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Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

International Architecture Conference

PO·MO·STROIKA Postmodern Theories, Practices and Histories in Central and Eastern Europe Postmodern knows no joke

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

International Architecture Conference 17-19 May 2018 Collegium Hungaricum Berlin 10117 Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12

International Architecture Conference

preface

po·mo·stroika is a three-day long program, architecture conference and related event series, taking place in 17-19 May 2018 in Berlin, focusing on postmodernism in Central and Eastern Europe. Reflecting on the recent renaissance of the postmodern phenomena, a direct consequence of the global economic and environmental crisis in parallel to the devaluation of the traditional communication formats, the conference offers a timely re-examination of local heritage and an overview on current research topics in the region. po·mo·stroika is based on the conviction that provincial character traits elevate Central and Eastern European postmodernism to a unique state. In most countries of the region (with notable exceptions like Romania), departure from state approved modernism also meant a slow but explicit draw apart from state ideologies, ultimately from centralization, control and authority. While in the so-called West, an omnipresent ideal of comparison, the failure of the modernist utopia and rediscovery of Classical forms meant a new surge of interest towards stability, security and strength, in Central and Eastern Europe this often signalled the opposite: exploration of the unkown and unusal. Later, after 1989 postmodernism became openly associated with the rise of capitalism and the promise of democratic transformation.

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preface

The expanse of this communicative architecture meant the rise of alternative practices, forums, communities and channels. In a certain way, postmodernism might be more of a social phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe than elsewhere, as in one way or another, the whole society participated in creating its background. Authoritarian strength crumbled and gave place to an aesthetic where chaos, mistake and entropy claimed their own place. Mess was more. po·mo·stroika discusses regional and national characteristics of postmodern architecture, visual and spatial culture, urbanism and design, as well as the influence and impact of the changing political and societal systems of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980-1990s. The conference offers a special accent on Post-Modern thinking and practice in today’s architecture, the influence of the Post-Modern movement on today’s practice as well with lecturers from contemporary practitioners. po·mo·stroika is a forum, a dialogue and a platform. Thank you for joining.

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Organizers

Translations of Modernism (Transmodern) is a Budapest-based collective, founded in 2014 with support of the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre. The aim of the founders was to generate discussion and building a public platform for everyone interested in the collective history, culture and afterlife of Post-War architecture in the former Socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. After several workshops and meetings in Brno, Cracow, and Bratislava the first Transmodern conference was held in Budapest, in October 2015, with the support of the International Visegrad Fund. The second Transmodern conference took place in Berlin in 28-29 April 2016, with the title ‘Utopias and Realities: Socialist Modernism’. - transmodern.eu

Curators: Dániel Kovács art historian, curator; Dávid Smiló architect; Szabolcs Molnár architect; Attila Róbert Csóka architect

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (CHB) is the main representative of Hungarian culture in the German capital, and committed to transfer contemporary creativity and innovation. It is an interdisciplinary program venue, maintaining a profile specialized on process-oriented, site-specific, collaborational events and projects. CHB is maintained by the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Balassi Institute. hungaricum.de Paradigma Ariadné is a Budapest based architecture studio unrestricted either by means or dimension, the founders of which, when working and thinking about architecture, employ a wide range of instruments offered by their professional praxis and address the built environment in the context of the market. This is why the clients of Paradigma Ariadné include individuals, institutions, companies, and local governments as well, allowing to assist and to provide ideas and understandings wherever processes either taking place in or creating a built environment require architecture-related knowledge.

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Financial partners:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary

Organizer partners:

Mediapartners:

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program 17 May, Thursday

9:00 ARRIVAL TO CHB

Section 1. OUR BRAND NEW HERITAGE Moderated by Dávid Smiló

9:30-10:00 Greetings – Dániel Kovács Ostmodern introduction – Marco Dziallas, Mandy Fischer, Matthias Hahndorf Architectuul introduction – Bostjan Bugaric

10:00-10:30 REENACTING POSTMODERNISM: COUNTERNARRATIVES OF PRESERVATION, BETWEEN ICONICITY AND ICONOCLASM Giorgia Aquilar Technische Universität München giorgia.aquilar@tum.de A new wave of preservation battles emerges on the horizon: increasingly being placed under threat, postmodern buildings embody the ambiguities inherent to the paradox of (re)constructing an essence. And the issue becomes even more delicate when it comes to postmodern approaches reenacted today to create the most authentic replicas of lost pasts. Against this backdrop, case studies will be discussed to investigate processes of (mis)translation involved in the transmission of this legacy. Raising questions of authenticity, identity and originality, the preservation of this oxymoronic heritage asks for a rereading of quotations, forgeries, doubles: at once calling into play the iconicity of an imaginary connected to symbolic values and acting through iconoclastic gestures against in-between pasts attempted to be erased.

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program 17 May, Thursday

Section 1. OUR BRAND NEW HERITAGE Moderated by Dávid Smiló

10:30-11:00

11:15-11:45

PROBLEMATIC MOMENTS OF REFLECTION OF POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN SLOVAKIA Barbora Tribulová Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava tribulova@vsvu.sk

BRNO SPORT DREAM Šárka Svobodová, Jaroslav Sedlák 4AM/Forum for Architecture and Media www.forum4am.cz, forum4am@gmail.com

During 80s’ or 90s’ postmodern architecture began to be very popular symbol of the end of the unification in Slovakia. But its popularity slowly expired with evaporation of revolutionary atmosphere. Contextualization or regionalism firstly considered advantages became the most critical moment and postmodern architecture was often criticized for an empty formalism. It’s the visual nature of postmodern architecture that plays a big role in the relation to it. The lecture will present some moments that led to the fall of postmodern architecture in Slovakia, for example its reflection in architectural publications or the problem of insufficient protection of the architecture of 20 th century. Special accent will befocused on the presentation of postmodern architecture in Slovakia then and now.

Boby Center, the generous sport-commercial area completed in an incredible time of one year, was opened in the 90’s by the Metallica concert. That was the same sensation as the first car-wash, the laser show-hall with the largest discotheque in the city and thematic bars, a postmodern hotel or a shopping gallery and supermarket. All this was done according to the vision of a former hockey player nicknamed Boby. The dream, however, lasted only a few years, into his bankruptcy. But unclear property relations as a remnant of the wild post-revolutionary transformation influence the development of the site till today.

Coffee break

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program 17 May, Thursday

Section 1. OUR BRAND NEW HERITAGE Moderated by Dávid Smiló

Section 2. WHATEVER WHATEVERISM Moderated by Dániel Kovács

11:45-12:15

13:30-14:00

THE UNCANNY VICTORY OF SOCIALISM OVER TIME. A TALE OF DESIGN, LAND OWNERSHIP AND BUILT FORM Radu Tudor Ponta “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urban Planning radu.ponta@yahoo.co.uk

ARCHIVE OF AFFINITIES OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE POSTMODERNISM Andrew Kovacs University of California, Los Angeles afkovacs@gmail.com

The presentation focuses on unfolding the design and the urban setup leading to the erection of the House of the People ensemble, with emphasis on the description of the unintentional urban and architectural conditions that resulted behind the curtains of buildings, hidden from the public and political eyes. These places are the original product of the 1980s urban and architectural design of Bucharest: not the Postmodern façade design and urban layout that had little to do with (western) contemporary theory and practice, but their consequence. Originally devoid of any urban and design intent, and ever since abandoned to chance and to the actual use patterns of the city’s and the local residents, these areas have recently stimulated contemporary approaches that reopen the case of the original design intention of the 1980s ensemble.

14:00-14:40 HEDONISTIC ROUTINE Ana Luísa Soares Fala atelier www.falaatelier.com, mail@falaatelier.com Ongoing projects illustrating a routine of shameless mannerism within banal programs and clients who don’t know who Venturi was. 14:40-15:10

Lunch break

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METHODISM, ATTITUDISM, REFERENTIALISM, ARCHIVISM Attila Csóka, Szabolcs Molnár, Dávid Smiló Paradigma Ariadné hello@paradigmaariadne.com

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program 17 May, Thursday

Section 2. WHATEVER WHATEVERISM Moderated by Dániel Kovács

Section 3. TRANSLATIONS OF POSTMODERNISM Moderated by Szabolcs Molnár

15:10-15:40

16:00-16:30

CARNETS: FROM THE LAND OF UNBORN MANIFESTOS Andrea Cusanno, Matteo Vianello • IUAV, University of Venice instagram/carnetscarnetscarnets, carnets.magazine@gmail.com

THE SPECTRE OF POSTMODERNISM: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN 1980’S EAST GERMAN ARCHITECTURE Kirsten Angermann Bauhaus University Weimar kirsten.angermann@uni-weimar.de

A collection of personal written and drawn fragments of journeys and experiences taken from 15 architecture offices, born after the 2008 economic crisis. The personal interviews developed in the first stage, become portraits of each studio, tracing multiple trajectories, some of them quite parallel. This has permitted to deduct that the european architecture scenario shows an heterogeneous and metamorphic appearance, not only regarding the different approaches and diverse cultural backgrounds, but also for the multidisciplinary mindset towards the architectural discipline.

Late 1970s: A spectre is haunting the GDR – the spectre of postmodernism. Triggered by projects like Friedrichstadt Palace or Nikolai quarter in Berlin, East German theorists started a heated debate on that spectre. Postmodernism threatened the functionalist concept of GDR architecture and was demonized accordingly. The paper will trace the positions of theorists against postmodernism and contrast them with buildings and projects of the same time, referring to the following questions: To what extent conflicted the socialist notion of architecture with postmodernism? Could functionalist theory find an argumentation against postmodern design at all? Did architects consciously oppose that theory or were they only following the spirit of the time, i.e. examples from western architecture?

Coffee break

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program 17 May, Thursday

Section 3. TRANSLATIONS OF POSTMODERNISM Moderated by Szabolcs Molnár

16:30-17:00

17:00-17:30

ORIGINS OF SOVIET POSTMODERNISM. A LITHUANIAN CASE Martynas Mankus Vilnius Gediminas Technical University martynas.mankus@gmail.com

POSTMODERNISM IN POLAND – AN ARCHITECTURE OF RESISTANCE? Florian Urban Glasgow School of Art f.urban@gsa.ac.uk

Chronologically, the late Soviet period architecture in Lithuania was marked by the transition from modernism to postmodernism. Since the postmodern condition is considered to be characteristic to the Western world, the dissemination of postmodern concepts in the so-called Second World was a result of local perception and interpretation. What could be then the conditions for postmodernism in the late Soviet environment? The context of this kind of expression in Soviet Lithuania is twofold. On the one hand, postmodern discourse is an example of circulation and reproduction of global architectural ideas. On the other hand, it arrived at the exact moment when it could reinforce local cultural development. It is argued that contextualist and historicist approaches could be interpreted as a mix of global tendencies with the postcolonial attempt to invent ‘our own’ architecture.

Postmodern architecture in the Eastern bloc, and in Poland in particular, embodies some of the basic contradictions of architecture’s political dimension: how can an art form requiring ample resources be critical of existing power relations? How can it find alternative modes of expression in an authoritarian and seemingly almighty political system? Is there such thing as an “architecture of resistance”, and how does it manifest in a rigid planned economy? The presentation will centre on a few cases, including the Ascension Church in Warsaw-Ursynów (1980-85, Marek Budzynski and Piotr Wicha) and Holy Ghost Church in Tychy/Silesia (1978-83, Stanisław Niemczyk). These and many similar buildings evidence the cracks in a socialist system that was never as monolithic as its rulers would have hoped for. They also reflect the political upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s, which in Poland were particularly turbulent.

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program 17 May, Thursday

Continued from previous page

program 18 May, friday Section 4. MEDIUMS, SPACES, OBJECTS Moderated by Attila Csóka 13:30-14:00

The presentation argue that Polish postmodernism had a subversive potential that manifested at several levels. First, postmodern architecture appeared “through the backdoor,” as a counterproposition to the rigid framework of the communist planned economy, often without explicit support by the rulers, and often, particularly in sacred architecture, through bottom-up initiative. Second, it was critical to the socialist system in the sense that it was influenced by strong national-conservative ideas in which the Catholic Church became a catalyst of anti-socialist opposition and the vision of a church-centred, pre-socialist society. At the same time Polish postmodern architecture, unlike similar design in capitalist countries, showed comparatively little critical edge at a disciplinary level. It was only to a small extent directed at the foundations of architectural culture, and it did not aim at a revision of widely accepted architectural beliefs. Against this background my presentation will point to the flexibility of meaning that is applied to the same architectural forms in different contexts, as well as to the leeway of dissidence in an apparently rigid system.

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REVOLUTIONARY AESTHETICS AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE REGIME IN TAMÁS KIRÁLY’S WORKS Gyula Muskovics curator, Andrea Soós researcher Tamás Király (1952-2013) was a Hungarian fashion designer who emerged at the beginning of the 1980s. He became part of the underground art scene of Budapest with his cutting-edge fashion performances: his avant-garde creations, extravagant shows and street actions criticized the socialist system in a sophisticated manner. The lecture’s point of departure is the collection shown in Berlin in 1988. The garments are based on simple forms: Király combined the precisely drawn lines of Bauhaus with red and black, the characteristic colors of Russian constructivism. For progressive artists in Hungary, such as Király, the rediscovery of the Russian avant-garde was not only a source of visual inspiration, but also a way of rebelling against the political apathy of the time. The postmodern eclecticism of Király’s approach towards fashion and his DIY solutions, creating extraordinary garments out of unusual materials were unique statements in Eastern-European art, and can be considered revolutionary in an era of dictatorship.

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program 18 May, friday

Section 4. MEDIUMS, SPACES, OBJECTS Moderated by Attila Csóka

14:00-14:30

14:30-15:00

SPECTACLE SQUARE Kuba Snopek Architecture theorist, Petro Vladimirov Researcher, data collector

PAPER ARCHITECTS AND PUBLIC SPACE: ALIENATION, YEARNING AND DEATH IN 1980S RUSSIA Helena Kernan University of Cambridge helena.r.k@hotmail.co.uk

In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), postmodernism was manifested above all in urbanism, not architecture. ’Spectacle Square’ represents the sites where urban renewal took its most radical forms: the vast central squares of Stalinist capital cities. Their combined centrality and total emptiness proved irresistible: deprived of the parades for which they had been designed, these squares became magnets not only for architectural proposals, but also grassroots political action. Juxtaposing dozens of architectural projects and political protests intended to fill these vast urban voids across CEE, we ask: what kind of urban life did the postmodern architects envision, and what did they sacrifice to history?

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An investigation into the Paper Architecture movement that emerged in the USSR in the 1980s, which deliberately produced unrealisable designs for the urban space. The presentation examines how the project was both cynical and utopian, taking into account the postmodernisms embedded in its theoretical foundations. It explores the Paper Architects’ longing to transform the public space, their sense of powerlessness, and their attempt to implant the personal and the individual into the public sphere, with a particular focus on the ‘Sepulchral Skyscraper’ designed by Iurii Avvakumov and Mikhail Belov. Using literature on the Russian and Soviet approach to death, the lecture questions what a pre-fab cemetery that builds itself vertically can tell us about belonging, defiance and bodies in the era of perestroika.

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program 18 May, friday

Section 4. MEDIUMS, SPACES, OBJECTS Moderated by Attila Csóka

Section 5. WASH YOUR DIRTY MONEY WITH MY POSTMODERNISM Moderated by Dávid Smiló

15:00-15:30 15:50-16:20 THE IDENTIFIED OBJECT. INTERPRETATIONS OF RUBIK’S CUBE Dániel Kovács Collegium Hungaricum Berlin kovacs@hungaricum.de „The Rubik’s Cube is many things. It is a toy, it is a puzzle, it is a math problem, but it is also just really interesting as a design object.” (Richard The, Google Creative Lab) Rubik’s Cube, an invention of Hungarian architect and designer Erno Rubik, is a multifaceted and popular symbol of pop culture. This role is achieved by a series of interesting and often conflicted layers of meanings: the Cube’s perceived simplicity contrasted by its inner structural complexity, its popularity both as a toy and a scientific tool, or its seemingly unwavering vogue as an unmistakeable product of the 80s. Based on the author’s previous research the lecture examines the various symbolic roles of the Cube in popular culture of yesterday and today.

ARCHITECTURE OF BANKING SOCIALISM Jana Pavlová VI PER gallery post2jana@gmail.com The lecture addresses the “architecture of banking socialism” as a specific phase in the history of the Czech Republic after 1989, defined by the period of the Václav Klaus government. Its identity was formed by newly established banking institutions with a respect to their chief role in the process of economic transformation.The aim of the lecture is to interpret the architecture of bank buildings in the context of the architectural discourse of that time. This was in regards to the polemic around the role of modernism and postmodernism in the process of transformation, which was understood, on the one hand, as an act of rehumanization, democratization and a return to Europe and, on the other hand, as an extension of the neoliberal monopoly.

Coffee break

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program 18 May, friday

Section 5. WASH YOUR DIRTY MONEY WITH MY POSTMODERNISM Moderated by Dávid Smiló

16:20-16:50

16:50-17:20

POST-MODERN ATTEMPTS TO REFORM HUNGARIAN INDUSTRIALIZED HOUSING CONTSTRUCTION Ábel Mészáros Lechner Knowledge Center late-modern.blogspot.hu, meszaros.abel@gmail.com

ZUS – THE DISSONANT IMAGE OF POLISH TRANSITION. SOCIAL INSURANCE INSTITUTION (‘ZAKŁAD UBEZPIECZEN SPOŁECZNYCH) Kacper Kepinski Instytut Architektury Krakow k.kepinski@instytutarchitekury.org

During the eighties building element factories took never seen efforts to create new elements which were suitable to build fashionable, post-modern houses. Constructing companies, relied on this new palette of elements, co-operating with the architects, started to build frame-mounted estates, creating streets and squares, instead of the former serous complexes had been built from an economic point of view. New buildings were built with tent roofs, made plasticizable by different forms of balconies, and many of them had only four or five stories, instead of the former ten. Between the houses post-modern installations were built such as wooden belfries or medieval city gates. At the very end of the decade, when it turned out that large-scaled public housing projects would be finished soon, adherents of industrialized building construction made further attempts for survival: they announced design contests for type designs of family houses and row houses made by panel. In addition, traditional downtown houses were made of panel. All in wain: the out-of- date, hard-to-modernize pre-fabricated building technology has died out during the early nineties.

After ‘89 Polish institutions started building their new image. Social Insurance Institution (Zakład Ubezpieczen Społecznych), operating since 1934 with great architectural heritage from interwar period, was one of the fastest growing branches of polish administration. Well known for its ‘palaces’ all over Poland, it became the symbol of extravagance and waste of public funds. Despite the country-wide scale and fast pace of construction, all ZUS’s buildings have some similarities, which make up a strong and common image, easily recognizable to the average recipient. This image, which was supposed to be a symbol of modernization and opening, became a burden associated mainly with mismanagement, detachment from the problems of the society of the transformation period and often also an example of architectural kitsch.

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program 18 May, friday

Section 6. REWRITING HISTORY BOOKS? Moderated by Szabolcs Molnár

17:40-18:10

18:10-18:40

SUPPRESSION AND APPROPRIATION: FROM CRYPTOPOSTMODERN TO PSEUDO-REGIONALISM Andor Wesselényi-Garay Hungarian Academy of Arts – Research Institute of Art Theory and Methodology wga418@gmail.com

REWRITING POSTMODERNITY: ANARCHISM AND THE GRAZER SCHULE Giacomo Pala Faculty of Architecture, Innsbruck University www.giacomopala.com; info@giacomopala.com

On the Hungarian architectural horizon, postmodern came to be mainly synonymous with narrative/figurative kitsch, stylistically speaking, and was hence associated with the lack of value and superficiality from the very start. Highly complex psychological formations of suppression and devolution emerged at a time when the term postmodern was applied as a stylistic swearword to Imre Makovecz, whose work was gaining increasing recognition internationally, by his critics whose own houses were not only referential but par excellence examples of “complexity and contradiction”. It is easy to see, therefore, that the non-organic contemporary architecture of the past decades had no choice but to organise itself along the lines of historical reminiscences, regardless of the fact whether the final outcome took on the guise of neo-modernisms or occasionally minimalist architecture; it was and still is a far cry from the Avant-garde.

The presentation will propose a „rewriting” of postmodernism, at first starting from some observationy the French philosopher Lyotard. First, it is proposed a general reassessment of the concept of Post-modern, looking at its philosophy rather than at its architectural expressions. In order to provide such a re-reading, it is studied a specific case-study: the architecture produced by the architects usually referred as the exponents of the “Graz Schule” (including, but not limited to, Günther Domenig, Szyszkowitz + Kowalski). More precisely, by looking at their work, it is attempted the proposal of a rewriting of the concept of postmodernism in architecture, intended as an “anarchist epistemology”, rather than an architectural style: subjective expression, participatory processes, alternative uses of digital technologies. Finally, a number of theoretical questions in relation to the politics of postmodernism are introduced, by looking at theories such as anarchism and post-anarchism.

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program 18 May, friday

program 19 May, saturday

Moholy-Nagy Hall CHB INCUBATOR: CONCERT – FERENC SNÉTBERGER AND THE NEW GENERATION

10:00 IBA 1987 GUIDED TOUR WITH ARCHITECT GUNNAR KLACK

20:00

The International Building Exhibition Berlin (Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin, IBA Berlin) was, according to Time magazine, “the most ambitious showcase of world architecture in this generation”. The IBA section for the construction of new buildings (IBA-Neu) was established in 1979, headed by director Josef Paul Kleihues. Culminating in 1987, this urban renewal project generated hundreds of constructions in West Berlin by the most important architects of the time: Mario Botta, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Oswald Mathias Ungers and many others. Today, IBA sites offer an unmatched insight into the architecture of the 1980s.

CHB Incubator is a residency program for talented Hungarian music students, initiated by Collegium Hungaricum Berlin in cooperation with Snétberger Music Talent Centre, an educational centre founded by famous guitar artist Ferenc Snétberger. As part of the residency program, CHB hosts a concert on 18 May 2018, featuring this semester’s fellows, Orsolya Janszo (vocals) and Attila Farkas (piano), along with Ferenc Snétberger (guitar), Toni Snétberger (drums), Fabian Leu (contrabass), Diána Danyi (vocals) and Benjamin Urbán (piano)

The tour will be guided by architect and researcher Gunnar Klack, member of the Forschungsinitiative IBA 87 team.f-iba.de The number of participants is limited. Registration is required at kovacs@hungaricum.de Registration deadline: 18 May, 12am

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notes

Postmodern knows no joke

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PO·MO·STROIKA Postmodern Theories, Practices and Histories in Central and Eastern Europe International Architecture Conference

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