Re-Centring the City: Global Mutations of Socialist Modernity

294 Pages·2020·33.691 MB·English

by  Jonathan Bach, Michal Murawski

Re-Centring the City
FRINGE
Series Editors
Alena Ledeneva and Peter Zusi, School of Slavonic and
East European Studies, UCL
The FRINGE series explores the roles that complexity, ambivalence
and immeasurability play in social and cultural phenomena. A cross-
disciplinary initiative bringing together researchers from the humanities,
social sciences and area studies, the series examines how seemingly
opposed notions such as centrality and marginality, clarity and ambiguity,
can shift and converge when embedded in everyday practices.
Alena Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the School of
Slavonic and East European Studies of UCL.
Peter Zusi is Associate Professor of Czech and Comparative Literature at
the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of UCL.
Re-Centring the City
Global Mutations of Socialist Modernity
Edited by Jonathan Bach and Michał Murawski
First published in 2020 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk
Text © Contributors, 2020
Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2020
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1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.
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Bach, J. and Murawski, M. (eds.). 2020. Re-Centring the City: Global Mutations
of Socialist Modernity. London: UCL Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/
111.9781787354111
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ISBN: 978-1-78735-413-5 (Hbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-78735-412-8 (Pbk.)
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787354111
Contents
List of figures viii
List of contributors xvi
Preface xviii
Acknowledgements xix
Introduction: Notes towards a political morphology
of undead urban forms 1
Jonathan Bach and Michał Murawski
Part I: Moscow, point of departure 15
1 Centre and periphery: a personal journey 17
Vladimir Paperny
2 Fortress City: the hegemony of the Moscow Kremlin
and the consequences and challenges of developing
a modern city around a medieval walled fortress 37
Clementine Cecil
3 Appropriating Stalinist heritage: state rhetoric
and urban transformation in the repurposing of VDNKh 44
Andreas Schönle
4 The city without a centre: disurbanism and
communism revisited 63
Owen Hatherley
5 Mutant centralities: Moscow architecture in the
post-Soviet era 73
Daria Paramonova
v
Part II: Off-centre: palatial peripheries 77
6 Berlin’s empty centre: a double take 79
Jonathan Bach
7 Phantom palaces: Prussian centralities, and
Humboldtian spectres 90
Jonas Tinius and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll
8 Palatial socialism, or (still-)socialist centrality in Warsaw 104
Michał Murawski
Part III: Looking inward: re-centring the sacred 115
9 The Architecture of the Seventh Day: building the
sacred in socialist Poland 117
Kuba Snopek with Izabela Cichon´ska and Karolina Popera
10 Post-shtetl: spectral transformations and architectural
challenges in the periphery’s bloodstream 129
Natalia Romik
11 Eat, pray, shop! The mosque as centrum in the
Swedish suburbs 149
Jennifer Mack
Part IV: Looking upward: power verticals 167
12 Verticality and centrality: the politics of
contemporary skyscrapers 169
Stephen Graham
13 Partitioning earth and sky: vertical urbanism in
post-socialist Mumbai 192
Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao
14 Vertical horizons: the shadow of The Shard 199
Tom Wolseley
Part V: Looking outward: hinterlands, diffusions, explosions 209
15 New geographies of hinterland 211
Pushpa Arabindoo
vi CONTENTS
16 De-escalating the centre: urban futures and
special economic zones beyond poststructuralism’s
neoliberal imaginations 224
Patrick Neveling
17 Explosion, response, aftermath 232
Joy Gerrard
Part VI: Things fall: (after)lives of monumentality 243
18 Domestic monumentality: scales of relationship
in the modern city 245
Adam Kaasa
19 On an alleged thought of inflicting harm on a Lenin statue 253
Oleksiy Radynski
20 We’re losing him! On monuments to Lenin,
and the cult of demolition in present-day Ukraine 257
Yevgenia Belorusets
Index 269
CONTENTS vii
List of figures
Figure 1.1 Samuil Paperny’s path from Hlusk to
Moscow. Map data: Vladimir Paperny. 18
Figure 1.2 Lev Paperny’s path from Hlusk to Kyiv.
Map data: Vladimir Paperny. 19
Figure 1.3 Nachman Maizil’s path from Hlusk to Tel
Aviv. Map data: Vladimir Paperny. 20
Figure 1.4 Gitl Maizil’s visit to the Papernys’ apart-
ment in Moscow, 1965. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 21
Figure 1.5 Nikolai Ozerov’s four-year exile in Sibe-
ria, 1920s. Map data: Vladimir Paperny 22
Figure 1.6 Grigory Zakharov’s column ‘Abundance’
in the underground hall at Kurskaia
metro station, 1949. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 24
Figure 1.7 Vladimir Paperny’s graduation design
project at the Stroganov Art Academy,
1964. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 24
Figure 1.8 Vladimir Paperny and Evgeny
Bogdanov’s ‘Isolo-Sphere’, Artemide
competition entry, never submitted.
Source: Vladimir Paperny. 25
Figure 1.9 Pavel Balandin’s border-guard sculpture
at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition,
Moscow, 1953. Courtesy of the Shchusev
State Museum of Architecture, coll. 11, 11790. 28
Figure 1.10 Matvei Manizer’s border-guard sculpture
at Ploshchad’ Revoliutsii metro station,
1938. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 29
Figure 1.11 Architect Leonid Poliakov, sculptor
Georgy Motovilov. Interior of the
entrance pavilion to Kaluzhskaia metro
station, 1949. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 30
viii
Figure 1.12 Two scales: a balcony inside a balcony
on the façade of Arkady Mordvinov’s
building ‘B’ on Gorky Street, 1938.
Source: Vladimir Paperny. 31
Figure 1.13 ‘No Trespassing’ sign on the door behind
the ornate gates at the entrance to the
Arbatskaia metro station.
Source: Vladimir Paperny. 32
Figure 1.14 Georgy Shchuko and others. The main
pavilion at the All-Union Agricultural
Exhibition, Moscow, 1954.
Source: Vladimir Paperny. 33
Figure 1.15 Georgy Shchuko and others. The main
pavilion at the All-Union Agricultural
Exhibition, Moscow, 1954. The size of
the door corresponds to the size of the
Lenin statue in front of the building.
Source: Vladimir Paperny. 34
Figure 1.16 The cover of Paperny’s PhD certificate,
2000. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 35
Figure 1.17 The inside of Paperny’s PhD certificate,
2000. Source: Vladimir Paperny. 35
Figure 3.1 Central Pavilion, VDNKh. Source:
Andreas Schönle. 45
Figure 3.2 Ukrainian Pavilion, VDNKh. Source:
Andreas Schönle. 46
Figure 3.3 A. F. Zhukov’s plan for VSKhV. A. F. Zhu-
kov, Arkhitektura vsesoiuznoi sel’skokho-
ziastvennoi vystavki. Moscow: Gos. izd.
literatury po stroitel’stvu i arkhitektury,
1955. Public domain. 50
Figure 3.4 Oceanarium. VDNKh. Source: Andreas Schönle. 51
Figure 3.5 Computer Engineering Pavilion between
1967 and 2014. VDNKh. Public domain. 53
Figure 3.6 Computer Engineering Pavilion in 2016.
VDNKh. Source: Andreas Schönle. 53
Figure 3.7 ‘The Crypt’ in the Russian Pavilion. 15th
Venice Architecture Biennale, 2016.
Source: Andreas Schönle. 55
Figure 3.8 ‘The Motherboard’ in the Russian
Pavilion. 15th Venice Architecture
Biennale, 2016. Source: Andreas Schönle. 56
LIST OF FIGURES ix