Contentious Spaces

The architectural heritage of socialist modernism and conservation in former Eastern Bloc countries.

Contentious Spaces explores the heritage of state-socialist architecture and urbanism, examining the socio-political, economic, and cultural processes that shaped these developments. The articles collected in this volume investigate both the conservation and preservation of this heritage, as well as the historicisation of modernist architectural vocabulary in the contemporary era. Moreover, the texts consider the heritage of state-socialist architecture and urban planning in relation to the global built environment and current geopolitical and socio-cultural processes.

By engaging with marginalised actors and spaces within post-socialist discourse, Contentious Spaces expands existing scholarship and acknowledges the architectural heritage of women architects and minorities, as well as the links between political centres of power and modernist architecture in geopolitical peripheries and their contemporary heritage. Geographically, the chapters engage with East-Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and other post-socialist spaces worldwide.

The World Without: On Shards and Lost Languages
Carmen Popescu

Chapter 1. The Material Heritage of Socialist Modernism: International Perspectives
Maja Babić and Tino Mager

Part I: State-Socialist Urban Heritage and Ideology

Chapter 2. Artefact or Monument? Afterlives of Socialist Relief Sculpture between Conservation and Repoliticisation
Emma Louise Leahy

Chapter 3. (In)tangible Socialist Heritage of Yugoslav Youth Labour Brigades : Can We Think the (Un)Imaginable?
Nikolina Bobic

Chapter 4. Romania’s Heritage of Socialist Sports Buildings: The Case of the Bacău Sports Hall
Ruxandra Balcanu

Chapter 5. Remaking Nature : Environmental and Urban Industrial Development during and after State Socialism, the Case of Industrial Navoi and Aktau (formerly Shevchenko) in the 1960s–2020s
Nadezda Gobova

Part II: Appropriating State-Socialist Urban Heritage

Chapter 6. When Does a Space End? Yugoslav Socialist Memorials and the EU ‘Anti-Totalitarian’ Reckoning
Tatjana Aleksić

Chapter 7. Above Nostalgia, Beyond Stereotypes : Tourism, Feminism and Activism as Paradigms of Contemporary Revalorisation of Modernist Legacies in Post-Yugoslav Space
Jovana Janinović

Chapter 8. Beyond the Narrative of the “Wild 1990s” : Cultural and Architectural Legacy of Soviet Industry
Polina Gundarina and Marina Sapunova

Chapter 9. Cafeneaua Guguţă: Heritage and Civic Activism in Chișinău
Abigail Karas

Chapter 10. Breka: Its Potential as an Affordable and Liveable Neighbourhood
Elsa Turkusic Juric

About the Contributors

Maja Babić

Maja Babić is an architectural historian. She is Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Groningen.

Tino Mager

Tino Mager is Associate Professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Groningen and President of ICOMOS Germany.

Abigail Karas

Elša Turkušić Jurić

Nikolina Bobic

Tatjana Aleksić

Carmen Popescu

Carmen Popescu is professor of architectural history at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val-de-Seine.

Jovana Janinović

Emma Louise Leahy

Nadezda Gobova

Ruxandra Balcanu

Polina Gundarina

Marina Sapunova