Martin Heidegger changed the way we conceive of people’s relations to spaces and time. Dasein is the untranslatable German word used to refer to the dynamic modality of being that is situated in an ecosystem of meaning. The way individual daseins construct meaning and identities for themselves is bound to the environment that people find themselves in. Through this lens, Lisa Guenther explores the way the architecture of solitary confinement informs the internal reality of prisoners and weaponizes their bodies against themselves (78). Architecture has the capacity to bring people together or even drive them to insanity, it holds the capacity to mobilize people to befit the wishes of a maker, a storyteller of sorts, the architect. The architect breathes life into a barren world. In K.A.C. Creswell’s Theory on the First Mosque in Islam one of the earliest Pre-Hijra mosques was requested to be merged by the Prophet (PBUH) with the mosque of As’aad in order to give “enough room for the growing Muslim community” (Ayaad 193). This may seem like an easily over passable thought but what if the mosques hadn’t been merged? What if the buildings remained separate and the early Islamic philosophies succumbed to interpretation and distortion of core ideologies. In other words, what if the two mosques adopt differing ideological interpretations of Islam and the communities which bear them became caustic and violent? Architecture allows the stories of humankind to take form, and in turn architects and the ideologies which drive them, project a charged contribution to the legacies which shape history. This paper will focus on the pre-colonial inception of modernity and the ideologies which shape it, as well as on postcolonial modernity in relation to violence. Lazarus comments on the influences of “constitutive anti-Marxism” in his paper The Politics of Postcolonial Modernism (771), which brings forth an interesting dimension to modernity, a Cold War one. How fitting when the Berlin Wall stands not only as a symbol of violence, or more aptly the lack of it, in history but also in post-colonial modernity. This paper will thus explore the relationship between modernist architecture and the presence or absence of violence in the years of the Cold War.

 

The United States and the Soviet Union chose many battlefields during the cold war struggle, one of these arenas was the race for exporting architectural styles and the ideologies they incorporate into the urban fabric of other nations (Faulks 1).  American modernity took form in the mass developments of middle class homes in suburbias, and was underscored by western liberal ideologies and values, such as those of “family, anti-communism, individualism and democracy” (Faulks 2). How so? Post-colonial Modernism emphasized the rational utilization of materials as well as the functionality of structural innovation (Modernism). Modernism in the western world aimed at providing affordable housing in large volumes. Walter Gropius, for example, was a renowned modernist architect who was commissioned to design the Dessau-Torten housing estate in West Germany, one of the first mass populating projects of its kind (Dessau-Törten). The importance of this feat, however, lies in the introduction of important economic ideologies of western democracies. Classical liberal economic ideologies, a staple of western democratic thought, leveraged the promise of upward economic mobility and increased standards of living for the middle class (Legacy). Modernist architectural projects such as the notorious Levittowns and other such suburbias prioritized cost-effectiveness and rational use of space over ornamentation and artistic expression, and thus provided middle-class families with the affordable security of homeownership. The role of architectural modernity in embodying western democratic thought and economic objectives began serving a role in the ideological warfare of the cold war through exporting architecture. 

 

Modernist architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis once described the ideal city as a place “which satisfies the dreamer and is acceptable to the scientist” (Schmiedeknecht). This dichotomization of the two driving spheres of architecture, design and functionality, artistic expression and urban constraint, closely parallels the schism between democracy and communism. On one side American architects are motivated by a bottom-up approach to modernism, one that serves to uplift people through design cues promoting gathering, familial bonds, and communal bonds. On the other side, lied Soviet modernism which drew on the Stalinist and Soviet realist architectural styles accentuating the elimination of superfluities (Hutchings 109). Under Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev “excesses” were condemned and instead standardized projects became the architectural norm. Where Soviet modernism breaks from Western modernism, however, is in the form it took. These standardized projects were often apartment buildings with standardized units as opposed to homes (Architecture Daily). Under a Leninist communist economy, the soviet union faced a housing shortage crisis, which Khrushchev and the Lenin regime vowed to tackle (Architecture Daily). Russian modernism was rising amidst an already weakened economy and had to prioritize function over design when striking the balance. Consequently, not only was the urgency of development a large factor in the form modernism took in the second half of the 20th century in Russia, but also the very ideologies which contextualized it. It is important to note that there’s a case and a crucial assumption to be made for subjective rationality in modernism. This subjectivity of the architect gives ground to discrimination, which in turn contributes or subdues violence. We’ve commented on the implications of the larger subjective interpretations of rationality in modernity, the ideological conflict between democratic and communist values, but subjectivity and the conflict it may breed can occur based on class cleavages as well. 

 

While communist Russia grounded the legitimacy of its political authority on its mission to emancipate the proletariat, it instead fed into the pre-existing oligarchical structures which centralized wealth and power. While Khrushchev played into the economic disparities by commissioning only standardized modernist building projects with strictly controlled apartment sizes (Zemaitis), socialist realism’s grandeur was rising in parallel. Socialist realist architecture was characterized by grand roman columns and opulent murals, and served the role of displaying the grandeur of communism (Zemaitis). While Lenin carried himself like a protector against economic class disparity, steadily marching towards that socialist utopia Marx so wondrously dreamed of, he was cementing a legacy of class awareness and economic disparity. A legacy embued into the architecture which immortalizes this history of man. An age-old debate in the realm of architecture brings into question whether “science [has] welcomed architecture as an intellectual discipline, a field of research as such?” (Cohen 15). To view architecture purely as a science would be to prescribe a formulaic and unified conception of what architecture ought to look like. On the other hand, architecture as the sole product of a dreamer would be intangible, abstract and wishfully elusive rather than bound by function. Soviet modernity was championed by a centralized state, a single formulaic answer to the urban landscape, driven purely by those who have assumed power over the landscape rather than given it to those who will populate it. 

 

In contrast, modernity in the United States was proliferated domestically and internationally by both private and public entities, such as the Rockefeller, MIT, Harvard University, and the United Nations. While modernity was being dispensed by individuals, “there wasn’t a single American institution not cooperating in the ‘war on communism’” (Provoost). American civil society and political engagement unified the population’s ideological stance which in turn accelerated the proliferation of western modernity in the global urban landscape. Given that the cold war was defined by the struggle of the two superpowers to accrue allegiance from the developing world, the comparison of the ideologies which grounded western modernity as opposed to soviet modernity is important. Modernist urban planning became the staple of architectural projects in developing nations (Provoost). While both US enterprise and political forces were mobilized, I propose that the absence of research on Russian architectural exports of modernity (Provoost) can be partly attributed to the absence of civil engagement and the sterility of monolithic action from the Russian government. Does that, however, mean that western modernity and the democratic ideologies which drive it struck that balance between the dreamer and the scientist which Russia has arguably failed?

 

In 1960s Berlin the urban landscape was polarized. West Berlin saw a “more abstract approach to international modernism” while East Berlin was fraught with “social realist murals that transmitted the state ideology” (Muller). Western modernity and the opportunistic spirit it’s pronounced with during the cold war sought to radicalize architecture and take progressive risks. Given that individuals lie at the core of western liberal democratic values, as well as at the forefront of the architectural vision for Berlin and the world, western modernity succumbed to the visions of these dreamers. A central critique of this form of modernism and its urban planning was the naivety of a number of these dreams, as well as its neglect of the past and the buildings which carry it. Contrastingly, East Berlin sought only the affirmation of a Lenin Communist regime through its urban cues (Muller). Western modernity held a universality to it, that of man’s indomitable will to create something new, a message that lies deep at the core of the individualistic values of democracy. Soviet modernity, on the other hand, failed to speak to a universality, and instead grounded itself on the functionality of the structure. What separates democratically motivated modernity from communist modernity? Where does the balance between these two forces lies? Where does the balance lie between remembrance of the past and vision of the future? And would the tide of the cold war have steered towards the Soviet Union if it proposed a more accessible and engaging form of modernity to the world, and in turn disseminated its communist values more effectively? These are all questions that we may never truly know the answer to, but who’s mechanics and distinctions capture an important aspect of our role as architects in laying the foundation for our envisioned future. 

 

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