3. – 4. 10. 2015 – POST-WAR MODERNISM * BRNO

Workshop in frame of V4 project TRANSLATIONS OF MODERNISM: POST-WAR ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL EUROPE

With the fall of the Iron Curtain and the arrival of market capitalism, many of the social and political values commonly inscribed in buildings turned suddenly obsolete, leaving behind anachronistic architectural structures, forgotten or bulldozed by contemporary forces: derelict office buildings containing toxic construction materials, abandoned headquarters of institutions standing for dissolving forms of social organization, or event halls representing outmoded concepts of culture. The mass devaluation of buildings hitherto integrated into Socialist societies and urban tissues has been further accelerated by the changes in the ownership structure of the real estate stock in Post-Socialist countries, namely privatization and the changing status of state companies.

Architecture, in this context, instead of being a consistent vehicle of memory and collective identity, is an ensemble of strongly politicized forms, signs, configurations and narratives, wherein the Socialist regime is sharply juxtaposed against the post-1989 liberal capitalist democracy.

The project investigates the changing destiny of post-war modernist architecture: the research demonstrates how post-war Modernist buildings become subject to refusal, defunction, oblivion, domestication, rediscovery or protection, fail technologically or turn into stigmatized objects. Based on these questions, the research and the corresponding workshops highlight the various relationships to the built environment and architecture of post-war modernism.

BRNO WORKSHOP SCHEDULE:

Saturday 3/10