Socmodernism

Has socialist architecture left us legacy other than large-panel housing estates? Yes, indeed! Flying saucers, rocket towers, UFO bridges, pyramid hotels, corn skyscrapers and star skyscrapers, Sun Gates, brutalist buildings and sculptural buildings, tent churches and telescope mosques. A new exhibition at the International Cultural Centre tells their amazing story.

With more than 400 exhibits on display, the exhibition will take visitors on an architectural journey from Estonia to Macedonia, from Tallin to Skopje, through Berlin, Prague, Bratislava, Vilnius, Kyiv, Budapest, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Bucharest. We will show not only public buildings, theatres, museums and sports halls, skyscrapers and department stores, but also socialist collective houses, ultramodern kolkhozes, wedding palaces and funeral homes. We will show almost perfect cities! Everything that proudly represents the recent past, yet at the same time has been mocked as an architectural failure since the 1990s.

At present, socialist modernism is undergoing a thorough reassessment. The failure and ugly collapse of communism meant that its architectural legacy suddenly became an unwanted heritage. Three decades later, when communist ideology is long gone, aware of the limitations of our own times, we can attempt a different diagnosis – new or at least devoid of negative emotions. Revision of socialist architectural legacy continues, although so far it has rarely crossed the borders of individual countries. We therefore propose a broader horizon and a more thorough reassessment. A look through the lens of the most outstanding works and architects, appreciative of the diversity of forms and attentive to the complexity of the context. Because architecture is so much more than materialisation of politics, socialist modernism demands a new reading without prejudice or preconceptions. — ”Socialist modernity looked the same as the one on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Like it or not, our countries were part of the global experience of modernity. Contrary to popular belief, knowledge, culture, and ideas permeated in many directions inside and outside the political blocs, so the image of socialist modernism is more complex and less obvious than the one produced by the stereotypical image of the two-bloc world. That is why it is so intriguing” — emphasises Dr. Łukasz Galusek, co-author of the exhibition.

Even in unfavourable conditions, socialist architects were able to maintain their originality and artistic autonomy. To design works that evade easy judgments. Stick to their own path. Not be trapped by doctrine – neither architectural nor political. Do their own thing. Despite the unprecedented scale of wartime destruction, despite the need to “start from scratch”, many were architects of continuity, faithful to the ethos of their profession and respectful of the achievements of their predecessors. With such a background, they developed an individual style, and many of their works gained the status of icons. — ”Socmodernism is the architecture and art of a time when we forgot about the horrors of war and looked to the future with hope. In the late 1950s, the fluid shapes of concrete buildings, inspired by the first space missions, resembling saucers or rockets, broke into the spaces of cities on both sides of the Iron Curtain and redefined the cultural landscape of Europe. The Cold War division meant that for a long time we pushed out from our consciousness and from our surroundings many — often outstanding — designs and works of art of that period” — explains Dr. Michał Wiśniewski, co-curator of the exhibition.