Monthly Archive: November 2003

In discussing the work of an important Slovak architect of the 20th century, we would like to investigate how changes in ideological paradigms have influenced the character of architecture, how they have limited creative freedom, how they have not led to the manifestation of pragmatic results, and how the official architectural model has been rejected.

We would like to observe how the peripheral regional society deals with radical modernizing trends and how the national-romantic tendency is enforced at the same time.

We would like to demonstrate how a richly layered architectural heritage is created thanks to a non-priori opened periphery … Read more

I.

It does not take an experienced connoisseur to notice the uncanny similarity between the widely popular art of Norman Rockwell and certain artworks of Socialist realism.

Similarly, some of the official art created in the Soviet Union during Rockwell’s most successful years could easily pass as emblematic of the Saturday Evening Post covers depicting that era.

This can be a confusing realization given that these images originated from the two very polarized ideological standpoints of that time. Is this a mere coincidence of style, or are these two forms of expression somehow more deeply bound?

The art of the … Read more

In this short essay I intend to investigate certain representational images and architectural articulations of the present-day Ukraine. By doing so, I attempt to critique the practice of architecture in a specific manner.

Recognizing architecture’s commitment to represent an invisible “reality,” which stays behind the object of representation, and architecture’s role in building up the “collective memory” – one’s reenactment into the life of community, city, nation or country, I decided to explore the ways the social space and the scope of national imagery is set into a work of architecture.

Several reasons influenced my decision. First, let’s agree that … Read more