Socmodernism

The first comprehensive, panoramic overview of socialist modernist architecture in Central Europe from the mid-1940s to the 1990s, from Tallinn to Ljubljana, and from the divided Berlin to Bucharest and Skopje. 

The post-war part of the 20th century was a time of many modernities, in architecture as in other spheres of life. In our region of Europe, when it was the 'Eastern Bloc', building design assumed a form at once unified, pr4abricated, and cosmic. This book recalls the best of all its qualities: creativity in spite of the imposed standardization, attempts to lend the pragmatism a human dimension, and imagination — which blossomed both within the confines of the officially binding system and outside it. It features not only iconic sites and projects, but also others never built or non-extant — marks of a 'different modernity', one sometimes as alien as if it were from another planet. Olga Drenda