Juliana Maxim

This is a book about the architecture conceived and produced in the first two decades of communism in Romania, and the central role it played in transforming the city into a new, collectivist environment, and housing into a revolutionary act. It challenges descriptions of the postwar Soviet Bloc artistic context as one dominated by anti-modernist tendencies. Each chapter covers the rise and development of a different aspect of socialist architectural culture: urban planning techniques, visual propaganda, the writing of architectural history, and open-air museums of folk architecture. By analyzing two decades from four different perspectives, the book illuminates the mechanisms whereby modern architecture became essential to the formation and consolidation of Romania’s socialist identity.