Post-war/Cold-War in the Region

Khan-Magomedov’s publication Pioneers of Soviet Architecture (1987, English translation) provided scholars outside of the socialist world with an introduction to what we now know as Russian Constructivist architecture and how it gave shape to the early ideals of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Sigfried Giedion did not mention the Constructivists or the entire field of Soviet and Soviet-influenced architecture in Europe in his seminal Space, Time and Architecture. In fact Soviet architecture barely rated a mention aside from in the work of a small group of specialist scholars in the late 1960s. European and North American scholarship on the Bauhaus eventually introduced the Constructivists and looked elsewhere as a response to the perceived ills of architecture in Western Europe. At the time of Khan-Magomedov’s publication, a massive compilation and examination of previously unseen visual and documentary material, western architectural historiography especially in the English-speaking world was at best uninformed, at worst disinterested in architecture of the communist and socialist world. For those working and teaching or learning in western institutions, architectural history was missing the part played by the architects and educators in the communist and socialist worlds.

Once the moment of the Constructivists was appropriated into the teleology of the western avant-garde, the architectural shaping of communist and socialist society beyond the 1920s was further distanced and increasingly derided. And yet after World War II, a paradox emerges. The “post-war” is a predominant trope for the history of modern architecture and its instrumental role in the modernisation of society; but how can the post-war be conceptualised as separated from the Cold War, when both are internal to the same periodisation of history? It is the tension between this chronological overlap and yet discursive absence that has given rise to the theme of this issue of Fabrications, and which is presented by the formatting of the diagonal slash, reminiscent of the theoretical double coding of the 1990s, a decade that marks the end of the Cold War. Following the defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany by Stalin’s Red Army in 1945, the world was caught in the grip of a political confrontation between the USA and the USSR, one which dominated the international environment for more than 40 years (1947–1991). While the Cold War meant the end of WWII in Europe, wars erupted in the Asia-Pacific region, most obviously in Vietnam and Korea, but also in Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia to name just a few. The Cold War is the flipside to the Post-War, and drawing attention to it alters how we understand the history of this period.

The rise of scholarship on the architectural history of communist Europe in the last decade or so has dramatically changed this scene of omission. There are now large collections of book publications with particular and focussed subjects, outstanding archival research and progressive analytical developments; sessions in major architectural history conferences including EAHN (2010 onwards, and thematic conference 2015) and SAH; and specialist themed issues of architecture history journals. Two key specialist issues include Carmen Popescu’s 2009 issue in Journal of Architecture, with introduction titled, “Architecture of the Communist Bloc in the Mirror;”¹ and Łukasz Stanek and Tom Avermaate, 2012 issue in Journal of Architecture with introduction by Stanek “The Second world’s architecture and planning in the Third World.”² Popescu raises questions about how to address architectural histories of those parts which were always in Europe but separate ideologically, where an additive approach is problematic, and a deeper historiographic examination is required. Stanek outlines an expansive field of the architectural operations steered by socialism during the Cold War period. Each are elaborated by formative papers in this new wave of architectural historiography.

This momentum is largely centred in Europe and the USA, and mostly generated by scholars with links to the places remade by socialist and communist states in the twentieth century. Such a surge of research interest and scholarship is not reflected in the architectural historiography of Australia and New Zealand, and this contrasts the prolific research on the post-war period, a major focus underpinned by a narrative of modernisation and new typologies, mid-century architectural aesthetics and urbanisation, along with a focus on key heroic architects. Yet, rarely is this examined within the perspective or framing of the Cold War; the underlying alliances with Britain and the US are implicit but the politics, or the bias of complicity is not discursively examined. The anti-communist political landscape and its influence on the omission or perception of architectural production in communist environments is one aspect of a limited historiography. Nor is the role of communism and the Communist party within Australia and New Zealand noted in architectural research, and historiography assumes “communism” as external to the Australian political landscape. Studies of émigré architects from war-torn Europe are promoted via their link to the Bauhaus, often accompanied by an oversight about the work and lives elsewhere, accentuated by negativity towards USSR and highlighting their lucky escape. Derogatory assumptions and political bias rather than analytical criticism drive this approach.

The full force and complexity of architecture – its instrumental role for emerging independent nations after colonisation, the sites of ideological battle, and the possibilities of exchange and collaboration – during the Cold War is all but flattened by a platform that assumes an anti-communist political position towards architectural historiography. In this sense, Australian architectural historiography which aspires towards a neutral and non-political professionalism results in replicating the dominant political alliance with the USA and UK. Australia and New Zealand’s strategic pivot to the United States and its formalisation in the ANZUS Treaty (1951) makes explicit its Cold War position and implications for the region. The security alliance was the foundation for a much more visible US footprint in Australasia, expressed in architectural terms not only through embassies but also military bases and other security installations such as the one at Pine Gap near Alice Springs. The US presence in the wider region was also dramatically expanded in the period, with facilities established or expanded up and down the western rim of the Pacific. These spectacular political landscapes and their implications in architectural history may then generate a shift from the complicit passivity of an apolitical historiography.

Studies of the region draw on post-colonial discourse but less so examine Cold War geopolitics in which the role of “export socialism” often in the very processes of decolonisation, are at best marginalised, and often omitted. Projects which may exemplify very different influences and details of exchange and collaboration in the four decades of Cold War are overlooked. There are exceptions, including the work of Peter Scriver on the architectural contexts in India, especially as leading proponent of the Non-Aligned Movement (see Forum this issue). Scholars in Asia frame this historical period in dialectical terms, written as a dialectic between socialism and capitalism. Modernist projects in Pakistan were funded by the Ford Foundation and served as a mark of distinction against the political orientation of India which was supported by the USSR. Duanfang Lu’s Third World Modernism examines architectural development in Asia during the Cold War. Architectural development and aid programmes escalated in the post-war period; they were directed by the United Nations and became the stage for the battles of Cold War political ideologies. This issue of Fabrications seeks to initiate a discussion of the political participation of architectural production in the post-war period through this alternate lens of the Cold war.

With the forthrightness of a film director, Stuart Leslie targets what many of us perceive as the centre and core of the architecture of the Cold War, the radomes (radar + dome), and the architectural infrastructure of satellite surveillance stations, in his paper focussing on those constructed by the USA to gaze at the manoeuvres of USSR. The essay is suspenseful in its pace and captures the excitement of espionage cinema, but its analytical force lies in the absolute and impressive technical know-how and detail. This surpasses what the well-informed architectural historian can muster and reveal Leslie’s scholarship in histories of science. It is difficult for the reader not to immerse themselves in the combination of play and exactness of this highly techno-scientific field. However, this is not what underpins the paper. Concepts like “military modernism” are outlined as an aesthetic, but equally outlined as contracts between governments, corporations, universities and heroic figures presenting power and knowledge at work on the ground. Equally, while not a focus, Leslie’s careful insertions of points about indigeneity and labour raise questions about the collateral effects of these big ideas. It is timely as Australia again embarks on new satellites to boost national security capability.

Meticulously examining the impact of the intersection between state territorial and geopolitical agenda and the bureaucratic management and effect of its implementation Young Il Seo addresses the dwellings at the South and North Korea border as Demilitarised Zone following its political and ideological division. His examination on two phases of the border dwelling constructions, the tomakjip (temporary border settlements) and the chŏn-lyak-ch’on (state organised strategic villages), brings to the study of border settlement an examination that is both temporal and spatial. Young Il Seo argues that both phases are generated by the political agenda of the state, (the first as “manufactured chaos” and the second as “strategic villages”). This historical positioning alters the approach to a subject that is conventionally examined as a spatial pattern and constrained by visual mapping. Interwoven with the analysis of state politics is a narrative of the South and North Korea border migrants – the subokmin (which roughly translates to “people in the recovered territory”) – and how these two forms of dwellings affected their lives. Young Il Seo’s literary intricacy develops a “caring” approach and contrasts the ways that border populations are politically exploited.

Schnoor’s paper on Ernst Plischke examines the political landscape and the role of a talented émigré architect could have in the period on either side of the end of World War II in New Zealand. While Plischke was an “enemy alien” and had to appear before the Enemy Alien Tribunal in Wellington in September 1940, his work is central to the modernising aspiration of the governing Labour Party. Schnoor’s detailing of the bureaucratic procedures, ambivalences, frustrations that are integral to Plischke’s work with the Department of Housing Construction incrementally builds a political shadow on his architectural inspiration and capacity, and their possible manifestations. Schnoor contextualises Plischke’s ambitions for the Naenae project in European modernist planning. But it is the shocking event of the “poll” effecting its disappointing and tragic outcome, that Schnoor handles carefully. While careful to observe evidence, this paper raises questions about Plischke’s “collectivist” ideas and their reception in the development of the welfare state, and its history in New Zealand, rather than Europe, and further highlights a gap in the examination of architecture and the state, or its wider political contexts.

Focussing on Australia’s diplomatic buildings in New Delhi, India, Hogben and Gower, outline the important political strategy of such buildings and architecture typology in the post-war period. Implicit in the paper is the significance of India as a newly independent state, which joined many other states in the “decolonisation of Asia” a region within which Australia perceived an increasing role. This was not least because internal to these new nations was the role of communist political parties in the post-war period. The paper presents a detailed study of the ideas, the designs, the siting and the final construction of an Australian diplomatic compound comprising Head of Mission, a chancery and residential buildings. Its attention to the selection of the architectural style and the changes of the design discusses how this was integral to communicating the political direction of Australia in the region, both to itself as a national narrative, and to its regional neighbours. The New Delhi compound provides a basis for further discussion of this typology that navigates outward and inward political terrains, as it was a precursor to other Australian diplomatic buildings in Asia.

Goad’s paper identifies how minimally the Cold War is examined within Australian architectural historiography, and proposes five themes to reorient post-war architectural history through the lens of the Cold War. In the first three themes, the lens of the Cold War requires a reorientation of architectural typology or “type” to structures of extraction, refinery and surveillance. Detail of major corporations, indigenous landscapes, planned settlements, and their links to government aims for alliance with the USA thus sketches a very different picture of post-war Australia. Goad carefully navigates Australia’s strong alliance with the USA, as something known yet not discussed in architectural history. The last two themes expand the scope of the political in architecture and urbanism by discussing firstly, the growing protests in the streets, especially in the 1970s, and secondly, via diplomacy and scholarships. Goad’s paper develops an overview of the post-war period through this new lens of the Cold War, by drawing attention to new typologies and layers to architectural history. It opens a challenge to how more conventional typologies of this period can be both rethought and rewritten.

The Forum including position papers by key scholars in this field recasts the lens of the Cold War, not only as a missing component in architectural historiography but as a different lens that redirects architectural questions of that transformative period of modernism.

Together, the papers and the Forum generate an understanding of the Cold War implications for architectural historiography generally, and particular to Australia and New Zealand, and the region. We hope this initiative generates new discussions about this period of history.

Notes

1. Carmen Popescu, “Introductory argument: architecture of the Communist Bloc in the mirror”, special issue Journal of Architecture, vol. 14, no. 1 (2009): 1–6.

2. Łukasz Stanek : “Introduction: the ‘Second World’s’ architecture and planning in the ‘Third World’,” The Journal of Architecture, 2012 17:3, 299–307