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From Agricultural Village to Socialist Industrial Town

Author(s): Romana Hajduková,Alžbeta Sopirová / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2023

Town of Strážske has gained recent attention because of heavy contamination with PCBs produced in Chemko Strážske, which was established in August 1952. Since then, small village in region of Upper Zemplín in eastern Slovakia had experienced a rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. Promising economic development quickly led to migration of builders and future factory workers to Strážske. New housing estates, „hostel for singles”, public and recreational amenities were built simultaneously with the factory construction. Growing population and urban development had a single goal – to support the industrial development. Industrial and spatial development changed Strážske from a small agricultural village to a thriving socialist industrial town, gaining town status in 1968. This paper aims to present the comprehensive picture of the urban development of Strážske from the 1950s to the present with an emphasis on socialist industrialization as the determinant of spatial development and socio-economic changes leading to emergence of brownfields and urban shrinkage.From Agricultural Village to Socialist Industrial Town.

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Historical Evolution and Contemporary Examples of Hungarian Social Housing

Author(s): Dávid Szabó / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2023

There is a lack of a housing system based on common social responsibility in Hungary. There were attempts to create wider social housing system after democratic transition, but the lack of coherent social support a comprehensive system has not able to be established. The small number of new social housing projects were completed in an isolated way. They have never reached a critical mass. Apart of the existing historical, outdated municipal housing stock fulfils this function.

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Rusovce Manor House and Its Neo-Gothic Rebuilding. New Findings from Artistic and Archival Materials

Author(s): Katarína Beňová / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2023

The theme of the study is the manor house in Rusovce, near Bratislava, built in the neo-Gothic style, designed by a prominent Austrian architect working in noble circles in the monarchy, Franz Beer (1804 – 1861). Between 1841 and 1846, a radical reconstruction of the manor in the neo-Gothic style was carried out, commissioned by Count Emanuel Zichy Ferraris (1808-1877). The house was the cause of public interest shortly after its completion, as is shown in the first visual depictions. The collections of the Slovak National Gallery contain two works of art which relate to the period around 1850 and evidence the artistic depiction of this monument. Alongside a 1847 watercolour, containing a view of the building and made by an unknown author (but probably the architect Beer) we have a sketchbook of drawings by Count Viktor Odescalchi (1833 – 1900) from the years 1851 and 1852, where he recorded his visits of Rusovce. In terms of extant surviving archival documents the most recent addition to our knowledge of the Rusovce rebuilding is a building journal, found in the Zichy family archive in the Hungarian National Archive in Budapest. These new visual and archival documents interpretation are the subjects of this study.

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The Concept of Homage in VAL’s E-temen-an-ki Project

Author(s): Gabriela Smetanová / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2023

The text is devoted to one of the eight projects of the Slovak art-architectural group VAL, active in the 1970s through the 1990s, the work of which falls into the category of visionary architecture. The following study is part of a broader historical-architectural research project involving VAL, one of the aims of which is an attempt to formulate an original conception of the group and to explore the possible development of their architectural thinking over time. Using the selected project E-temen-an-ki – Sheraton Hotel Babylon, it explores one of the characteristic motifs of the group’s work, which is the concept of homage, and the way it is grasped and manifested in the project.

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Visual Viewshed Simulation: Applying a 3D environment in archaeological research at Faysaliyya (southern Jordan)

Author(s): Jacek Karmowski / Language(s): English Issue: XXXI/2022

The shift from presenting and analyzing threedimensional data in 2D to displaying and analyzing them in a 3D environment is becoming increasingly prevalent in archaeological practice. This approach opens new possibilities, such as a 3D virtual reality, that archaeologists can take advantage of. This paper presents an application of the Visual Viewshed Simulation, a 3D virtual reality tool for (re)constructing the visibility of objects in the field, taking into account factors such as atmospheric and lighting conditions. This approach can provide a new way to research people–place relations and may be particularly useful in landscape archaeology.

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Ритуални паралели в архитектурата и детските игри

Author(s): Daniela Tsvetkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

The enfilade pattern is a constructive archetype found in both the material and spiritual fields. The simpler it is, the clearer its message and the stronger the faith it inspires. And vice versa: the abstract form of the structure leads to confusion. The concept of the Double Helix Enfilade of arch. Berberov suggests a complex architectural-urbanistic ensemble, the possibilities of which are revealed in the context of the creation of the Bulgarian alphabet and the phenomenon of miraculous icons. The enfilade scheme is found in rites that are transformed into transitory board games, usually with a religious or educational purpose. The most successful games in this category are based on the classic enfilade principle. The Double Helix Enfilade is suitable for successfully illustrating complex scientific theories. The games for boys and girls described in the article convey identical knowledge, but the way in which this happens is fundamentally different.

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ისტორიული „ბასიანის“ მეგალითური კულტურა

Author(s): Kakha Shengelia,Teimuraz Khutsishvili,Nodar Aronishidze / Language(s): Georgian Issue: 9/2023

First of all, it should be noted that the present letter includes the research of one part of the material culture monuments of the historical Basiani region, currently in Eastern Turkey (Fasinler, Kofrukoy) - samples of megalithic, cyclopean construction. We note here that the aim of the work is the primary, scientific presentation of the material identified by the expedition team. Part of the material found by us as a result of field-expedition works is published for the first time - thus, an attempt of scientific study is attached to it in the form of historical-cultural analysis of the region, scientific annotation of cultural monuments and their classification-dating. The issues raised within the research, conclusions, attempts to date and classify the monuments are obviously primary in nature and require future study. In the Basiani region (Turkey), within the scope of the expeditions, we traced more than two dozen monuments of megalithic culture, although the present letter will present an attempt at scientific analysis of only about ten of them. A large part of the mentioned monuments have been destroyed almost to the ground, which complicates the possibility of a more or less complete scientific reasoning about them. Monuments with plans that have survived in a relatively complete form were selected for the study - it was by taking into account planning features, construction techniques and materials that the typological differences of the given cyclopean construction were highlighted. Different types of planning, construction techniques and materials allow us to more or less determine the time range of the construction of monuments. It is important that a complete study of the mentioned monuments is impossible without archaeological excavations. Nevertheless, the art-scientific analysis of the presented group of monuments gave us important results, which became even clearer in the light of historical research. By analyzing the historical sources and studying the morphology of the monuments, it was possible to determine the general time range of the construction of this large group of almost destroyed buildings.

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In hoc signo vinces. Znaki krzyża na elewacjach domów w powiecie raciborskim

Author(s): Kornelia Lach / Language(s): Polish Issue: 7/2019

The Racibórz County is located in the south of Poland and covers the southwesternmost part of the Province of Silesia. This area is a treasury of interesting products of spiritual and material culture. A good example of this are the signs of the holy cross on the facades of houses. Most often they are found on the front walls, but they also appear on the walls facing the yard. Sometimes they are concave signs carved in plaster, and some¬times they are convex, that is, the cross is slightly above the surface of the wall. Some crosses are formed of bricks. A cross made of two mirror strips or geometrically cut mirror pieces is very popular in the studied area. The crosses are sometimes surrounded with ornaments with floral motifs and/ or the initials of the founders, or with the date of the house’s construction. This architectural detail, being a material religious symbol, proves the fa¬ith of past generations and is an image of the values that ancestors lived by, an expression of the religious, moral, aesthetic and cultural needs of the local communities.

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Does spatial autocorrelation matter for sustainable regional development planning and evaluation?

Author(s): Daniel A. Griffith / Language(s): English Issue: 65/2023

Pursuing the various existing stainability dimensions obliges leaders of societyto engage in more comprehensive monitoring of collective economic and other suppliesand demands, particularly in a geographic context. In turn, the affected inputs, outputs,resources/goods/services stocks, and generated garbage/trash waste, which all exist andare tagged implicitly or explicitly in geographic space, are definite harborers of spatialautocorrelation. Harnessing this nearly ubiquitous georeferenced data property implantsa capability of fostering efficient and effective sustainability ventures. Tessellation strati-fied random sampling to monitor environmental pollution alludes to one example of thisassertion. This paper illustrates this exemplification with an examination of 2023 air qual-ity data for Poland. In doing so, it translates a framework build upon idealized tessellationsinto one for the administrative districts of Poland. This methodological conversion enablesgovernmental organizations to participate in and oversee any intended monitoring with-out additional jurisdictional complications. Serendipitous academic discoveries include aninitial extension of the set of standard polygon shapes (e.g., square and hexagon) to thetrapezoid for spatial sampling purposes, and the possibility that spatial autocorrelationimpacts upon design-based statistics may far outweigh a violation of the conventionalrandom sampling equiprobable commandment. Finally, the discerning conclusion reachedthrough the analyses summarized in this exposé argues that spatial autocorrelation doesmatter for sustainable regional development planning and evaluation.

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Architectural Decoration of Christian Churches in Some Regions of Caucasus between 10th and 11thCenturies: An Attempt to Reconstruct the Decorative System

Author(s): Ekaterina Endoltseva / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

In course of the long-term research on the architectural decoration of Christian churches in Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia, there has been gathered a great number of important materials (that help to correct the date of some groups of artefacts and to identify some new subjects, as well as to put them in the artistic context of the life of the Byzantine Empire and its periphery in the period between the 10th and the beginning of the 11th centuries). However, lapidary collections that originate from these regions have not been studied from the point of view of function and its reliefs. It is necessary to separate the fragments of the altar barriers from the ones of the facades of the Christian churches. Studying of the analogies from the neighboring regions (modern territory of Georgia, Armenia, Asia Minor, other parts of the Byzantine Empire) and using the modern methods of research (3D reconstructions) could permit to visualize many principal monuments (small forms and monumental decoration) that originate from the above-mentioned regions. Such research is important for the studying of the artistic culture of these regions in the period of the genesis of the self-conscience of their tribes (end of the 9th cent. – beginning of the 11th cent.) and their separation from the political and cultural influence of the hegemon, that is the Byzantine Empire. Reconstruction of some monuments (altar barriers, decorative system of the facades) and drafting of the typological lines could afford us to demonstrate the meaning of the two regions for the Christian culture of the Southern Caucasus in the period concerned. It is also important to show their interrelations with the neighboring territories. Actuality of the problem is proved by the active research led, for example, in Georgia, Russian Federation, France, etc. Originality of research is proved by the fact that small forms and facade decoration of the Christian churches in Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia in the period in question have not been systematically studied yet. The previous studies focused on the paleo Christian period and the dates supposed for some key monuments have been essentially corrected by recent research. Meanwhile, this territory (Western Georgia, passes between Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Abkhazia, Southern Ossetia and Racha) played a decisive role in the formation of the original type of medieval artistic Christian conscience.

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Adaptation of places of worship to secular functions with the use of narrative method as a tool to preserve religious heritage

Author(s): Anna Maria Wierzbicka,Maria Arno / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022

Sacral objects are an important part of Europe’s religious heritage. For centuries, temples have constituted a key element in the urban morphology; they fit into the urban fabric of European cities and are permanently embedded there. Due to the current laicization of Europe, the adaptation of sacred buildings into secular functions has become a necessity for economic reasons. Their owners, architects, conservators and historians are faced with a dilemma: whether to preserve an object or transform it into another function? Places of worship cannot be considered in solely economic terms due to the identity of the place, its current function and its symbolism. Sacred spaces, apart from their function, structure and form, also have meaning. In holy sites, the symbol becomes a narrative tool. The purpose of a narrative in the cultural context is related to the site, the narrator, the recipient and the time of the narrative. Narrative research into semantic architecture, as one of the means of researching sacred architecture, has potential both in analysis and as a tool to facilitate design processes for the appropriate transformation of sacred buildings to serve secular functions.

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Particularities of wooden carved iconostases in selected post-Byzantine churches of Albania

Author(s): Laura Shumka / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022

This paper presents the data and study results of the post-Byzantine wood carved iconostases of different churches in Albania, which notwithstanding the circumstances of the communistic period have preserved to a considerable extent their typical characteristics. The paper aims to examine the stylistic and morphological aspects of the iconostasis in selected churches in relation to the architecture and tries to identify the relationships, sequences and reasons for such phenomena. The presence of iconostases in the Eastern Orthodox Church is based on the carried rituals and services that are expressed through ecclesiastical sculptures and other works. In these contexts, the iconostasis is the most dominating screen, related to the rood screen of English mediaeval churches, but contrary to them it is a closed and solid structure. In the iconostasis, architecture and wood carving workers collaborate on a large scale in order to create a solid and well-integrated frame. The analysis includes St Mary’s Monastery, also known as the Monastery of Dormition of Theotokos Mary, a medieval Byzantine church on Zvërnec island in the Narta Lagoon, southwest of the city of Vlora, southwestern Albania (SMZ); the Church of Apostles in Hoshtevë, Gjirokastra, with its spectacular interior completely covered with frescoes that became a cultural monument of Albania in 1948 (SA); and the Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, simply known as Koimissi or St Mary, in the village of Labovë e Kryqit, Gjirokastër County, southern Albania (SM).

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Values as a base for the viable adaptive reuse of fortified heritage in urban contexts

Author(s): John Ebejer,Anna Staniewska,Jadwiga Środulska-Wielgus,Krzysztof Wielgus / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

The last decades have brought a growing interest in fortified heritage research, protection and reuse in Europe as a result of the demilitarisation of numerous historic defence structures occupied by armies in many countries and used as service facilities during the Cold War. There are various approaches to the conservation of fortified heritage and adaptive reuse is one of them. The values associated with a site should constitute the departure and arrival point for any type of intervention. An essential part of the process therefore should be the appropriate identification of these values to base on them contemporary actions. Fortified heritage has values similar to other forms of urban heritage but it also possesses values that are unique to this form of architecture and landscape. This paper sets out the values that should be taken into consideration when carrying out an adaptive reuse project on fortified heritage. Based on research and on international charters, as well as the writers’ own experience, the paper identifies seven values and makes a distinction between two groups of values, namely: intrinsic (history, memory and identity; scientific and technical; territorial and architectural) and extrinsic (landscape and aesthetic; environmental sustainability; social and cultural; economic). While intrinsic values of fortified heritage are usually well described, less explored are the issues of extrinsic values. The paper presents two case studies, Zamość Fortress and Fort St Elmo, and considers how these values were taken into account in the respective projects.

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On Cooperative Housing in Socialist Czechoslovakia, 1959-1970

Author(s): Marta Edith Holečková / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2022

Although Czechoslovakia was not excessively damaged by the previous conflict, it faced the same problem as the worse affected European countries – the lack of suitable housing. This trend was both increasing and highly evident throughout the 1950s. A certain breakthrough occured at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, when cooperative housing construction was restored by legal measures and the population became actively involved in solving the “housing problem”. The study briefly reflects on the development of cooperatives in the Czech lands and presents cooperatives as the only possible alternative to the state sector at that time, which attempted to be economically independent despite the planned economy.

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Housing for the Greatest Number in Lisbon (1960s-1970s): Olivais and Telheiras. The Analysis of Domestic Space in Relation to the Ways of Life of Different Social Classes

Author(s): Ana Tostões,Zara Ferreira / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2022

Olivais Norte (1955-1959), Olivais Sul (1960-1964) and Telheiras Sul (1974) are paradigmatic cases that demonstrate how in Lisbon, with state support, developments on a city scale were able to address the question of housing for the greatest number. They embodied the idea that resolving the housing question meant thinking not only about the dwelling space, but also about developing integrated projects that balanced everything involved in the functioning of human life in an urban context. Thinking about “habitat” necessarily implied thinking about the relationships between the individual and the collective.

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The Architecture of Power and the Power of Architecture

Author(s): Laura Krišteková / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2022

Review of: Architecture and Czech Politics in the 19th through the 21st Centuries, 11.10.2022-5.2.2023. Slovak National Museum, Vajanského nábrežie 2, Bratislava, Slovakia

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Shelter Oddity

Author(s): Andrea Alberto Dutto / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2022

Nomadic shelters, along with rock music and drugs, characterized the American counterculture of the 1960s. Built for the sake of building individually or collectively, these shelters were exposed in the Whole Earth Catalog, first published in 1968. This publication brought together contributions from various fields of knowledge to provide practical instructions for the do-it-youself making of experimental structures like domes, cabins, shacks, and tipi. Although Bernard Rudofsky would have considered some of these structures as “vernacular architectures,” characterized by local anthropological affiliations, the Whole Earth Catalog considered them as universal ephemeral structures built and used by temporary collectives or isolated individuals.These hippie shelters differed from the legacy of the 1930s, when the shelter still embodied a quest for permanence. At the time of the Great Depression, back-to-the-land pioneer Ralph Borsodi and his School of Living pursued an alternative way of living in which the shelter was the key symbol of a new model of community-based self-sufficiency and homesteading. At this time, the shelter appeared intertwined with utopian communities based on the value of “simple living” but nonetheless conceived to be a permanent alternative way of living. This article outlines some general features of the contradictory legacy of the shelter as a concept suspended between impermanence and permanence.

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Constructing Temporary Urban Commons Through Civic Engagement in Bucharest

Author(s): Cristian Borcan / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2022

A largely absent phenomenon from the architectural discourses regarding the city started to take shape in Bucharest’s public spaces during the last 15 years. Part of a larger movement of civic engagement, informal civic groups emerged as a reaction to the continuous disappearance and scarcity of public resources of the city. Claiming a collective right to participate in the production processes of the city, their activism is centred on the belief that the city is a shared resource open to all. The article maps, reviews and assesses the actions of these community groups through the lens of the commons. The commons is defined here as a construct composed of three elements: a material urban resource, a community that uses the resource, and the social processes through which the community sustains the resource. The paper argues that the notion of commons might help understand collective civic actions within the city spaces, and that it can empower urban practices of spatial production based on social innovation and participatory design processes. Combining spatial practice research methodologies with participatory action research, the research is based on the author’s involvement in the phenomenon over the last years, acting from a position of architect-practitioner, researcher, co-organizer, activist and inhabitant. Although small scale and ephemeral, the micro infrastructures of civic engagement can act like test grounds for collective practices, showcasing the results of bottom-up collaborative city making. Architects and spatial planners, through specific skills and knowledges, can have a role to play in these processes.

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Challenging the Solidity of Romanian Communist Civic Centers

Author(s): Sorin Vasile Manea,Mihaela Hărmănescu / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2022

During the communist period in Romania, the construction of civic centers was one of the favorite topics of the restructuring of cities. Built by demolishing the old city centers or by adding to them, the civic center is a new urban fabric, created and erected as a result of political will. On a theoretical basis, the concept of the civic center proposed the combination of formal, configurative-spatial aspects, with elements of functionality, thus creating the place of manifestation of social life. In practice, however, they are subject to political command. As such the urban public squares often become spaces subordinated to political and administrative programs. In this sense, the urban public space, in particular the public square, loses its social character and becomes the backdrop of the typical political manifestations of the age. After the fall of communism, starting with the 1990’s, against the background of the rejection of the past and the economic decline, in the absence of adequate urban policies, civic centers are ignored and left outside the integrated, unitary, urban investment projects. Consequently, many separate, unconcerted interventions occur leading to alterations of both the design of the public space and to a certain extent, that of the buildings themselves. Originally built as a statement for the communist society, these civic centers are today part of different reality to which they must conform. The article focuses on the transformations that have taken place in the civic centers and especially on the surfaces of public spaces themselves since their establishment.

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Permanent Palaces and Transient Rooms: Uplotnenie or the Introduction to Ephemerality in the Soviet Domestic Interior

Author(s): Senem Yildirim / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2022

History of Soviet housing is a complicated one. Majority of the existing literature of Soviet housing tend to focus on what has been built during Soviet regime, which creates the illusion that a new topology of an ideal revolutionary habitat imposing “collectivities of cohabitation”, replaced the existing historical texture of or dominated the landscape of the major Soviet cities. However, the reality of Soviet housing in the first few decades of the Soviet rule were wretchedly different than what has often been depicted. Almost 95 % of this new way of communal living in major cities of Soviet Republic was achieved not through building new residential blocks but by re-purposing the existing bourgeois apartments of the Tsarist Russia as communal apartments. This housing re-distribution regulation declared in 1917 and announced to the public with the catchy slogan: “Palaces to the Workers!” came to be known as Uplotnenie (English: condensation). As a part of Uplotnenie, the interiors former bourgeois quarters in major Soviet cities were reconfigured to have communal rooms while the outer shells -the facades- of the buildings were kept intact. The interiors of these buildings were divided with partitions to hold honeycomb shells of communal rooms according to sanitary standards determined by statisticians that would allow the optimum space to survive. The added partitions gave a temporal and flexible character to the rooms. Since the Soviet state had foreseen further reductions of the sanitary living area would be necessary as the industrial areas will continue to grow, the architectural solution for condensation of the apartments had to be flexible. The walls had to be mobile and could be rearranged at will. As expected, through the 1930s to 1950s, already-installed rooms within once-bourgeois rooms were re-installed to host more rooms. Thus, the space of a communal apartment was always in flux: fragmenting, changing shape, bifurcating and ever-ephemeral. While one’s room could disappear overnight, the outer shell of “the palaces”, demised as a remnant of the bourgeois regime, remained: persistent and permanent. This article focuses on permanent “palaces” and transient rooms. Focusing on the changing blueprints of communal apartments following Uplotnenie until 1950s, the aim here is to trace the ephemeral interiors and permanent exteriors of Soviet communal apartments.

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