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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War

Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War

Stanek, Lukasz

Hardcover

Architecture HistoryRegional ArchitectureSocial Movements

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0691168709
ISBN13: 9780691168708
Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
Published: Jan 14 2020
Pages: 368
Weight: 3.50
Height: 1.10 Width: 8.10 Depth: 11.20
Language: English

How socialist architects, planners, and contractors worked collectively to urbanize and develop the Global South during the Soviet era

In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East in order to bring modernization to the developing world. Architecture in Global Socialism shows how their collaboration reshaped five cities in the Global South: Accra, Lagos, Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait City.

Lukasz Stanek describes how local authorities and professionals in these cities drew on Soviet prefabrication systems, Hungarian and Polish planning methods, Yugoslav and Bulgarian construction materials, Romanian and East German standard designs, and manual laborers from across Eastern Europe. He explores how the socialist development path was adapted to tropical conditions in Ghana in the 1960s, and how Eastern European architectural traditions were given new life in 1970s Nigeria. He looks at how the differences between socialist foreign trade and the emerging global construction market were exploited in the Middle East in the closing decades of the Cold War. Stanek demonstrates how these and other practices of global cooperation by socialist countries--what he calls socialist worldmaking--left their enduring mark on urban landscapes in the postcolonial world.

Featuring an extensive collection of previously unpublished images, Architecture in Global Socialism draws on original archival research on four continents and a wealth of in-depth interviews. 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.

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