Modernism and the State

9:30 - 11:30 am
Goldsmith Lecture Hall (GOL 3.120)

confirmed participants:

Vladimir Kulić

Vladimir Kulić had a busy year of teaching and researching his dissertation, "Land of the In-Between: Architecture and Politics in Socialist Yugoslavia 1945-65." He also presented his work on several occasions. In April 2006, he gave a talk entitled "The 'Other' Modernism or Ur-Modernism? Dušan Grabrijan, Juraj Neidhardt, and a Modern Architecture for Bosnia," at the 59th Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in Savannah. On September 28, he presented another paper, "Shifting Otherness(es): Foreign Perceptions of Architecture in Socialist Yugoslavia," at the 9th International Conference of DOCOMOMO in Ankara, Turkey. In August 2006, he also co-chaired a session on the "Socialist City" at the conference of the European Association for Urban History in Stockholm.

After a long delay, Vladimir's article "Žene u arhitekturi: imena, brojevi, stratetegije" [Women in Architecture: Names, Numbers, Strategies], came out in the book Mapiranje mizoginije u Srbiji II [Mapping the Misogyny in Serbia, Vol. 2], edited by Marina Blagojevi (Belgrade: AŽIN, 2005). Another article, "Politika arhitekture" [Politics of Architecture], was published in the Slovenian architectural journal Arhitektov Bilten [XXXV, no. 167/168 (November 2005): 82-87]. His piece about the visual rhetoric of an icon of Yugoslav modernism, the building of the General Staff and Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, is in the final stages of production and is expected to appear in 2007: "Architecture and the Politics of Reading: The Case of the Generalstab Building in Belgrade" will be published in the book Visible Culture: Design Artifacts and Participated Meaning, edited by Leslie Atzmon (West Lafayette, Indiana: Parlor Press, forthcoming 2007).

Juliana Maxim

Juliana Maxim is an art and architectural historian and an assistant professor in the Art Department at the University of San Diego. Her work centers on 20th century art, architecture and urbanism in Eastern Europe and on the relation between representation and political regimes, as well as on the question of "other" modernisms. Her PhD dissertation, titled The New, the Old, the Modern: Architecture and its Representation in Socialist Romania, 1955-1965 (MIT, 2006) examines how the architectural culture of postwar Romania sustained the regime's attempt to transform inhabitation and the city into a new collectivist environment.

Michelangelo Sabatino

Michelangelo Sabatino (PhD) was trained as an architect and architectural historian in Venice and Toronto. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture of the University of Houston. His research and teaching interests are focused upon late 19th and 20th century European and North American architecture, urbanism, and design. The theme that has fueled his research, writing, and teaching is the conflicted relationship of modern architecture to history. Whether interested, indifferent or openly hostile to the past, the majority of architects working throughout the twentieth century contended with its disquieting presence as they forged new visions of the future. His doctoral work explored the influence upon Italian modernism of folk art and architecture. His current research explores the role of the "primitive" in modern architecture.

His publications have appeared in journals such as Casabella, Harvard Design Magazine and JSAH. He has contributed an essay to Foro Italico (2003) and co-edited Il nuovo e il moderno in architettura (2001). Sabatino has received fellowships and grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Georgia O'Keefe Research Museum, the Wolfsonian-FIU, and the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada). He has chaired sessions at the SAH and CAA and has organized an international symposium on Italian design in Toronto.

Danilo Udovički-Selb

Professor Danilo Udovički-Selb specializes in twentieth-century architecture and has served as invited scholar at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Center for the History and Theory of Architecture, Zurich; Ecole Nationale Superieure de la Creation Industrielle, Paris; and School of Architecture at Versailles, France. At the University of Texas at Austin, his involvement with interdisciplinary teaching has resulted in courses for the Center for Post-Soviet and East-European Studies, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Center for the Study of Modernism. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Center for European Studies and his research has been funded with seven grants from the School of Architecture, the Center for Russian, East-European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES), the Center for European Studies (CES), and the University.

Recent publications include an essay, "Between Modernism and 'Socialist' Realism: Invocations and Imaginaries at the Rest Homes and Sanatoria of the Northern Caucasus, 1928-1938," in The Architecture of Hospitals, edited by Cornelis Waagenar, (Groningen: Groningen University Press, 2005). In December, 2005, he published the lead article "Les Engagements de Charlotte Perriand pour L'Exposition de 1937 à Paris: Le Corbusier, 'Les jeunes '37' et le Front Populaire," in the exhibition catalogue of the Centre George Pompidou in Paris dedicated to the French Modernist and co-founder of the UAM, Charlotte Perriand. He also gave an address at the opening of the exhibition on December 6. Professor Udovički-Selb's other recent scholarly activities include a paper at the Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in Savannah, a paper at the March 2006 international symposium "La colline de Chaillot et ses palais," held in Paris, and a paper at the 2006 DOCOMOMO international conference in Istanbul and Ankara.

Rosemary Wakeman

Rosemary Wakeman is an Associate Professor in the History Department and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham University in New York. She is the author of Modernizing the Provincial City: Toulouse, 1945-1975 (Harvard University Press, 1997) and has also edited Themes in Modern European History Since 1945 for Routledge Press. She has published numerous articles on French urban planning history and recently co-editing (with Charles Rearick) a special issue on Paris for French Historical Studies. She also teaches as a Visiting Professor at the Institut d'urbanisme de Paris at the University of Paris XII and contributes regularly to the Revue Urbanisme including most recently a special issue on New York (October 2006).

Wakeman has just completed a book on public space in Paris during the period 1945-1958 that focuses on how space and landscape were imagined and reshaped in the aftermath of war. She is editing a special issue on the current renovation of the Les Halles district in Paris for French Politics, Culture & Society. She is also writing on the phenomenon of "Suspended Slabs: Utopian Space, Lost Space" for the Revue Histoire Urbaine.

Moderator: Danilo Udovički-Selb

What happens to modernism once it becomes the "official style" of institutional architecture? With rare exceptions (Czechoslovakia, Turkey, early Soviet Union), before WW II the relationship between modernist architecture and institutional environment was a tangled one--suffice it to mention the competitions for the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva (1927) or the Palace of Soviets in Moscow (1932). But the situation radically changed after the war. Within a few years, modernist architecture won the official acceptance of Western states, and soon after Stalin's death, the same happened in the Eastern block. At the same time, the Third World countries--both colonies and the newly independent ones--also looked for an architectural expression for their own institutions. What were the modes of appropriation of modernism in these radically different contexts? What meanings were assigned to modern architectural forms in them? How do we methodologically approach such potentially complex situations?