing estates in the Czech capital.