Ideals in Concrete - Exploring Central and Eastern Europe

"Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the definitive end of a divided Europe, Europe still leaves a divided impression, despite the accession of various Eastern European countries to the European Union. More than four decades of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe has left deep scars in Europe. The post-1945 cultural fixation of countries in Central and Eastern Europe on the USSR stands in sharp contrast with Western Europes orientation towards the United States. Although the polarization in a political and military sense belongs to the Cold War past, these days the cultural domination of the West is omnipresent. Can we still talk about a shared culture in the ‘Family of Europe’, or are East and West mutually estranged? Spinning off from this pivotal theme, the contradistinctions and similarities between East and West are subject to critical examination in a series of essays in text and image. Many of these subsidiary themes are associated with the city, since the impact of Communism is nowhere more evident than in this urban space. In the planning euphoria and the building of a completely new society on rational and scientific principles we can glimpse a mirroring of the ideas and views of Communist politicians, architects and urban planners. The contemporary phenomenon of the shrinking city calls for solutions which extend beyond restructuring, conservation or regeneration; it is sooner about constructing an identity that can rival Europe and the rest of the world"