Molnár - Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe

The built environment of former socialist countries is often deemed uniform and drab, an apt reflection of a repressive regime. Building the State peeks behind the gray faade to reveal a colourful struggle over competing meanings of the nation, Europe, modernity and the past in a divided continent.

Examining how social change is closely intertwined with transformations of the built environment, this volume focuses on the relationship between architecture and state politics in post-war Central Europe using examples from Hungary and Germany. Built around four case studies, the book traces how architecture was politically mobilized in the service of social change, first in socialist modernization programs and then in the postsocialist transition.

Building the State does not only offer a comprehensive survey of the diverse political uses of architecture in post-war Central Europe but is the first book to explore how transformations of the built environment can offer a lens into broader processes of state formation and social change.

Virg Molnr is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and her work focuses on the politics of the built environment and urban culture.

THE ARCHITEXT SERIES

Edited by Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King

Architectural discourse has traditionally represented buildings as art objects or technical objects. Yet buildings are also social objects in that they are invested with social meaning and shape social relations. Recognizing these assumptions, the Architext series aims to bring together recent debates in social and cultural theory and the study and practice of architecture and urban design. Critical, comparative and interdisciplinary, the books in the series, by theorizing architecture, bring the space of the built environment centrally into the social sciences and humanities, as well as bringing the theoretical insights of the latter into the discourses of architecture and urban design. Particular attention is paid to issues of gender, race, sexuality and the body, to questions of identity and place, to the cultural politics of representation and language, and to the global and postcolonial contexts in which these are addressed.

Framing Places
Kim Dovey

Gender Space Architecture
Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and lain Borden

Behind the Postcolonial
Abidin Kusno

The Architecture of Oppression
Paul Jaskot

Words Between the Spaces
Thomas A. Markus and Deborah Cameron

Embodied Utopias
Gender, social change and the modern metropolis
Rebeccah Zorach, Lise Sanders and Amy Bingaman

Writing Spaces
Discourses of architecture, urbanism, and the built environment
C. Greig Crysler

Drifting Migrancy and Architecture
Edited by Stephen Cairns

Beyond Description
Space Historicity SingaporeEdited by Ryan Bishop, John Phillips and Wei-Wei Yeo

Spaces of Global Cultures
Architecture Urbanism Identity
Anthony D. King

Indigenous Modernities
Negotiating architecture and urbanism
Jyoti Hosagrahar

Moderns Abroad
Architecture, cities and Italian imperialism
Mia Fuller

Colonial Modernities
Building, dwelling and architecture in British India and Ceylon
Edited by Peter Scriver and Vikram Prakash

Desire Lines
Space, memory and identity in the post-apartheid City
Edited by Noleen Murray, Nick Shepherd and Martin Hall

Visualizing the City
Edited by Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann

Framing Places 2nd edition
Kim Dovey

Re-Shaping Cities
How Global Mobility Transforms Architecture and Urban Form
Edited by Michael Guggenheim and Ola Sderstrm

Bauhaus Dream-house
Modernity and GlobalizationKaterina Redi-Ray

Stadium Worlds
Football, Space and the Built Environment
Edited by Sybille Frank and Silke Steets

Building the State importantly demonstrates how architecture and urbanism construct political objectives by other means. In charting the changing roles and evolving self-identity of the architectural profession in two key parts of Central Europe between 1945 and 2000, Virg Molnr adroitly reveals the complex dialogue among modernism, socialism and nationalism.

Lawrence J. Vale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

This book offers a fresh perspective on the interaction between architecture and politics in East Germany and Hungary during state socialism and its aftermath. The author's approach, combining case studies and historical ethnography, is a delight for any reader, including architectural historians.

Pl Ritok, Hungarian Architecture Museum

Virg Molnr

Building the State

Architecture, Politics, and
State Formation in Post-War
Central Europe

First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 Virg Molnr

The right of Virg Molnr to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Molnr, Virg Eszter, 1973
Building the state: architecture, politics, and state formation in post-war central Europe/
Virg Molnr.
pages cm -- (The architext series)
Includes bibliographical references.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Architecture and society--Europe, Central--History--20th century. 2. Architecture-
Political aspects--Europe, Central--History--20th century. I. Title.
NA2543.S6M595 2013
720.1'03094--dc23
2012031306

ISBN: 978-0-415-62293-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-85763-5 (pbk)

Typeset in Frutiger
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

This book began its life an embarrassingly long time ago as a doctoral dissertation. When a project takes so long to mature, one incurs numerous debts in the process. I was very lucky to have a generous, intellectually rigorous, and exceptionally committed group of faculty members at Princeton University to teach me the tricks of the trade. I thank my formal committee members and a handful of informal but regular interlocutors for their advice, support, and patience: Michle Lamont, Frank Dobbin, Marion Fourcade, Anson Rabinbach, and Viviana Zelizer have followed this project from the very start and are chiefly responsible for making it better. I am also grateful to Bob Wuthnow and Paul DiMaggio for their comments on the final product and the first invaluable tips on how an unwieldy dissertation could be transformed into a readable book.