Postwar Modernism Research Articles

Renovating Modern Heritage

The post-war building stock is increasingly being transformed. Even at objects protected as listed heritage, renovation usually results in a high degree of material exchange and replacement. This is especially the case in regard to historic curtain wall constructions. Based on the case study of the Commerzbank High-rise and original planning documents by Gartner, the paper focuses on the applied strategy of disassembling and reassembling the curtained aluminium sandwich elements, and the resulting upgrading of the original façade with a newly installed interlayer for insulation. The paper discusses the possible transfer of this strategy, which largely depended on the existing high quality of the aluminium components, their corrosion-resistant properties and low weight. The case study of the former Commerzbank High-rise indicates that a long-term preservation of post-war modern building stock can be achieved without wholesale replacement of original building components. The reuse of existing materials and components represents a promising approach.

Ashley Mason asks ‘must we really build and create each time anew’? - ‘Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945–1965’ Barbican Art Gallery, London 3 March – 26 June 2022

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Victor Gruen versus Jan Gehl – and the contemporary model of pedestrianization

ABSTRACT Some cities are currently proposing pedestrianization strategies, while others are debating removing their post-war pedestrian malls. To engage these seemingly conflicting actions, this research questions how ideas of pedestrianization evolved between the post-war and contemporary eras, and extracts lessons to inform contemporary pedestrianization. By examining Victor Gruen’s and Jan Gehl’s ideas about pedestrianization, this research articulates how the concept has evolved from the post-war to now. Arguably, despite claims that contemporary pedestrian strategies are new ideas, this research demonstrates how they represent an evolution from earlier post-war modernist ideas. Understanding these connections offers lessons for contemporary pedestrianization strategies.

Digital Survey of the Late 1960's Villa in Ustroń: Creating a Virtual Model of a Heritage Site of Polish Post-War Modernist Architecture

Abstract The paper undertakes the topic of architectural heritage of post-war modernism in Poland. Beside the typical single-family housing solutions from the second half of 20th century (the so-called “Polish cube”) it is possible to point out some examples of houses designed according to the world's leading design tendencies of that time. Those buildings were established on individual requests of the social elites including scientists, directors and government officials. One of such objects is a modernist villa from the 1960s located in Ustroń – a popular resort at the foot of the Beskid Mountains and built for General Jerzy Ziętek. There is a lack of its accurate, systematic documentation, which would become a basis for a conservation project. Here, we demonstrate a response to this problem which results in the development of a precise inventory documentation and representation of the investigated object, which is a valuable heritage of post-war modernism architecture. Methodology presented in this paper is based on combination of digital tools such as UAV photogrammetry and HBIM modelling and by adding a rich database obtained through thorough research.

Sovetskij tyl pod ugrozoj himicheskoj vojny: stanovlenie i razvitie protivohimicheskoj sluzhby mestnoj protivovozdushnoj oborony v gody Velikoj Otechestvennoj vojny (1941—1945 gg.)

The article presents with the Local Air Defence’s diverse activity for providing chemical rear protection in 1941-1945. The information is based on the archival sources some of which are firstly introduced into a scientific discourse. The article deals with the problems of anti-gas shelters equipment and means of chemical protection production. Particular attention is given to cooperation between the Local Air Defence and the Main Military Chemical Directorate. The data of the latter played the key role in the identification of the main directions of the rear chemical protection. The article refers to the basic stages of the chemical protection formation. It also presents the special activities of the Chemical Protection Directorate such as the establishing of the commission for detection and facts fixation of using chemical weapons, anemometric survey, and the new forms of chemical protection training introducing. The article gives some information about the projects of the post-war modernization of the Local Air Defence.

POST-WAR RECOVERY OF EUROPE: EXPERIENCE AND LESSONS FOR UKRAINE

The paper studies the problems of a country’s recovery after a war or a military conflict. The European experience of restructuring the economy after World War II is investigated. The main focus of the paper is on the analysis of post-war Modernization and Re-Equipment Plan of France, entitled the Monnet Plan, and European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan. The plan for recovering the French economy is of interest to Ukraine due to the similarities in problems and challenges faced by France in 1946 and Ukraine now. Therefore, the paper reviews the methods and approaches employed by the French experts trying to modernize their country. It also determines the risks that the French tackled while implementing the Monnet Plan. The author highlights the progressiveness and identifies the peculiarities of the Marshall Plan used to restructure post-war Europe. Suggestions for its adaptation opportunities in the current Ukrainian conditions are based on the results of the generalization and systematization of the European experience. The author argues that Ukraine’s recovery should start from the structural transformation and transition from the agrarian raw economy to an industrial and innovative kind, achieved through establishment of modern high-tech digital Industry 4.0. Notably, Ukraine itself must show initiative in this if it wishes to avoid being side-lined as a middling agrarian state. Here, a strong and unyielding position of the national elite is of paramount importance, as is their defence of the national interests and the right of the Ukrainian state to innovative development EU membership. It is of key importance that the issue of granting Ukraine financial support is resolved, as it is a condition of ensuring its resilience and sustainability of its post-war economic growth. On its part, Ukraine must ensure transparency in the use of the international aid, eradicate corruption and misuse of funds allocation.

Wieder aufbauen nach dem Krieg. Alfred Roth und die in der Schweiz internierten polnischen Architekten

Abstract During the Second World War, more than 10,000 Polish soldiers were interned in Switzerland. Among them were prominent architects, including Marek Leykam and Bohdan Garliński, who upon returning to Poland, left their mark on postwar modernism. Leykam was later marginalized for his buildings that were allegedly too International in style. Garliński became one of the key ideologists of Socialist Realism in the First General Exhibition of Architecture of the People’s Republic of Poland. This article is the first to re-trace their years in Switzerland and their contacts with Alfred Roth, CIAM member and former employee of Le Corbusier. During the war, Roth pursued plans for the reconstruction of Europe, and it was he who supplied the internees with architectural literature and support. Their intersections exemplify the larger history of Switzerland’s insular role during the war, and Poland’s immensely complex architectural scene in the early 1950s.

Empires of Antiquities: Modernity and the Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, 1914–1950

Empires of Antiquities: Modernity and the Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, 1914–1950

Dial M for Murder: the detective thriller, the postwar uncanny, and 3D cinema

ABSTRACT In Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954), 3D facilitates the film’s organization of the scopic and epistemological pleasures of the detective thriller around the perceptual experience of the uncanny. By filtering its décor through stereo-aesthetics, Dial M articulates a postwar dread of dispossession, challenges the spectator’s efforts to feel ‘at home’ in the depicted space and in the space of reception, and dramatizes how the (violent) violation of boundaries and the anticipation of homelessness shaped the experience of postwar modernity.

Phenomenon of the Work of Architect and Visual Artist Włodzimierz Ściegienny

The objective of this paper is to present the career and work of architect and visual artist Włodzimierz Ściegienny from the perspective of the author, who engages in documenting the works of this exceptional creative personality. The rich legacy of Ściegienny, which has so far not been documented, is worthy of presentation and preservation in memory. This paper presents a broad spectrum of creative activity—ranging from drawing, painting, visual art, medallion making, sculpture, to architecture. The material presented can become a starting point for further papers that would document and present the works of numerous forgotten artists of post-war Modernism. This paper is dedicated to the memory of a late architect and artist, on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of his birth.

Laughing at Architecture: Architectural Histories of Humour, Satire and Wit

Laughing at Architecture: Architectural Histories of Humour, Satire and Wit

Planting a Kiss: Rodolfo Paras-Perez and the Wood- cut’s Retrieval


 
 
 Using Rodolfo Paras-Perez’s print practice and scholarship, this essay illustrates how the notion of the kiss came to be the artistic and transmissive device for the woodcut’s revival in Manila. Reflecting on the trope of the kiss in its capacity to operate pictorial lineage, two woodcut works by Paras-Perez (Kiss, 1962 and Florante at Laura, 1977) are foregrounded, alongside the artist’s milieus and influences, to highlight an interchange spanning Europe, the United States, Mexico, and the Philippines. While both woodcut and kiss first arrived through colonial contact, they later served as agents of a postwar modernism in Philippine graphic arts, enlivening and disrupting its genealogy.
 
 

Serbian Late Twentieth-Century Neo-Avant-Garde: Minimalist Music by Vladimir Tošić and Miroslav Miša Savić

This article examines selected minimalist compositions by Vladimir Tošić and Miroslav Miša Savić, two members of the neo-avant-garde composers group, Opus 4, whose activities created a unique artistic paradigm on the Serbian art music scene. While the group's work clearly referred to experimental trends in the United States (minimalism, Fluxus, multimedia, and conceptual art), it also retained a significant ‘trace’ of European post-war modernism, embodied in the group's commitment to serialist modes of organising musical material. Thus, the ‘integral minimalism’ of Savić and Tošić (within the unique aesthetics of Opus 4) unites both European and American post-war neo-avant-garde concepts. This study situates Tošić's and Savić's minimalist works within the Serbian late twentieth-century ‘new music’ context and is dedicated to the neo-avant-garde minimalist oeuvres of the two composers.

Conservation Issues of Post-War Modernist Architecture in Poland

The following article addresses a broad spectrum of subjects relating to the protection and conservation of postwar modernist heritage in Poland. It is divided into three sections, each comprising several related aspects of the issue. The first section briefly explores the legal and organisational structure in place for monuments protection. The second section focuses on […]

Campaigning for Postwar Modernist Housing Estates in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main Area

Most German large-scale postwar housing estates suffer from a negative image. While many individual buildings from the era are part of the listed cultural heritage today, the estates usually have escaped formal listing even as conservation areas, despite their historic significance being obvious. Although in theory, listing does not depend on public opinion, in practice, […]

An Inquiry into Intentional Values: The Arenawijk in Antwerp – Renaat Braem’s Modernist Social Housing Ensemble as a Case Study

Renaat Braem’s Arenawijk in Antwerp is a key example of Belgian post-war modernism, representing the development of social housing as a state-building enterprise. Considering the building’s continuous use and current redevelopment, this paper explores the expansion of Belgium’s current legal heritage protection, which is based on heritage values. Additional ‘intentional values’ would focus on the […]

Nomad and Pariah: Anni Albers and Hannah Arendt on Refugee Experience

The renowned Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers and the celebrated social critic Hannah Arendt both entered the United States as refugees from Nazi Germany. This essay explores the distinct yet parallel ways in which their respective works amplify their experiences of displacement and give voice to a political stance on behalf of the voiceless. Albers’s writing and creative output engage directly with the unstable, nomadic character of modern life, promoting the role of textiles as portable shelter in an age of extreme mobility. Meanwhile, Arendt outlines a fierce critique of political and social structures that lack the capacity to define the rights of refugees as “nothing but human beings.” Both locate the particular conditions of postwar modernity within the experience of the refugee, whose liminal identity is strictly undefinable and yet increasingly ubiquitous.

The Allure of Generality (Revisited)

Ongoing appraisals of generality in architecture have largely referenced theories in natural philosophy as well as generic and normative structures, criticised as formalistic and dull. Expounding on generality’s role beyond its received ideas, this paper describes the creative methodological value of this concept. Drawing on sources in post-war modernism, analytic philosophy, and the prevailing academic quest for new research methods, the paper assesses the methodological role of generality as a creative tool in the search for innovative architectural knowledge and modes of practice. It ties conceptual design’s exploration during the post-war period to cross-disciplinary academic methodological concerns about generality. Scrutinising Mies van der Rohe’s mid-century statements, it illuminates a rigorous, disciplined body of work anchored in the epistemology of the era’s philosophy of science. The terrain highlighted has relevance to current architectural dialectics, which rethink research methods in the quest for new design practices.

Symbolic Geographies, Nordic Inspirations, and Baltic Identities

"In Finland we really felt architecture", Lithuanian architect Vytautas Čekanauskas used to say remembering his first study trip to Finland in 1959. Impact of Nordic design is often emphasised when discussing Baltic design of the State Socialist period. When new residential districts in the 1960s were built among the trees in existing pine forests, as happened in Āgenskalna Priedesin Riga, Mustamäe in Tallinn, and Lazdynai in Vilnius, then Tapiola in Helsinki was most often cited as inspiration. Indeed, as opportunities for tourist travel and foreign exchange programs increased in the late 1950s, the Soviet Architects' Association began to organize professional delegations that included several representatives from each of the Baltic republics, dispatched on fact-finding missions to Finland. But why Nordic concept of regionalism became so important in the formation of the Baltic post-war modernism ? In the paper it is argued, that Finnish modern architecture, that was experienced at first hand during the study trips, was perceived as an acceptable model for the Baltic architects who wished to belong to the international community of modern architecture, yet retaining a national idiom and being distinctive within the USSR.

Millennials and the contested urban legacy of post-war modernist social housing in the UK

ABSTRACT Attitudes to the European modernist social housing experiments of the 1950s and 1960s are complicated and contested. Once derided as a failed and elitist social project, over the last two decades, there has been growing appreciation of the design principles and ethos of the post-war Architecture of Social Intent (AOSI), assisted by a proactive programme of national conservation protection. In this paper, we reflect on a university action research project to explore what the AOSI might mean to a younger “millennial” generation. Using an undergraduate action-research project from the UK, we explore millennials responses to the idea of the AOSI but also the perceptions of the welfare state associated with it and the state’s changing role in social housing provision. The paper makes a distinctive contribution to the growing literature on changing perceptions of modernist heritage, making a case for wider public engagement with urban change and design aesthetics.