Bloomsbury Second World Postmodernisms: Architecture and Society under Late Socialism

If postmodernism is indeed the cultural logic of late capitalism, why did typical postmodernist themes like ornament, color, history and identity find their application in the architecture of the communist-socialist Second World? How do we explain the retreat into paper architecture and theoretical discussion in societies still nominally devoted to socialist modernisation? Exploring the intersection of two areas of growing scholarly interestpostmodernism and the architecture of the socialist and former-communist worldthis edited collection stakes out new ground as the first work to chart the various transformations of second world architecture in the 1970s and 80s. Sixteen essays together explore the question of whether or not architectural postmodernism had a specific second world variant. The collection ultimately aims to demonstrate both the unique nature of second world architectural phenomena, and also to assess connections with western postmodernism. The work comprises sixteen truly diverse case studies, covering not only the vast geographical scope of the former socialist world, but also a wealth of aesthetic, discursive and practical phenomena, interpreting architecture in the broader socio-political context of the last decades of the Cold War. The result should provide a greatly expanded map of recent architectural history, which redefines postmodernist architecture in a more theoretically comprehensive and global way.