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.

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)

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.

"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.

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 the nineteenth and early twentieth century Kyiv was an important city in the European part of the Russian empire, rivaling Warsaw in economic and strategic significance. It also held the unrivaled spiritual and ideological position as Russia’s own Jerusalem. In Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands, Serhiy Bilenky examines issues of space, urban planning, socio-spatial form, and the perceptions of change in imperial Kyiv. Combining cultural and social history with urban studies, Bilenky unearths a wide range of unpublished archival materials and argues that the changes experienced by the city prior to the revolution of 1917 were no less dramatic and traumatic than those of the Communist and post-Communist era. In fact, much of Kyiv’s contemporary urban form, architecture, and natural setting were shaped by imperial modernizers during the long nineteenth century. The author also explores a general culture of imperial urbanism in Eastern Europe. Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands is the first work to approach the history of Kyiv from an interdisciplinary perspective and showcases Kyiv’s rightful place as a city worthy of attention from historians, urbanists, and literary scholars.

Mapping Vilnius is the first book in a series promoting Critical Urbanism as a way of analyzing the changing relationships between citizens, the state and the international context in shaping urban spaces in Central- and Eastern Europe. In this participatory research into two districts of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, mapping is used as a process-oriented technique to visualize these relationships in transition. It book was edited by the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism at the European Humanities University in Vilnius. Among the authors are Felix Ackermann, Vaiva Andriušytė, Philip Boos, Benjamin Cope, Dalia Čiupalaitė, Inga Freimane, Elisa Gerbsch, Tomas Grunskis, Max Hellriegel, Alina Jablonskaya, Justas Juzėnas, Anu Kägu, Andrei Karpeka, Yagmur Koreli, Miodrag Kuč, Siarhei Liubimau, Miglė Paužaitė, Indre Ruseckaitė, Tomáš Samec, Aliaksandra Smirnova, Kamilė Užpalytė, Gerda Vaitkevičiūtė, Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė, Clemens Weise, Lennart Wiesiolek

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 financial crisis of 2007/2008 prompted governments across Europe to adopt austerity measures aimed at the reduction of their escalating budget deficits. Higher Education in Austerity Europe explores how the resulting cuts in public expenditure - together with the increasing reliance on the privatisation of services - have impacted on higher education directly through the reduction of public sector provision and indirectly as a result of the social and political consequences of that reduction. Moreover, it explores how the effects of these economic policies have differed markedly across the national regions of Europe, with the result that inequality has increased significantly both within and between national regions, and this, in turn, has led to social and political dislocation within and across communities. It is only by viewing higher education within this broader context that we can begin to understand the full implications of the austerity measures introduced over the last ten years. Jon Nixon draws together leading scholars to delve into the complexity of impact and response generated by these measures. Part 1 focuses on cross-European perspectives; Part 2 on the impact of austerity measures within national systems; and Part 3 on new perspectives and possibilities. The volume also includes considered responses from 'outsiders' by academics located in Asia, Australia, and the USA, providing an additional dimension to the analysis. As well as analysing the full impact of austerity measures across some of the worst hit national regions of Europe, the contributors also identifying openings and possibilities for renewal.

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.