Red Library: Modernist Architecture

A hundred years after its emergence, modern architecture is still controversial. Our Library this issue looks at how it came into being and some of its suppressed histories.

Bird’s eye view of the Phase I zhilkombinat, New Kharkiv ‘socialist city’, 1930. Architect: Giprograd (Pavel Aleshin, et al.).

In 2022, architecture’s social media is divided between ‘I Luv Brutalism’ accounts — all snapshots of the National Theatre — and ‘Traditional Western Architecture’ accounts apparently managed by Greek statues. Modernism, it seems, is still controversial. Except on the furthest fringes of the far right, debate does not still rage about whether or not Picasso or Stravinsky […]

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