The research project proposes to write a history of fantasy in Late-Soviet architecture, focusing on its mediating role in the transformative effects of postwar modernisation. From the 1960s onwards several architects realigned their work according to new technological discourses – including cybernetics and scientific forecasting – producing design projects where the predicted future was subjected to the scrutiny of precise calculations. By the 1980s, fantasy had transformed in the plural scenarios of ‘paper architecture’ that often took a critical stance towards modernity, corresponding to how cybernetics recognised the future as open to alternative historical trajectories. The project “Forecast and Fantasy in Late Soviet Architecture” will argue that rather than being determined by top-down ideological doctrines the spatial and artistic production of the period should be seen as negotiating technological changes and new scientific discourses, participating in the ways in which the experience of modernity unfolded in the Socialist block.
Principal investigator: Andres Kurg
Senior research staff: Mari Laanemets, Epp Lankots.
Other research staff: Karin Nugis Vicente, Kristina Papstel, Ingrid Ruudi.
Duration of the project: 2020–2024.
Project type: Personal Research Funding Start-up Grant PSG530.
See in the Estonian Research Information System.