archint_1989_cz:de: Iconic Ruins? Representative Socialist Architecture in the four Visegrad Countries

Recorded 05.12.2019 at Tschechisches Zentrum Berlin


Focusing primarily on politically prominent post-war public
investment projects in the former state-socialist countries Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (also called the Visegrad
Group), the evening explored where the state’s ambitions of power
and the architects’ creative ideas connected and where they
clashed. How is the society’s relationship to these buildings and
how is each of the Visegrad countries handling this heritage from
the socialist era?


Featuring:


Petr Vorlík (CZ), architect and architecture historian.
Co-curator of the Iconic ruins? exhibition. He works in the
Department of Theory and History of Architecture at the Faculty
of Architecture, Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague.


Peter Szalay (SK), architecture historian and theoretician. He
works as a researcher at the Department of Architecture,
Institute of History at the Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Bratislava.


Anna Cymer (PL), architecture historian and journalist. She is
the author of the book Architektura w Polsce 1945 - 1989
(Architecture in Poland 1945 - 1989) and co-curator of the Iconic
ruins? exhibition.


Dániel Kovács (HU), art historian, architectural critic, chief
editor of Epiteszforum.hu and curator of the Hungarian Pavilion
at the 17. International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.


Bettina Güldner (DE), art and design historian, curator of art
and design exhibitions.


On the occasion of this discussion a small exhibition Iconic
Ruins? tracing the evolution of socialist architecture in the
countries of the Visegrad Group will be shown. The exhibition was
created as part of Shared Cities: Creative Momentum - an
international network for creative discourse at the intersection
of architecture, art, urbanism and the sharing economy, co-funded
by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.


archint_1989_cz:de is an event series focusing on the
architecture and monuments from the post-war period and how they
have been dealt with since the Velvet Revolution and the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989. Why does our freedom often manifest as
the freedom to destroy or simply just to forget? Can these
actions be seen themselves as not only interventions but as
actual monuments to the regained freedom, reunification and
post-1989 transformation? Should these works of art and
architecture be disconnected from their political connotations
and instead be respected for their artistic value? Is it a
question of East – West division? Here, Czech and German
architectural theoreticians will present their new projects and
discuss them.


Partners of the event series: Embassy of the Czech Republic in
Berlin, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Polish Institute Berlin,
Slovak Institute in Berlin, EUNIC Berlin.


Graphic design: Iveta Krajcirova, Deconstructed