30 C O N T E X T 1 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 Conference report: DoCoMoMo-EAHN conference on mass housing Mass housing in the socialist bloc In 2007 Edinburgh College of Art hosted a day conference, ‘Trash or Treasure? Towards a rescue archaeology of modernist mass housing’. The event was organised by DoCoMoMo’s international specialist committee on urbanism and landscape in collaboration with the Saltire Society – long noted for its inclusive approach to creative excellence in Scotland’s cultural life. Post-war mass social housing is one of modernism’s most ambivalent legacies. Its sheer extent defies conventional approaches either to selective listing or to conservation, the wastefulness of trashing it all is self-evident, and the parameters for re-establishing respect for it are varied and unresolved. A follow-up conference was held at the College of Art in September 2011, this time in collaboration with the European Architectural History Network. Aimed at presenting an overview of the state of present studies into post-war mass housing, the conference explored the geo-political and socio-cultural disparities, as well as similarities between east and west Europe through a series of comparative case studies, with a special focus on east Europe – where the relative extent of construction and survival is generally greater than in the west, and arguably better appreciated by its inhabitants. In the decades following 1945, the construction of mass housing, especially in the socialist bloc, was an urgent necessity. The requirement for accommodation for workers was met by harnessing the technologies of prefabricated construction. Denser point blocks and slabs satisfied comprehensive land-use strategies. This was a state-sponsored solution to the housing crisis and modern living standards for society. There were two conceptual bases: standardised design and construction techniques; and a belief in egalitarian living conditions. Evaluation today, therefore, is a complex relative issue that concerns experimentation in technology and architecture, and revolution in politics and society. This 2011 conference took the form of an intensive day of presentations by a wide-ranging list of speakers from across Europe, securely rooted in Scotland by a preparatory, introductory evening focused on the 1960s overspill new town of Cumbernauld – both experimental and revolutionary – and followed by a housing-themed day trip to Glasgow. The underlying message of the conference was that urban planning, architecture and technology were not the determinants of success or failure where mass housing were concerned; rather, their cultural, political and social contexts. International modernism did not take regional let alone national contexts into account. Hence the recognition of value today is highly varied. Whereas the manifestations of resistance to mass housing have long been strongest in the UK, across much of the eastern bloc extended families have become well-established in mass housing neighbourhoods, and aspirations for change are limited to improvements in the quality of internal fittings and external landscaping, and the use of colour to ameliorate drab facades. Heritage value is not perceived as intrinsic; rather, a variable whose meaning is as much social as physical. From the academic perspective, the conference’s conclusion was that neglect of the study of post-war mass housing has meant that there are large gaps in its inventorisation; and from the conservation perspective, of the social as well as technical means to treasure rather than trash it. Beria Bayizitlioglu, architect and consultant in housing quality Housing in Kaliningrad, Russia: post-war mass social housing is one of modernism’s most ambivalent legacies. Mass social housing in Tirnovo, Bulgaria
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