Lecture on Soviet Modernism

Dietmar Steiner 

31 March 2014

Arch. Dietmar Steiner, director of the Vienna Architecture Center, gave a presentation of the research project titled "Soviet Modernism" on the treatment of the remaining objects from the Soviet Union. The project investigates the architecture of 14 former Soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

This presentation casts light over a somewhat obscure and highly isolated period of Soviet-style architecture dating back to around the half of the 20th century, meanwhile, when Stalinist architecture and constructivism were known in detail in the Western world. This research project deals precisely with these issues; from highlighting and identifying the typologies of these objects and to new ways of exploiting or reusing them.

In this context, Ark. Steiner started the lecture by presenting the problems of the "Pyramid" of Tirana. He emphasized her symbolism as the success of the time when it was built, putting her perceptions under her microscope after the change of the political system in Albania. The most important of it was the preservation and reuse of this typology of objects, which are part of collective memory, of value for the history of Albanian architecture. Ark. Steiner also presented a series of successful examples of similar cases in various Soviet and former Yugoslav Army artifacts.

At the end of the lecture, he asked questions from the audience about these issues that exist in our country and stressed the necessity for urgent intervention in buildings that still expect historic and architectural consideration. He also mentioned that the poor technology at the time of building these facilities and the lack of financial resources for their preservation make the situation extremely emergent. Our hope is that these buildings can be restored, rehabilitated, and/or modernized to be used in the function of society.