Moscow 1937 - Architecture and Propaganda from the Western Perspective

The project focuses on an analysis of the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Architects, which took place in Moscow in 1937. The event became the first significant international platform at which the departure of Soviet architecture from avant-garde forms and the subsequent tendency towards historicising styles were intensively discussed. The importance of the entire event was enhanced by invitations to leading foreign architects, who made presentations there and were subsequently called upon to submit written reports about the Congress. The work therefore focuses on gathering and analysing the relevant texts, especially in the writings left by Frank Lloyd Wright and Pavel Janák. Based on the confrontation and analysis of the extant texts, the reception of Soviet architecture in the second half of the 1930s will be critically interpreted. For the given aims, recent art-historical methods will be applied in the socio-cultural, ideological and political context.