The first study of how the built environments and urban landscapes of parts of west Africa and the Middle East were impacted by the operations of Eastern European architects and urbanists.
Łukasz Stanek is senior lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory and the editor of Team 10 East: Revisionist Architecture in Real Existing Modernism. Twitter @StanekLukasz
"Winner of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion, Society of
Architectural Historians of Great Britain"
"Winner of the President’s Award for Research in History and
Theory, Royal Institute of British Architects"
"One of the Financial Times' Summer Books of 2020:
Architecture"
"Winner of the First Book Prize, International Planning History
Society"
"Highly commended for the inaugural Architectural Book of the Year
Award, History Category"
"This is one of those books that turns a discipline upside down –
the cold war, state socialism, eastern Europe and 20th-century
architecture all look different in the light of its findings . . .
[it is] a pioneering work of revisionist history that ought to be
read far beyond the those already interested in architecture . . .
what [Stanek] achieves here is enormous: a book that rewrites not
only the history of the cold war, but also the history of
globalisation and global urbanization."---Owen Hatherly, The
Guardian
"A fascinating snapshot of a historic moment in which the future
was in flux."---Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times
"Architecture in Global Socialism strikes a generally successful
balance between theoretical exposition and historical analysis,
liberally illustrated, suitably informed but accessible to the
general reader."---Alexander Adams, The Critic
"This incisive book presents a new understanding of global
urbanization and its architecture through the lens of socialist
internationalism, challenging long held notions about modernization
and development in the global South."---Georgina Johnston, World
Architecture News
"An epic, revisionist study many years in the making, centering on
how Non-Aligned countries in the post-war era employed
professionals from Eastern and Central Europe to plan and build
their post-colonial urban spaces."---Owen Hatherley, Tribune
"[Stanek’s] omniscience is impressive."---Jonathan Meades, Literary
Review
"[Architecture in Global Socialism] challenges cold-war
preconceptions of the roles played by those from Eastern European
socialist countries who worked collectively to urbanise and develop
the Global South during the Soviet era."---Michael Boncza, Morning
Star
"Rather than describing global urbanisation as a process that was
visited upon societies in the developing world by western
consultants, Stanek’s history reveals the role played by socialist
architects in constructing a negotiated future in which local
rulers, authorities and communities took an active interest in
shaping their own destinies. Free from big-name architects and
landmarks, Architecture in Global Socialism also gives voice to a
largely forgotten body of professionals who travelled to the
non-aligned world – neither communist nor pro-West – during the
Cold War and whose lives and careers were enriched and globalised
in the process."---Nick Leech, The National
"Architecture in Global Socialism is not only a book that
successfully lifts the curtain on the importance of the “forgotten”
socialist network with its backdrop and real effects on the life
and environment of millions of people. It is also a refreshing
point of view that allows you to look with valid optimism at the
complex reality that surrounds us and the possibilities of
understanding and describing it."---Alicja Gzowska, Polish
History
"Stanek’s book is extraordinarily well researched, clearly written
and convincing in its conclusions. Being the first comprehensive
presentation of an important chapter in recent architectural
history, there is no doubt that it will soon become a classic in
the field."---Florian Urban, Planning Perspectives
"An important correction to architectural history’s neglect of
detailed studies into West Africa and the Middle East."---Ben
Tosland, Architectural Histories
"Beautifully illustrated, extremely well researched, and
extensively documented, this is a fascinating examination of the
role played by architects, planners, and sometimes builders from
the communist countries of Eastern Europe in the architecture of
newly independent countries in Africa and the Middle East in the
post–WW II era. . . . The large format of the volume does justice
to the numerous illustrations, including drawings and buildings, a
great many in color; these are accompanied by Stanek's perceptive
comments, a host of endnotes, and an extensive bibliography. The
result is an impressive investigation of an overlooked topic in
20th-century architectural history."
*Choice*
"The book will be a milestone, not just because of the almost
encyclopaedic completeness of the contents but because it offers a
repeatable research methodology, capable of communicating multiple
dialogues between different cultures and identities."---Fabrizio
Gallanti, Arbitare
"Architecture in Global Socialism provides important lessons on
many levels. It is not only groundbreaking in terms of filling an
enormous “blind spot” in historiography, or through its development
of a methodology that is not simply postulated but works in
practice – it also proves to be relevant in discussions about the
current urban condition."---Alicja Gzowska, View: Theories and
Practices of Visual Culture
"Architecture in Global Socialism is a much needed revisionist
account of architectural practice and urbanism in the second half
of the twentieth century."---Hannah Neate, Eurasian Geography and
Economics
"A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship reassessing
socialist architecture and urban design within the Cold War’s
myriad economic and diplomatic networks . . . this book sets an
undoubtedly strong precedent for further research on socialist
architecture in a global context. . . . Architecture in Global
Socialism [is] a truly compelling study."---Holly Bushman, Art
Margins
"A book about architecture, modernity and the world system of
'actually existing socialism' in the Soviet bloc and its allies.
With rare photographs and designs, Stanek takes a tour through the
forgotten world of the future society and cities architects planned
and built."---Gerry Hassan, Scottish Review
"Architecture in Global Socialism constitutes a significant
contribution to the historiography of modern architecture in
Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East. It is the kind of
book we need more of: expansive in scope, specific in analysis, and
rigorous in argumentation. It recognizes the pluralism of actors
and contexts in the Global South, which further dismantles the myth
of a monolithic modernism and demands additional scholarship that
both revises and builds. Stanek’s book promises to remain an
essential reference for scholars and students well into the
future."---David Rifkind, Art Bulletin
"[In Architecture in Global Socialisms,] Łukasz Stanek shifts the
lens to the so-called weak actors of Eastern European socialist
states, as well as to professional groups that ‘built’
modernity—architects, but also contractors, building supervisors,
and foreign trade representatives. This excellent study thus shows,
convincingly, that global processes—in this case urbanization—were
not monolithic and one cannot talk of exceptions to an existing
rule of ‘globalization.’ —Victor Petrov, H-Net Reviews"
"Architecture in Global Socialism is an indispensable contribution
to our understanding of the multifaceted process of globalization.
. . . [The book is] the first study of its kind in architectural
history. Ambitious in scope and breadth, it compellingly conveys
the sheer scale and magnitude of the presence and work of
architects from the socialist bloc in West Africa and the Middle
East from 1957 (the year of Ghana’s independence) to the end of the
Cold War. . . . The importance of [this book] cannot be
overestimated."---Ayala Levin, Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians
"Architectural historians have recently discovered the outsize role
that the former socialist world played in the Global South in the
postwar decolonization process. Łukasz Stanek’s book Architecture
in Global Socialism . . . was a signal achievement in this respect,
as it mapped for the first time the astonishing extent of
architectural exports from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle
East."---Vladimir Kulić, The Architect’s Newspaper
"Architecture in Global Socialism provides much-needed cornerstones
to advance spatial political economy."---Franklin Obeng-Odoom,
Housing Studies
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