Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland

"Garish churches, gabled slab blocks, neo-historical tenements - this book is about these and other architectural oddities that one would not expect under an authoritarian socialist regime. It is about the committed individuals that rendered them possible in spite of repressive politics and persistent shortage. It is about a very different background of postmodern architecture, far removed from the debates over Robert Venturi, Philip Johnson or Prince Charles-a context in which postmodernism stood not for world-weary irony, but for individualized resistance against a collectivist dictatorship, a yearning for truth and spiritual values, and a discourse on distinctiveness and national identity. Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland argues that this new architecture was more than just a symptom of the beginning political and economic transformation. Rather, it was itself an agent of change. The changing style and priorities in architecture, the most public and expensive of the visual arts, contributed to incremental change beneath what otherwise appeared to be a rigid authoritarian regime. The book analyses the dynamics of this change. It shows that to a large extent postmodern architecture was promoted by dedicated people who took advantage of cracks in the system. These included not only architects but also public servants and priests, acting courageously without explicit support by the rulers, despite tight economic circumstances. Their work did more than just tweak the appearance of the built environment, it changed society in late-socialist Poland and continues to do so today. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in architectural history, postmodernism, and socialist history"--