This volume brings together essays focused on Lithuania’s architectural and urban legacy, as well as recent developments since 1990, when the country said a firm farewell to the era of dependence and the Soviet communist regime. Nevertheless, as the book argues, the legacy of the past still dominates due to an uncritical adoption of Modernist dogmas in architecture and urban design by architects and urban designers during the last two decades of Soviet colonization. It offers a critical overview of urban developments during the last three decades which were marked by the emergence of private capital, the market economy and the growth of the real estate sector. The rapid expansion of the building industry brought new challenges to architects and urban designers, and more often than not they fell prey to the new ideology of economism, commodification and commercialism. These developments are reflected in the urban tissue and aesthetics, as well as in the present shape of urban public spaces, in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius and other large cities. The book will be useful to architectural and cultural historians, as well as to critics interested in current developments and historical trends in eastern Europe and Baltic urban and architectural developments.

This volume explores the relationship between sites, architectural symbols and cultural landscapes, and discusses a variety of issues related to the central themes of the book, providing insights into the history, as well as the present development, of cultural landscapes. Contributors to this book—architects, architectural historians and theorists—reconsider the notion of genius loci and its importance in shaping historical landscapes in the eastern part of Europe. Despite being focused on Lithuanian historical and architectural contexts, these essays will be of interest to anyone who approaches architectural and urban legacies as part of general culture. Transcending local realities, and providing insights into the making and destruction of cultural landscapes, the book will be useful to architects and architectural historians, as well as scholars dealing with urban and landscape issues not only in Europe, but also in other parts of the globe.

Europe Thirty Years After 1989 explores what happened in the former socialist countries during the last thirty years and the reasons behind these events. The authors examine how values, memory, and identity have been transforming these countries since the year 1989.

This volume explores the relationship between sites, architectural symbols and cultural landscapes, and discusses a variety of issues related to the central themes of the book, providing insights into the history, as well as the present development, of cultural landscapes. Contributors to this book--architects, architectural historians and theorists--reconsider the notion of genius loci and its importance in shaping historical landscapes in the eastern part of Europe. Despite being focused on Lithuanian historical and architectural contexts, these essays will be of interest to anyone who approaches architectural and urban legacies as part of general culture. Transcending local realities, and providing insights into the making and destruction of cultural landscapes, the book will be useful to architects and architectural historians, as well as scholars dealing with urban and landscape issues not only in Europe, but also in other parts of the globe.

Urban Planning During Socialism delves into the evolution of cities during the period of state socialism of the 20th century, summarizing the urban and architectural studies that trace their transformations. The book focuses primarily on the periphery of the socialist world, both spatially and in terms of scholarly thinking. The case study cities presented in this book draw on cultural and material studies to demonstrate diverse and novel concepts of ‘periphery’ through transformations of socialist cityscapes rather than homogenous views on cities during the period of state socialism of the 20th century. In doing so the book explores the transversalities of political, economic, and social phenomena; the places for everyday life in socialist cities; the role of professional communities on production and reproduction of space and ecological thinking. This book is aimed at scholarly readership, in particular scholars in architecture, urban planning, and human geography, as well as undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students in these disciplines studying the urban transformation of cities after World War II in socialist countries. It will also be of interest for planning officials, architects, policymakers and activists in former socialist countries.

Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era positions the long Renaissance and eighteenth century as being vital for understanding how many of the concerns present in contemporary debates on climate change and sustainability originated in earlier centuries. Traversing three physical and intellectual domains, Land Air Sea consists of case studies examining how questions of environmentalism were formulated in early modern architecture and the built environment. Addressing emergent technologies, indigenous cultural beliefs, natural philosophy, and political statecraft, this book aims to recast our modernist conceptions of what buildings are by uncovering early modern epistemologies that redefined human impact on the habitable world.

"In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk treks across Latin America to discover the activist architects, maverick politicians and radical communities rethinking their cities for the twenty-first century. From Brazil to Venezuela, Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk finds new ways to address the issues of poverty, inequality, and the barrio"--Back cover.

The monograph presents the complex analysis and evaluation of the changes of the social-spatial genotype of the large Lithuanian cities (Kaunas, Klaipėda and Vilnius) determined by the modernist urbanization of the Soviet era using the interdisciplinary theory of networks and mathematical network models as the main methodological tools. The idea behind the monograph is the following: the modernistic urbanism not only introduced the new spatial configurations in specific location of a city with a specific social scenario of public space usage, but essentially affected how city is functioning as a whole. Soviet transformations of three Lithuanian cities from 1939 till 2016 are used as a good example of above mentioned revolutionary processes. ABSTRACTING & INDEXING Modernization of Public Spaces in Lithuanian Cities is covered by the following services: Baidu Scholar EBSCO Discovery Service Google Scholar J-Gate Naviga (Softweco) Primo Central (ExLibris) ReadCube Semantic Scholar Summon (ProQuest) TDOne (TDNet) WorldCat (OCLC)

Revolutions have gripped many countries, leading to the destruction of buildings, places, and artifacts; climate change is threatening the ancestral homes of many, the increasingly uneven distribution of resources has made the poor vulnerable to the coercive efforts by the rich, and social uncertainty has led to the romanticizing of the past. Humanity is resilient, but we have a fundamental need for attachment to places, buildings, and objects. This edited volume will explore the different meanings and forms of place attachment and meaning based on our histories and conceptualization of material artifacts. Each chapter examines a varied relationship between a given society and the meaning formed through myth, symbols, and ideologies manifested through diverse forms of material artifacts. Topics of consideration examine place attachment at many scales including at the level of the artifact, human being, building, urban context, and region. We need a better understanding of human relationships to the past, our attachments to the events and places, and to the external influences on our attachments. This understanding will allow for better preservation methods pertaining to important places and buildings, and enhanced social wellbeing for all groups of people. Covering a broad range of international perspectives on place meaning from the United States to Europe, Asia to Russia, and Africa to Australia, this book is an essential read for students, academics, and professionals alike.

The advent of the new age has alerted us to the conflicted nature of historical memory which defined the 20th century while simultaneously assaulting us with new historical upheavals that demand responsibility and critical consideration. As the historical text bears traces of the writing subject, the element of deception is remarkable, meaning historical memory easily lends itself to forgery and false and subjective projections. As such, how do we think about the past, about history, about memory, and how does memory function? Is history an objective account, a collection of dry, reliable facts? Is it an imaginative narrative, tinged with nostalgia, a projection of our wishful thinking, the workings of our subjective perceptions and attitudes, our states of mind? The essays in this volume focus on the relevance of the past to the present and future in terms of the shifting attitudes to personal and collective experiences that have shaped dominant Western critical discourses about history, memory, and nostalgia. The contributors here take issue with the epistemological, hermeneutic, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of the representational practices through which we revisit and revise the meaning of the past.