CO N FE R E N C E PR O C E  E D  I N G S  
The 6th Baltic Sea Region 
Cultural Heritage Forum 
From Postwar to Postmodern – 20th Century Built Cultural Heritage 
RIKSANTIKVARIEÄMBETET
 
 
The 6th Baltic Sea Region Cultural Heritage Forum 

From Postwar to Postmodern
 
  
 
 
 
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The conference logotype shows a variety of different coloured triangles. This pattern is taken from the windows of the 
University Church of Kiel, part of the University Campus where the conference took place. The church was built in 1965 
and is an appropriate as well as a very beautiful symbol for this conference. Please read more about the architecture of 
the 1960s and 1970s on Kiel University Campus in the article of Dr Nils Meyers in this publication. 
Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) 
P. O. Box 5405 
SE-114 84 Stockholm 
Tel. +46 8 5191 80 00 
www.raa.se 
registrator@raa.se 
Riksantikvarieämbetet 2017 
The 6th Baltic Sea Region Cultural Heritage Forum: From Postwar to Postmodern 
Editor Maria Rossipal
 
Cover illustration: Konrad Rappaport, The Science Communication Lab, Kiel. 

Photo (back cover): Małgorzata Rozbicka; KRIPOS/Scanpix; Karin Hermerén; Torben Kiepke;  

von Bonin, National Board of Antiquities, Finland.
 
Copyright according to Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, unless otherwise stated.
 
Terms on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5
 
ISBN 978-91-7209-800-8 (PDF)
 
ISBN 978-91-7209-801-5 (Tryck)
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
Content 
5 Foreword 
6 Introduction 
8 Joint Statement 
Session I: History and Heritage – Postwar 20th Century 
Built Cultural Heritage in the Baltic Sea Region 
11	 MART K ALM | Whose Happiness is Better? The Architecture of the 
Industrial Societies around the Baltic Sea 
21	 DAVID CHIPPERFIELD | Restorations and Reconstructions:
Reflections on Berlin 
28	 PETER ARONSSON | The Role of Cultural Heritage and the Use of 
History in the 20th-Century Baltic Sea Region 
34	 MARIJA DRĖMAITĖ | Long Life of the Socialist Modernism in the 
Baltic States 
40	 MAŁGORZATA ROZBICK A | Poland’s Postwar Architectural Heritage:
A Record of Political, Social, and Economic Change 
51	 SIRI SK JOLD LEXAU | Lost Cultural Heritage: The Aftermath of the 
Bombing of the Government Quarter in Oslo and the Need for 
Collective Memory 
58	 JĀNIS LEJNIEKS | Rebranding the Soviet Regime’s Built Cultural Heritage 
64	 HÅK AN HÖKERBERG | Difficult Heritage: Various Approaches to 
Twentieth-Century Totalitarian Architecture 
Session II: Demolition, preservation or adaptive re-use?
Contemporary challenges for Postwar 20th Century 
Built Cultural Heritage 
73	 WESSEL DE JONGE | Heritage for the Masses. About Modern Icons 
& Everyday Modernism, Historic Value & a Sustainable Future 
86	 PANU LEHTOVUORI & GEORGIANA VARNA | Urbanism at a turning  
point – Modern, Postmodern, Now 
99	 DENNIS RODWELL | The Values of Heritage: A New Paradigm 
for the 21st Century 
106	 PER STRÖMBERG | Creative Destruction or Destructive Creativity? 
Negotiating the Heritage of the Cold War in the Experience Economy 
113	 ANDRZEJ SIWEK | Protection of the Architectural Heritage of the 
Post-war Poland – Current Status and Future Prospects 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
    
 
 
Session III: Management of the Postwar and 
Postmodern Built Cultural Heritage 
123	 SUSAN MACDONALD | Moving on: approaches and frameworks for 
conserving the heritage of the postwar era and beyond 
134	 TORBEN KIEPKE & K ATJA HASCHE | Between Rejection and  
Adaption. Listing buildings of the period 1950–1990 
141	 K ARIN HERMERÉN | What about the art? Challenges of Authenticity 
and Preservation of Art Related to Buildings and Architecture 
149	 CISSELA GÉNETAY & ULF LINDBERG | A contemporary approach to 
assessment and prioritisation of cultural heritage 
155	 RIIT TA SALASTIE | Policy making – Preservation Methodologies for 
the Modern Built Cultural Heritage in Helsinki 
Outside the conference programme 
163	 NILS MEYER | Architecture of the 1960s and 1970s on Kiel University 
Campus – Heritage Value and Assessment 
169	 HANNU MATIKK A | Working Group Coastal Heritage 
170	 SALLAMARIA TIKK ANEN | Working Group Underwater Cultural
Heritage 
171 List of contributors 
175 The Baltic Region Heritage Committee 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
5 
Foreword
 
Heritage is primarily not about the past but rather 
about our relationship with the present and the 
future and our ability to deal with a constant 
changing society. Therefore there is a strong need 
for understanding the active processes of making 
cultural heritage. To ensure a sustainable develop­
ment of society, based on democratic values, there 
is need of constant reflection on what we choose to 
preserve from the past. This process of understand­
ing our past must also encompass what is some­
times called difficult heritage. 
The interest for 20th century built cultural heri­
tage coincides with the changes of the framework
and organization of the heritage sector. Given the
quantity and quality of monuments and buildings
from the postwar 20th century period, different
methods of conservation, in terms of fabrics and
constructions, need to be further discussed and
tested. As do methods of inventory and assessment.
The changes in roles and responsibilities, the dif­
ferent positions in conservation theory and the var­
ious approaches to assessment have implications for 
how the heritage sector’s work can be conducted. 
Today, the legacy of postwar municipal planning 
and architecture in the Baltic Sea region, faces 
great challenges, both socially and economically 
not least, politically.
Deeper knowledge of postwar 20th century 
built heritage, particularly postmodern built her­
itage, is decisive. There is also a strong need to 
elaborate common approaches for cultural assess­
ment and conservation. In order to tackle the spe­
cific challenges of postwar 20th century built heri­
tage there is a strong need for closer cooperation in 
our region. A closer collaboration can contribute to 
a mutual better understanding of the various values 
that can be ascribed to this period from a Baltic 
Sea region perspective and can also contribute to a 
better understanding of the region’s shared history. 
Lars Amréus 
Director General 
Swedish National Heritage Board 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6 
Introduction
 
The theme of the 6th Baltic Sea Region Cultural 
Heritage Forum was From Postwar to Postmodern – 
20th Century Built Cultural Heritage. The objective
of the conference was to raise awareness of the built 
cultural heritage of the postwar and postmodern 
period in the Baltic Sea region. The Forum was 
arranged in cooperation between the Swedish 
National Heritage Board and the State Archaeo­
logical Department Schleswig Holstein under the 
supervision of the Baltic Region Heritage Com­
mittee (the former Monitoring Group on Cultural 
Heritage in the Baltic Sea States). 
The national heritage agencies, represented in the 
Baltic Region Heritage Committee (BRHC), have 
all been invited to contribute in conceptualizing 
the main theme. The working group on 20th Cen­
tury Built Heritage has in close collaboration with 
the Baltic Region Heritage Committee elaborated 
the theme.
The three main sessions mirrored the main 
themes of the Forum, namely History and Herit­
age – Postwar 20th Century Built Cultural Heritage 
in the Baltic Sea Region; Demolition, Preservation or 
Adaptive Re-use? Contemporary challenges for Post­
war 20th Century Built Cultural Heritage and Man­
agement of the Postwar and Postmodern Built Cultural 
Heritage. Discussions following the three main ses­
sions and more intimate parallel sessions made it 
possible for deepened reflection and analysis. 
Most of the lectures were filmed and can 
until summer of 2018 be found on the website  
http://www.kiel­heritage­forum­2016.eu/home/
videos­from­the­lectures/.
In addition to the lecturer programme, the 
Working group on Underwater Cultural Heritage 
contributed with the poster­exhibition Glimpses of
Maritime Heritage – modern and ancient. Elements 
of modern 20th century underwater cultural heritage 
and maritime landscapes. The Norwegian Directo­
rate for Cultural Heritage & Arts Council Norway 
contributed with the poster exhibition People and 
possibilities – a photo exhibition showing how cultural 
cooperation can create new economic and social possibil­
ities for people and organizations across Europe. The 
Working group on Coastal Heritage also arranged 
a non­stop short film show The coastal heritage 
around the Baltic Sea. 
Acknowledgements 
The Baltic Region Heritage Committee wishes to 
thank everyone who was involved in organizing 
this conference. This conference could not have 
been arranged without professional support from 
the Swedish National Heritage Board, responsible 
for the conference programme, and the State 
Archaeological Department Schleswig Holstein, 
who was responsible for the conference arrange­
ment. The State Office for Preservation of Monu­
ments Schleswig Holstein also contributed with the 
guided tours on the last day of the conference. A 
special thanks to the guides Mr Bastian Müller and 
Dr Margita Meyer. 
The conference received financial contributions 
from the Ministry of Justice, Cultural and Euro­
pean Affairs Schleswig­Holstein, for which we are 
very grateful. The Baltic Region Heritage Commit­
tee is also very thankful to the Chamber of Archi­
tects Schleswig­Holstein for their great generos­
ity to invite lecturers and organizers to dinner the 
night before the conference.
Special thanks also to Dr Nils Meyer for guiding 
conference participants on the University Campus 
and to the architect of the University Church, Mr 
Erhart Kettner, for his enthusiastic guidance in the 
magnificent building he has created. 
  
7 
The Baltic Region Heritage Committee is also 
greatly in debt to the lecturers for their presenta­
tions, manuscripts and cooperation in the prepara­
tion of this publication. 
Last, but not least, we thank the students at 
the Institute of Modern German Literature and 
Media at Kiel University, responsible for the live 
streaming, the sound, the light and the practical 
arrangements on stage during the Forum. 
Anita Bergenstråhle-Lind
Chair of the Baltic Region Heritage Committee 
Swedish National Heritage Board 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8 
Joint statement.
Postwar and late 20th Century Built
Heritage in the Baltic Sea Region 
Preamble
The 6th Baltic Sea Cultural Heritage Forum calls 
for the attention of safeguarding the postwar and 
late 20th century built environments as valuable 
manifestations of the region’s history and develop­
ment. 
The postwar 20th century built heritage in the 
region reflects the ideology and different interpre­
tations of the welfare society in an eastern and a 
western context. Furthermore the late 20th century 
built heritage represents the general shift towards 
globalization and a stronger emphasis on individ­
uality. The conference fosters to understand the 
importance of postwar and late 20th century built 
heritage as an integral part of sustainable develop­
ment strategies of urban and rural landscapes. 
Statement
The postwar and late 20th century built heritage 
in the Baltic Sea Region is at risk due to extensive 
social changes and a lack of recognition from soci­
ety in general. The architecture, ideology and func­
tion that intervene in the legacy of 20th century 
built heritage require specific demands. The prac­
tical core challenges are the exceptional scope in 
quantity, the experimental use of different materials 
and the rapid change of functions and use. A deep­
ened regional cooperation is decisive in order to 
safeguard the legacy of postwar and late 20th cen­
tury built heritage in the Baltic Sea Region. 
The Conference call upon all state parties to recog­
nize and strive towards the following: 
• Promote research in the field and spread know­
ledge and raise awareness of postwar and late 20th
century built heritage in the Baltic Sea Region.
• Deepen cooperation in order to tackle the 
specific challenges of postwar and late 20th 
century built heritage to enhance safeguarding; 
that includes adaptive re­use and classification. 
• Elaborate common approaches for cultural 
assessment regarding postwar and late 20th 
century built heritage, landscape and public 
spaces and promote integration of these methods 
in planning processes, property management and 
property development. 
• Mediate tangible and intangible values of post­
war and late 20th century built heritage for the 
purpose of integrating democratic perspectives in 
order to obtain sustainable development. 
• Promote preservation and management of 20th 
century built heritage as part of global effort to 
reduce global warming. Life cycle assessment 
(LCA) is a valuable tool in addressing this angle. 
• Promote research on a cross­sector basis regard­
ing materials, best practice/methods and tech­
niques for the preservation of postwar and late 
20th century built heritage including sustainable 
improvement of the energy performance. 
• Recognize preservation and continuous use and 
reuse of 20th century built heritage as important 
aspects of ecological and social sustainability. 
• Highlight postwar and late 20th century archi­
tecture in a Baltic Sea Region context in order to 
attract tourism and regional development/foster 
heritage based economy. 
 
 
 
9 
Session I:
 
History and Heritage
 
– Postwar 20th Century Built Cultural
Heritage in the Baltic Sea Region 
10
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
11 
MART KALM 
Whose happiness is better? 
The architecture of the industrial
societies around the Baltic Sea 
The East and the West 
World War II clearly divided the countries around 
the Baltic Sea into two separate camps, the East 
and the West. This was a completely unprecedented 
situation, for so far, the sea had been a connecting 
and unifying force. This is not to say that it hadn’t 
been used to carry out plans of conquest throughout 
history, be it by the Vikings, the German­speaking 
Hanseatic merchants from Lübeck, or Denmark, 
Poland, Sweden, Russia and Germany with expan­
sionist ambitions. By the late 1940s, the Cold War 
was taking shape with the opposing sides dividing 
into the capitalist West and communist East, each 
demonising the other; for more than four decades 
the Iron Curtain set the balance between the Bal­
tic Sea countries. The line between the two camps 
simply followed the contours of the territory 
seized by the Soviet Union in WW II. That terri­
tory stretched from Karelia, which was taken from 
Finland, to Mecklenburg, which became part of 
the German Democratic Republic; East Prussia 
was simply made an exclave of the Russian Soviet 
Federative Socialist Republic. The Baltic Sea was 
not, however, among the hotspots of the Cold 
War, which was dominated by the global tensions 
between the United States and the Soviet Union. 
Perhaps the most notorious incident occurred in 
1981, as a Soviet submarine carrying nuclear war­
heads ran aground near the Swedish naval base in 
Karlskrona.
The Baltic Sea region provided opportunities 
for détente and soft transitions rather than outright 
confrontations between the two systems in the 
Cold War. And this is of particular interest because 
of the alternatives offered here. 
The Soviet­friendly attitude, forced on Finland 
after the war, transformed the country into some­
thing like a middleman between the East and the 
West. In the eyes of the Soviet Union, Finland, 
having stuck to a capitalist economy and Western 
social organisation, was half as bad as the rest of 
the capitalist countries. It was during excursions 
to Finland that Soviet citizens got to see life in the 
West, for there were much fewer opportunities for 
them to travel anywhere else outside the Eastern 
bloc. The Finnish­Estonian cultural bridge con­
stituted a special line of communication here,1 for
as closely related nations they could, if interested, 
understand each others language and had tradi­
tionally close ties until WW II. There was even 
some resentment in Moscow over the fact that the 
activities of the Soviet­Finnish Friendship Soci­
ety were disproportionately focused on Estonia. 
Although not particularly similar as cities, Tallinn 
and Kotka established close ties under the twinned 
town movement, which served as an instrument of 
détente all over Europe. Finnish architects had their 
first post war visit to Estonia in 1963, with their 
Estonian colleagues in turn visiting Finland the 
following year. Until the 1968 events in Czecho­
slovakia, the architecture students of the two coun­
tries even had study tours in both directions and 
joint competitions. Professional ties often devel­
oped into personal ones. In northern Estonia, peo­
ple watched Finnish television, hoping to access 
less distorted news coverage. Here the influence of 
Finnish TV on mass culture, fashion and life style 
was more apparent. Similar in principle, although 
less striking, was the role of Polish television for 
Lithuanians, not to mention the information war 
   
 
  
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
12 
within the divided Germany. In 1965, the ferry 
connection between Helsinki and Tallinn was 
resumed. Although the Soviet side was essentially 
interested in getting foreign currency from the 
binging Finns, many professional and personal ties 
developed in the process, friendships between fam­
ilies emerging as especially important. Close grass­
roots ties between Finland and Estonia were in fact 
one of the biggest leaks in the Iron Curtain, and 
their influence makes itself felt even today. 
Theoretically, one could think that détente was 
supported by the social organisation that flourished 
in Sweden, or the Nordic countries more broadly, 
in the post­war years; it served as an example for 
many and was seen as outright socialist by the right 
wing in America and elsewhere. However, the 
Soviet Union did not recognise the possibility of 
a compromise solution with a strong public sector 
between communism and capitalism; to Soviet cit­
izens, Sweden was presented as a typical, militarily 
aggressive capitalist jungle. 
An important exception rather than a typical case
in the Soviet Union, the Baltic States were a peculi­
arity of the Baltic Sea region, one that both mitigated
and escalated the Cold War. The predominantly
Lutheran Estonia and Latvia and Catholic Lithuania
were culturally not part of the Orthodox Russia,
despite having belonged in the tsarist empire for a
long time. As in the Nordic countries and Poland,
German had been the most widely spoken foreign
language in Estonia and Latvia, while in Russia,
French firmly held this position. For the Russian
intelligentsia, the Baltics were “our little West” or “an
inner abroad”2, where they came to relish the Euro­
pean old towns full of Gothic architecture, the cafés,
whipped cream, long­haired youngsters and other
things that could not be found in Russia.
Even if the Baltic consciousness grew numb to 
the trauma of Soviet occupation brought on by the 
war and got used to the situation, the people still 
lived with the unspoken knowledge that they were 
unjustly subjected to Moscow’s foreign rule. On the 
other side of the Iron Curtain, however, no one was 
to know anything about this and the Soviet Union 
perpetuated the myth of 15 equal brotherly Soviet 
republics. The Estonian and Latvian émigré com­
munities in Sweden sought to draw the attention 
of the locals to the occupation of the Baltic States, 
but they achieved little in terms of influencing offi­
cial policy. 
Aesthetic confrontation during
the post-war decade 
Architecture was an important means of visual­
isation of the Cold War. Aesthetic confrontation 
characterised the first post­war decade, as Stalin­
ist Russia continued to cultivate historicist mon­
umental architecture based on academicism. It 
was architecture characteristic of the dictator­
ships of the 1930s. In the Baltics and Poland as 
well as East Germany, immediately after the war 
attempts were made to continue building on the 
pre­war modernist experience, which had at dif­
ferent times fluctuated between various degrees of 
modernism and traditionalism. By the end of the 
1940s, however, these countries were forced to sub­
mit to Moscow’s model.3 Following the example of 
the American­style tower blocks in Moscow4, sim­
ilar buildings were to be erected in the capitals of 
the other Soviet republics, scaled down slightly to 
reflect the relative importance of their respective 
locations. While these buildings were completed in 
Riga, Tallinn kept looking for an ever more perfect 
solution until Stalinism came to an end.5 
According to the Soviet architectural doctrine,
buildings were to be nationalist in form and social­
ist in content. As the former Hanseatic cities had a
strong Gothic heritage, Gothic décor was applied to
the Stalinist residential buildings erected in Rostock
Lange Strasse.6 What makes this all the more
intriguing is the fact that, according to the com­
munist understanding of history, the Middle Ages
were a particularly backward period in history, due
to being dominated by religion. Historical periods
only started to become more progressive with the
Renaissance, where humanism emerged. But when
neo­mannerism was used on new buildings in Tal­
linn old town and neo­baroque in Riga, this was
not so much for ideological reasons, as mannerism
was all but non­existent in Tallinn, although Swed­
ish baroque is historically important in Riga. It was
just an abstract attempt to adapt the buildings to the
historical environment, an aim to which these styles
were thought to be best suited aesthetically. As con­
cerns nationalism in form, the situation in Poland
was even more complicated.7 When they were reset­
tled in German merchant cities, the Poles from for­
mer Polish territories now part of Ukraine or Bela­
rus didn’t feel at home and set out to Polonise key
historical buildings. In order to cope in Danzig/
Gdansk, they brought with them from Lviv the
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
13 
equestrian statue of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski.
They restored the merchants’ houses in a rational,
modernising spirit, leaving the main volumes of the
buildings unchanged, while at the same time trans­
forming the narrow inner courtyards and outbuild­
ings into communal green areas.8 
The mandatory Stalinism of the early 1950s did 
not, however, leave a very strong mark on the exist­
ing environment, for the crudely organised con­
struction efforts and by then under­industrialised 
VÄXJÖ PUBLIC LIBRARY. Architect Erik Uluots, 
1954–65. Photo by author 2016. Erik Uluots 
(1930–2006) is one of Swedish architects of 
Estonian origin. All they left from Estonia to 
Sweden in September 1944.
VATIALA CHAPEL, near Tampere, 1960.  

Architect Viljo Revell. Photo by author 2007. 

pre­war technology meant that little was built and 
many large projects were only completed in a sim­
plified form in the second half of the decade.
A counterpoint to the grand and ceremonial
architecture of the Eastern bloc was provided by
Nordic modernism, which had started to attract
global attention in both architecture and design
as early as the 1930s. In contrast to the local archi­
tects in the Eastern bloc, the Nordic countries pro­
vided the biggest international stars of the post­war
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
14 
years. These included Finnish architects who had
already made a name for themselves before the war
– Alvar Aalto and Erik Bryggmann, an architect
from Turku whose position in historical writing has
unfortunately lost prominence over time; in Sweden,
Sven Markelius and Sigurd Lewerentz remained
active, while Gunnar Erik Asplund had died in
1940; in Denmark, Arne Jacobsen had returned
after having sought refuge from the war in Sweden,
and Vilhelm Lauritzen and Kay Fisker continued
to work. Emerging as new bright stars were Jørn
Utzon in Denmark, the British­born architect Ralph
Erskine in Sweden as well as Aarne Ervi and Viljo
Revell in Finland. Nazism and the war had devas­
tated the powerful architectural scene in Germany,
where in the 1950s, a new generation sprang up with
Egon Eiermann, Werner Düttmann and others.
Already in the pre­war years, Nordic modernism 
had started to use softer forms and natural mate­
rials for cosiness and simplicity instead of a cool 
laboratory­like atmosphere. Traditional building 
methods, natural colours and unpretentiousness 
were well suited to the post­war period of recovery. 
But here, too, the contrast was not absolute, for 
in the Eastern bloc, family homes, which were on 
the fringes of the official architectural discourse, 
held on firmly to the tradition of the cosy home. 
And in Estonia, family homes took a significant 
step closer to Heimatstil than they had before the 
war. This contraband of German culture in an 
otherwise Germanophobic Soviet Union can per­
haps be explained by the wartime period of Ger­
man occupation, during which the architects, who 
were sitting idly at home after the 1930s construc­
tion boom, were, in the absence of anything else, 
time and again leafing through German architec­
ture magazines, which had been filtered down to 
traditionalism. 
International modernism and
industrial housing 
In the post­WW II period, modernisation picked up 
speed in all the Baltic Sea countries. In the West, a 
welfare society with a regulated free market econ­
omy developed; in the East, a society without pri­
vate property clumsily tried to make headway 
under a bureaucracy of state controlled command 
economy, while officially striving for communism. 
A distinct parallel development, which both sides 
saw as the foundation of prosperity, was indus­
trialisation. In retrospect, the post­war decades 
have also been called the high­industrial period.9 
This meant mass urbanisation and the abandon­
ing of villages. The industrialisation process was 
so intense that the local hinterland was incapable 
of filling the jobs offered by industry, a fact that 
attracted immigrants. In search of a better life, 
many Finnish people moved to Sweden, while 
Denmark and Sweden opened the doors to Italians 
and Yugoslavs, and Germany to the Turks. Esto­
nia and Latvia received Russians, who did not just 
come for a better life, but as part of a colonisation 
process directed from Moscow with the aim of 
homogenising the whole population of the Soviet 
Union into Russian speakers. 
In constant rivalry, both the East and the West 
declared boundless care for their citizens. Both 
sides aspired to build a more just society offering 
better conditions of life, all the while refusing to 
officially recognise the other side’s aspirations. 
While in the West there were young people and 
left­wing intellectuals who admired the building of 
communism, such pluralism wasn’t tolerated in the 
undemocratic East, which didn’t stop all the popu­
lation from desiring the shiny stuff in the West. 
Khrushchev’s campaign of catching up with the 
US meant that the USSR was to produce the same 
volumes of consumer goods as the West. The eco­
nomic growth of the 1960s allowed the significantly 
less well off East to increase consumption; refriger­
ators, TVs and other household appliances started 
to make their appearance. All this, however, 
required a modern home in which to cultivate this 
dream of a consumer society. 
A necessary concomitant of an industrial society
with swelling urban populations is the construction
of housing on a mass scale, which in the 20th cen­
tury increasingly meant social housing. In the 1930s,
when most of Europe was veering towards totalitar­
ianism, Sweden, under the Social Democratic leader
Albin Hansson, began to build the Folkhemmet, or
People’s Home, which involved extensive construc­
tion of housing for the less well off.
Indeed, large­scale social housing projects 
financed with state loans in cities and communes/
municipalities are considered a characteristic fea­
ture of post­war architecture in the Nordic coun­
tries. On the outskirts of cities, low­density, free­
plan neighbourhoods of 3 to 4­storey residential 
buildings began to appear, drawing inspiration 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
15 
from England. Along the edges of these neighbour­
hoods, the increasingly popular terraced houses for 
larger families were added.10 These settlements on 
the border between the city and the country offered 
a semi­urban experience to those arriving from 
rural areas: the children could play outside without 
finding themselves on a busy street as soon as they 
went out the door. In contrast to the city centre, 
each apartment had plenty of sunlight and a view 
of nature. It has been said that while in Sweden 
more attention was focused on socialising within 
a neighbourhood, in Finland integration with the 
landscape was seen as particularly important. 
In almost all the Nordic countries, housing 
research institutions were established in order to 
work out optimal floor plans for apartments, and 
building codes to ensure high standards. Although 
the early apartments only had two or three rooms, 
warm water and central heating were a great joy 
to the residents. Given the family structure at the 
time, the so­called “green widows” appeared in 
these new city districts, housewives condemned to 
boredom in their modern homes in semi­natural 
surroundings. Then again, the Finnish feminist 
art historian Kirsi Saarikangas has emphasised the 
importance of the open plan of the apartments of 
the time, where the smooth transitions from the 
kitchen to the dining area and on to the living 
room stressed the unity of the family and no longer 
secluded the wife in the kitchen.11 
This calming and vitalising neo­empiricist Nor­
dic architecture not only found a lot of followers in 
Germany, but was also a popular example for many 
architects from Scotland to Italy, not to mention 
the Eastern bloc. 
Nikita Khrushchev, who introduced the Khrush­
chev Thaw in the mid­1950s, declared Stalinist 
architecture excessive and demanded a transition to 
industrial methods of construction. This meant that 
global modernist architecture was now accepted 
in the Eastern bloc. But in the 1960s and 1970s, 
architecture in the Nordic countries was also los­
ing its regional character and took on the form of 
homogenised international modernism. Similarities 
between the architecture in the East and West 
didn’t mean that Cold War rivalry was coming to 
an end; rather, there was now an ambition to com­
pete in the same weight class.
From 1959, housing factories using the Camus 
technology bought from the French to produce pre­
fabricated concrete panels the size of a whole room 
were erected all over the Eastern bloc and kept 
churning out panels until the collapse of the system 
in 1991. And so, Plattenbauten, or housing con­
structed of large prefabricated concrete panels, can 
be found from Vladivostok to East Berlin, even 
on legendary Friedrichstrasse. The first 5­storey 
Plattenbauten, which are known as khrushchovkas in 
Russian, mainly had 2­room apartments; over the 
years, 9, 12 and 16­storey blocks were introduced, 
with increasingly spacious apartments. In the Nor­
dic countries, apartments grew larger with each 
decade, and the Eastern bloc never caught up with 
the mass construction of 100­square­metre, 4­room 
apartments in Sweden in the 1980s. 
As the Eastern bloc was experiencing the most 
acute apartment shortage, with masses of people 
living in communal apartments, and the govern­
ments building on state land, they didn’t bother 
with small neighbourhoods as in the Nordic coun­
tries. In the Eastern bloc, the equivalent of a neigh­
bourhood was a micro­district, or microrayon: a 
school and a kindergarten surrounded by apart­
ment buildings; as a rule, however, new residential 
districts were made up of roughly ten such 
micro­districts, and towards the end of the Soviet 
era, districts with several hundreds of thousands of 
residents were planned. This pursuit of large vol­
umes was somewhat similar to the Swedish Social 
Democrat programme of building a million apart­
ments, which was realised in ten years between 
1964 and 1974. Both aimed to ensure the happiness 
of the citizens by constructing homes with mod­
ern amenities for them. Although the neighbour­
hoods never reached such gigantic dimensions in 
Sweden, the country did introduce the industrial­
ised production of housing made of prefabricated 
concrete slabs.12 Now the Swedes experienced first­
hand what was long since clear to the people in the 
Eastern bloc, that even if the policy goal of build­
ing an apartment for every family is achieved, the 
mass construction campaign results in a dreary, 
unarchitectural environment with poor building 
quality, with the landscaping typically not fitting in 
the budget. 
While in the rest of the Soviet Union new hous­
ing districts were usually built in empty fields out­
side the city, in the Baltic republics attempts were 
made at least to some extent to take into account 
the surrounding natural environment and adapt 
 16 
SUMMER COTTAGE of architect Modris Gelzis in Saulkrasti, Latvia, 1959–60. Photo by author 2011. 
to the existing landscape, following the example 
of Helsinki’s Tapiola district in particular, but 
also other developments. Starting from the late 
1950s, the Agenskalna priedes district in Riga and 
Mustamäe in Tallinn were both built in a pine 
grove. However, being used to plodding about 
freely, the builders only managed to leave a few 
pine trees standing. Built in the 1960s, the Lazdy­
nai district in Vilnius13 was more of a success, as the 
builders actually managed to arrange the houses 
within the surrounding greenery. The architects 
never made a secret of the fact that they used Tou­
louse­Le Mirail, Vällingby and Tapiola as their 
models. Unfortunately, the element most strongly 
reminiscent of Vällingby – a cultural and shopping 
centre across the trenched motorway to the city 
centre – was planned but never built. Despite that, 
however, Lazdynai received the highest award in 
the USSR, the Lenin Prize, from Moscow in 1972, 
and was to serve as an example for future projects. 
In Central and Northern Europe, workers living 
in apartment buildings had been cultivating small 
patches of land in allotment gardens, or Schreber­
gärten, outside the city since the early 20th century. 
These offered activities in the fresh air for both 
visual pleasure and dietary variety. In the Soviet 
Union, the establishment of gardening coopera­
tives was permitted from the late 1950s, as mass 
housing construction was picking up speed. Given 
the constant shortage of foodstuffs in the Soviet 
Union, growing your own food was of vital impor­
tance. While this lovely hobby allowed for experi­
ments in landscape architecture when planning the 
allotments in Denmark (e.g. Naerum), in the Soviet 
Union people stuck to the plain old grid plan. This 
is not to say that people didn’t invest much in their 
garden houses, however; designed by architects, 
these sometimes looked quite smart. Cottages fur­
ther away from the city, often by a lake or on the 
coast, became very popular in the Nordic countries 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
17 
FARUM MIDTPUNKT HOUSING in Copenhagen, 1972–75. Architects Jørn Ole Sørensen, Viggo Møller-Jensen and Tyge Arnfred.
Photo by author 2012. 
in the post­war decades, but were quite widespread 
in the Baltics, too. Added to this in the 1960s, was 
the introduction of Finnish saunas, which trans­
formed what had been a washing place into a party 
venue. Company holiday houses for employees were 
common in the West, but became especially popu­
lar in the Eastern bloc, which officially promoted a 
collective way of life. 
As the German researcher Elke Beyer points
out, the idea that the existing urban planning
based on expert knowledge was inadequate was
gaining ground in the East as well as the West
in the 1970s, and traditional architectural know­
ledge was increasingly valued.14 The East, where
most of the buildings constructed only came from
the housing factories, envied the West, where low­
rise, high­density housing was built widely in the
1970s. Among the most exciting experiments in this
field is the Farum Midtpunkt (designed by Jørn
Ole Sørensen, Viggo Møller­Jensen and Tyge Arn­
fred, 1972–75) in Copenhagen, a group of residential
buildings, which takes its cue from the world of
mega structures. Cars enter under the buildings and
people are led to each apartment along inner streets;
as a result, the only views of the natural surround­
ings open from the apartments’ spacious terraces.
Although rare, attempts to build such gigantic 
social containers can also be found in the Eastern 
bloc. In Estonia, the Kolkhoz Construction Office 
of the Pärnu region built a stepped house almost 
a kilometre long for its staff (designed by Toomas 
Rein, from 1971).15 An inner street at ground floor 
level brings together the residents from both wings 
of the building to the centre, where a shop was 
planned but never built, leading on to a kindergar­
ten and sports complex. Although the kindergarten 
was completed, the absence of the shop means it is 
not accessible through corridors and children still 
need to be dressed warmly to be taken across the 
yard in the winter. 
  
 
18 
Playground of architects 
Industrial mass construction pushed the architect 
aside in both the East and the West; with the cri­
sis of modernism, a distrust of expert knowledge 
followed starting from the 1970s. While before the 
war architects were increasing their grip on con­
struction, now they maintained control over just 
a fraction of the construction process, despite the 
increasingly huge numbers of architects being 
trained.
THE LONG HOUSE of the Pärnu KEK, 

Estonia, from 1971, architect Toomas Rein. 

Photo by author 2016. 

PALACE OF WEDDINGS, Vilnius, 1968–74.
 
Architect Gediminas Baravykas.
 
Photo by author 2014. 

The standard view is that equality between men 
and women has been cultivated for a long time in 
the Nordic countries and not so in the post­com­
munist societies. Nevertheless, the post­war archi­
tects in the Nordic countries were mostly men, 
although they may have had strong wives by 
their side (for example, Heikki and Kaija Sirén or 
Reima and Raili Pietilä). In the Baltics, however, 
where Soviet modernisation brought large num­
bers of young women into universities right after 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
19 
the war, female architects emerged as very impor­
tant indeed. In Estonia, Valve Pormeister, who 
had a background in landscape architecture, was 
among the most highly esteemed promoters of 
Nordic modernism starting from the late 1950s.16 In 
Latvia, Marta Staņa, who began her architectural 
education already before the war, was among the 
co­designers of the Daile Theatre (1961–76) in Riga, 
a central piece of post­Stalinist modernism in the 
country.17 Elena Nijolė Bučiūtė won a competition 
and designed the Lithuanian National Opera and 
Ballet Theatre (1960–74) in Vilnius.18 
In the egalitarian Nordic countries, churches 
were a laboratory of architectural experimentation 
and a key opportunity for architects’ self­expression 
in the second half of the 20th century. The distinc­
tive church buildings with their sculptural forms 
stood out against the conformist background archi­
tecture. In the Eastern bloc, churches were being 
built in Poland, especially in the 1980s, after the 
Gdańsk strikes, when extravagant religious archi­
tecture served the function of demonstrating oppo­
sition to the authorities. In Lithuania, another 
Catholic country, the Soviet authorities, however, 
invested effort into rituals aimed at replacing the 
church, and so ostentatious wedding palaces and 
funeral homes were built.19 
Cultural transfer 
Throughout the entire post­Stalinist period, attempts
to emulate Western architecture are observable in
the Eastern bloc. Nordic architecture was enjoying
its heyday and was more familiar, which made it a
likely model during that period in particular. Some­
times, however, the transfers could also be based
on chance or pragmatism. The inclined side walls
of the long volume of the 1972 Olympic Centre in
Kiel (Olympiazentrum Schilksee) reappeared in the
hotel section of the Tallinn Olympic Yachting Cen­
tre erected for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.
Although this was a rather common device in the
architecture of the time, the functional similarity of
the buildings alerts one to the possibility of a con­
nection. Indeed, the then city architect of Tallinn
Dmitri Bruns came from a mixed family and was
fluent in German as well as having close ties with
architects in Hamburg. He was able to get hold of
the design documents for the Kiel building, which
were relied on when drawing up the conditions for
the Tallinn competition.
The Baltic Sea countries on both sides of the Iron
Curtain also had some shared sources of inspiration.
During the Cold War, Germany and Northern
Europe were among the most receptive to Amer­
ican influences. In the USSR, however, a bipolar
worldview of a race between Moscow and Washing­
ton dominated. While during the Khrushchev Thaw
around the turn of the 1960s the goal had been to
catch up with America in terms of welfare (i.e. con­
sumption), this pursuit was given up as hopeless dur­
ing the 1960s, focusing on rivalry in the conquest of
space instead. The corporate modernism of Ameri­
can architecture, as exemplified by the minimalist,
coolly anonymous General Motors Technical Center
in Warren (1948–55) by Finnish­born architect Eero
Saarinen, was perfectly capable of serving as a model
for both Arne Jacobsen, when he designed the
Rødovre Town Hall (1956–69) outside Copenhagen,
and Ell Väärtnõu, when she designed the kolkhoz
sanatorium “Tervis” (1967–71) in Pärnu. The univer­
sality of modernism made the same aesthetic code
serve the needs of a technical centre of a major cor­
poration, a social democratic municipality and Soviet
veteran workers alike.
These instances of cultural transfer should not,
however, be seen as mere pairs of giver and taker,
original and copy. And it is not just that borrowed
ideas are always treated differently in new circum­
stances; in the Baltics, the primary importance of
these loans was to reaffirm being part of Western
culture despite the Soviet occupation. It is disputable
whether this attitude was part of a resistance move­
ment or intentional collaboration where imitating
the West gave architects an advantage over their col­
leagues in Moscow. In any case, what was important
was to be different from the rest of the Soviet Union
and to build one’s identity on being different.
Despite the fact that the Cold War divided the 
Baltic Sea countries between different sides of the 
Iron Curtain, which the people were able to per­
forate with peepholes, both sides sought to build a 
happy society through intensive industrialisation. 
The contemporaries on both sides were unhappy 
with much of the new architecture, but the half­ 
century that has passed since then has healed the 
wounds. Today, the buildings constructed at the 
time are instead seen as heritage, which in turn is 
forcing us to revise the current principles of herit­
age conservation. This, however, is an exciting task 
that is still on­going. 
  
   
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
    
 
 
20 
ENDNOTES 
1.	 Hallas­Murula, K. (2005). Soome – Eesti: sajand arhitek­
tuurisuhteid [Finland – Estonia: A Century of Architectural 
Relations]. Tallinn: Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum. 
2.	 Gerchuk, Y. (2000). The Aesthetic of Everyday Life in the 
Khrushchev Thaw in the USSR (1954–64). in: S. Reid, D. 
Crowley, ed­s., Style and Socialism. Modernity and Material
Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe. Oxford, New York: 
Berg, pp. 82. 
3.	 Åman, A. (1992). Architecture and Ideology in the Eastern 
Europe during the Stalin Era. New York : The Architectural 
History Foundation.
 4.	 Зуева, П. П. (2010). Нью-йорские небоскребы как 
прототипы «сталинских высоток». in: Ю. Л. Косенкова, 
ed., Архитектура сталинской эпохи. Опыт историческово 
осмысления. Москва: КомКнига, pp. 435–451. 
5.	 Kalm, M. (2014). The Spatial Sovietisation of Tallinn dur­
ing the Stalin period (1944–1955). In: G. Wagner­Kyora, ed., 
Wiederaufbau europäischer Städte / Rebuilding European Cities. 
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 367–386. 
6.	 Durth, W., Düwel, J. and Gutschow, N. (2007). Architektur
und Städtebau der DDR. Die Frühen Jähre. Berlin: Jovis, pp. 
437–442. 
7.	 Rampley, M (2012) . Contested Histories: Heritage and/as 
the Construction of the Past: an Introduction. In: M.  
Rampley, ed, Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and
Eastern Europe. Contested Pasts, Contested Presents. Suffolk: 
The Boydell Press, pp. 1–20. 
8.	 Friedrich, J. (2010). Neue Stadt in altem Gewand. Der  
Wiederaufbau Danzigs 1945–1960. Köln: Böhlau. 
9.	 Fellman, S. and Isacson, M. (2007). The High­Industrial 
Period in the Nordic and Baltic Countries. In: A. Kervanto 
Nevanlinna, ed. Industry and Modernism. Companies,  
Architecture, and Identity in the Nordic and Baltic Countries 
during the High-Industrial Period. Helsinki: Finnish  
Literature Society, pp. 41–63. 
10.	 Nikula, R. (2014). Suomalainen rivitalo. Työväenasunnosta
keskiluokan unelmaksi. [Finnish Terraced House. From 
Workers’ Dwelling to a Middle­class Dream] Helsinki: 
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. 
11.	 Saarikangas, K. (2005). On the Edges of the Forest. 
Encounters and Ambiguities Between Planning and  
Habitation in Finnish Suburbs. In: M. Kalm and I. Ruudi, 
ed­s, Constructed Happiness – Domestic Environment in the 
Cold War Era. Tallinn: Estonian Academy of Arts, pp.  
200–220. 
12. 	 Caldenby, C (1998). The Time of the Large Programmes 
1960–75. In: C. Caldenby, J. Lindvall and W. Wang, ed­s, 
20th Century Architecture. Sweden. Prestel: Munich, pp. 143– 
169. 
13. 	 Dremaite, M. (2012). Modern Housing in Lithuania in the 
1960s. Nordic Influences. In: Survival of Modern from  
Cultural Centres to Planned Suburbs. Nordic-Baltic Experi
ences. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine 
­
Arts, pp. 71–82. 
14. 	 Beyer, E. (2012). ‘The Soviet Union is an Enormous 
 Construction Site’. In: K. Ritter, E. Shapiro­Obermair, D. 
Steiner and A. Wachter, ed­s. Soviet Modernism 1955–1991. 
Unknown History. Wien: Architekturzentrum, Zürich: Park 
Books, p. 270 
15. 	 Kalm, M. (2007). The Oasis of Industrialised Countryside 
in Soviet Estonia. In: A. Kervanto Nevanlinna, ed. Industry 
and Modernism. Companies, Architecture, and Identity in the 
Nordic and Baltic Countries during the High-Industrial Period. 
Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, pp. 352–371. 
16. 	 Ruudi, I. (2016). Women architects of Soviet Estonia: four 
approaches to design in rural context. In: M. Pepchinski and 
M. Simon, ed­s, Idealogical Equals. Women Architects in  
Sovialist Europe 1945–1989. New York: Routledge, pp. 
91–104; Jänes, L. (2005). Valve Pormeister. Eesti maa-arhitek
tuuri uuendaja [Valve Pormeister. Modernizer of Estonian 
Countryside]. Tallinn: Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum. 
17. 	 Rudovska, M. (2012) Expired Monuments. Case Studies on 
Soviet­era Architecture in Latvia through the Kaleidoscope 
of Postcolonialism. Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi [Studies in Art 
History]. 21(3–4), pp. 76–93. 
18.	  Zettersten Bloxham, G. (2012). Five Performing Arts Build­
ing Projects from 1960s to 2011. In: Survival of Modern from 
Cultural Centres to Planned Suburbs. Nordic-Baltic E xperiences. 
Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, pp. 
54–63. 
19. 	 Dremaite, M. and Petrulis, V (2012). Inventing A Soviet 
Ritual: Funeral Homes In Lithuania. In: K. Ritter, E.  
Shapiro­Obermair, D. Steiner and A. Wachter, ed­s. Soviet 
Modernism 1955–1991. Unknown History. Wien: Architektur­
zentrum, Zürich: Park Books, pp. 55–58. 
­
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
I 
21 
DAVID CHIPPERFIELD 
Restorations and Reconstructions:
Reflections on Berlin 
I come here today not as somebody who can talk
with much authority on heritage, and I must admit
that I am not particularly fascinated with herit­
age per se. As an architect, I happen to have become
involved in heritage. However, looking at heritage
as something not only from the distant past but also
as something closer to our time can bring us into a
stronger dialogue with a fundamental issue in archi­
tecture: its meaning to society. I hope to illustrate
this through sharing some of my experiences.
I come here from a battleground, from the front­
line. When I look out from the window of my 
office in London I see a city being rebuilt and the 
struggle between protection and development in 
its most explicit form. We all know that protect­
ing history through monuments is important, and it 
is societally accepted that we protect important rel­
ics of our past. In 1882, the UK government passed 
the Ancient Monuments Protection Act which was 
specifically set up to protect any pre­historic sites 
IMAGE OF THE LONDON SKYLINE from David Chipperfield Architects London. Credit: David Chipperfield Architects. 
-~-ru 
lfil 
11 
22 
PROJECT ON FRIEDRICHSTRASSE IN BERLIN. Copyright: Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects. 
23 
that are links to deep in our past. To many the her­
itage argument has been won. 
However, the topic of this conference brings to 
us to a pressing issue. If we start looking at the 
heritage of post­war architecture and our recent 
past, we must not only consider singular monu­
ments but also those other things which contribute 
in more vague ways to our idea of a city. We archi­
tects are currently seeing the development of archi­
tecture through singular architectural objects yet as 
architects we believe that buildings should contrib­
ute more than their individual qualities. Buildings 
should contribute to the idea of a society and a city. 
Architecture as an isolated individual act is some­
thing which endangers our cities. 
In Britain, we largely disregarded much of the 
country’s non­monumental architecture until the 
late 1960s. We had been demolishing large swathes 
of now­celebrated Georgian architecture until it 
became protected through listing. Though partly 
protected purely for its age, we came to realise that 
this architecture also had an important impact on 
the broader shape of our built environment. 
One case study that stimulates this debate is the 
competition to replace the Kaufhaus designed by 
Josef Eiderman in Munich, for which I was on the 
jury. The existing post­war building is not particu­
larly significant yet interesting as the city resisted 
its demolition, or substantial rebuilding, based on 
three main arguments. Firstly, that the building 
represented a moment in history and if too many 
of such structures are removed the sense of the city 
and its historic layers would be lost. Secondly, there 
was a general sense that whatever replaced would 
only be worse, indicating a general loss of confi­
dence in the abilities of contemporary architecture 
itself and its motivations. Lastly, and perhaps most 
strongly expressed, there was nervousness and scep­
ticism about the financial motivations behind a new 
building development.
This experience raised many interesting ques­
tions. Outside the academic environment, how does 
one deal with protection and discussion of memory 
on the front line of an ever­increasingly commercial 
environment? How can we make issues of protec­
tion and development relevant to each other rather 
than polemicized against each other? How can we 
bridge these seemingly opposing sides? In Munich, 
the city’s arguments were not academic defences 
for a historic building but rather a more sentimen­
tal attitude about the shape and form of the city as 
a whole. 
In Berlin, my practice has worked on several 
small­scale projects, often rebuilding old war­dam­
aged buildings with commercial developers who 
were looking to protect and develop them. We 
must accept that damage is done to buildings 
because they are essential to our daily messy lives 
and subject to various uses. A building is not an 
artefact that can be easily stored away, new ones 
will often necessarily replace an old one. Of course, 
there are exceptional buildings that are preserved as 
artefacts, such as churches, but what about a school 
or an office building that is no longer in use? Often 
it involves modification, adaption and extension to 
give them new function and economy.
Our most extreme example of this mediation 
between protection and development is in Shanghai 
where we were responsible for a row of mediocre 
buildings on the Bund. A developer had proposed 
‘keeping them’ by rebuilding replicas in better 
quality. Over the 10­year process of the project, we 
argued for keeping the old bricks to ensure conti­
nuity of substance instead. It should not be forgot­
ten either that there is also the social side of the 
question of heritage redevelopment and changes 
to the societal mix of an area, particularly where 
former residential areas become retail areas for 
instance. We are often at risk of turning our cities 
into museums, I see it in China and in Europe.
Another area of concern for architects practis­
ing today is the confusion of histories and which 
ones to protect. Some years ago, my office entered 
a competition to work on the cathedral of Pozzu­
oli in Italy. After a fire, it was discovered that the 
baroque church was built around an ancient Greek 
temple and we were tasked with working out how 
to deal with these many layers of history and which 
ones to refer to in the new project. When adapt­
ing buildings, I have come across an academic 
reluctance to adopt strategies that were had been 
used historically. It used to be possible to re­inter­
pret historic buildings but now we seem to have an 
ideological attitude that there is one moment in a 
building’s history that we must re­find or one cru­
cial characteristic that we must celebrate. There is a 
lack of confidence in what we might add, or even in 
just revealing more fully the complexity. 
With more recent buildings this is even more 
complicated, particularly if one has the drawings 
24 
RAVELINS OF CASTELLO SFORZESCO in Milan. Credit: Richard Davies (above top). 
NEUE NATIONALGALERIE by Mies van der Rohe in Berlin. A view from Postdamer Strasse. 
Credit: Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects (above left). 
PROPOSAL FOR HAUS DER KUNST in Munich. View from southwest, Prinzregentenstraße. 
Credit: David Chipperfield Architects (above right). 
of a world­renowned architect that differ from the In the nineteenth century, the existing mili­
completed design. We seem more willing and able tary structure of the Castello Sforzeco in Milan 
to accept that there may be reversible mistakes in was embellished by the architect Luca Beltrami in 
the construction of a recent building but not in order to transform it into a more fantastical idea of 
older structures. In recent buildings, the design a castle. This confusing act has now been widely 
intent can often overrule the substance. If we want accepted as a layer of the structure’s history. We are 
to give some balance to the struggle between pro­ now involved in rebuilding a fragment of the cas­
tection and development – protection of layers of tle for the museum complex now established there. 
history in our city, not just single structure – then In this process, we are not looking to restore it but 
we ought to be a bit more flexible in how another rather to also build on the existing structure to sub­
building might be borne out of an existing one. stantiate it, stabilise it, and give it a new life. 
And yet, intellectually we don’t seem to like that. 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
25 
In the next few years, the US Embassy in Lon­
don designed by Eero Saarinen will be vacated and 
given new life as a hotel. As one of America’s great­
est architects, there is an understandable interest 
in the building from an architectural heritage per­
spective. Yet, when talking about a building from 
the 1960s, it is debateable to what degree the arte­
fact is to be protected and left untouched. What 
happens if it’s not popularly liked? And what if the 
master architect to whom it is attributed was, in 
reality, not very closely involved in its construction 
or at times unsure of the design? These are ques­
tions with which we are grappling. In researching 
the history of the building, we found some draw­
ings that showed the building as a taller structure. 
Naturally, this discovery made the developer very 
happy because it could somehow validate proposed 
changes to the structure. We are aware that this is 
a very fragile discussion and we keep reassessing 
the values of the structure itself as well as the 
design intent. In the end, there must be some 
mediation between protection and reuse. It is often 
so difficult to understand where the line should be 
drawn between the conservationists and developers 
as both sides exaggerate and do not communicate 
well. In the end, the city is the victim of such 
failures.
Returning to Berlin – a city with too much his­
tory – we find all sorts of confusion and paradoxes. 
For example, after the historic and much celebrated 
fall of the Berlin Wall, fragments were sold all over 
the world leaving recent tourists disappointed that 
they don’t get to see it, which in turn has led to dis­
cussions about rebuilding parts of it as a tourist 
attraction.
The Neue Nationalgalerie by Mies van der Rohe 
was part of the provocative project to build the cul­
tural centre of West Berlin as close to the wall as 
possible. The buildings of this campus are utopian 
in spirit. The layout of Hans Scharoun’s Berlin 
Philharmonic concert hall seeks to develop new 
social concepts by changing of the relationship 
between the audience and musicians. Meanwhile, 
Mies’ temple­like building tries to bring a sense of 
order to a chaotic environment. At first it was dis­
liked because Mies’ had tried to build the design 
elsewhere first and it did not function well (it is dif­
ficult to hang art in large glass hall). Over time, 
however, it became a symbol of West Berlin even in 
its perceived uselessness, and embedded itself in the 
identity of the city. Today the fabric and structure 
of this icon are no longer in good condition and we 
have been tasked with its repair. It should be added, 
though, that despite the poor performance of the 
main exhibition space, there are many aspects of 
the building, including back of house facilities that 
still work very well and are testament to Mies’ skill.
Heritage is an industry and it has often become 
an excuse for doing things in a fixed or formulaic 
way. As such, it often becomes isolated from daily 
practice. Nonetheless, I am interested in it and 
strongly feel that the Neue Nationalgalerie is an 
important piece of our architectural heritage. Some 
assume that in such a case of careful restoration the 
creative architectural input is almost zero, no desire 
to interpret the work of Mies but rather just the 
aim to save it. In a building such as this, everything 
is on show and any intervention is revealed – no 
walls can be thickened, no insulation added. So 
why am I interested in this work?
When I am designing a building from scratch
the client may well question the design and its cost
implications. In such situations, it is me and my
team trying to counteract these commercial forces.
When there is a third person involved – Mies van
der Rohe – it is already accepted that the design
has quality and beauty, so there is a collective effort
towards resolving any issues. It’s not that ‘you can’t
do that to my façade’ but rather than ‘you can’t do
that to Mies’ façade’. It is rare for an architect and
the client to be in such agreement and collaboration.
In most projects you have to ask the developer or 
client to trust you that the physical qualities of your 
design are worth the cost. It is difficult to convince 
someone of the importance of the ‘feel’ of a build­
ing and this is an issue with much of our modernist 
architectural heritage today. The construction qual­
ity is often poor because it is not considered worth 
the investment. 
When looking at the work of Mies, however, the 
‘feel’ of the building is something everyone seems 
to understand and we are to avoid changing that 
‘feel’ in any way. Seemingly simple decisions about 
glazing took a year to reach a result that would 
improve the thermal performance of the building 
without disrupting the integrity of Mies’ design. It 
must be added that a sophisticated environment is 
needed to create the right forum for debating and 
making these decisions, and my experience in Ger­
many has been very positive in this regard. 
 26 
Neues Museum in Berlin, southwest corner. 
Credit: Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield 
Architects. 
Neues Museum in Berlin, staircase hall. 
Credit: SPK / David Chipperfield Architects, 
photo Joerg von Bruchhausen. 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
27 
Let us look at another piece of difficult twen­
tieth­century heritage deeply rooted in German 
history: the Haus der Kunst in Munich. This is a 
building contaminated with history. Hitler was 
involved in the design by Paul Ludwig Troost 
for this art gallery which opened in 1937 with the 
‘Great German Art Exhibition’. An insidious 
example of Nazi propaganda, the show was Hitler’s 
attempt to define an ‘authentic German art’ in con­
trast to ‘degenerate’ modern art. The building was 
camouflaged and survived the bombing of the city 
by Allied forces. After the war, it was used by the 
American occupation forces who sealed off the 
front door, only allowing access through the side 
doors to humiliate the building in some way. More 
recently, the steps leading up from the street have 
been removed and trees have been planted around 
the building to disguise it. 
We are now working on the renovation of the 
building and trying to promote it in its current 
role as a progressive contemporary art museum. 
In doing so we and the client are facing some dif­
ficult questions, not regarding architecture but 
regarding its meaning. Given that it is now a pub­
licly­funded institution that itself has meaning, we 
felt it should have a physical presence and our pro­
posal included the removal of the trees as a way of 
encouraging people to confront the fascist structure 
and engage with it. This has provoked a very active 
ongoing debate, and I am delighted that so many 
people are emotionally and intellectually engaged 
with the project. As architects, our work is often 
heavily criticised but if we want architecture to 
mean something to society, we should be glad that 
there are debates and views of all kinds. 
Though I very much enjoy grappling with dif­
ficult questions about heritage as a distinct scien­
tific intellectual activity, it is only because I think it 
really does mean something for our physical envi­
ronment that I am so enthusiastic about it. I am 
nervous that our built environment is undervalued, 
and that where it is valued it risks becoming simply 
a series of places to visit. Within the discussion 
about how to protect our history, however, one 
eventually leads to a discussion about how to pro­
tect our environment and how to ensure that the 
notion of permanence and the physical powers of 
architecture are respected more generally.
Before turning to my work on the Neues 
Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island, I want to dis­
cuss the context a little and consider the nearby 
site of the Stadtschloss, the former Prussian palace 
that was badly damaged during the Second World 
War. Though the ruin could have been rebuilt after 
the war – several intellectuals argued it should stay 
– instead it was demolished and replaced with the 
GDR Palast der Republik which is in itself also a 
fascinating building. It is not often that you find 
bowling alleys and amusements in a political build­
ing. Unfortunately, it was ugly and the urban plan 
around it was weak. From an urban point of view, 
then, one can understand the need to fill the gap 
left by the Stadtschloss. A temporary awning of the 
façade on scaffolding revealed how the Stadtschloss 
formed an important part of the urban composition 
of Unter den Linden. Nonetheless, the revision of 
history through the eradication of buildings and 
records of moments in time is a questionable act. 
There is a need for a balance between protecting 
the layers of a city’s history while accepting that 
buildings are not artefacts, they are subject to dis­
cussions that are much more complex.
The intense discussions around the Neues 
Museum were one of the aspects of the project that 
I enjoyed most. The building was badly damaged 
during the Second World War and, having been 
a ruin for the following 60 years, it developed a 
magical quality. Parts of the highly­decorated and 
didactic spaces were left intact while others were 
totally missing. We intended to protect and cele­
brate what survived while maintaining archaeolog­
ical integrity. The new building grew out of the old 
one by putting the damage back into perspective 
and accepting some of the loss. Under the full glare 
of public opinion there was continuous discussion 
and opposition about every corner. More than 500 
newspaper articles were written over the 12 years.  
In the end, what was important to me was that it 
was a project of meaning. It could not have been 
achieved without the intense discussion and collab­
oration regarding each decision. 
It seems that by gathering around historic build­
ings that have collective memory and meaning 
one can have discussions which do not exist in 
the production of contemporary architecture. It 
is my opinion that such a discussion of meaning 
should exist in the production of contemporary 
architecture.
Thank you. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
28 
PETER ARONSSON 
The Role of Cultural Heritage and 
the Use of History in the 20th-Century 
Baltic Sea Region 
Making heritage 
Making heritage out of the material world is an act 
changing the appearance of the world. It has social, 
legal, commercial and political implications. Inter­
action also works the other way around: changing 
social and economic conditions creates possibil­
ities and a need for the making of new heritage. 
This is an act which involves drawing an epochal 
line. Heritage signals a past significance worthy 
of honour and remembrance but void of prag­
matic functiontality once its appearance has been 
defined. Heritagization moves reality from the 
sphere of pragmatic action to a more or less sacral 
zone (unless it is a church, then it is the other way 
around with the religious being translated to the 
semi­sacral sphere of heritage.) That zone contains 
new functionalities for creating a community, deal­
ing with conflicts and producing values for an 
experience economy. Heritage is made to deal with 
change.
The agrarian society was heritagized when indus­
trial and urban society was making its way as his­
tory progressed. The heritagization of modernity 
and industrial society is connected to the process 
of making post­modernity viable. It entails some 
unquestionable tranformations of early ruins of 
industry into Industrial Cool, but the transfor­
mation as a whole has not set a new canon of how 
to represent this transformation. This signals an 
important question of the nature of current trans­
formations. What part of modernity is still in 
motion as a maker of the futures of society and 
what parts are ready or in nead for heritagization? 
Heritagization means an aestheticization of the 
material world. With legitimate institutions select­
ing, protecting and communicating heritage, the 
conceptualization of the past is stabilized to serve 
the victorious powers of change, also with the help 
of good taste and educated sensibilities. 
Without doubt, difficult heritage may also arise 
and serve important roles as contrast. Auschwitz 
is the example par excellence. This is not the rule, 
however, nor does it often happen that what is evil, 
ugly or boring can reach secure heritagization. 
Remains from industrial society are an ambivalent 
case: which parts are worthy of becoming heritage? 
Are they still representing the future (re­industri­
alization of Europe) or mainly an economic and 
environmental problem?
 This paper will discuss the ambivalent role of 
turning the modern period into history. Even the 
title of the conference can be seen as a contestable 
argument. While some art historians might argue 
that even post­modernism is now being historicized 
by the idea of contemporary art, a more social, 
global and economic standpoint might be that 
we are still in the midst of a world dominated by 
industrial capital with increasing individualism 
and neoliberal economics dominating and where 
conflicts globally take the forms of neo­nationalism 
and religious revivalism.
The making of Heritage is an arena for arguing, 
not only for the value of reminiscences of the past, 
but also for the description of the contemporary 
world and its direction towards the future. Looking 
for reasons for differences is not only confined to 
academic perspectives but is subject to wider views 
of how the future should be shaped, involving the 
fears and hopes for the future of our societies.
The hopes and fears for the future shape the 
mimetic logic which reassembles the past as a space 
of experience into a narrative logic proposing direc­
tions on how to direct the present to move into the 
future.1 Pre­modern society argued in principal for 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
29 
Space of experiences Horizon of expectations 
Mimetic logic 
Narrative logic 
Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck, I have proposed the following model for the past-present-future relationship: 
fulfilling traditional patterns, overlapping space 
of experiences and horizon of expectations nearly 
completely, while modern society as an opposite 
celebrated radical and unique novelty. Post­moder­
nity realizes the power of contemporary logics to 
re­assemble the past to meet different issues and 
situations with more varied strategies. 
The transition from agrarian to industrial
society gave birth to heritage 
It is perhaps easier to acknowledge the power and 
dynamics of the recoding of reality into heritage if, 
for the sake of argument, we look back to an earlier 
epochal shift, when the great leap was to move 
from agricultural to industrial society, or even more 
generally from pre­modern to modern society. The 
second half of the 19th century is a period that 
makes great and paradigmatic efforts to deal with 
changes through uses of the past, making it into 
history and heritage. However, in the 19th century, 
neither the academic nor the administrative spheres 
for action and management were well defined. His­
tory, on the one hand, gradually turned into one of 
the most fundamental formats for knowledge and, 
on the other, into a proper academic discipline. 
Nature and biology were historicized by glacial and 
evolutionary theories, and museums were set up to 
secure empirical evidence and to narrate both natu­
ral and human history. The framing was both uni­
versal, according to the Enlightenment ethos, and 
national in an increasingly political mobilization of 
identity and economic dynamics.2 
At the end of the 19th century, the agricultural 
sector still dominated the GNP of most countries, 
including Sweden. Rapid change involving urban­
ization, marketization and secularization leading 
to migration as well as new ideologies questioning 
traditional hierarchies, socialist and Marxist move­
ments, all challenged the stability of traditional 
world views and polities. A sense of disappearing 
stability created a high need for anchoring nation­
making in a distant and homogenous past placed 
on a fundament of academic research in order to 
reject any suspicion of being the offspring of the 
ideology or insecure politics of the present.
Scientific history developed at its fastest at the
universities in Göttingen and Berlin. In 1853, Ger­
manische Nationalmuseum opened in Nuremberg.
Academic disciplines and cultural institutions,
securely anchored in science, created, materialized
and visualized one of the most complex and insecure
state­ and nation­building processes in Europe, for
the very reason that it was so urgently needed.3 
In Sweden, the economic and social transforma­
tion was among the fastest in the world. Here, the 
invention of the open­air museum celebrating tra­
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
30 
ditional agrarian society became one of the greatest 
exports to other nations in the making, especially 
in predominantly rural Eastern Europe. Opening 
Skansen for the popular co­creation of past worlds 
in 1891 and Nordiska museet, the new palace for 
saving the heritage of a lost world for scientific 
study, a decade later made some strong statements, 
which were, however, not obvious to the partici­
pants, who thought that they were rescuing a solid, 
undisturbed disappearing material and immaterial 
heritage, relics of Nordic culture and the Swedish 
nation.4 The function was more profound and con­
temporary:
First, the institution made a strong statement that
we are all Swedish, overrunning and transforming
regional differences as well as differences in con­
sumption, crafts and class, but displaying differ­
ences as contributions to a concerted national glory.
Secondly, these institutions made a tribute 
to popular and agrarian culture as carriers of 
long­standing values: simple, content, traditional 
and stable, to argue against the value of possibly 
radical changes in the social, economic and politi­
cal constitution.
Thirdly, it secured national borders by natu­
ralizing them in response to recent changes and 
threats. The threats from Germany and Russia were 
looming over the Baltics, the bone of contention 
about the Union with Norway (dissolved unilater­
ally by Norway in 1905), and the territories earlier 
lost (Finland in 1809) were kept in mind, but never 
materialized into violent action. Sweden has not 
taken active part in war since 1814, and the trans­
formation of Scandinavian state hostilities to a 
realm of a shared Nordic heritage has been of major 
importance.5 
Fourthly, placing agrarian society in a museum 
marks that the future belongs to industrial society. 
– “Thank you very much, we honour you by pre­
serving, and visiting you on Sundays – but you are 
History”, in the very sense of past practical signifi­
cance used in American English. 
Fifthly, it presents a field of activity and a play­
ground for polite society to role­play these changes, 
acting on feelings of insecurity as regards the legit­
imacy of the changing world order and a privileged 
position.6 
These examples show the dynamics of negotia­
tions that are both possible and necessary to take 
on through the making of a viable past and insti­
tutionalizing it as heritage, in this case by paradig­
matically saving and moving built environment in a 
new musealized setting.7 
Certainly, heritage was created before this 
period. Traces from all periods of human history 
give evidence of universal needs to apprehend 
the turning of time in the face of individual 
death. With the making of nation­states from the 
16th century onwards, the uses of heritage were 
enhanced to state policy and laws of protection to 
ensure a heroic past for the newly emerged mon­
archies and their nation­states. Napoleon set an 
example in herding heritage treasures into Paris to 
demonstrate power, taste and the supremacy of the 
French nation. The making of national heritage and 
museums became a cultural consequence of this 
global competition to make nations out of dynastic 
states where former subjects were to be trans­
formed to engaged citizens and mobilized as will­
ing soldiers and tax­payers. The sovereignty of the 
state became dependent on heritage. The capacity 
of the heritage institutions and museums to per­
form a viable cultural constitution dealing with 
communities and differences productively is deci­
sive for the quality of the contract between civil 
society and the making of the political community, 
nation and state.8 
Modes of transition to post-industrial
society re-shape heritage 
If we jump one hundred years ahead, we can see 
that the predicament thought of as exclusive to 
our own time bears a striking resemblance to older 
undertakings. Heritage as a term was used for the 
first time in Sweden by the author Viktor Rydberg 
in 1887 and experienced its second strong revival in 
Europe from the 1990s onwards. The Swedish dis­
cussions of how to transform heritage to a relevant 
process for contemporary society include three 
main themes: how should migration and minori­
ties participate and be represented? What under­
takings need to be made to secure the relics of ear­
lier industrial society? How does heritage become 
a relevant tool for the making of a community, for 
democracy, integration and for cultural and travel 
industries? 
The re­making of the 20th­century built envi­
ronment from a purely practical, pragmatic and 
programmatically functional sphere of engage­
ment to cultural heritage interacts with the under­
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
31 
standing of the epochs involved. The forms this 
took differ dramatically from one state to another 
and change over time. Where the Swedish period 
from the 1930s to the 1970s is demarcated and his­
toricized as the heyday of Welfare society, the 
Peoples’ Home (Folkhemmet), and looked upon 
with productive nostalgia by various interests, 
the same period is sharply divided south and east 
of the Baltic by the Second World War and the 
ensuing Cold War. Moreover, the following period 
around 1989/91 is first dominated by a neo­liberal 
turn in connection with the dissolution of the 
Soviet empire ­ a period of hope, even the “End 
of History”.9 The Yugoslav Wars could be seen as 
a remaining unlucky heritage of the former com­
munist system. From 2001, the threat of global ter­
rorism, seemingly endless wars and unrest in the 
Middle East and international terrorism directed 
towards Western powers and modes of life have 
presented new challenges as has the new and more 
aggressive foreign policy of Russia.
The sensibilities vis­à­vis the past might accord­
ingly shift dramatically in response to these recent 
turning points in history. The National Museum of 
the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest takes a radical 
stance against the use of text to present heritage – 
text being still too closely associated with Marx­
ist propaganda, while empirical evidence of peas­
ant realities is aestheticized and universalized to 
remind the nation of its authentic Christian pop­
ular heritage in modes very different from the 
aesthetics used in northern Europe. When the 
Deutsches Historisches Museum re­opened to 
present the same Marxist period, it used text exten­
sively to convince the audience of the temporary 
character of that period in the longer time perspec­
tive of German and European nation­making.
Moving to the Baltic region, this post­war region 
contains very different meanings, drawing mainly 
on the pace of modernization and on its roles in the 
two world wars and the Cold War. Germany is the 
country having been in need of the most explicit 
and sustained working through of its past through 
its Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The process was 
more openly and, I would say, successfully nego­
tiated in BRD as the recognized heir of German 
statehood in the West, while DDR tried to escape 
responsibility for Nazism by associating with the 
anti­fascist struggle led by Soviet forces. Some of 
the difficulties in pleading the legitimacy in the 
relationship between the people and the state in 
Europe are, I would argue, due to the lack of a rele­
vant and legitimate working through of the respon­
sibilities for atrocities during the World War and 
the Cold War. The consequences have not always 
been as catastrophic as in the case of the Balkans 
but are more comparable to the enduring lack of 
trust between civil society and the state in the for­
mer eastern parts of Germany, making for prob­
lems otherwise more visible in Greece and Italy.10
 Memories of modern heritage will carry very 
different meanings for countries with a history 
of being occupied by Soviet and of struggling to 
rebuild ruins after the war, on the one hand, and 
Scandinavian welfare states like Sweden, taking 
advantage of its undamaged production apparatus 
to pursue an even faster modernization and urban­
ization under social­democratic hegemony, on 
the other. It was able to draw heavily on the high 
appreciation of modernity and social engineering 
that was present as early as the 1920s. History and 
heritage were largely to be overcome, as they sig­
nalled either poverty or pre­democratic hierarchies. 
This is, of course, putting it rather strongly, but 
it is striking in comparison with the programme 
of rebuilding the medieval cities of Gdansk, War­
saw, Münster etc. after the Second World War. 
The anchoring in a pre­modern past was not on 
the agenda in the Nordic welfare states. Of course, 
there were slight differences here, with Denmark 
and Sweden representing the old empires and Swe­
den remaining the nation least threatened and 
occupied as the one extreme of modernity, while 
Finland and Norway still felt a strong need to 
anchor their independence in the medieval, pre­ 
occupied era.
Memories of or in the welfare State 
Memories from the industrial era thus constitute an 
ambivalent field of heritage in several senses: 
• In what sense is it really a past historical epoch 
in need of protection? This is contested in several 
ways: even if part of the industrial production has 
moved to low­cost countries, there are still strong 
interest groups describing both Europe in general 
and Sweden as a country with an industrial econ­
omy with a future – very much similar to the case 
argued for agriculture around 1900. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
32 
• Heritage from the industrial epoch often con­
sists of massive, large­scale structures difficult to 
preserve at a reasonable cost. 
These structures are of less obvious aesthetic value 
than the selected heritage of pre­modern conspicu­
ous consumption filling up the art and crafts muse­
ums.11 
It is obvious that a similar pattern from the 1900 
turn of the century can be discerned. The new 
developments that do care for industrial heritage 
are to some extent institutionalized , in Sweden 
through Arbetets museum (“The Museum of 
Work”) and industrial heritage initiatives but are 
as often carried by actors identifying with the new 
economy. Industrial Cool is easier to develop for 
a new IT entrepreneur than for anyone who still 
works as a sub­contractor to a car industry out­
sourced to China.12 
It is possible to discern a dominant mode of 
aesthetic and political modernity working hand 
in hand in Swedish historical culture. It is shared, 
with nuances, among the Scandinavian countries, 
often with an added international appeal, as in con­
cepts like Nordic design and Nordic Light, as well 
as being recognizable in material artefacts ranging 
from Alvar Aalto to IKEA. 
We should, however, not overstate the power of 
one dominant discourse, even when supported and 
orchestrated by cultural policy and official heritage 
institutions. Nostalgic modes of desire and visions 
of other futures are not only projected to moder­
nity and Industrial Cool. The typical Falu red col­
our croft in the countryside possesses considera­
ble attraction as a summer house and a dream of a 
simpler life not only for Swedes but also for Danes, 
Dutch and Germans buying and caring for houses 
abandoned by urbanized Swedes in southern Scan­
dinavia. New urbanism carries other references 
backwards, even if only seldom as openly as in the 
fake medieval city of Jakriborg between Lund and 
Malmö, or in a proposed national romantic build­
ing project in Växjö, re­creating a late nineteenth 
century street. These highly debated applications 
of post­modernity demonstrate that repetition is 
never possible. The attraction of the medieval in 
late­modern society is very different from both 
late­nineteenth century medievalism drawing on 
the origin of the nation and the desperate recon­
structions after the Second World War. In contem­
porary society, it merges with the dream of a more 
rustic and natural never­never land, less historical 
and more mythical than ever ­ a dream that seems 
to replay the long­standing dilemma of modernity: 
the need for refuge from the ever­changing 
demands of contemporaneity. 
Contemporary political implications 
The political impact of the ambivalences of contem­
porary challenges and relevant uses of the past can 
be demonstrated by the Swedish case.
The clearest mark of the heyday of classical 
expansionist welfare state policy was the building 
of the Million Programme of concrete suburbs in 
the major cities. People outside these settings sel­
dom regard them as a valuable part of history, but 
mostly evaluate them more as a problem. With­
out doubt, many people, among them many sec­
ond­generation immigrants, embrace them with 
a similar warm feeling as earlier generation of 
Swedes have done through their local history com­
munities (hembygdsföreningar). At the other end 
of the spectrum, the city centre of Stockholm with 
legacies of ruthless modernization is becoming a 
field for more or less successful heritage argumen­
tation and protection (Slussen, Sergels Torg). This 
corresponds to a consumer hype for furniture, arts 
and crafts and even for IKEA products from the 
1950s and 1960s. “Per Albin Hansson built the peo­
ple’s home and Ingvar Kamprad furnished it”. An 
IKEA Museum opened in Älmhult in 2016. It nar­
rates a story of successful Swedish modernity inter­
acting with local values and entrepreneurship in 
creating ideals for modern living and a successful 
company strategy.
As a parallel to these aesthetic ambivalences, the
turns in national politics show similar twists and
turns. Around 1990, the neoliberal turn in Sweden
entailed a strong stand against the culture associated
with collective social democracy lumping together
society and state into one expanding public sector,
a Welfare State. This strategy emanating from the
right­wing party did not lead to a strong and last­
ing governmental position. Changing the strategy
to embrace the ethos of the People’s Home, Folk­
hemmet, the New Moderates could argue that they
wanted to preserve this heritage but modernize the
provisions through market mechanisms and individ­
ual choice. Even this turn paid tribute to the posi­
tive value of modernity within the broader political
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
33 
culture in Sweden.13 As downsides of the new model
show up, an even more open and insecure political
situation has come to dominate political culture and
has opened for a more right­wing and ethnic version
of Folkhemmet as a political force. Consequently,
this wrestling with heritage and politics is an ongo­
ing process, with parallels around the globe. 
Conclusions 
The tool box of history has basically remained 
stable since the late 18th century. Similar sites, arte­
facts and narratives are framed by a national his­
tory outlined already in pre­modern state­making, 
refined in the era of history in the 19th century and 
delivered to us. Using these tools can produce quite 
different and sometimes competing narratives rep­
resenting different modes of historical conscious­
ness. History is today less valued as a science (not 
to say destiny) and more as a source of meaning 
for identity politics and for production, as heritage 
industry. The epoch of modernity provided histori­
cal consciousness both for conservatism, liberalism, 
REFERENCES 
Alzén, A. and Burell, B., (red.) (2005) Otydligt, otympligt, otaligt.
Det industriella kulturarvets utmaningar, Stockholm: Carlsson. 
Aronsson, P. (2011) “The Productive Dilemmas of History”, in 
Ruin, H. and Ers, A., (eds) Rethinking Time: Essays on History, 
Memory and Representation, p. 29–38. Stockholm: Södertörn 
University.
Aronsson, P. (2012) “writing the museum”, in Hegardt, J. e.  
The museum beyond the nation, pp. 17–40. Stockholm: National 
Historical Museum. 
Aronsson, P. (2015a) “National museums as cultural constitutions”,
in Aronsson, P. and Elgenius, G., (eds.) National Museums and
Nation-building in Europe 1750–2010. Mobilization and legiti­
macy, continuity and change, pp. 167–199. London: Routledge.
Aronsson, P. (2015b) “Shaping lives: negotiating and narrating 
memories”, Etnográfica, 19(3): 577–591.
Aronsson, P. and Bentz, E. (2011) “National Museums in Ger­
many: Anchoring Competing Communities”, in Aronsson, P. 
and Elgenius, G., (eds.) Building National Museums in Europe 
1750–2010. Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European 
National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and 
the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011, pp. 327–362. 
Linköping: LiU E­Press.
Aronsson, P. and Elgenius, G., (eds.) (2015) National Museums 
and Nation-building in Europe 1750–2010. Mobilization and 
legitimacy, continuity and change, London: Routledge.
Aronsson, P. and Gradén, L., (eds.) (2013) Performing Nordic 
heritage. Everyday practices and institutional culture, Burling­
ton: Ashgate.
Berger, S. and Conrad, C. (2015) The past as history. National 
identity and historical consciousness in Modern Europe, Hound­
mills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 
communism and fascism, all moving modernity in 
different directions. 
What roles will be played to open horizons of 
expectation for these different modernities for cre­
ating a future in a fundamentally challenging 
global setting, dealing with the past critically or as 
role models? Apart from more repetitive and reac­
tionary backlashes into old ­isms obviously at hand, 
we can identify both productive and legitimate ten­
dencies of two kinds: 1. To create a sense of belong­
ing and security we may see more site­ and situ­
ation­specific strategies and sensibility resulting 
in a much needed contribution to a qualitatively 
renewed heritagization of modernity, relating to 
a more complex appreciation of historical lega­
cies then the traditional national framing. 2. To 
gather and demonstrate positive roads towards 
future through making heritage, the framing needs 
to demonstrate not only warnings to the contrary 
but above all to celebrate and inspire innovation for 
sustainability in all the aspects needed for human­
ity to make the future both possible and desirable.  
Bäckström, M. (2011) “Loading guns with patriotic love: Artur 
Hazelius’s attempts at Skansen to remake Swedish society”, in 
Knell, S. J., Aronsson, P. and Amundsen, A., (eds) National
Museums. New Studies from around the World, pp. 69–87.  
London: Routledge.
Fukuyama, F. (1992) The end of history and the last man, New 
York: Free Press: Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada. 
Koselleck, R. (1985) Futures past: on the semantics of historical time, 
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Rentzhog, S. (2007) Open air museums. The history and future of a 
visionary idea, Stockholm, Östersund: Carlsson; Jamtli förlag.
Trägårdh, L. and Berggren, H. (2011) “Social Trust and Radical 
Individualism: The Paradox at the Heart of Nordic Capital­
ism”, Nordic way, 27 s. Stockholm: Global utmaning. 
Willim, R. (2008) Industrial cool: om postindustriella fabriker, 
Lund: Humanistiska fakulteteten, Lunds universitet. 
ENDNOTES 
1. Koselleck 1985; Aronsson 2015b. 
2. Aronsson 2011. 
3. Berger and Conrad 2015; Aronsson and Bentz 2011. 
4. Rentzhog 2007; Bäckström 2011. 
5. Aronsson and Gradén 2013. 
6. Bäckström 2011. 
7. Aronsson 2012. 
8. Aronsson and Elgenius 2015.
9. Fukuyama 1992.
10. Aronsson 2015a. 
11. Alzén and Burell 2005. 
12. Willim 2008. 
13. Trägårdh and Berggren 2011. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
34 
MARIJA DRĖMAITĖ 
Long Life of the Socialist Modernism
in the Baltic States
 
In 2016 UNESCO World Heritage Committee 
Session inscribed the works of Le Corbusier on 
the World Heritage List.1 It must have been the 
moment of triumph for many lovers of the Modern 
Movement and people who initiated preservation 
programs for modern architecture. With key works 
of Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and other 
masters on the World heritage list we can be sure 
that Modern Movement became an established 
cultural heritage. 
What about the socialist modernism? It already 
had its momentum few years ago with lectures, 
books, conferences and exhibitions. These events 
testify to the need to understand and consider 
Socialist pasts not as a “lost”, which is better 
ignored, but rather as a distinctive phenomenon 
that is still affecting us, exploring which can at 
least in part explain our present. And many of my 
colleagues ask why socialist modernism did not 
make it to the world heritage list. 
We can speculate that it might be because of the 
poor value of the socialist modernism, or, to put it 
in other words, because socialist modernism did 
not produce any World class architectural icons? 
Or maybe the reason is a less influential commu­
nity, which did not make enough effort to prepare 
an outstanding nomination? As a good provocation 
I would like to mention a book Belyaevo Forever 
(Strelka, 2014) by Polish researcher Kuba Snopek, 
who tried to put a Moscow mass housing area Bely­
aevo on the UNESCO world heritage list and dis­
cussed the values of generic architecture. However, 
it is so far a research project.
Or maybe the post socialist world simply does 
not love socialist modernism at all and is not inter­
ested in preserving it? At a recent conference 
on Socialist Modernism, hosted by the Colle­
gium Hungarium in Berlin (24–26 April, 2016), 
an issue of general refusal of postwar modernism 
was raised focusing on an alarming example from 
Skopje. Macedonia’s capital was rebuilt after the 
1963 earthquake with a modernist city center plan 
by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange (1965). Now, 
the hollow Doric columns and “antiquitisation” are 
transforming the city. Asked why, Prime Minister 
Nikola Gruevski told, that national feelings were 
suppressed in Tito’s Yugoslavia and “there were no 
monuments or statues to express our nationhood.”2 
Doesn’t it suggest a thought that socialist modern­
ism is not worth preserving at all?
It is quite paradoxical, but for the time being it 
was easier to find society’s support for the preserva­
tion of buildings from the Stalinist period, because 
of their elaborate Neo­Classical facades, perceived 
as architectural beauty. So architectural historians 
really have to struggle explaining architectural val­
ues of the modernist glass boxes, seen on almost 
every corner. Several years ago people thought that 
communism was already history. However, after 
the 2014 Russian invasion in Ukraine, there began 
a second wave of revisionism, when Soviet period 
monuments that remained after the first wave in 
1990–1992 as rather neutral, were questioned again. 
The real communist legacy that bothered the soci­
ety was actually sculptural monuments that liter­
ally symbolized the Soviet. Some were even taken 
off in July 2015 in Vilnius, a well­known case of the 
Green Bridge. 
What about the socialist modernism, which does 
not speak ideology so explicitly? Wherever I go, 
my fellow modernists are complaining that social­
ist modernism is left abandoned and not preserved 
in their countries. Is it also the case in the Baltic 
Countries? Is it perceived as an ideological “other”? 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
35 
It is important to notice, that buildings of socialist 
modernism has reached the moment, where they 
lived approx. 25 years in socialism and equally 25 
years in democratic societies. When I look around, 
I see that most of the functional buildings are reno­
vated and used for the purposes they were designed 
for (schools, shops, offices, hospitals) and even edi­
fices built for communist regimes seem to be adapt­
able for the representational needs without moral 
problems – Ministries and Parliaments operate 
there. In recent years there have been significant 
public campaigns to save socialist­era buildings 
under threat. This rather pragmatic approach was 
well put by the 2013 Tallinn Architectural Bien­
nale’s topic “Recycling socialism”: “With Biennale 
we wanted to take the discussion further by gath­
ering architects­visionaries from all around Europe 
to find ideas for the future”.3 
Baltic Modernism as “an inner abroad”  
within the Soviet Union 
Why modernist architecture from the 1960s to the 
1980s is important in the Baltic Countries? Being 
the latest to be incorporated into the Soviet Union 
in 1940, with the still present national schools 
of modern architecture, in the late 1950s Baltic 
Republics generated a form of critical modernism 
towards Stalinist architecture and became media­
tors of the Western modernism in the USSR, fur­
ther gaining the title of the inner abroad or the 
Soviet West. That is a very short summary of the 
popular mythology.
For the generation of young Baltic architects 
(born in the 1930s, graduated in the 1950s) the 
Khrushchev’s Thaw in 1955 encouraged the process 
of cultural liberation that could be characterized 
by a clear re­emergence of national, Western­ori­
ented and modernist aspects of culture. By graft­
ing westward looking orientation onto local tra­
ditions, architects at the Baltic periphery of the 
Soviet Union kept alive an historical ambition to be 
included in a Western European cultural commu­
nity.4 
Gyorgy Peteri, editor of the book Imagining the 
West in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, devel­
oped a concept of symbolic geographies, that reveal 
“how human agents, in particular historical and 
cultural contexts, define themselves by locating 
themselves spatially as well as temporarily, draw­
ing the boundaries of social spaces where they are 
MODERNIST PALACE OF ART EXHIBITIONS in the Old Town of 
Vilnius (Vytautas Čekanauskas, 1965–1967). Photo: Personal archive of 
Vytautas Čekanauskas. 
within, and relating themselves and their spaces to 
others. … What makes these socially and histor­
ically situated processes really important is their 
intimate relationship to the formation of identities 
and, indeed, to identity politics.”5 
We can trace that temporal geography, or the 
modernism from the pre­war independent states, 
as an important source of inspiration. Another, 
spatial symbolical geography can be perceived as 
an interpretation of the Western modernism or 
the imagined West. The possibility to visit capital­
ist countries, and especially Finland, made impor­
tant influence. In the Nordic regional modernism 
Baltic architects saw the features they were aspiring 
to – an acceptable combination of the international 
modernism and regional identity. Therefore the 
national modernism in the Baltic republics was 
based on the use of local materials (red brick, 
stone and wood), combination of natural light, and 
respect to natural environment and historic herit­
age. First it was experimented in relatively small 
designs for interiors, recreation pavilions, and cafes. 
Later designs for major commissions employed 
modernism for the National Highlights, as in 
the Palace of Art Exhibitions in Vilnius, Dailes 
Theatre in Riga or Song Festival Arena in Tallinn. 
Officially Baltic design contributed for the 
Soviet urban planning – the first State and Lenin 
awards in the USSR were given for Lithuanian and 
Estonian mass housing microrayons and the Baltic 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
36 
collective­farm settlements, and were also widely 
used for propaganda reasons as soviet architectural 
achievements. In 1988 the Lenin award went to the 
Lithuanian state farm Juknaiciai for completely dif­
ferent garden­city design and individualization of 
the kolkhoz architecture. It is evident that these 
designs were not following but setting the new 
standards and changing ideals of the soviet archi­
tecture. Together with critical processes in the late 
Soviet Period (for example the Tallinn School acted 
as a platform for presenting a criticism of building 
regulations, Soviet mass construction, standardiza­
tion and modernist urban planning), Baltic archi­
tecture earned the reputation of a very strong, west­
ern oriented architectural school with a regional 
identity. And they loved it.
So, are we actually longing for something today? 
There are different types of longing. One of which 
– the architect’s longing for the lost honourable sta­
tus of the master after the fall of modernism (and 
the entire system). In the East and in the West 
alike there were architects whose personal vision 
coincided with the official one and this became a 
key to their success. This is related to the “urban 
legends” that have subsequently arisen – Lithu­
anian architects like telling stories about their 
“silent resistance” to the Soviet regime. By repeat­
ing it again and again they uphold the myth on the 
exclusivity of the architecture of the Baltic States. 
According to Andres Kurg, the loss of strong posi­
tions in 1990, when an architect became just a 
part of the real estate development programme, 
encouraged a nostalgic feeling for former positions 
and former powers: “It is quite paradoxical. They 
became theoreticians when they lost their power as 
architects. I think they are nostalgic for their lost 
status in society”.6 
Adaptive re-use of socialist 
modernism buildings 
We have reached a turning point when many Euro­
pean architects consider socialist modernism as his­
torical architecture. It is no wonder that more than 
20 pieces of Socialist Modernism listed in Lithua­
nia, and most of them were listed back in 1988–1990 
as the achievements of the socialist Lithuania and it 
was initiated mostly by architects themselves. Most 
of them stood out the time challenge and now are 
on the renewed list after revision. An illustrative 
case is the Neringa cafe interior in Vilnius that was 
listed already in the Soviet period. During the wild 
1990s, when all private cafes and restaurants refur­
bished their interiors, the Neringa cafe and hotel 
was bought by the Nordic investors. With respect 
to listed interior they have restored it. That is how 
the only authentic Socialist Modernist interior has 
survived and now is in great respect.
There are a lot of socialist (in the essence) build­
ings that continue successfully their functional 
duties. Former Latvian Communist Party Central 
Committee building is now functioning as the 
World Trade Center, one of the most prestigious 
office buildings in Riga. The same building of the 
Lithuanian Communist Party is now functioning 
as the premises of the Lithuanian Government, 
and in Estonia it is now home to the Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs. The same can be said about the 
houses of Political Education that were built as 
modern educational buildings containing large 
halls and number of classes. Former House of 
Political Education in Riga is now a Riga Congress 
Center; House of Political Education in Kaunas 
was adapted to the University premises whereas in 
Vilnius it was not completed by the collapse of the 
Soviet Lithuania and was immediately turned into 
the Congress Hall.
Famous cultural buildings, like Dailes Theatre 
in Riga or Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius 
continue to function after thorough renovations. 
Revolution Museum in Vilnius was successfully 
renovated and adapted to the new use as a National 
Gallery in 2009. The Red Latvian Riflemen 
Museum and Monument was also adapted to the 
new Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. And 
there are of course many more functional build­
ings that are being used and are being renovated, 
however with much less attention to their archi­
tecture than function. I talk about architecturally 
important hospitals, schools and other functional 
buildings.
There still are many problematic cases that are 
connected to the functions of the socialist society 
that are not anymore in use. For example, a funeral 
home in Kaunas built in 1978 for special purposes of 
secular funeral ritual is a very interesting building, 
both from the functional as well as architectural 
point of view. And it is listed. However, it is not in 
use anymore and it is really difficult to adapt it to 
new use. However, when there is a strategic interest 
in replacing a socialist building, socialist legacy is 
 37 
CAFÉ NERINGA at the opening in 1959. 
Photo: Vilnius County Archive. 
CAFÉ NERINGA after renovation is still a 
popular place. Photo: Marija Drėmaitė, 2012. 
usually used in a negative way. This was said about There are also many significant buildings that 
the Palace of Sports and Concerts in Vilnius when did not survive, like the beautiful restaurant Jūras 
there was interest to demolish it and use its plot. It Pērle on the Latvian beach. Demolition of these 
was called a Soviet Concrete Monster. Then it was buildings is not usually ideological, but rather eco­
listed in 2006 and continued to stand derelict until nomical – usually a new development project. 
it got included into the major redevelopment pro­ However, demolition of the restaurant Banga on 
ject for the National congress center. And now it is the Lithuanian beach in Palanga last year sends a 
an architecturally and technologically interesting rather alarming “Skopje like” message. 
building from the 1960s. 
 38 
LAZDYNAI RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT was the only mass housing Soviet district to be awarded with Lenin Prize 
and is now a listed urban area. However, Lazdynai do not have a management or renovation plan, which result 
in random renovation of houses. Photo: Marija Drėmaitė, 2012.
FORMER REVOLUTION MUSEUM in Vilnius was renovated and adapted to the National Gallery in 2009 
(Audrius Bučas, Gintaras Kuginys, Darius Čaplinskas). Photo: Marija Drėmaitė, 2011. 
39 
ARCHITECTS IN VILNIUS at the meeting against planned demolition of the Postmodernist Road Police Administrative building (1985). 
Photo: Audrius Ambrasas, 2016. 
What is the Future? 
Taking into account that approx. 70% of our built 
environment was built in the postwar period, we 
must be ready to deal with this load of construc­
tions. The attitude towards Socialist modernism 
has been changing over time – the judging aspect 
has been gradually diminishing (backwardness 
in comparison to the West or being in search for 
Western copies), more contextual questions appear 
(what were the conditions of the time? why were 
such commissions made?). In the post­Socialist 
world, an evaluation of architecture based on ideol­
ogy is no longer relevant. Even more so, buildings 
of the Socialist modernism are being devastated 
more often not because they are “Socialist”, but 
because of their strategic locations in city centres, 
under the pressure of developers or any other com­
mercial interests. There is also an issue with aes­
thetical acceptance of Socialist Modernism, which 
looks “standard, industrial, grey and dull” for many. 
The conclusion that is revealed when consistently 
scrutinizing Baltic modernism is a growing suspi­
cion about its universal character. How could the 
modernist architecture be so universal, while also 
being so personal at the same time? In discussing 
the various judgments on the heritage of modern­
ist architecture one could also feel the same sus­
picion: how much are such judgments influenced 
by different forms of nostalgia and how much by a 
truly critical outlook? If it really is nostalgia – is it 
possible to reconcile it with critical thinking? And 
if it really is nostalgia – whose nostalgia is it and 
nostalgia for what? After an entire generation has 
emerged since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which 
basically represented the end of the epoch of mod­
ernism (or at least a part of it), it is interesting to 
have a look at what kind of challenges await the 
researchers, curators, audience and society. 
ENDNOTES 
1. 	 Four new sites inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage 
List, UNESCO World Heritage Center, 17 July 2016,  
http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1528 
2. 	 Barry D. Wood, “Modernity or Madness? Faux Baroque 
buildings transform Skopje”, http://www.usatoday.com/
story/travel/destinations/2016/01/13/skopje/78732050/ 
3. 	 “Recycling Socialism. It is architect’s job to inspire and 
explain what other solutions could be made”, interview with 
Aet Ader by Viktorija Šiaulytė, Modernism: Between  
Nostalgia and Criticism, edited volume, edited by Marija  
Drėmaitė and Julija Reklaitė, Vilnius: Vilnius University and 
Architecture Fund, 2014, p. 175­184, http://www.archfondas.
lt/leidiniu/en/node/123 
4.	  John V. Maciuika, “East Block, West View: Architecture and 
Lithuanian National Identity”, Traditional Dwellings and  
Settlements Review (University of California Press, 1999), 
Vol. XI, No. 1, p. 24. 
5. 	 Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 
edited by Gyorgy Peteri, Pittsburgh University Press, 2010, 
p. 2–3. 
6.	  Modernism: Between Nostalgia and Criticism, edited volume, 
edited by Marija Drėmaitė and Julija Reklaitė, Vilnius:  
Vilnius University and Architecture Fund, 2014, p. 11,  
http://www.archfondas.lt/leidiniu/en/node/123 
  
 
 
40 
MAŁGORZATA ROZBICKA 
Poland’s Postwar Architectural Heritage: 
A Record of Political, Social, and
Economic Change 
Poland’s postwar architecture and urban planning among Poles, it is cultural heritage that should be 

is a phenomenon that is remarkably diverse both protected in accordance with its artistic, historical, 

formally and in terms of content. Although Polish and scientific values. 

architects were never completely isolated from 

European and world architecture following 1945, 1945–1948
 
their architectural creativity up to 1989 was strongly Regardless of attitude to systemic transformation, 

influenced by political, social, and economic the priority task before the Polish population over 

changes taking place in Poland. the years 1945–1949 was reconstruction after war­

Presented here is the architectural landscape of time destruction. This was especially true of War­
postwar Poland. It provides proof of great diversity saw – 85% rubble. However, its capital function and 
and cultural value. Still stirring mixed emotions reconstruction were decreed by the new communist 
WARSAW. POLISH UNITED WORKERS’ PARTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE BUILDING (W. Kłyszewski, J. Mokrzyński, and E. Wierzbicki, 1947–1952). 
State in 2016. Photo by P. Kobek from the Collection of the National Heritage Board of Poland (hereinafter referred to as Coll. NID). 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
41 
authorities in the winter of 1945 as the “primary 
task in rebuilding the country”.1 
Actually getting this job done necessitated the 
recruitment of the intelligentsia, especially archi­
tects. For the most part, they did not look favorably 
upon the government as conferred and protected by 
the Soviets. Today, it is difficult to fathom just what 
ultimately caused them to collectively join the cen­
tralized process of reconstruction initialized by the 
communists. However, it seems that the exception­
ally skillful dosing of communist doctrine in the 
initial stages of systemic transformation was key.2 
In architecture and urban planning, the unique 
liberalism of the first phase of communist rule 
guaranteed architects freedom in creativity while 
limiting the role of political factors to formulating 
needs and creating an organizational framework.
Apart from rebuilding the core of old Warsaw 
– the Old and New Towns and adjacent streets 
– that was carried out with a relatively faithful 
preservation of historical buildings, the architecture 
of the years 1945–1949 developed in direct relation­
ship to the achievements of interwar Modernism. 
Depending on subject, designs and erected build­
ings made creative reference to Constructivism – 
the classical tradition that developed in Poland in 
the 1930s – and the left­wing accomplishments of 
the Avant­Garde in social matters.3 
Even the first major construction projects of 
postwar Warsaw saw the successful application of 
1930s’ academic Constructivism joining functional 
perfection with an official feel based on axial sym­
metry, meticulous stone finish, and reinforced con­
crete structure. One example is the State Economic 
Planning Commission complex (Stanisław Bień­
kuński and Stanisław Rychłowski, 1946–1948). 
Another is the Polish United Workers’ Party Cen­
tral Committee building (Wacław Kłyszewski, 
Jerzy Mokrzyński, and Eugeniusz Wierzbicki, 
1947–1952).
Freedom in creativity also bore fruit in the 
architecture of public buildings through yet other 
tendencies. A most interesting architectural 
phenomenon is the creativity of Marek Leykam – 
exceptional through its architectural form coupled 
with the logic of function and the rhythm of rein­
forced concrete structure. Outstanding Warsaw 
buildings include the Corbusian CDT department 
store (Zbigniew Ihnatowicz and Jerzy Romański, 
1948–1952). 
The Avant­Garde mainly left its mark on the 
architecture and urban planning of Warsaw hous­
ing estates. There, the prime thought was the build­
ing of social ties on the basis of the Anglo­Saxon 
concept of the “Neighborhood Unit” (Żoliborz – 
Barbara and Stanisław Brukalski, 1946; Mokotów – 
Zasław Malicki and Stefan Tworkowski, 1946; Koło 
II – Helena and Szymon Syrkus, 1947–1950).
Unfortunately, starting with 1948, respect for the 
creative independence of the architectural commu­
nity by state ideological and political bodies dete­
riorated as systemic transformation quickened. 
The authorities gradually took over full control 
of all aspects of architectural work.4 State nation­
wide design institutions began to emerge. Hous­
ing cooperatives were deprived of their function 
as investor in 1949. Housing construction encom­
passing investment, design, and construction was 
almost completely monopolized by the ZOR Work­
ers’ Housing Development Administration.5 
1949–1955 
Thus, after a brief few years of creative freedom, 
enthusiasm, and dedication to reconstruction, 
Polish architecture entered a time of strong ideolo­
gization.
The offensive of Socialist Realism was launched 
by a resolution passed in June 1949 at the National 
Party Convention of Architects. It decreed that 
architecture “must become the ideological weapon 
of the Party.”6 It must be clear and close to the peo­
ple. It must be national in form and socialist in 
content – a “creative mapping of the ideology and 
spirit of the times”7 supporting the Six­Year Plan 
for the Economic Development and Building of 
Socialism (1950–1956).8 
The Design Office Coordination Committee 
was established in February 1950. Its purpose was 
the subjugation of architecture to ideology, and to 
develop criteria for its assessment in terms of the 
postulates of Socialist Realism.9 Piercing criticism 
of the achievements of the years 1946–1948 was 
launched. Major public buildings still under con­
struction were modified in the spirit of socialism.10 
Only a few, like the CDT, ranked among “designs 
manifestly on the loosing architectural side,”11 were
completed without significant changes.
The impact of ideological and organizational 
transformations also marked the architecture of 
housing estates under construction. Rectification 
  
42 
WARSAW. MDM MARSZAŁKOWSKA HOUSING DISTRICT (S. Jankowski, J. Knothe, J. Sigalin, and Z. Stępiński, 1951–1952). State in 2016. 
Photo by P. Kobek. Coll. NID. 
was the fate of the architectural detail and finish 
of housing estates such as the Modern Praga I (H. 
and S. Syrkus, A. Przybylski, and R. Dowgird, 
1948–1952) and Muranów South (Bohdan Lachert, 
1949–1956), built on the rubble of Warsaw’s Ghetto. 
Socialist Realism, in its search for “national 
form” in the past, chose Classical composition and 
detail as the basis of its development and logic. 
Expressions of Constructivism were aggressively 
fought by totalitarian neo­Classicism. Modernist 
Disurbanism replaced courtyard solutions with vast 
axial­radial structures while the “penury and bar­
renness” of Constructivism was supplanted by a 
wealth of stylized detail uniformly introduced onto 
the façades of government, culture, and apartment 
buildings.
One of the most spectacular applications of the 
ideology, planning, and architecture of Social­
ist Realism was the MDM Marszałkowska Hous­
ing District (S. Jankowski, J. Knothe, J. Sigalin, 
and Z. Stępiński, 1951–1952), a monumental hous­
ing complex and parade route on the ruins of War­
saw’s city center with the enormous Parade Square, 
the site of the Palace of Culture and Science build­
ing (Lew Rudniew, 1952–1955) – “gift of the nations 
of the USSR” – Polonized Soviet­Classical archi­
tecture applying detail paraphrasing Polish Renais­
sance and neo­Classical forms. 
Outside of the capital, the most significant 
example embodying Socialist Realism is the green­
field project of the 60 000 strong city of Nowa 
Huta and Europe’s then largest steel mill. Erected 
in stages on the basis of a master plan by Tadeusz 
Ptaszycki (1950), it assumed construction of over a 
dozen housing estates of diverse layouts and archi­
tecture within a structure of traffic arteries radiat­
ing from a five­sided central square.12 
The gradual retreat from rigorous adherence to 
the formal and ideological assumptions of Socialist 
Realism began with its timid criticism during the 
First National Convention of Architects one month 
after Stalin’s death.13 
43 
KATOWICE. SPORTS-ENTERTAINMENT ARENA (architecture: M. Gintowt, M. Krasiński, structural engineering: A. Żórawski, 1960). 
State in 2015. Photo by M. Rozbicka. 
The first monumental structure that broke with 
the canons of Socialist Realism is the Tenth Anni­
versary Stadium seating 70 000. Designed and 
built utilizing wartime rubble, it was an earthwork­ 
masonry structure crowned by a conspicuous glazed 
pavilion (J. Hryniewiecki, M. Leykam, and C. 
Rajewski, 1954–1955). 
1956–1960 
The Polish architectural community ultimately cut 
itself off from the theory and practice of Socialist 
Realism in March 1956 during the Polish Nation­
wide Architects’ Convention.14 
Coming to power in October 1956, Władysław 
Gomułka ushered a brief period of moderate 
reform and “thawing.” There was an opening to the 
West, improved relations with the Roman Catholic 
Church, and a halt to agricultural collectivization. 
Architecture and urban planning looked for a new, 
modern aesthetic and modern structural, material, 
and planning solutions. 
A basic problem facing the new Party leader­
ship was housing. A housing policy was d eveloped 
over the years 1957–1958. It assumed using the pop­
ulation’s resources for housing projects and a big­
ger role for cooperatives15 – certainly p ositive 
changes. However, there were also new ideas 
regarding housing construction. Among them was 
the principle of type standardization announced 
in 195916 as well as the introduction that same year 
of design standards17 making dwelling unit floor 
area dependent on occupancy – a mere nine square 
meters for every individual.
Nevertheless, the post­October “opening” 
brought several successful residential buildings. 
Among these is Warsaw’s Sady Żoliborskie I hous­
ing estate (Halina Skibniewska, 1958–1962). Meet­
ing standards it creates a harmonious complex of 
twenty carefully planed and developed five­ and 
three­story buildings picturesquely positioned 
amidst vegetation.18 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
44 
The design freedom of the “thaw” also bore fruit 
in ambitious designs for public buildings. Unfor­
tunately, they often exceeded domestic contracting 
potential. They were built in reduced form or not 
at all – e.g., the novel design for the Eclectic Zach­
ęta exhibition building expansion (Oskar Hansen, 
Lech Tomaszewski, and Stanisław Zamecznik, 
1958).
In spite of technological and economic restric­
tions, many ambitious 1956–1960 public buildings
designs were eventually built, albeit not until the 
1960s or later. Among the most original in form 
and structural bravery is Warsaw’s Supersam 
building. It was Poland’s first supermarket and 
cafeteria (Jerzy Hryniewiecki, Maciej and Ewa 
Krasiński, Wacław Zalewski, Andrzej Żórawski, 
and Stanisław Kusia, 1959–1962). Another is the 
Katowice sports­entertainment arena (architecture: 
Maciej Gintowt and Maciej Krasiński, structural 
engineering: Andrzej Żórawski, 1960, construction 
1964–1971).
The “thaw” also brought with it several build­
ings using modern forms and material­structural 
concepts. On a wave of improved State–Church 
relations these included churches such as the 
Church of the Holy Mother of Polish Emigrants 
in Władysławowo (Szczepan Baum and Andrzej 
Kulesza, 1957–1961) and the Church of St. John the 
Baptist in Nowe Tychy (Józef Kołodziejczyk, Tade­
usz Szczęsny, and Zbigniew Weber, 1957–1958).19 
The 1960s 
After the “thaw’s” Five­Year Plan (1956–1960), the 
authorities backtracked in the two successive eco­
nomic plans (1961–1965 and 1966–1970) and invested 
in industry and raw materials. Their decision 
resulted in a slowing of housing construction, espe­
cially dwelling unit quality and size.
As the 1960s started, “post­thaw” enthusiasm 
began to wan in the architectural community. Cen­
tralization of design processes and multiplication 
of formal restrictions continued. The govern­
ment introduced type standardization in 195920 and
urban and rural building construction guidelines in 
1966. The development of nationwide housing con­
struction prefabrication systems became a priority 
(1966).21 Obviously, pressure to implement prefab­
rication and type standardization limited the free­
dom of designers. 
Any identifying of the architects with their work 
was additionally weakened by the cost­cutting leg­
islation of July 196022 and stricter standards defin­
ing net building intensity introduced in 1964. This 
had the effect of decreasing the area within housing 
estate limits and increasing the share of long high­
rise buildings.23 
Searching for reserves and savings, state author­
ities implemented plans for cheap buildings in 
1961.24 One year later a directive introduced a pro­
gram that assumed the lowering of construction 
costs by 20%. Changes introduced to housing 
design standards in 1961 also insisted on extreme 
savings. They forced dwelling units that were as 
small as possible, with single–sided airing, win­
dowless kitchens, minimal entry halls, and bath­
rooms that required special permission for a bath­
tub, shower, and washbasin.25 
An inadequate construction and materials indus­
try and the dependence on “building contractors 
consistently demanding simplification” had a nega­
tive effect on architectural design, especially hous­
ing design.26 
The 1960s was also a period of the supremacy 
of urban plans, which instead of shaping the cul­
tural landscape often served to “legalize decisions 
taken counter to the plan,”27 while simultaneously 
“assigning buildings the role of simple volumes and 
functions.”28 
Ongoing centralization of the design process, 
cost­cutting, multiplying restrictions, and the pri­
macy of prefabrication, especially large panel con­
struction, fashioned a utilitarian, economical, and 
standardized architecture springing out of Mod­
ernism and its concept of the social housing estate 
– Socmodern. The effect was a landscape filled with 
hundreds of similar block­filled housing estates.29 
Nevertheless, in spite of standards that were 
probably the most restrictive in Europe, thanks to 
designer stubbornness and creative inventiveness, 
this same period saw the emergence of housing 
estates that stood apart from the Socmodern tem­
plate with its five­ and eleven­story standardized 
rectilinear volumes. In terms of urban and archi­
tectural planning, the most original was the Juliusz 
Słowacki housing estate in Lublin (architecture: 
Oskar and Zofia Hansen, structural engineering: 
Jerzy Dowgiałło, 1960–1963, construction 1964–
1972). This was the first effort to give reality to the 
novel idea of an open linear and open form system 
  
 
45 
WARSAW. ZA ŻELAZNĄ BRAMĄ HOUSING ESTATE (J. Furman, J. Czyż, J. Józefowicz, A. Skopiński, 1965–1972). State in 1992. 
Photo: W. Stępień, Coll. NID. 
presented by Oskar Hansen at the 1959 CIAM 
Congress.30 
A controversial achievements of this period 
is the Za Żelazną Bramą housing estate located 
in the center of Warsaw and consisting of nine­
teen “cubby­ hole” sixteen­story buildings (Jan 
Fu rman, Jerzy Czyż, Jerzy Józefowicz, and Andrzej 
Skopiński, 1965–1972) – an attempt to actually build 
Le Corbusier’s vision of dwellings surrounded by 
vegetation in functionally self­sufficient high­rise 
buildings applying extreme cost­cutting in the 
politicized reality of the 1960s.31  
On the other hand, the Eastern Wall (Zbigniew 
Karpiński and Jan Klewin, 1962–1969) in the very 
center of Warsaw is undoubtedly a success of the 
1960s. This late­Modern retail­housing complex 
based on two parallel circulation routes – vehic­
ular and pedestrian – consists of four department 
stores, architecturally diverse retail, culture, and 
office buildings of various height along the pedes­
trian route, all overlooked by three twenty­four­
story towers. 
The 1970s 
The economic situation of Poland began to dete­
riorate with the end of the 1960s. Although true 
that industrial production continued to grow, the 
living standard of the population remained at an 
unchanged low level. Instead of adjusting economic 
expectations, the authorities introduced price 
hikes. This increase in December 1970 met with 
protests. After bloody suppression Edward Gierek 
took the helm of the Party and promised increased 
consumer good supplies and more dwelling units.
This is why the 1970s were a decade of dynamic 
housing construction based on large panel con­
struction – 80% of housing projects. Prefabrication 
also meant expansion of production facilities – 
“house factories.” Sixty­three were established over 
the years 1971–1975, reaching 160 by 1980.32 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
46 
WARSAW. DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR URSYNÓW NORTH HOUSING 
ESTATE (M. Budzyński, J. Szczepanik-Dzikowski, A. Szkop, 1972–1975). 
Collection of the Department of Polish Architecture, Faculty of  
Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology. 
Apart from industrialization of construction 
technology, a 1974 standard influenced housing 
estate urban planning and architecture signifi­
cantly. This was mainly due to urban planning 
guidelines.33 They aimed at integrating residential­
­retail urban tissue34 and were supplemented by 
housing standards35 that increased usable floor areas 
of dwelling units.36 
These newly defined technical­construction 
and legislative conditions coupled with economic 
growth in the first half of the 1970s spurred work 
on wide­ranging housing projects. In spite of 
low construction quality and contractor­dictated 
restrictions, variations in the volumes, heights, tex­
tures, colors, and detail provided relatively many 
housing estates that demonstrated individualized 
planning and architecture.
The most spatially and architecturally uncon­
ventional one was Wrocław’s Przyjaźń housing 
estate (Witold Jerzy Molicki, 1970–1980). Warsaw’s 
Służew nad Dolinką housing estate, with its inter­
esting detail and skillful insertion into the land­
scape, is also noteworthy (Janusz Nowak, Piotr 
Sembrat, and Jerzy Kuźmienko, 1974–1979). How­
ever, Warsaw’s Ursynów North housing estate 
(Marek Budzyński, Jan Szczepanik­Dzikowski, 
and Andrzej Szkop, 1972–1975) based on sociolog­
ical37 and nature studies, integrated housing, retail 
and recreational services, and traditional municipal 
streets and squares,38 was the most original and 
largest housing complex of this period. 
Through loans, the 1970s saw a whole series of 
spatially and architecturally ambitious public build­
ings and facilities. The years 1971–1976 brought new 
projects, especially in Warsaw – mainly the West­
ern Center region (Jerzy Skrzypczak, 1969–1974) 
with two skyscrapers and a glazed hall, Europe’s 
most modern railroad station at that time (Arseni­
usz Romanowicz, 1973–1976). The years 1971–1975 
also saw the building of the largest traffic project of 
the capital. Changes in Party policy with respect to 
the West in the years 1972–1973 made possible sev­
eral projects by Swedish architects (e.g., Sten Sam­
uelson, Hotel Forum, 1972–1973).
State­Church relations were ultimately normal­
ized with the start of the 1970s. This resulted in 
numerous projects that were not restricted by the 
rigors of type standardization. Designers molded 
traditional religious models into the language of 
contemporary architecture. Among the flagship 
designs of this period are the Church of the 
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Gorajec 
(Jan Bogusławski, 1973–1979) and the intriguing 
pyramidal form of the Church of the Holy Spirit in 
Tychy (Stanisław Niemczyk, 1976–1983).39 
The first symptoms of a worsening economic sit­
uation became visible around 1975. Over the years 
1976–1980, national income fell by 7%. Shortages
in consumer goods also appeared. Once again the 
only remedy forwarded by the authorities was price 
hikes. Once again there was a wave of strikes end­
ing with the signing by the government of an 
agreement with the protestors on August 31, 1980 
and the emergence of the “Solidarity” Independent 
Trade Union Association. 
The 1980s 
The brief period of post­August liberty was over­
shadowed by an atmosphere of confrontation. Sol­
idarity pushed for change. The authorities tried to 
  
47 
ELBLĄG. NEW DEVELOPMENTS AT THE OLD TOWN (1985– ). State in 2004. Photo by M. Rozbicka. 
prevent this.40 The social, political, and economic 
crisis of the end of the 1970s was exacerbated by 
the introduction of martial law in December 1981. 
Organizational paralysis, hampered movement, 
lack of resources and construction potential were 
apparent in the drastic fall in construction work 
and related difficulties. A period of investment 
stagnation and the breaking of the monopoly of 
state design offices by independent design studios41 
established 1982–1983, it triggered serious discus­
sion in the architectural community. The 14th Con­
gress of the International Union of Architects in 
Warsaw in May 1981 marked the beginning. Topics 
included new currents in architecture and ways of 
overcoming systemic and technical barriers block­
ing architecture, especially housing.42 Postmodern­
ism proved of special interest. It was a current of 
tolerance, plurality, and sensitivity to the historical, 
regional, landscape, and social context. It was per­
ceived as a desirable remedy for the type standard­
ization and unification of 1960s and 70s Socmod­
ern.43 
With limited investment potential in 1980s 
Poland, Postmodernism mainly existed as theo­
retical ideas, but did make its mark with several 
noteworthy buildings. Primarily designers supple­
menting downtown tissue made reference to it by 
utilizing traditional technologies and reintroducing 
appropriate scale and meaningful detail. Among
major housing projects were the Centrum E hous­
ing estate (Romuald Loegler, 1988–1995),44 out­
standing in its Postmodern forms and colors amidst 
the Socialist Realism buildings of Nowa Huta, and 
the Poznań’s Zielone Wzgórza housing estate (J. 
Buszkiewicz and his team, starting 1982), an urban 
design based on traditional towns.45 The desire to 
make reference to local tradition also found expres­
sion around the mid­1980s with reinstated histori­
cal property lines and street networks lost over the 
course of a complicated history together with their 
  
 
 
48 
WARSAW. WARSAW UNIVERSITY NEW LIBRARY (M. Budzyński, Z. Badowski, 1994–1999). State in 2000. Photo: W. Stępień, Coll. NID. 
architectural identity – Elbląg, Kołobrzeg, and 
Głogów.46 
The Church – probably the most creative inves­
tor of that period – also embraced Postmodernism. 
Designers raised buildings of increasing scale 
and expressiveness. Among numerous churches 
erected during the 1980s, the most outstanding was 
undoubtedly the Postmodern Resurrectionist Con­
gregation Higher Theological Seminary (Dariusz 
Kozłowski and Wacław Stefański, 1985–1996) and 
the Church of the Ascension in Warsaw’s Ursynów 
(M. Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski, 1982–
1989). Just the latter’s very presence with its modern 
form based on Polish architectural tradition within 
a socialist housing estate speaks of the breakdown 
of formal and program standards forced by the 
communist authorities.47 
The 1990s 
The democratic breakthrough that occurred in 
Poland after the first almost free elections in the 
Eastern Bloc in June 1989 came at a time that was 
exceptionally difficult both a politically and eco­
nomically. After martial law, international sanc­
tions, years of stagnation and strikes, and inflation 
running at 700%, Poland was truly bankrupt. Thus, 
the years 1990–1997 were primarily ones of radical 
economic and local government reform (1990) as 
well as … “regaining balance.”48 In architecture 
it was a time of the final collapse of state mono­
poly in design. Initially, this led to projects for the 
Church. These were followed by domestic business, 
including residential and retail projects. Unlike the 
unified style of Socmodern, designs applied expres­
sive Postmodern meanings in strict relation to sur­
  
 
49 
roundings and traditional forms of architecture. 
This particularly applied to infill buildings like the 
Wrocław designs of Wojciech Jarząbek (residential 
building at the corner of Zielińskiego and Swo­
bodnej streets, 1991) or Jacek Lenart in Szczecin 
(the corner of a tenement quarter on Zgody Square, 
1995–1996), built in the centers of cities, hoping to 
give order to chaos.
It was not until the mid­1990s that conditions 
emerged allowing Polish architects to embrace 
world architectural and technological trends. The 
result was the construction of several significant 
buildings: a new wing for the Poznań Music Acad­
emy (Jerzy Gurawski, 1995–1997) built in the spirit 
of muted Postmodernism, the new University of 
Warsaw library saturated with Postmodern refer­
ences combining expressive environmental threads 
with contemporary technology in a fascinating 
ENDNOTES 
1. 	 Majewski P. (2009). Ideologia i konserwacja. Architektura 
zabytkowa w Polsce w czasach socrealizmu. Warsaw: TRIO, 
p. 29; Olszewski A. K. (1992). Architektura polska w latach 
1944–1960. In: Polskie życie artystyczne w latach 1945–1960, A. 
Wojciechowski, ed., Wrocław­Warsaw­Cracow, p. 336. 
2. 	 Majewski (2009), p. 30. 
3. 	 Miłobędzki A. (1994). Architektura ziem Polski / The A rchitecture 
of Poland. Cracow: International Culture Center, pp. 116–118. 
4. 	 Marciniak P. (2009). Architektura i urbanistyka Poznania 
w lat ach 1945–1989 na tle doświadczeń europejskich, Poznań: 
 Poznań University of Technology Press, p. 16. 
5. Syrkus (1976), pp. 356–357. 
6. Marciniak (2009), p. 238. 
7. 	 Galiński B. (1953). Architektura Polska 1950–1951, Warsaw: 
PWT, p. 207. 
8. Bierut B. (1949). Sześcioletni plan odbudowy Warszawy, Warsaw. 
9. Galiński (1953), pp. 3–5 and 205. 
10. 	 Baraniewski W. (1996). Ideologia w architekturze Warszawy 
okresu realizmu socjalistycznego, Rocznik Historii Sztuki, Vol. 
XXII. Warsaw: Neriton, p. 246. 
11. Galiński (1953), pp. 205 and 206. 
12. 	 Beiersdorf Z. and Komorowski W. (2010). Nowa Huta lat 
pięćdziesiątych. Dziedzictwo – zagrożenia i perspektywy, 
Zabytki drugiej połowy XX wieku – waloryzacja, ochrona, 
konserwacja, Warsaw­Berlin: ICOMOS Polska, ICOMOS 
Deutschland, KOBiK, pp. 17–28. 
13. 	 Pierwsza Krajowa Narada Architektów (1953). Architektura, 
No. 7, p. 172. 
14. 	 Wnioski z Ogólnopolskiej Narady Architektów (1956). 
 Architektura, No. 5, p. 122. 
15. 	 Compare: Czapelski M. (2012). “Mistery” i inni. O warszaw­
skiej architekturze mieszkaniowej lat 60. i jej uwarunkowa­
niach. In: Ł. Gorczyca and M. Czapelski, eds., Mister Warsza
wy. Architektura mieszkaniowa lat 60. XX wieku. Warsaw, pp. 
­
way (Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski 
with their team, 1994–1999), or the glazed Supreme 
Court building in Warsaw, steeped with symbolism 
and plant accents (Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew 
Badowski with their team, 1996–1999). Simultane­
ously, international capital began its encroachment, 
especially into cities where it dictated its rules to 
local government thanks to conditions created by 
the unfortunate reform of the spatial planning sys­
tem (1994). What has started is the commerciali­
zation of space that is continuing to this very day. 
Combined with the neoliberal architectural dis­
course it has released a pluralism of styles that has 
never been seen before, but which is a far cry from 
the pro­social ethos of the Modernism cultivated 
in Poland from the interwar period right up to the 
beginning of the 1990s. 
15–16; < http://spoldzielniemieszkaniowe.pl/main/na­rozdro­
zu­1956­1989,177,,.html>, [accessed 2016.05.02]. 
16. 	 Directive No. 285 of the Council of Ministers of July 2, 1959 
(Polish Monitor No. 70, item 365 and Polish Monitor No. 23, 
item 109).
17.	  Design standards for dwelling units and multi-family buildings 
in cities and housing estates. Directive No. 364 of the Council 
of Ministers of August 20, 1959 (Polish Monitor No. 81, item 
422). 
18. 	 Fudala T. (2012). Mieszkanie z instrukcją obsługi. Osiedle 
Sady Żoliborskie Haliny Skibniewskiej. In: Ł. Gorczyca and 
M. Czapelski, eds., Mister Warszawy. Architektura mieszkanio­
wa lat 60. XX wieku. Warsaw, pp. 35–55. 
19. 	 Zachwatowicz J. (1966). Kościoły w Polsce odbudowane i 
wybudowane 1945–1965, Warsaw: Ars Christiana. 
20. Directive No. 285. 
21. 	 Directive No. 126. Compare: Wojtkun G. (2011). Wielka płyta 
na styku żelaznej kurtyny, Przestrzeń i Forma, No. 15, p. 479. 
22. 	 §11, Clause 3 of Directive of the Council of Ministers No. 216 
of July 14, 1960 (Polish Monitor 1960, No. 61, item 288). 
23. 	 Decree No. 15 of the Chairman of the Building, Urban Plan­
ning, and Architecture Committee of February 21, 1961. Com­
pare: Chmielewski J. M. and Mirecka M. (2007). Modernizacja 
osiedli mieszkaniowych. Warsaw, pp. 20–21.
24. Directive No. 216 of the Council of Ministers of June 13, 1961 
(Polish Monitor of 1961, No. 63, item 269). 
25. 	 Directive No. 104 of the Council of Ministers of March 11, 
1961 (Polish Monitor of 1961, item 124).
26. Szafer T. P. (1972). Nowa architektura polska. Diariusz lat 1966– 
1970. Warsaw: Arkady, p. 7. 
27. Szafer (1972), p. 7. 
28. As cited in Szafer (1972), p. 7.
29. Miłobędzki (1994) p. 122.
30. Szafer (1972), pp. 15, 17, and 20–21. 
 50 
31. 	 Skolimowska A. (2012). Modulor polski. Historia osiedla 
Za Żelazną Bramą, In: Ł. Gorczyca and M. Czapelski, eds., 
Mister Warszawy. Architektura mieszkaniowa lat 60. XX wiek. 
Warsaw, pp.79–101. 
32. 	 Szafer T. P. (1981). Nowa architektura polska. Diariusz lat 1976– 
1980. Warsaw: Arkady, p. 5. 
33. 	 Directive No. 9 of the Minister of Land Management and 
Environmental Protection of January 29, 1974 ( Journal of 
Building of 1974, No. 2, item 2). 
34. 	 Korzeniewski W. (1988). Podstawy programowania i projek­
towania zespołów wielorodzinnej zabudowy mieszkaniowej. 
 Warsaw: COIB, p. 6. 
35. 	 Directive No. 10 of the Minister of Land Management and 
Environmental Protection of January 20, 1974 ( Journal of 
Building Construction of 1974, No. 2, item 3).
36. Compare: Wojtkun (2008), pp. 110–111.
37. Szafer (1988), pp. 199 and 224. 
38. 	 Budzyński M. (1975). Ursynów Północny – uwarunkowania, 
zasady, Architektura, No. 1/2, p. 56. 
39. 	 Czuba M. (2010). Architektura sakralna II poł. XX wieku w 
Polsce – waloryzacja i ochrona prawna. In: B. Szmygin and  
J. Haspel, eds., Zabytki drugiej połowy XX wieku – waloryzacja, 
ochrona, konserwacj. Warsaw­Berlin: ICOMOS Polska, ICO­
MOS Deutschland, KOBiDZ, pp. 41–43.
40. Janowski K. B. (2004). Źródła i przebieg zmiany politycznej 
w Polsce (1980–1989). In: 17th General Convention of Polish 
Historians [online]. Cracow. <http://jazon.hist.uj.edu.pl/
zjazd/> [accessed 2016.05.05].
41. 	 Marciniak (2009), pp. 19–20.
42. Compare: Oświadczenie II Ogólnopolskiej narady architek­
tów na temat architektury mieszkaniowej, Gdańsk (1984). 
Architektura, No. 2, 1984, pp. 18–19. 
43. 	 Tokajuk A. Trwanie czy przemijanie? O postmodernizmie w 
polskiej powojennej architekturze mieszkaniowej, Czasopismo 
Techniczne. Architektura, R.108–2011, pp. 428–429.
44. E. Zamorska­Przyłuska, ed., O architekturze Romualda 
Loeglera. Cracow, p. 177. 
45. Marciniak (2009), p. 248.
46. Compare: Lubocka­Hoffmann M. (2004). Miasta historyczne 
zachodniej i północnej Polski. Zniszczenia i programy odbudowy. 
Bydgoszcz: Excalibur, pp. 156–162. 
47. 	 Budzyński M. (1982). Kościół na Ursynowie Północnym w 
Warszawie, Architektura, No. 5/6, pp. 62 and 67.
48. Sepioł J. (2015). Architektura polskiej demokracji, Form 
 Follows Freedom, Architektura dla kultury w Polsce 2000+.  
J. Purchel and J. Sepioł, eds., Cracow: MCK, p. 28. 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
51 
SIRI SK JOLD LEXAU 
Lost Cultural Heritage: The Aftermath of the 
Bombing of the Government Quarter in Oslo 
and the Need for Collective Memory 
A blow to openness and democracy In the middle of Norwegian holiday time, when 
Cultural heritage has become a crucial target in con­ a large part of the population was enjoying their 
flicts. In this paper, I will discuss controversies and free time and long, bright summer nights, the 
challenges when symbolic buildings of high value as shocking news of a bomb attack to the Government 
cultural heritage are harmed due to terrorism, but Quarter in the centre of Oslo reached listeners all 
also by ignorance of their architectural value. The over the world. 8 people were killed, 10 severely 
value may be as economical or material resource, his­ injured and 30 treated for their injuries. Interroga­
torical significance or architectural quality. At the tions showed that the terrorist blow was meant to 
same time, contemporary needs ask for buildings harm the social democratic system and its values, 
adapted to changing needs. My point of departure and what the attacker Anders Behring Breivik 
will be the bomb attack on the Norwegian govern­ found to be islamist friendly politics of the Labour 
ment quarter on July 22nd, 2011. Party government. 
THE H BLOCK OF THE GOVERNMENT QUARTER after the bomb attack on July 22, 2011. Photo: KRIPOS/Scanpix. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
52 
According to Breivik’s ideology, the attack was 
meant to harm 
1. the H block government building housing the 
Labour party’s prime minister’s offices 
2. the political ideology of the state management
3. random civilians in Oslo 
4. future politicians of the Labour party, partici­
pants at a labour party youth camp at Utøya near 
Oslo (77 young people were killed and 150 were 
hospitalized due to their injuries). 
The main government building, the H block that 
was damaged in the attack, was designed in the 
1950s by Gunnar Viksjø (1910–1971), one of the 
nation’s most prominent architects at the time, to 
house offices of the state administration. The bomb 
destroyed the interior of the lowest floors and envi­
ronments of the H block, but left other buildings 
nearby less harmed. We will have a look into 
the architectural qualities of the building and its 
nearby sibling the Y block, and the debate concern­
ing the future fate of this very central city area in 
Oslo. Questions related to finances, functionality, 
security, architectural quality, cultural heritage 
and memorial significance both of the damaged 
H block, and the adjacent Y block that was not 
harmed in the attack, were elements of these dis­
cussions. My lecture will discuss the following 
questions attached to these buildings of high archi­
tectural value and significance as cultural heritage. 
1.	 It is decided that the H block will be preserved, 
but maybe built higher, and surrounded by new 
buildings. What kind of memory will it convey? 
2.	 How about its kin, the Y block? Should it be 
demolished, including its integrated art works of 
very high value, to give way for new plans of the 
area? 
3.	 How about the openness created by the architect 
to give people of the social democratic welfare 
state direct access to the country’s highest repre­
sentatives, in a time where terrorist attacks have 
to be considered? 
4.	 Should the area of historical significance be 
closed off to Oslo’s citizens for security reasons? 
During political conflicts and war, we are used 
to the alarming news that buildings and other 
cultural works are destroyed on purpose. We have 
witnessed Turkey’s systematic erasure of Greek her­
itage in the occupied territories of Cyprus from 
the mid­70s and onwards, Serb artillery burning 
the National and University Library of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina in 1992, Taliban’s destruction of the 
Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001, and 
DAESH’s recent demolition of heritage in Palmyra 
or any shrine or monument not being in accordance 
with their conception of religious practice. It is 
often the symbolic significance of the buildings 
that causes such political motivated attacks. Even 
of less impact than other international examples, 
the symbolic value of the Government Quarter in 
Oslo is very strong for Norwegians, which I will 
return to later. Should the state itself, in a period of 
peace, destroy its own heritage? 
Architectural qualities of the
Government Quarter 
The high­rise H block of originally 15 stories where 
the prime minister’s offices were located, is con­
trasted by the lower, curved Y block of three sto­
ries where the Ministry of Knowledge was located 
in recent years. The H block was inaugurated in 
1958 and the Y block in the same architectural style, 
by the same architect Erling Viksjø, was completed 
in 1969. Both buildings are adorned with an inno­
vative concrete/stone surface called “natural con­
crete”, a method invented and patented by the 
architect and the engineer Sverre Jystad. Before 
the cement of the façades was cured, the formwork 
was removed and the surface sand blown to create 
a durable and beautiful surface where the natural 
stone appeared as decorative elements in the facade. 
In this way, Viksjø’s buildings constructed by con­
crete skeletons got facades of natural stone. By 
using different colours and size of the pebbles, 
varying patterns and roughness give the surfaces 
diverse qualities. The sand blowing technique also 
made it possible to integrate works of art directly 
into the concrete walls of the façades and on inte­
rior walls. 
By letting artists use sand blowing as a way of 
artistic expression, Viksjø wished to integrate art in 
his architecture. Among profiled contemporary art­
ists, Carl Nesjar (1920–2015) is the one best known 
for using such methods, and he had through 17 
years a close cooperation with Pablo Picasso (1881–
1973). The buildings also have integrated works by 
Tore Haaland (1918–2006), Odd Tandberg (1924–), 
Inger Sitter (1929–2015) and Kai Fjell (1907–1989). 
The area binding the H block, the Y block and 
  
53 
THE H BLOCK AND THE Y BLOCK
 
of the Government Quarter. 

Photo: Trond Joelson, Byggeindustrien.
 
SANDBLOWN NATURAL CONCRETE
 
and artistic work designed by Pablo Picasso 

and executed by Carl Nesjar.
 
Photo: Teigens fotoatelier/Nasjonalmuseet.
 
  
54 
ERLING VIKSJØ: The H block of the 
Government Quarter in Oslo, 1958. 
Photo: Teigens fotoatelier/ 
Nasjonalmuseet. 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT
QUARTER, sketch by Erling Viksjø, 
probably 1958. Photo: Andreas Harvik 
/Nasjonalmuseet. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
55 
other buildings together, is partly designed to con­
tinue the qualities of the natural concrete facades. 
Geometrical patterns give vitality to the pedestrian 
areas, which connected the buildnings, parking lots 
and garages. 
The H block was designed through different 
stages during the period 1940 to 1958. Statens 
bygge­ og eiendomsdirektorat (The Directorate for 
Building and Properties in Norway) announced 
an open competition for the H block Government 
Building project in 1939, and 49 entries were sub­
mitted. Preconditions were to provide an economic 
and effective system of ground plans combined 
with a representative design. In March 1940, the 
entries Rytme designed by Ove Bang and Øivin 
Holst Grimsgaard, Vestibyle by Erling Viksjø, U by 
Nils Holter and Fri by Dagfinn Morseth and Mads 
Wiel Gedde were awarded as four equal winners 
(Tostrup: 92, 95–96). Viksjø’s entry shows a rather 
strict raster system, with window frames with­
drawn from the outer facade grid. In many ways, 
this makes his proposal stronger, but also heavier 
than other entries, as Bang’s more transparent glass 
body.
Two further steps in the development of the area 
were anticipated, but only one was completed. In 
1958, Viksjø continued to work on a possible exten­
sion of the Government Quarter, and a drawing 
probably executed in 1958 shows a second, Y­shaped 
building complementing the high­rise. 
Contemporary challenges 
Now, we will have a closer look at how we plan to 
deal with these buildings today. The first question 
raised after the bomb attack in 2011 was whether 
the H block should be saved or demolished. Rig­
mor Aasrud, Minister of Local Government and 
Regional Development stated already the day after 
the bomb attack that it probably would be far too 
expensive to reconstruct the building, it was prob­
ably too damaged, and further it did not have any 
architectural value. Then followed a long process of 
investigations: Was it structural possible to use the 
H block in the future or was the structure too dam­
aged? How about the human factor? Should trau­
matized employees who had lost their colleges or 
miraculously avoided a fatal situation in the bomb 
attack be forced to go back to work in the same 
building? Later investigations showed that the 
structure of the building was not severely damaged, 
and that it could easily be rebuilt as a functional 
office building with its remaining qualities intact. 
Experts on architectural history also pointed to 
the architectural value of the building, and the 
fact that it was a core example of the Norwegian 
welfare state’s open form architecture of the post­
war period. On the other hand, the human factor 
was a challenge. 
But the buildings have values of their own right. 
When the bomb attack hit the H block, the Direc­
torate for Cultural Heritage in Norway was already 
preparing a listing of both the H block and the Y 
block as part of the National Protection Plan of 
Buildings owned by the State (Landsverneplan for 
bygninger i statens eie). It was argued that 
1. the H block was for many years one of the largest 
single buildings in Norway
2. it is urgent to protect the building’s architectural 
value as one of the most significant buildings of 
Norwegian after­war modernistic architecture
3. the H block is a monumental building where all
functions are connected in one building
4. it represents an ideal of education/public build­
ings for its time. 
All the same, the bomb attack triggered revised 
debates on the future development of the Govern­
ment Quarter. Questions were raised related to 
architectural quality, administrative functionality, 
material resource value, security challenges and 
work quality for traumatized employees. In June 
2013, the result of the first concept investigation 
by architects Metier, LPO og OPAK for a pos­
sible future use of the buildings in the Govern­
ment Quarter was published. The commission was 
to find a long­time solution meeting the necessary 
demands of security and functionality, and the 
investigation concluded that it would be rational to 
demolish and reconstruct the buildings. In October 
2013, an additional concept analysis was delivered 
by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Nor­
way. This investigation concluded that both the 
H block and the Y block have national value and 
should be preserved. Probably it would also be 
resource effective to preserve them vs demolish­
ment and reconstruction. 
In May 2014, Prime Minister Erna Solberg 
and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and 
Modernization, Jan Tore Sanner presented the plan 
for a New Government Quarter where the H block 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
56 
would be preserved, stating: “The H block is the 
most significant symbol building of the modern 
Norwegian Welfare State after WW2. The H block 
is among the best examples of monumental mod­
ernism, and the art works stand in a special posi­
tion among recent Norwegian history of art and 
architecture” (Statsministerens kontor). So, finally, 
the H block was saved. The Y block should, how­
ever, be demolished to give space for new buildings, 
while two of its integrated art works should be pre­
served and moved. 
Collective Memory 
Only in the very last years, huge concrete buildings 
designed and constructed in the first decades after 
WW2 have been evaluated for possible protection. 
In many ways, they are too recent to be regarded 
as cultural heritage in the public and professional 
opinion. They are experiencing their mid­life crisis, 
as Siri Hoem puts it in a chronicle (Aftenposten 
04.08.2015). If we had the patience to wait another 
10–20 years before judging their future, maybe we 
would appreciate them otherwise. Quite recently, 
a profiled Norwegian lawyer and former head 
of the Norwegian Police Security Service, Ellen 
Holager Andenæs, in the popular Friday evening 
programme Nytt på Nytt October 9th 2015, sev­
eral times claimed that the H block had no value 
for people, that it was just ugly. “It’s UGLY. Case 
closed”. This was in a discussion with Jørn Hol­
mene, head of the Directorate for Cultural Herit­
age in Norway. I suppose that her view represent a 
substantial part of the Norwegian population’s view 
of post­war architecture, including bureaucrats who 
have been or will be working in the building in the 
future.
The buildings of the Government Quarter were 
initially seen as quite controversial because they 
repressed a beautiful city area in the 1950s, further 
because they by many were regarded as “ugly”, ulti­
mately destroyed by an ultra­conservative activist 
who wished to harm the symbols of the political 
social democracy and the welfare state. On the 
other hand, the discussions on the significance of 
the buildings, both as architectural heritage and as 
an important memory of the nation’s recent politi­
cal history have had its effect. The decision to pre­
serve the H block as part of a future city renewal 
of the area has been accepted without much resist­
ance. The problem is that the Y block has to go, 
UN HEADQUARTERS, New York, designed by Le Corbusier 
and Oscar Niemeyer (1947–49). Photo: Creative Commons, 
Geoffreyq, 06.08.2011. 
according to this plan. This will be a huge loss, 
seen from an architectural historian’s point of 
view, as such a composition of building bodies is 
to be found very few places in the world. A supe­
rior example is the UN Headquarters in New York, 
consisting of the office tower for the Secretariat 
designed by Le Corbusier, and the Assembly Hall 
in a separate, curved building designed by Oscar 
Niemeyer. The assemblage was erected in 1947–49. 
In Oslo, the rectangular high­rise block is con­
trasted to the curving façade of the lower Y block 
in a very similar way to the UN buildings. Another 
point is that buildings with curving facades over a 
ground plan of Xs and Ys were used several times 
for buildings associated with the post­war inter­
national cooperation work among democratic 
states. Further examples are the Unesco Building 
in Paris, designed by Marcel Breuer, Pier Luigi 
Nervi and Bernard Zehrfus and built in 1952–58. 
Marcel Breuer used this shape for several buildings. 
Another international example is the Berleymont 
Building in Brussels, directly inspired by the UN 
Headquarters, and designed by Lucien de Vestel 
and Jean Gilson, built 1963–69. The UN buildings 
were erected at the same time as Viksjø submitted 
a revised version av his H block design. In 1958, 
he proposed the Y block as a strongly contrasted 
building volume, and there is reason to believe 
 
 
 
 
 
57 
that he knew the design of the UN Headquar­
ters, designed by two of the most internationally 
renowned architects of the time. This assemblage 
of buildings was erected in Oslo, Norway, but Nor­
wegians wish to remove half of the composition, 
maybe the most important part, due to what I will 
call pure historic ignorance. 
The area around the H block and the Y block 
was an open, public accessible area where every­
body could walk literally through the lavish build­
ings of the state administration. This was exactly in 
accordance with Sigfried Giedion, Josep Lluis Sert 
and Fernand Léger’s thesises of “Nine Points on 
Monumentality” in their paper published in 1943, 
and in Giedion’s article “The Need for a New Mon­
umentality” from 1944. Public resources should be 
used for the obligations of the welfare state to the 
contemporary society’s living population and their 
everyday needs, not to costly monuments of the 
dead. In Norway as anywhere else, concrete, often 
with a very rough and untreated surface, was a pre­
ferred material to obtain this new kind of monu­
mentality for public buildings. Schools, hospitals, 
town halls, sport halls and bank buildings were 
erected in raw concrete with few decorative details 
except the aesthetic qualities of the concrete itself. 
Viksjø had such principles more or less in front of 
him when he designed the Government Quarter, 
but he enriched them with his innovative use of 
concrete. Anyway, his planning was in accordance 
with international, contemporary, politically 
conscious architectural theory. 
The new, 2015 plans for the Government Quarter 
states that the H block will still be the highest 
building of the area, but this will be obtained by 
building it even higher than its extension of 1990 
by Per Viksjø. Surrounding buildings will also be 
quite high. So – what kind of public area will this 
be in the future? Which memories will it convey? 
That a bomb explosion led to a thorough transfor­
mation of the area? 
Probably the area will not be very attractive for 
pedestrians, if they should be allowed to enter. We 
will lose the openness originally so characteristic of 
the Norwegian Government Quarter, due to secu­
rity reasons. We could have chosen to preserve the 
main buildings, the H and Y block, as functional 
office buildings. We might even recognize their 
value as material resources not to be thrown away 
at extra costs, in addition to keep them as monu­
ments of important political ideals for the benefit of 
society that a terrorist did not manage to destroy. 
We might even be proud of them. And it is not 
necessarily a good idea to compress the whole state 
administration in one place – concerning security. 
Current plans for the area will destroy the unique 
composition of two contrasting, but related build­
ings of very high architectural quality. It will trans­
form the Government Quarter into a high­rise 
business district with high security precautions. 
And we will completely loose this architectural 
mirroring of political ideals so characteristic of 
Scandinavian welfare states in the post­war period. 
SOURCES 
Giedion, Sigfried (1944). The Need for a New Monumentality  
in Zucker, Paul (ed.): New Architecture and City Planning.  
A Symposium. New York: Philosophical Library.
Hoem, Siri (2015). Regjeringskvartalet: En historisk rivetabbe  
in Aftenposten. Oslo: Schibsted, 04.08.2015. 
Statsministerens kontor (2014). https://www.regjeringen.
no/no/aktuelt/dep/kmd/nett­tv/Nett­TV­Pressekonfer­
anse­om­Regjeringskvartalet/id760974/, read 15.08.2016.
Tostrup, Elisabeth (2012). Høye idealer på kronglete tomt. 
Konkurransen om ny regjeringsbygning i 1939–1940 in 
Arkitekturårbok 2012. Oslo: Arkitekturmuseet for arkitektur, 
kunst og design. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
58 
JĀNIS LEJNIEKS
Rebranding the Soviet Regime’s
Built Cultural Heritage and the Need
for Collective Memory 
The Soviet regime in Latvia has a long pre­history, 
as noted by the distinguished historian Stanley G. 
Payne, “Latvia’s unique contribution to the revo­
lution was to become the first region in which the 
Bolsheviks created an organized and disciplined 
armed force, much more reliable than the Red 
Guard militia. This took the form of volunteer 
Latvian “Strelkii” (riflemen) regiments, stemming 
from elite Latvian regiments in the old [Russian 
imperial] army.”1 
The Latvian riflemen were military formations 
assembled starting 1915 in Latvia in order to defend 
Baltic territories against the Germans in World 
War I. Initially, the battalions were formed by vol­
unteers, and “from 1916 by conscription among the 
Latvian population. A total of about 40 000 troops 
were drafted into the Latvian Riflemen Division.”2 
After the collapse of the Russian empire the Lat­
vian regiments in the Tsarist army were split in 
politically right and left wings. The first eventually 
became the core of the military forces of the new 
Latvian state. The left­minded, which inherited the 
radical tradition from the rebels in the Revolution 
of 1905, “showed popular support for Bolshevism. 
The Red Army arrived in Riga on 3 January 1919, 
and the first Communist regime outside Russia was 
set up as the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.”3 
The second time a Communist regime was set 
up in Latvia was in June 1940, shortly after the 
Red Army occupied Latvia on the basis of the Hit­
ler­Stalin Pact. Soon the Latvian communists were 
sent from Russia to establish and strengthen the 
regime. In June 1941, German forces “liberated” 
Latvia, but in 1944, when this occupation came to 
an end, a Soviet regime was set up for the third 
time after the Red Army “liberated” Latvia again. 
MONUMENT OF DELIBERATION OF RIGA by Red Army in 1944, 
arch. E.Vecumnieks, V.Zilgalvis, E.Bāliņš a.o., built in Victory 
Square in 1985. Photo: Unknown. 
During the years of the Soviet occupation regime 
many monuments and buildings devoted to the 
history of the regime were built. Most of them, 
including all the statues of Lenin, except for war 
cemeteries, were destroyed in the early 90s, when a 
campaign of iconoclasm took place. Nevertheless, 
some of the most controversial and prominent of 
these, connected with the native history, survived 
and became the stumbling block in the non­homo­
genous society of contemporary Latvia. The ideo­
logy of the re­established Latvian state was one 
aspect of the changes. 
The “Law on the Protection of Cultural Monu­
ments” of the Republic of Latvia, adopted in 1992, 
deliberately included the regulation that prohibited 
to list buildings whose age is less than 50 years. 
Negativism regarding Soviet Modernism­style 
buildings was prevalent in the 90s, when, conse­
quently, a lot of them were abandoned or demol­
ished regardless their architectural quality. 
  
 
 
e-- ~ 
'://~~~(~-,.~~rt·) 
?- ~~r~-r) 
59 
One of such still threatened artefacts is the Mon­
ument Devoted to the Liberation of Riga in 1944 
by the Red Army. It was built in 1985 by Latvian 
artists, architects and engineers at the place where 
German war criminals were publicly executed in 
1946. The monument was built partly from dona­
tions collected at workplaces. It is the most visible 
dominant feature on the left bank of Daugava 
River in the Riga city centre, located on the main 
East­West axis of city.
In 1997, extreme nationalists attempted to blow 
it up – unsuccessfully, and the state repaired the 
damage. Later there was a suggestion by Raimonds 
Slaidiņš, a Latvian­born architect from the USA, 
to remodel it by adding some elements telling the 
controversial story about the violence against Lat­
vian people by the Soviet regime, but the proposal 
was not carried out. 
The financial aspect in the process of changes 
started playing a role with the introduction of lib­
eral market economy. Investors contrived to destroy 
or substantially remodel buildings of the Soviet 
era, which had become private property. The inter­
est for income coincided with the wide­spread pub­
lic opinion about “worthless Soviet cultural heri­
tage”. For example, cinema buildings became parts 
of supermarkets or casino chains. The best samples 
of Soviet Modernism, located in the places with 
a high estate property value, were demolished to 
build new buildings with much more density. 
PROPOSAL TO REMODEL
MONUMENT OF DELIBERATION
of Riga by Raimonds Slaidinsch 
(USA), 90s. 
Re­use of the Soviet­era buildings became 
another way of dealing with the communist past. 
The easiest way of re­branding them consisted of 
removing the symbols of the hated regime, as it 
was done with the pentagonal star on the top of the 
building of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, built 
in the 50s. More controversial are cases when essen­
tial changes are offered. One of such buildings is 
the Museum of the Red Latvian Riflemen built in 
1971, which served as the icon of the regime until 
1991. 
The location of the Museum and memorial statue 
is the most controversial one in the capital city of 
Latvia, as it stands at the very core of Old Riga, 
close to the Town Hall Square with the famous 
14th­century Blackheads House. There were inten­
tions to change the area in the late 30s, when Pres­
ident Kārlis Ulmanis planned to remodel the old 
Hanseatic city into the national capital of Latvian 
state. The plans were stopped by WWII and Soviet 
aggression. In June 1941 the core of Old Riga was 
destroyed by a fire caused by war action. 
After WWII the remains of buildings were 
razed, and a large square created, along with 
numerous plans and projects aimed to revive the 
place. In the late 60s, when the regime decided to 
build the museum and memorial devoted to the 
brave Red Latvian Riflemen, there was no planning 
document to reconstruct the Blackheads House. 
The Soviet city planners’ philosophy for the future 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
60 
of Old Town was based on ignoring the historic 
urban fabric. 
The authors of the winning design deliberately 
planned their museum building ignoring the foun­
dations of the Blackheads House. The Memorial 
sketches were prepared to develop it as a dominant 
ensemble. Nevertheless, the cultural heritage pro­
tection authorities had other plans in their minds, 
and they forced the authors to shift the new build­
ing, taking into account the possibility to recon­
struct the Blackheads House in the future as a 
pastiche.
Political support for such intentions came much 
later, when in the early 90s the enthusiasts of 
restoring the situation ante bellum got the chance 
to build copies of the Blackheads House, as well as 
the Town Hall. After the construction was com­
pleted, the Museum’s building lost its dominant 
role at the centre of a large square and became a 
part of perimetral building front of the block.
Along the way there were unsuccessful attempts 
to take a political decision to raze the Museum’s 
building and remove the statue of the riflemen. 
Instead of them, a sketch for a hotel building was 
prepared by the Director of the Riga City Develop­
ment Department, Juris Paegle, but protests of the 
Latvian architects’ community stopped the pro­
OLD RIGA. WWII damages.
Axonometric view, 50s. 
cess. The clash between the business interests and 
intents to keep the building for public use were 
recognizable.
Persons who escaped West or were deported dur­
ing WWII established the Occupation Museum 
Foundation (now: Association) of Latvia and 
adapted the building of the former Red Latvian 
Riflemen’s Museum building for the use of the 
Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. The building 
belongs to the Latvian state, and in 2006, by a spe­
cial law, it was exclusively dedicated for the use of 
the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. 
The Museum is owned and administered by 
the Occupation Museum Association of Latvia. 
Besides maintaining the building, the Latvian state 
pays an annual subsidy to the Museum to fulfil 
important state functions, including protocol visits 
by high state guests. However, the subsidy currently 
covers only about 1/4 of the actual costs of running 
the Museum. 
In 2001 the “world­renowned Latvian­American 
architect Gunnar Birkerts generously designed as 
a gift the project for reconstruction and expansion 
of the Museum building. The Museum has 
entitled this project ‘The Building for the Future’ 
[Nākotnes Nams]”.4 The addition will have much 
improved facilities for visitors, museum staff and a 
  
 
 
 
61 
MEMORIAL OF RED LATVIAN
RIFLEMEN in Old Riga, built in 
1971, arch. Dz. Driba, G.Lūsis-
Grīnbergs, now Museum of 
Occupation at the Town hall 
square. View from St. Peter’s 
church. Photo: Unknown, 
magazine Māksla. 
TOWN HALL SQUARE, Museum 
of Occupation behind the Black-
heads house, reconstructed in 
1999. View from St. Peter’s church. 
Photo: Jānis Lejnieks. 
modern interactive exposition. Birkerts describes a detailed plan of the whole block was approved by 
his design metaphorically as the progression from the City Council in 2010. The design by Gunnar 
the dark past, to the bright present and enlightened Birkerts was on the way toward realization in 
future. 2015 when a group of Latvian architects protested 
A preliminary design was approved by the City against the long­approved project. There are several 
Building Board in 2008. A public hearing was held, reasons for the protest. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
62 
ADDITION TO MUSEUM OF OCCUPATION, design by Gunnar Birkerts (USA), 2001. 
The influential Social Democratic Party “Concord”
(“Saskaņa”), ruling Riga City, has not recognized 
the fact, that Latvia was occupied in 1940 by the 
Soviet Union under the provisions of the 1939 Hit­
ler–Stalin Pact with Nazi Germany. As follows, 
the development of the Museum of the Occupation 
close to the Town hall building is in conflict with 
the political platform of the ruling party of Riga 
City Council. 
Another reason can be the jealousy of local 
architects. Gunnar Birkerts was earlier commis­
sioned to design the Latvian National Library 
without a competition. The failure of the star archi­
tect to invite the author of the original Museum 
building, G. Lūsis­Grīnbergs, to take part (another 
author, arch. Dz. Driba had passed away) in the 
design process played a negative role as well. 
The Latvian society nowadays is split in its 
attitude toward its own history. The line of 
demarcation does not lie between nationalities but 
different­minded people, since the last­minute pro­
test against the long­approved Birkerts project is 
signed by the academician of Latvian Academy of 
Sciences, Professor of Architecture Jānis Krastiņš, 
and some prominent architects, such as Zaiga Gaile 
and Andis Sīlis. 
Zaiga Gaile proclaims that she and her associates 
want to reconstruct the Occupation Museum – the 
black sarcophagus that houses the permanent exhi­
bition. Instead of building the white addition to the 
Museum they propose to invest the rest of the allo­
cated financing (ca. EUR 7 500 000) to remodel 
the former KGB building to house the Museum’s 
other functions. “I talked with the PM and others, 
and everyone agrees – if there are numerous empty 
buildings in Riga, there is no need to extend the 
museum. Let’s not destroy our past”.5 
The question is raised about the past. The past 
is in presence everywhere where the Soviet regime 
built any monument. On the main street in Riga 
a Lenin statue was unveiled in 1950; it was pulled 
down in 1991. The neutral background of this place 
indicates that before WWII there was a refresh­
ment stand in this place. In 2002, a group of busi­
ness people announced a competition for a statue 
to commemorate the leader of the anti­Nazi resist­
ance organization “Latvian Central Council” dur­
ing WWII, Konstantīns Čakste.
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
63 
After two years of public debate the winning 
proposal by Ojārs Feldbergs, as well the second 
one by Gļebs Panteļejevs, was rejected by city and 
state officials. Poor management of branding policy 
was the reason why the proposal did not pass. The 
bad “aura” of the place was the main argument for 
public opinion makers along with the generally 
unknown personality of Čakste, the son of the first 
president of Latvia, who died in 1945 in a Nazi con­
centration camp and whose role was not known 
during Soviet occupation. 
There are a few things that all sites will need to 
consider when they are branding themselves: at first 
“The effort must include a very broad cross­section 
of place stakeholders and, secondly, it must employ 
a consensus­building process.”6 This can be verified 
by the case of the planned but not yet realized 
development of the Museum of the Occupation, as 
not all the stakeholders in Latvia are in favor of it. 
The Riga City Architect and the Building Board 
have refused to approve the design by Gunnar 
Birkerts, motivating his refusal by the claim that 
“the addition to Museum of the Occupation fails 
to restore the structure of the medieval Old town 
(building lines, facades, local traditions, traditional 
materials).” The arguments are based on the build­
ing code of Riga, created on the basis of ICOMOS
recommendations, since Riga Historical Centre has 
been the UNESCO World Heritage Site from 1997.
Right­wing parties, leading the government, 
reacted soon. Since the Museum of the Occupation 
operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, 
the Parliament plans to make amendments in the 
Law of the Museum of the Occupation to grant 
to the building the status of an “object of national 
interest” and to enable the Ministry of Environ­
mental Protection and Regional Planning to issue a 
building permit. If passed, this amendment would 
effectively bypass the City Building Board. While 
waiting for the building process to proceed, the 
Museum has been housed in temporary quarters 
for nearly four years, where its exhibition attracts 
only 1/4 of the more than 100 000 annual visitors 
that came to the old building. Income from visitors 
has declined dramatically. The Museum’s financial 
reserves are dwindling, and further delays will 
defray them to the point of no return.
The Memorial of the Red Latvian Riflemen 
in Old Riga still bears the iconic brand of Soviet 
Modernism. Along with the political interpreta­
tion of the regulations regarding the preservation 
of the World Heritage Site of historic Riga, this 
fact frustrates intentions to re­brand the building to 
serve its stated purpose to research and present all 
aspects of the occupation of Latvia in the period of 
1940–1991 that is deemed especially important now­
adays in hybrid­war time. 
WWII has not yet ended at the very core of 
Old Riga, and the debate on the expansion of the 
Museum building in the Parliament this autumn 
will not be end of this story. There is not enough 
space for two controversial, as well as powerful 
icons on one site: the Memorial of Red Latvian 
Riflemen and the Museum of the Occupation of 
Latvia.
The Latvian Institute, working on the promotion 
of Latvia’s positive international recognition, 
stresses, that “branding must strengthen the most 
popular elements of the brand. It also must widen 
the brand in spheres which potentially could pro­
mote the state and make it more recognizable. The 
rise of Latvia’s reputation is a long­term challenge. 
However, the state has one worldwide recognized 
brand that is more popular than the state itself – 
Riga.”7 
The capital of the state has become the battle­
field of radically different opinions regarding the 
rebranding of the Soviet regime’s built cultural her­
itage. It is not clear which part of history should 
serve better for the identity of the nation and 
should be preserved: the heroic story of the Latvian 
riflemen, or the sad story of those deported and 
exiled Latvians, whose fate accuses the Red part of 
the Latvian riflemen. The conflict between Latvian 
architects reveals the political background of the 
decision not yet taken. 
ENDNOTES 
1. 	 Stanley G. Payne, Civil War in Europe, 1905–1949, p. 40, 
Cambridge University Press, 2012. 
2. 	 Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster, 
Iron guard, p.16, VDM Publishing, 2010. 
3. 	 Stanley G. Payne, Civil War in Europe, 1905–1949, p. 48, 
Cambridge University Press, 2012. 
4. 	 http://www.latvia.eu/news/museum­occupation­latvia­cele­
brates­20th­anniversary 
5. 	 http://www.lsm.lv/en/article/societ/society/architect­occupa­
tion­museum­plan­is­flawed.a138759/ 
6. 	 https://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2014/07/place­
branding­guide.html 
7.	  http://www.li.lv/en/nation­branding 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
64 
HÅKAN HÖKERBERG 
Difficult Heritage: Various Approaches 
to Twentieth-Century Totalitarian Architecture 
Architecture is an efficient instrument to manifest
and spread the political agenda of a nation; there­
fore it is often prospering in totalitarian regimes.
This explains why architecture from twentieth­cen­
tury dictatorships is richly represented in the Euro­
pean urban landscape. It is sometimes defined as
totalitarian (or rhetoric) architecture, but this defini­
tion has to be used with some caution. It may imply
that certain architecture has an inherent ideological
nature and may consequently lead to the conclusion
that certain architectural styles are associable with
dictatorship. Totalitarian regimes often have a pre­
dilection for certain architectural styles but their
employment is not limited to such regimes. They can
also be found in democratic states. 
Although we must dismiss the idea of specific 
totalitarian architectural styles, it is indisputable 
the case that certain qualities and building 
elements can distribute specific political meanings 
and messages. Furthermore, symbols and inscrip­
tions on buildings and monuments left behind by 
totalitarian regimes often leave no doubt of their 
ideological intentions. This paper will focus on offi­
cial buildings and sites that express such explicit 
connotations. They constitute a controversial heri­
tage and their assimilation to democratic society 
entails a multitude of difficulties. These challenges 
are met with a wide spectrum of strategies, rang­
ing from neglect or demolition to conservation 
and protection. These varying approaches are usu­
ally related to historiography, prevailing images of 
national identity, or the specific identity to which 
the post­totalitarian nation aspires. 
The past in the present 
The idea of history as an objective discipline, unaf­
fected by temporary ideological and political trends
is no longer valid; it is interacting with present polit­
ical and cultural circumstances. This interaction
between the past and the present enhances the com­
plexity of historic knowledge but it does also imply
some limitations; ‘hindsight paradoxically limits our
ability to understand the past by giving us greater
knowledge than people of the time could have had’
(Lowenthal 1993:216–217). Our reconstruction of the
past makes it more coherent than it actually was.
‘In order to create a community’s required his­
tory and destiny, which in turn can be used to form 
the representation of the nation, the nation requires 
a usable past’ (Misztal 2003:17). An operational use 
of history allows for an interpretation of history 
that serves specific interests, for example to high­
light some epoques while others are ignored or 
glossed over as a parenthesis in history. To design 
a usable past provides the possibility to establish a 
desired identity and self­legitimation. The display 
of ideologically difficult heritage can also contrib­
ute to the creation of a usable past, where different 
approaches represent the significance that is given 
to the heritage. 
Its conservation can turn into a witness to an 
accepted oppressive past and encourage reconcil­
iation. In other cases, conservation is favoured by 
supporters of a revisionist agenda who endeavour to 
use it as a chauvinistic and nostalgic manifestation 
of a glorious past. Demolition is often the solution 
when the legacy is too painful to be of any utility to 
present agents.
The postmodern conception of history has made 
its distinction to memory more diffuse. Similarly to 
history, memory is the representation of the past in 
the present. We are constantly revising our mem­
ories to suit our current identities (Gillis 1994:3). 
Personal memories of past events diminish over 
  
 
 
 
 
65 
time and become transformed to collective memo­
ries – a process that facilitates heritagisation of con­
troversial sites and buildings. No one can be held 
accountable anymore, as for example at Auschwitz.
Not only memory but also forgetfulness are fun­
damental elements when nations seek to estab­
lish their representation in the past – as the French 
philosopher Ernest Renan declared already in 1882 
is his discourse ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? ’; he states 
that ‘getting its history wrong is crucial for the cre­
ation of a nation’ (Renan 1882). Obviously forget­
ting (or mental suppression) is not an entirely neg­
ative phenomenon; memory gaps can contribute 
to national stability and democratic consolidation: 
‘to remember everything could bring a threat to 
national cohesion and self­image’ (Misztal 2003:17). 
History is the prerequisite for heritage, but 
the two serve quite different purposes. ‘Heritage 
diverges from history not in being biased but in its 
attitude toward bias’ (Lowenthal 1998:122). Heri­
tage leaves out far more than history, and the polit­
ical impact is more evident in heritage than in his­
tory; heritage is the product of contemporary 
political and scientific circumstances and it is con­
tinuously redefined in changing political, cultural 
and social contexts. 
Heritage is usually associated with positive qual­
ities such as historical, aesthetic and ethical values, 
but existing social and political conflicts based on 
different interpretations of history that are reflected 
in a physical object do not disappear simply because 
these objects become classified or listed as herit­
age. Heritage has the capacity to cause discord – 
an inherent quality that has to be recognised and 
accepted as it contributes to tell a more ‘truthful’ 
history and mirrors the complex nature of the dis­
puted heritage (Dolff­Bonekämper 2008). 
Various Approaches 
The architectural heritage from twentieth­century 
totalitarian regimes is a materialisation of the 
national history. Its physical condition and display 
are reflections of how historiography, the use of 
history and collective memory have been coordi­
nated to achieve a usable – and suitable – past. The 
various approaches to this controversial heritage 
represent applied history; they justify the official 
history and identity that the nation wishes to prom­
ulgate, even if the above­mentioned methodologi­
cal imperfections affect the representation. 
FORO ITALICO, the obelisk. Photo: Håkan Hökerberg. 
The following inventory on different approaches 
to dissonant heritage is mainly focused on Italy. 
This is not to imply that there is no evidence 
from other post­totalitarian nations but Italy pre­
serves much more objects and a greater variety of 
responses to them. 
Conservation 
Foro Italico (former Foro Mussolini) is a large sports 
complex in Rome, inaugurated in 1932. It was the 
first large­scale building project by the Fascist 
regime and it was built to bring not only physical 
but also ideological education to the younger gen­
eration. The sports ground is largely intact and still 
emblazoned with highly charged fascist symbols 
and inscriptions. 
A marble obelisk at the entrance to the complex 
has the inscription ‘MUSSOLINI DUX OPERA
NAZIONALE BALILLA’ that can be seen from a 
66 
FORO ITALICO, the mosaics. Photo: Håkan Hökerberg.
 
THE FORMER CASA DEL FASCIO, Pomezia, today a police station. Photo: Håkan Hökerberg.
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
67 
great distance. In post­war Italy, left­wing political 
groups have asked for the demolition of the obelisk 
several times but its existence has never been under 
serious threat. When it was restored in 2007, the 
municipal conservation authorities declared that 
the obelisk was national heritage and therefore the 
inscription must be preserved. Consequently, the 
obelisk continues to immortalise ‘Mussolini Dux’, 
attracting the worship of neo­fascist groups who 
view it as a shrine to the Duce. 
A street leading from the obelisk to the stadiums 
was inaugurated one year after the declaration of 
the Italian Empire, and was named Viale dell ’Im­
pero (today Viale del Foro Italico). Eleven massive 
marble blocks are placed on each side of the street, 
carrying inscriptions that commemorate important 
dates in Italy’s fascist history. The pavement of the 
street is decorated with mosaics in black and white. 
Even though there are no physical representations 
of Mussolini, he is present in every component of 
the iconographic programme of the mosaics.
The official Italian evaluation of Foro Italico as
heritage recognises only the aesthetic qualities of the
complex, while the ideological and historic signifi­
cance of the site is ignored; the result is a normalisa­
tion and trivialisation, a depoliticised and false narra­
tive of an entirely political project (Arthurs 2010:124).
Adapted re-use 
An enormous number of fascist public institutions
were built all over Italy during the twenty years of
the Regime; all of which became redundant after
the war. Most of them were in a good physical state,
and demolitions motivated by purely ideological rea­
sons were out of the question due to the precarious
post­war Italian economy and also the shortage of
intact buildings that could meet the requirements
of the new democratic state. A pragmatic solution
was reached: many fascist official buildings were
converted to police stations, local government offices
etc. and their politically charged history was disre­
garded. Readaptation to institutions informed by
democratic ideals can in itself disarm a building’s
political messages. In a sense, such appropriation of
buildings associated with the fascist regime can be
regarded as a symbol of conquest, a manifestation
of the superiority of the democratic society. But
the smooth transformation of fascist institutions to
democratic Italy can also be viewed as a symptom of
a reluctance to confront the nation’s dark history. 
‘Desacralisation’ 
The Monument to Victory (Monumento alla Vitto­
ria) in Bolzano was inaugurated in 1928. Officially 
raised as a memorial to Italian soldiers who fell in 
the First World War but most of all, it was a trib­
ute to Fascism and a symbol of the fascist appro­
priation of the First World War legacy. In 2014, 
a permanent exhibition was opened in the monu­
ment’s crypt: (‘BZ ’18–’45 One Monument – One 
City – Two Dictatorships’) with the aim to disarm 
the aggressive ideological connotations of the struc­
ture and to replace it with a new message of peace 
and reconciliation: to ‘desacralise a fascist relic’ 
(Leogrande 2014). Desacralisation is a means to 
contextualise politically charged buildings: by 
exposing the detested ideology that they represent 
they are stripped of their original ‘sacred’ character. 
Neglect 
Neglect can have the character of a compromise, 
combining recognition of an object as heritage that 
requires preservation with deliberate neglect of its 
maintenance. This turns the monument into a dis­
play of the distance felt to a previous, collapsed 
political system and downplays its historical sig­
nificance. Neglect can also prevent a ‘sacralisation’, 
the process by which a monument or site becomes 
a shrine for political groups with totalitarian 
agendas.
Although the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds 
in Nuremberg were severely bombed during the 
war, much of them still remain. These buildings 
and spaces constitute a challenge to heritage 
authorities ‘because they have virtually no credible 
meanings or uses in a democratic society, except for 
the reflection of political horror’ (Benton 2010:135). 
Some parts have been demolished, while the sym­
bolically significant Zeppelin Building has delib­
erately been left in a state of disrepair as a prof­
anation, a ‘demythification’, of the structure 
(Macdonald 2009). 
Mutilation 
The tension between, on the one hand, allowing 
objects laden with strong associations to ‘bad’ 
regimes to remain part of the nation’s heritage and, 
on the other, eagerness to demonstrate condemna­
tion of said regime, sometimes leads to a combina­
tion of preservation and destruction. An example 
is the practice called ‘military castration’, which in 
 68 
THE MONUMENT TO VICTORY, Bolzano. Photo: Håkan Hökerberg.
 
MUTILATED FASCES, Direzione Generale delle Entrate, Milan. Photo: Håkan Hökerberg.
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
69 
Italy takes the form of removing the blade of axes 
from the Lictoral fasces, to deprive it of its most 
aggressive element while preserving the mutilated 
symbol as heritage. Such ‘castrated’ fasces can be 
found on masses of buildings and monuments in 
the Italian urban landscapes – and their original 
design often remains easily readable. (Benton 
1999:218, 2010:156) 
Demolition 
Time has a particular relevance for monuments as 
they usually have one single function: to commu­
nicate or propagate a message related to individ­
uals, groups or historic events. When we become 
entirely oblivious of their original history and 
causes of erection, they have failed their purpose; 
the intended connotations of the monuments are 
lost (Connerton 2009:34). The ‘one­dimensional’ 
character of rhetoric monuments raised by totalitar­
ian regimes makes them sensitive to political par­
adigm shifts. They are frequently objects of icono­
clasm and vandalism because of their ideological 
nature as well as their public accessibility (Gam­
boni 1997:67). During the first decade after the fall 
of Communism in Eastern Europe, the destruc­
tions of statues and memorials of communist lead­
ers and ideologists became almost an epidemic; 
Russia has been called the land of empty pedestals.
To demolish controversial monuments might 
seem the simplest solution, but that it can also be 
a very provocative one is illustrated by the destruc­
tion of the Lenin statue in Berlin. This 20 m. high 
statue was raised in 1970 in former East Berlin to 
celebrate the centennial of Lenin’s birthday. Soon 
after the German reunification the local govern­
ment decided to tear it down, as it was not seen as 
convergent with the new democratic federal state. 
However, the opposition against its removal was 
massive as the statue was regarded as an important 
symbol of GDR history. Many resented what they 
felt as a forced adaptation to a united Germany 
dominated by the West Germany (Ladd 1998:196­
199).
Demolition of entire buildings solely for ideo­
logical reasons is less common. In contrast to 
one­dimensionally rhetoric monuments, buildings 
are weaker carriers of meaning and are more easily 
adapted to new political circumstances as they have 
several functions, not only political but also more 
operational. That said, a recent and much disputed 
exception is the dismantling of the Palast der 
Republik in former East Berlin (Ladd 1998:59­70; 
Wise 1998:114­120). 
Amnesia 
Collective amnesia can have significant conse­
quences for the preservation and perception of con­
troversial heritage. The main question is what 
causes it. Is collective amnesia an effect of national 
efforts to ‘censor’ modern history? Does the offi­
cially sanctioned historiography have the capacity 
to erase collective memory? As we have seen in 
the examples from Berlin, destruction of statues 
and monuments may cause furious polemics, 
which has led to the appearance of a less drastic 
approach whereby statues are removed from their 
original prominent locations in the city centre and 
re­erected in more remote places. The practice is 
particularly common in Eastern Europe, where the 
production of statues and memorials dedicated by 
leading communists was intense during the years 
of dictatorship. The Memento Park in Budapest, a 
’statue park’ with 42 statues and monuments from 
the communist era, was opened in 1993. Even if 
statue parks are less radical solutions than demoli­
tions, such removal of monuments from their orig­
inal location deprives them of their political and 
historical context, and they become mere artefacts, 
associated with kitsch and nostalgia. 
Final remarks 
Any attempts at formulating the most appropriate 
approach to ideologically difficult heritage must be 
avoided; the varying levels of political significance, 
explicit iconography and aggressive rhetoric make 
it necessary to decide on the best approach to each 
individual heritage from its own specific circum­
stances. Physical preservation is obviously prefera­
ble as it is fundamental to the understanding of the 
historical and political conditions that brought the 
heritage into being. However, the nature and state 
of preservation can vary: conservation, re­use, des­
acralisation, neglect or mutilation – according to 
how the heritage is perceived and used in the pre­
vailing political climate.
It is a towering challenge to ex­totalitarian 
states to display a negative and oppressive past 
while at the same time expresses its distance to it. 
The ability to be reconciled with a difficult his­
tory and work for the recognition of its physical 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
70 
remains as heritage is an important manifestation 
of the solidity and legitimacy of a modern demo­
cratic government. In the words of Benton: ‘…the 
remains of the works of tyrants and oppressors may 
reassure later generations of the healthy survival of 
their own culture’ (Benton 2010:131). 
REFERENCES 
Arthurs, J. W 2010. ”Fascism as ’heritage’ in contemporary Italy.” 
In Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, edited by Mammone, 
A., Veltri, G. London: Routledge, 114–128. 
Benton, T. 1999. ”From the Arengario to the Lictor’s Axe: 
Memories of Italian Fascism.” In Material Memories: Design 
and Evocation, edited by Kwint, M., Breward C. and Aynsley J. 
Oxford: Berg, 199–218.
Benton, T. 2010. ”Heritage and changes of regime.” In Under­
standing Heritage and Memory, edited by Benton. T. Manches­
ter University Press in association with The Open University, 
UK, 126–163. 
Connerton, P. 2009. How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Dolff­Bonekämper, G. 2008. ”Sites of Memory and Sites of 
Discord. Historic monuments as a medium for discuss­
ing conflict in Europe.” In The Heritage Reader, edited by 
Fairclough, G., Harrison, R., Jameson, J. H. Jr. and Schofield 
J. London, New York: Routledge, 134–138. 
Gamboni, D. 1997. The Destruction of Art. Iconoclasm and Vandal­
ism since the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books. 
Gillis, J.R. 1994. Commemorations. The Politics of National
Identity, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ladd, B. 1998. The Ghosts of Berlin. Confronting German History 
in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press. 
Leogrande. A. 2014. “La redenzione elettronica di un relitto 
fascista.”. In pagina 99we, sabato 6 dicembre 2014, 29. 
Lowenthal, D. 1993. The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lowenthal, D. 1998. Possessed by the Past. The Heritage Crusade 
and the Spoils of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 
Macdonald, S. 2009. Difficult Heritage. Negotiating the Nazi Past 
in Nuremberg and Beyond, London, New York: Routledge. 
Misztal, B. A. 2003. Theories of Social Remembering, Maidenhead, 
Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Renan, E. 1882. Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? Conférence à la 
Sorbonne le 11 mars 1882. 
Wise, M. Z. 1998. Capital Dilemma: Germany’s Search for a New 
Architecture of Democracy, New York: Princeton Architectural 
Press. 
 
    
 
71 
Session II:
Demolition, preservation or adaptive
re-use? Contemporary challenges
for Postwar 20th Century Built 
Cultural Heritage 
72
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
73 
WESSEL DE JONGE 
Heritage for the Masses. About
Modern Icons & Everyday Modernism,
Historic Value & a Sustainable Future 
The theme of post­war modernist heritage can best 
be understood by reflecting on the roots of modern 
architecture and the concept of 20th century heri­
tage as such, and how it developed over the last 
decades. Today’s venue, this remarkable Audito­
rium Maximum, is an outstanding example of post­
war Modern Movement architecture, designed for 
the Kiel University by the award­winning modern 
architect Wilhelm Neveling, and built in 1965–1969. 
No doubt in 2008, its designation as a landmark – 
or Denkmal as you’d say in German – marked a 
new phase in the conservation of architectural her­
itage in Germany and perhaps the Baltics Region 
at large, addressing the built inheritance of a period 
as recent as the late 1960s. Yet it is not only the very 
designation of such recent heritage that calls for 
new and innovative conservation policies, but just 
as well its nature and character. 
Conservation policies 
Since in most NW European countries the urgency 
for conservation policies emerged around the turn 
of the previous century, the field of work for her­
itage professionals has widened its scope in an 
unprecedented way. The early benchmarks of archi­
tectural heritage conservation concerned the resto­
ration of historic mansions, neglected castles and 
ruinous churches – a limited quantity of ‘ancient’ 
buildings that were eventually appreciated by the 
public at large.
The Netherlands was no exception. A first 
National Department for Conservation was 
founded in 1918, followed in 1960 by the country’s 
first Architectural Heritage Act. A fifty­year cut­
off date was to ensure sufficient distance­in­time to 
properly assess the historic value of such an object. 
Moreover, it was decided that structures built after 
1850 were not eligible for listing in the national reg­
ister anyway.
But around 1980 things started to shift. By that 
time the cut­off date did no longer prevent the 
inclusion of the works of H.P. Berlage, the expres­
sionist Amsterdam School and ‘De Stijl’, nor the 
early works of the Modern Movement, as these had 
all reached an age of fifty years or more. Despite 
the fact that an integrated policy on 20th century 
heritage was still lacking, and the 1850 time restric­
tion was still sustained, some early examples were 
randomly designated, in case there was an urgency 
to do so. An example may be the so­called White 
Villa’s in Rotterdam that were listed in 1980 when 
developments in the area threatened their survival. 
Today this ensemble includes the famous 1933 Son­
neveld Museum House (restored in 2001), and the 
wonderful Chabot Museum for expressionist art on 
the other corner. 
New challenges 
Around that time the first pioneering restoration
projects were taken up in other European countries,
like the 1937 Asilo Infantile Sant’ Elia in Como – a
kindergarten designed by Giuseppe Terragni that
was restored in the mid­1980s by his nephew Emilio
– and the row housing by J.J.P. Oud in the Weißen­
hofsiedlung in Stuttgart, refurbished around 1985
according to the social housing regulations of that
time – a fate that other Werkbund Estates, like the
1929 WUWA Estate of Breslau, today Wrocław in
Poland, initially seemed to have escaped due to lack
of funding under the socialist system.
As a result of these early efforts, conservation 
professionals started to realise that the eventual 
nomination and listing of recent architectural 
heritage would pose completely new challenges. 
  
 
74 
First of all, many building of the modern era 
were constructed by using new and often industri­
ally prefabricated building materials like steel, glass 
and concrete, the decay and repair of which was 
still a blanc spot in conservation practice. Many 
modern buildings were not designed to withstand 
the ravages of time, despite buildings like Herbert 
Johanson’s 1939 fire station in Tallinn and other 
examples of Estonian ‘Lime Stone Modernism’ 
proving the opposite. Hence, we are often faced 
with structures that were not intended to last long, 
which presents a challenge when it comes to the 
authenticity of materials when taking up their con­
servation and repair.
Secondly, there was a challenge in terms of quan­
tity. A 1939 cartoon depicts the Swedish Secretary 
for housing Nils Melander as a farmer operating a 
harvester producing rigid rows of hay bales, repre­
senting the results of the social housing industry in 
Sweden. An aerial view of the 1929–31 Westhausen 
Siedlung in Frankfurt, designed by Ernst May and 
his teams shows how real this picture actually was. 
These prototypes for mass housing paved the way 
for the production of millions of standardised hous­
ing units after the War. Some of these schemes 
have remarkable quality, like Tapiola in Helsinki, 
but due to the standardisation and repetition many 
other housing efforts met criticism.
The amount of buildings constructed in the 20th 
century outnumbers all that has been built in all 
previous ages together. When looking at the post­
war period, in the Netherlands more than 75% of 
all our building stock has been constructed since 
the Second Wold War. In many countries in the 
Baltic region these figures may even be higher – 
for sure they are in Finland. As a result, the series 
of 20th century buildings initially expected to be 
nominated for listing, may have easily jammed the 
entire system of designation and funding. New 
selection instruments had to be developed, and 
hard choices were to be made in order not to lose it 
all – the credo was ‘Choose or Lose’. 
Moreover, where the architectural legacy from 
the old days typically celebrates the palaces of the 
noble, the churches of the clergy and the town 
halls and other icons of civic pride, the bench­
marks of the Modern Movement mostly involve 
ordinary buildings that were designed to create a 
better life for the masses, such as healthy housing 
and schools, hygienic and day­lit workplaces and 
health­care facilities – that is: ordinary buildings 
rather than icons, and all of that in large quantities.
Even if many older landmarks can indeed be 
maintained as a museum site or tourist destination, 
the sheer number of the then expected 20th century 
landmarks implied that most of them could only 
be safeguarded by lending them a second lease of 
life in an economically viable and sustainable way, 
by adaptive re­use for new functional programs. 
This last point in particular is one of the corner­
stones of the present national architectural conser­
vation policy in our country, which is represented 
by the slogan: ‘Conservation through Development’ 
– a policy that is quite different from those in most 
surrounding countries, which tend to be more con­
servative. 
Yet some buildings are being regarded as so 
unique, that an integrated and careful conservation 
is required even when that would compromise their 
proper use – as we did in case of the 1928 ‘Zonnes­
traal’ Sanatorium in Hilversum. However, to my 
mind such a choice must remain an exception to 
the rule. So, making the proper choices is therefore 
essential. I’ll come back to that later but it is clear 
that understanding the true cultural heritage value 
of an object is of prime importance before such a 
decision can actually be made. 
Spiritual economy 
In order to understand the cultural and architec­
tural historic value of post­war modern architecture 
we may briefly go back to the roots of the Modern 
Movement shortly after the First World War. A 
research project at the Delft Faculty of Archi­
tecture in the 1980s, published by prof. Hubert­
Jan Henket and myself in 1990, unravelled how 
strongly and diversely the architectural concepts of 
the Modern Movement are actually rooted in the 
socio­cultural and technological developments of 
the Industrial Revolution. The industrialization of 
Western society caused an unprecedented process 
of urbanisation and a change of lifestyle – to suit 
the spirit and the realities of the Machine Age. 
Modern Times triggered a demand for new and 
specific building types, such as factories, power 
stations, office blocks, educational and healthcare 
facilities, and infrastructural buildings for railways 
and telecommunication. The functional programs 
for buildings became increasingly diverse and par­
ticular. And – as any designer knows – the more 
  
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75 
THE 1928 ‘ZONNESTRAAL’ SANATORIUM after restoration in 2003, showing custom-made replacement glazing and the
re-equipped boiler house. Photo: Michel Kievits/Sybolt Voeten. 
EVENING VIEW OF ‘ZONNESTRAAL’ SANATORIUM after restoration in 2003. The lower floors are now in use for health 
care facilities, the upper floor serves as a conference centre. Photo: Michel Kievits/Sybolt Voeten. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
76 
specific a design solution is, the more short­lived 
it is likely to be as well. Vanguard architects in 
the 1920’s acknowledged a direct link between the 
design, the technical lifespan of a building and user 
requirements over time. As the time span for any 
such a particular use shortened as well, time and 
transitoriness ultimately became important issues in 
the architectural discourse. 
Taken to the extreme, this leads either to a tran­
sitory architecture or an adaptable one. The conse­
quent translation of these ideas into practice pro­
duced some remarkable examples of Modern 
Movement architecture, of which both the ‘Zon­
nestraal’ Sanatorium and the contemporary Van 
Nelle Factory in Rotterdam are stunning examples 
in the Netherlands, for both of which I’ve had the 
pleasure to be involved in their preservation as an 
architect later on. 
Ruled by the principle of utmost functionality, 
for both buildings a rigorous distinction was fol­
lowed out between load bearing structures and 
infills to allow for maximum functional flexibil­
ity. Light and transparent materials in the facade 
were to ensure the unhampered access of daylight 
and fresh air. Based on scientific research, archi­
tects took advantage of the specific qualities of 
materials to construct as light as possible, with a 
minimum of material used. Related to the idea of 
varied lifespans was the introduction of prefabri­
cation for building components, allowing the easy 
replacement of deteriorated parts, as well as future 
adaptation to respond to functional change.
The Dutch Modern Movement architect Jan 
(Johannes) Duiker (1890–1935) labelled this 
approach ‘spiritual economy’ that, as he wrote in 
1932, ‘leads to the ultimate construction, depending 
on the applied material, and develops towards the 
immaterial, the spiritual.1 In their search for opti­
mal constructions, buildings were designed with an 
extreme sensitivity concerning building physics. 
Functionalism and rationalism 
With ‘Zonnestraal’, designed between 1926 and 
1928, Duiker with his associate Bernard Bijvoet 
(1889–1979) produced a first and arguably most 
direct response to a short­lived functional program 
in his professional life. Duiker advocated an archi­
tecture that would be the result of reason rather 
than style. He promoted the idea that whenever a 
building’s purpose had to change, the form would 
seize its right to exist and the building must be 
either adapted or demolished altogether. In doing 
so, he interpreted buildings as utilities with a lim­
ited lifespan by definition and – in the case of the 
sanatorium – even as ‘disposables’.
Based on a solid belief in Science and Progress, 
the sanatorium buildings were indeed established 
in the conviction that tuberculosis would be exter­
minated within thirty years. The materials and con­
structions adopted for its construction were appar­
ently chosen to last just for that period. In doing 
so, he managed to subtly balance user requirements 
and technical lifespan with the limited budget 
of the client, creating structures of breathtaking 
beauty and great fragility at the same time.
Hence, in such cases, we are faced with the con­
servation of structures that were intended to be 
transitory. And indeed, ‘Zonnestraal’ lost its san­
atorium function – after 29 years. It was trans­
formed into a general hospital in 1957 and finally 
abandoned in the 1980s. It is clear that the conser­
vation of such buildings poses great challenges in 
both conceptual and material terms as the idea of 
transitoriness must be understood as part of the 
original design intention.
The sanatorium buildings seem to evoke a strik­
ing demonstration of Adolf Behne’s original defini­
tion of ‘functionalism’ of 1923, as opposed to ‘ration­
alism’. Behne (1885–1949) published his ideas later
in his ground breaking publication ‘Der Moderne
Zweckbau’ of 1926. He defined functional planning
to depart from the program and to involve the care­
ful design of individual spaces for each particular
use, with specific dimensions and performance char­
acteristics, organically producing a tailor­made suit.
Indeed, in ‘Zonnestraal’s main building each room
has particular dimensions, and even the height of the
spandrel varies according to the individual use of the
space concerned. It is self­evident that the specificity
of this architectural solution went hand in hand with
a short functional life expectancy.
The Van Nelle Factory, designed between 1925 
and 1928 by Leen van der Vlugt (1894–1936) and Jan 
Brinkman (1902–1949), on the other hand complies 
with Behne’s definition of ‘rationalism’, providing 
large quantities of generic space to accommodate 
a use that would greatly vary over time – typical 
of production processes. The non­specificity of the 
factory halls suggested a long functional lifespan 
and – just as well – a long technical life expectancy. 
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77 
THE VAN NELLE FACTORY after restoration, in use as a business centre for the creative industry. Photo: Jannes Linders. 

SECTION THROUGH THE VAN NELLE FACTORY showing secondary glazing and climate control systems. Drawing: Wessel de Jonge architects.
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
78 
Observing the obvious differences between both 
cases, we may realise how the contrasting visions in 
the 1920s of how to respond short­lived functional 
programs, as suggested by Behne’s definitions, have 
produced buildings that show great differences 
regarding their suitability for adaptive re­use.
A highly specific, tailor­made ‘functionalist’ 
building like ‘Zonnestraal’, may not be easily 
adaptable to functional change and is likely to have 
a short functional life expectancy, as opposed to 
such striking examples of ‘rationalism’ as the fac­
tory in Rotterdam, where the non­specific, generic 
space could be relatively easily adapted to a new 
use as a centre for design studios and offices.2 Such
architecture is more about the manageability of 
change than about a building as a cultural artefact. 
This means that our approach in valuation may 
have to shift from ‘product’ to ‘process’, which will 
have a significant impact on our understanding of 
the so­called ‘authenticity’ of such a heritage item. 
We have to understand that – even within the 
Modern Movement and post­war modernism – 
various architectural concepts led to principle dif­
ferences between modern buildings that must again 
lead to different approaches when planning their 
conservation and adaptive re­use. This underlines 
the necessity of a comprehensive survey into the 
conceptual background of a building – next to the 
material aspects – before making design decisions 
as part of a transformation or restoration project.
Moreover, as architects today, understanding 
this lesson from history is the key to design new, 
sustainable buildings for the future. 
DOCOMOMO International 
Ironically, the landmark designation of ‘Zonnes­
traal’ Sanatorium has now canonized this transi­
tory structure as a timeless masterpiece. But how­
ever paradoxical the heritage status of Duiker’s chef 
d’oeuvre may have appeared, the case of ‘Zonnes­
traal’ had a huge impact. It inspired the creation 
of DOCOMOMO International, an international
platform to share research and early hands­on 
experience with the conservation of ‘modern heri­
tage’ with other architects, heritage profession­
als, researchers, students and their teachers. The 
International Working party for the Documen­
tation and Conservation of buildings, sites and 
neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement, was 
established at the TU Eindhoven in 1990. 
DOCOMOMO working parties are organized 
along national and regional lines. Several thematic 
networks operate as international specialist com­
mittees, for instance on selection criteria, urban­
ism and landscape, and early 20th century building 
materials and their repair, but the organisation is 
also reflecting on the lessons to be learned from the 
Modern Movement and its translation into mod­
ernism after the Second World War. 
Today, DOCOMOMO International has work­
ing parties in more than 60 countries, from Canada 
to South Africa, and from Brazil to Japan. Most 
countries in the Baltic Region are represented, 
although some branches have gone through a 
dormant state, as is common in voluntary organisa­
tions. Operated from the Netherlands for the first 
14 years, the international secretariat moved from 
the Netherlands to Paris, later to Barcelona and is 
now at the Architecture Department of the Insti­
tute of Technology in Lisbon, under the presidency 
of prof. Ana Tostões.
Even after more than 25 years – on an interna­
tional scale – these first steps still serve as a ref­
erence in the discourse about 20th century archi­
tectural heritage, that has meanwhile reached the 
agenda of such institutes as the UNESCO World
Heritage Centre and ICOMOS in Paris and the 
Getty in Los Angeles.3 
‘Zonnestraal’ restored 
Coming back to the guinea pig that caused all the 
troubles, we were commissioned to take up the 
actual restoration and adaptive re­use of the ‘Zon­
nestraal’ Sanatorium complex in 1993.4 The works 
largely involved the restoration of the original 
facades, partitions and finishes, and there has been 
little conservation of authentic materials except for 
the concrete structural frame, a few partitions and a 
section of salvaged steel window frames, which was 
all that was left of the original substance. We con­
sidered the essential meaning of this building to lie 
within the conceptual starting points of the orig­
inal designers, and the project has been aimed at 
revitalising the perception thereof.
Yet, during our preparatory research we came to 
realise that the material aspect was just as well vital 
to make the full cultural context of ‘Zonnestraal’ in 
its time comprehensible, and to revitalise Duiker’s 
architectural concept successfully. Therefore, some 
lost parts have been carefully reconstructed at high 
  
 
79 
cost, such as the new steel window casements, the 
drawn window glass, the terrazzo floorings in par­
ticular areas, and including remade linoleum and 
hand­crafted replicas of mass produced parts from 
the 1920s, like window hardware and light fixtures. 
Other parts could convincingly be replaced by 
standard products that are still readily available.
To my mind, one could successfully argue that it 
still concerns a truthful restoration. The ‘Zonnes­
traal’ case testifies that the presence of substantial 
amounts of original materials is not a prerequisite 
to convey its cultural and architectural historic sig­
nificance – an observation that actually underlines 
the ambiguity of the notion ‘authenticity’. 
Today, the centre involves a variety of independ­
ent, polyclinical health services and additional con­
ference facilities. The works at the main building 
could only be completed after ten years in 2003, 
and a first pavilion’s exterior followed in 2013 – 
twenty years later… 
Post-war modern heritage 
From these experiences with the early examples of 
modern architecture lessons have been drawn that 
help us in dealing with the post­war inheritance of 
modern architecture. As was to be expected, given 
the quantity of this stock and the high vacancy 
rates of obsolete office buildings in particular, we 
are more and more dealing with clients who are 
traditionally active in the real estate market, like 
property developers, investment companies and
housing associations who have to develop viable 
projects, rather than the more idealistic clients with 
the corresponding budgets in the pioneering phase.
What remained however is the often fragile 
character of these buildings, even if the technical 
quality of buildings has enormously improved in 
the post­war period. The vulnerability of the mate­
rials and construction is most prominent in their 
facades, particularly single­skin metal frames with 
light infills and single glazing, and light precast 
concrete elements and thin claddings.
An issue that became much more prominent 
is energy saving and sustainability in general. 
Although roofs were generally insulated, few early 
post­war modern buildings feature adequate ther­
mal insulation in their facades. Although listed 
buildings in the Netherlands may be exempted 
from many building regulations, there is a huge 
societal pressure to improve their thermal per­
THE 1953 HUF BUILDING after restoration. Sunscreens have been 
added in order to allow for clear glazing. Photo: Jannes Linders. 
formance. The insulation and sealing of facades 
may further be required for sound proofing, as our 
urban environment got much noisier since 1945. 
Such technical improvements are likely to have a 
significant impact on the design and appearance of 
the original facade of a building. 
A further downside of sealing and insulating our 
buildings is that the natural ventilation on which 
the interior climate originally may have depended 
is impeded and mechanical climate control systems 
may be required. Such systems may have a huge 
impact on the original mid­century interiors. 
HUF building
In the case of the 1953 HUF building in Rotterdam, 
many of these challenges came together. The origi­
nal store owner, who required a ground floor retail 
space with storage room in the basement and on 
the first floor, was forced to add four floors of office 
space that he didn’t really needed, in order to com­
ply with the Reconstruction Master Plan for the 
devastated centre of Rotterdam. 
Architects Van den Broek & Bakema therefore 
tucked away the office entrance to the back in order 
to create a continuous shop front for the shoe store. 
  
 
 
 
 
80 
The hidden entrance made the office floors already 
hard to rent out but the disastrous interior climate 
conditions made it even worse. The floors are only 
400 m2 in surface area and are completely enclosed 
by a curtain wall with glass from floor to ceiling, 
without any sunscreens. In the summer the interior 
already overheated in the morning before office 
hours. Period photographs show how the original 
tenants struggled with this problem by covering the 
glass with tin foil and adding ventilators.
After the tenants moved out in the 1990s the 
upper floors remained vacant5 until squatters took 
over and the building fell prey to vandalism and 
fire. When a property developer decided on a 
mayor investment close by, it was not very helpful 
that this once glorious building just around the cor­
ner was a complete disgrace. The HUF building was 
therefore acquired and the property developer hired 
us for an adaptive re­use and refurbishment project.
The main issue here was the upgrading of the 
single glazed steel curtain wall and to improve cli­
mate control. For ‘Zonnestraal’ we had developed 
very thin insulating double glazing units at high 
expenses and we had learned how to fit these into 
the steel window casements. In some of the Van 
Nelle buildings we could test them again. Since 
then, these glazing units became readily available 
on the market and now we could afford to use these 
for the HUF building too.
But without blocking the sun, the overheating 
problem would only get worse due to the double 
glazing, because the heat is captured inside. There 
were only two options to resolve this problem: the 
choice for sun reflective coated glass that would 
ruin the transparent character of the building or 
the addition of exterior sunscreens which were not 
part of the building as originally built. Meanwhile 
the building was nominated for listing and unex­
pectedly, we now had to deal with the municipal 
heritage authorities as well. As we are used to do in 
our way of working, we developed and calculated 
both options to be discussed with the heritage 
office. 
However, we remained confused how an expert 
architect like Van den Broek & Bakema could 
have made such a design error. Additional archival 
research produced an original perspective drawing 
indeed featuring sunscreens. Apparently the archi­
tects originally designed the building to have sun­
screens. Close inspection of the façade posts indeed 
revealed the holes where the screens were planned 
to be fixed. This allowed to decide for the addition 
of new sunscreens, and leave the glazing as trans­
parent as possible.
The screens are effective for the vision panels but 
less so for the lower spandrel panels that were orig­
inally fitted with wired glass for security. We devel­
oped a variant glazing unit with a restrained reflec­
tive coating on the inside, and a patterned outside 
glass panel to mimic the original wired glass. A 
further challenge was the safety of the glazed span­
drel panel. Even if we would have made the span­
drel panel with wired glass – which is not really 
possible in double glazing units – this would not 
have complied with safety regulations. There was 
no way that the glass panel could be designed to 
perform in that sense.
On close inspection we realized that the heating 
radiators were somehow already preventing people 
to fall through: they were made of steel, and almost 
continuous along the facade. We had the radiators 
tested for strength and raised them 10 cm in order 
to have them accepted as ‘fences’, thus complying 
with the safety code. 
As is mostly the case, much of the climate con­
trol issues can be substantially reduced by making 
such clever changes to the building skin. If changes 
to the facade are rejected altogether and upgrading 
of the building skin is ruled out, the problems have 
to be resolved entirely with climate control systems. 
This means that huge ducts will run through the 
building, and large machinery has to be placed 
somewhere, which mostly ends up on the roof. 
For HUF it was sufficient to introduce a central 
air distribution duct in the middle and one extrac­
tion unit in the staircase for each floor. The origi­
nal suspended ceiling was already gone as it con­
tained asbestos, and we decided to leave it that way 
to enjoy the extra head room. 
The hidden entrance was transformed by slightly 
projecting it out from the continuous shopfronts 
and by adding some colour. The climate control 
units are disguised behind an illuminated screen on 
top of the roof apartment. The HUF Building was
only listed as national heritage after completion of 
the works in 2010, as one of the first 100 post­war 
buildings in The Netherlands. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
81 
THE 1960 GAK BUILDING after conversion into housing, featuring a re-designed aluminium-
and-glass curtain wall that looks almost exactly like the original. Photo: Luuk Kramer. 
GAK building 
When we started working on proposals for a new 
functional program for the former National Social 
Security Central Office in Amsterdam, the build­
ing wasn’t listed either but some sort of a nomina­
tion was pending – and still is. The highly inno­
vative building was designed by the architect Ben 
Merkelbach and opened in 1960. Modelled after 
the 1954 Lever House in New York, it was the first 
completely air­conditioned building in the Neth­
erlands. The aluminium­and­steel curtain wall 
featured double glazing with a sun­absorbent green 
glass outer panel. Because of the air­conditioning, 
all windows were fixed and the interior climate 
control depended completely on systems.
The challenge was what to do with this structure 
that features 40 000 m2 of floor area. The building 
was bought around 2006 by a property developer 
and a housing association together, after long term 
vacancy started to have a negative impact on the 
neighbourhood and affected the social structure as 
well as the value of other properties in the area.
After running quick scans for several functional 
programs the decision was made to refurbish it 
as an office block again, until the economic crisis 
in 2008 ruined the market for offices almost 
overnight. The sheer size of the building obstructed 
an efficient redevelopment. Several initiatives were 
developed, amongst others for a hotel and a school, 
but none of these could fill up more than about 
one­third of this colossus. 
Several years passed until finally it was decided 
to convert one wing of the building into housing for 
single young professionals, featuring studio apart­
ments of about 30 m2 each, including a bathroom, 
that were put up for sale rather than rented out. 
Although there is a huge demand for such units 
in Amsterdam the redevelopment of the entire 
building in one go would have released over 750 
units simultaneously, which would have spoilt 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
82 
the market. Only after the successful sales of the 
units in the northern wing, it was decided to con­
tinue with the other wing. Would sales have disap­
pointed, the other parts of the building may have 
been converted into a school, a hotel or offices, are 
a combination thereof. 
Due to the pending nomination, again we had 
to deal with the heritage authorities, although the 
building had no formal status. Operating in this 
twilight zone makes our work as an architect some­
times very complicated as we have to convince 
our clients ourselves to respect the building and 
there are hardly any incentives from the heritage 
institutes to support our case. In doing so, we may 
act against our client’s interest, which is contrary to 
our professions’ ethics.
Given this situation we were asked to replace the 
failing facade in such a way that the appearance 
would remain the same but the performance would 
be up­to­date. Although the client proposed to 
keep the facade closed, we proposed to introduce 
operable windows for the apartments. It was quite a 
challenge to fit these into the clear­cut aesthetics of 
the original design, but we managed by introducing 
a moveable frame that is completely covered by 
a glass panel, which is glued to the frame from 
the outside – the so called Paff windows made in 
Germany.
Fortunately the same green glass was still avail­
able and because the glazing technology has 
advanced enormously over the last decades, we 
could make high­performance insulating glazing
units with the same looks as in the 1960. The real 
challenge was the backside of the building where 
a main highway is located. Given the noise and air 
pollution, it is actually not allowed to make hous­
ing in such locations with operable windows.
Again we learned from our earlier experience. At 
the Van Nelle Factory similar problems were over­
come by introducing a secondary glazing on the 
inside, a solution that was adapted for the West­
ern facade of the GAK building. By strongly venti­
lating the shallow greenhouse zone we were able to 
accommodate about 320 apartments in the North 
wing, which was completed in 2013. The South 
wing was put to use in 2015. The works on the cen­
tral part are still underway and we hope to finish 
the works by mid­2017.
After that, the heritage authorities are still 
expected to consider the designation of the build­
ing as architectural heritage, but we don’t really 
know what their strategy is. Would the building 
not be listed in the end, my client will have spent 
quite some extra investments without even having 
the return of a heritage listing. 
‘Patrimonium’ Technical School
The last example concerns a school building in
Amsterdam for elementary technical education, com­
pleted in 1956 after design of the young architect
Ben Ingwersen (1921–1996). The building is clearly
inspired on Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in
Marseille that had been completed a few years before.
The school building had been designed as a life­
size mock­up for the students to explain the basic 
principles of building engineering. The application 
of bare concrete was part of that effort and even 
the electrical system was exposed so as to educate 
future electricians, carpenters and mechanics.
Fortunately, we could have a Historic Building 
Survey commissioned even if the building wasn’t 
listed yet when we started our work. Initially, we 
were asked to only improve the interior climate 
conditions. We convinced the new School Board 
that it wouldn’t make sense just to put in a new 
HVAC system, unless the thermal insulation of the 
single­glass­in­concrete facade and further sustain­
ability issues would be addressed too.
With the historic report on the table, step­by­
step we succeeded in raising enthusiasm with the 
new users to preserve and restore the architectural, 
spatial and technological qualities of the build­
ing to a great extent. Remarkably, the school team 
recognized the educational value of the building 
for the teaching curriculum of the grammar school 
that was to make use of the premises.
In an earlier effort to restyle the atmosphere of 
the building altogether, all the interior concrete 
work had been painted mint green with peach­
coloured walls, including some of the unique con­
crete art reliefs. After series of test were conducted 
by a professional restorer, we managed to have all 
the paint removed, albeit at high expenses. The 
message here may be that, whenever a concrete 
building has to be repaired, it may be better to 
accept the colour differences of patch repairs then 
to paint it altogether, because it is really hard to get 
the paint off later.
Much effort was made to have the thin precast
concrete panels and window frames repaired with
83 
THE 1956 FIRST TECHNICAL SCHOOL in Amsterdam after conversion into the Cygnus Grammar School in 2013. 
Photo: Raoul Suermondt. 
CYGNUS GRAMMAR SCHOOL, detail of the entrance showing concrete repair and natural wood window frames. 
Photo: Raoul Suermondt. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
84 
matching mortars. We hope to publish an extensive
report about these works in a book that is currently
being prepared by the Getty Conservation Institute.
As traffic noise and pollution had increased dra­
matically since 1956, the wooden sliding windows 
were no longer used, often resulting in alarming 
CO2­levels inside. A regular mechanical ventila­
tion system would have involved a huge amount 
of ducts running through the building. By using 
the corridors and stairwells as a return channel the 
amount of ducts could be reduced by half. 
The improvement of the climate control systems 
suggested that the non­insulated concrete­and­
glass facade be upgraded as well. The original 
detail of the single glazing set straight into the sub­
tle concrete rebates seemed impossible to maintain 
when installing energy­efficient double glazing 
units. To our surprise, the supplier unexpectedly 
came up with the proposal to still glue the glazing 
straight into the concrete rebates with a sealant. By 
using a product in a similar color as the concrete 
the improved fixing of the insulated glazing units 
remains almost unobtrusive. 
The next challenge was what to do with the con­
tinuous concrete members of the window frames 
themselves. As the fins have a larger outside than 
inside surface area, it was expected that they would 
radiate heat towards the outside rather than cold 
towards the inside, and calculations confirmed that 
no structural condensation risk was to be expected. 
In case of excessive humidity levels – i.e. large 
numbers of students at the same time – condensa­
tion is expected to occur occasionally on the glaz­
ing, which will be collected in a small gutter, from 
where condensation water will easily evaporate as 
soon as humidity levels in the room drop. Although 
not ‘according to standards’ we could convince the 
client that this would work in practice and that we 
would arrive at a balanced proposal to be agreed by 
the heritage authorities. 
Choices 
Since the 1980s, our national heritage authorities 
developed various programs to extend the field of 
work, first with an inventory of the period 1850–
1940, which resulted in hundreds of additional des­
ignations. Since a few years, buildings as recent as 
1970 are now within their scope, which means even 
more buildings are becoming eligible for listing. 
Let’s briefly go back to my earlier remarks about 
the exceptional treatment of some selected build­
ings that deserve an integrated and careful con­
servation, even if that would impede their proper 
functional use. Taken to the extreme this approach 
leads to buildings whose primary function is now 
to be a museum, as has been the case of the 1930 
Tugendhat House by Mies van der Rohe, with 
which I’ve been involved as the vice chairman of 
THICOM – the international advisory board for its 
restoration. 
Apart from ‘Zonnestraal’ Sanatorium that has 
already been mentioned and that could be given 
some sort of a suitable functional program, other 
more moderate examples are Alvar Aalto’s 1935 
Library in Viipuri in Karelia, today Vyborg in 
Russia, that remains in use as a library, and the 
1939 Villa Stenersen in Oslo, designed by Arne 
Korsmo, which is used as a venue for conferences 
and concerts. 
It goes without saying that the process of mak­
ing a selection of such buildings to stand out from 
the regular policies is crucial. How do we deter­
mine which buildings justify such a treatment that 
is not only likely to be very expensive but may also 
prevent their economic use? Which means not 
only that investments have to come from public 
resources but just as well that the future main­
tenance budgets may not be generated by the object 
itself. This choice has to be based on solid research 
of the cultural and architecture­historical values 
of such an object that forms the basis of a Cultural 
Value Assessment and preferably a Historic Build­
ing Survey.
A paradox however is that the listing system in 
most countries does not involve any differentiation 
in designation. Unlike the British system, where 
graded levels of designation indicate the impor­
tance of each object and the various strategies set 
out for their conservation, in the Netherlands all 
landmarks appear in the register as being of equal 
value. In practice however, this ‘equality’ appears 
not to be the case. While the historic value of listed 
buildings is interpreted in some cases as a reason to 
object almost any significant change that would be 
in favour of its adaptive re­use, other listed build­
ings may be approached more conceptually allow­
ing adaptation and transformation to a greater 
extent. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
85 
The examples of the Zonnestraal sanatorium and 
the Van Nelle Factory illustrate our case, whereas 
it was the factory that has been inscribed in the 
World Heritage List in 2014. For building own­
ers and their consultants it is not always possible 
to understand which approach should be followed. 
It would be helpful to inform the stakeholders in 
the field more precisely and in advance. Particu­
larly in case of the huge amounts of post­war heri­
tage buildings, a grading system may be helpful to 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Behne, A., Der Moderne Zweckbau, Berlin/Vienna 1926.  
Translated as R.H. Bletter (ed.), Modern Functional Building, 
Oxford/Santa Monica 1996.
Henket, H.A.J. and W. de Jonge, Het Nieuwe Bouwen en restau­
reren. Het bepalen van gevolgen van restauratiemogelijkheden, 
Zeist/Den Haag 1990. English summary The Modern  
Movement and Restoration. Determining the Impact of Different 
Restoration Options, for the National Department for Conser­
vation, 1990. 
Jonge, W. de, ‘The Technology of Change. The Van Nelle  
Factories in Transition’, in Back from Utopia. The challenge of the 
Modern Movement, H. Heijnen en H.A.J.Henket (eds.),  
Rotterdam 2002, pp. 44–59.
Jonge, W. de, ‘Three modern preservation cases. The restoration 
of Rietveld’s Biennale Pavilion (1953–54) in Venice, Italy,  
compared to Sanatorium ‘Zonnestraal’ (Jan Duiker, 1926–28) 
and the Van Nelle Factories (Brinkman&Van der Vlugt, 
1926–31)’, in The Double Dimension: Heritage and Innovation, J. 
Hill (ed.), RAIA, Sydney 2004, pp. 39–61.
Jonge, W. de, ‘‘Zonnestraal’: Restoration of a transitory archi­
tecture. Concept, planning and realisation in the context of its 
authenticity’, in Technology of Sensations, The Alvar Aalto Vyborg 
Library, Proceedings of the 7th DOCOMOMO International 
Technology Seminar, Vyborg, Russia (September 18–19, 2003), 
DOCOMOMO preservation technology dossier 7, O. Wede­
brunn et.al. (eds.), Copenhagen 2004, pp. 12–33. 
Jonge, W. de, ‘Continuity and Change in the Architecture of 
Van Nelle’, in Van Nelle Monument in Progress, M. Backer, D. 
Camp and M. Dicke (eds.), Rotterdam 2005, pp. 250–287.
Jonge, W. de, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Building. The  
“functionally differentiated outer wall” and the preservation of 
Modern Movement buildings’, in Climate and Building Physics 
in the Modern Movement, Proceedings of the 9th DOCOMO­
MO International Technology Seminar, Löbau (June 24–25, 
convince stakeholders to embark on conservation 
and adaptive re­use project that suit their ambitions 
and capabilities.
In any case, it appears key to define the essential 
values as precisely as possible. This is true for all 
scale levels ranging from modern landscaping and 
landscape objects, to building complexes, buildings 
themselves, building parts, interiors and the related 
details and materials. 
2005), DOCOMOMO preservation technology dossier 9, J. 
Tomlow and O. Wedebrunn (eds.), Zittau 2006, pp. 27–45.
Jonge, W. de, various chapters in Sanatorium Zonnestraal. History 
and restoration of a modern monument, P. Meurs and M. van 
Thoor (eds.), Rotterdam 2010. 
Jonge, W. de, ‘Diversity in Modern Movement heritage pres­
ervation. The restoration of Rietveld’s Biennale Pavilion 
(1953–54) in Venice, Italy, compared to Sanatorium ‘Zonnes­
traal’ (Duiker, 1926–28) and the Van Nelle Factories (Brink­
man&Van der Vlugt, 1925–31)’, in L’opera sovrana. Studi sull ’ 
architettura del XX secolo /Etudes sur l ’architecture de XXe siècle / 
Studien über die Architektur des XX. Jh., M. Boesch et.al. (eds.), 
Mendrisio/Zürich 2014, pp. 493–501.
Jonge, W. de, ‘Something Concrete! The first Technical School 
in Amsterdam restored’, in Expansion & Conflict, Proceedings 
of the 13th DOCOMOMO International Conference, Seoul 
(September 24–27, 2014), A. Tostões, J.S. Kimm and T­w. 
Kim (eds.), Seoul 2014, pp. 321–325. 
ENDNOTES 
1.	 Duiker, J., Dr. Berlage en de ‘Nieuwe Zakelijkheid’, in ‘De 8 en 
Opbouw’ 1932, pp 43–51.
2. Extensive reports on the adaptive re­use and restoration of the 
Van Nelle Factory has been published in Backer et.al. 2005.
3. The Getty Foundation has recently engaged itself with 
modern heritage launching the ‘Keeping it Modern’ Grant 
Program that provides funding for preparatory research and 
planning, as well as conservation works. 
4. Extensive reports on the history and restoration works of the 
‘Zonnestraal’ Sanatorium have been published in Meurs & 
Van Thoor 2010. 
5. This is a general problem in The Netherlands: as the incoming 
rents for the shops are multi­fold of the rent for office floors or 
apartments, building owners do not make much effort to rent 
out the upper floors. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
86 
PANU LEHTOVUORI & GEORGIANA VARNA 
Urbanism at a turning point 
– Modern, Postmodern, Now 
Introduction
Deep­cutting innovations and paradigm shifts in 
urban planning seem often to coincide with global 
economic recessions. Ebenezer Howard presented 
his ‘social city’, a metropolitan system of connected 
garden cities, in the 1890s, at the end of the Long 
Depression 1873–96. Modern Movement fixed its 
planning principles in the early 1930s, during the 
Great Depression 1929–39, a period of economic 
and political uncertainty that finally led to Second 
World War. Critiques of the ostensibly rational 
modern planning surfaced as the Lefebvrean call 
for the ‘right to the city’ in 1968, leading the sub­
sequent interest in participation, co­creation and 
autopoiesis, in urban history and the ‘Other City 
Planning’ as well as limits of economic growth dur­
ing the first and second Oil Crisis 1974–80. 
Today, we still suffer from the Financial Crisis 
that started in 2007, culminated in the collapse of 
Lehman Brothers in 2008 and continued as the 
European Sovereign Debt Crisis 2010–, Russian 
financial crisis 2014 and Brazil’s recession 2014–. If 
the casual observation about links between global 
recessions and new planning ideas holds true, we 
should be witnessing the emergence of a new plan­
ning paradigm.
Is this the case? Is urbanism at a turning point? 
Yes and no. Yes, because urbanism is facing 
pretty radical and large challenges as the whole 
humankind is becoming urban. The theories, cele­
brated examples and ethics of urbanism are chang­
ing. No, because it is so hard to recognize one 
movement or one thinker that would give shape to 
the change. Urbanism is changing but the change 
occurs in plural, with varied speeds. Or we are just 
too close to see clearly. 
In what follows, we will discuss interesting nov­
elties and critiques of urban planning, its practices 
and outcomes. The text is structured in three main 
parts: Modern, Postmodern and Now. Our aim 
is not to rewrite the rather well­known history of 
modern planning, but to learn from the previous 
more or less successful paradigm shifts in 1930s 
and 1970s (Kuhn 1962; Taylor 1998). Especially, we 
devote space for the post­war discussions leading 
to architectural postmodernism and the academic 
debate on ‘postmodern urbanism’. Exploring 
diverse examples and narratives, we will chart the 
current situation of urbanism and urban change. 
We ask what might be the elements of a paradigm 
shift today. Where will the directions of future’s 
urban thinking lead us? How to combine ethics and 
economy? What is the role of the past – cultural 
and built heritage – in shaping future’s urban prac­
tices and built environments? 
Part 1: Modern 
– Alternative Histories and Critiques 
Early CIAM’s ‘global conception of space’ 
Modern urban planning can be seen as a reaction to 
the growth of the industrial metropolis. Its found­
ers, the likes of Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbus­
ier, aimed at finding clear solutions to the perceived 
problems of the cities of their time, especially to the 
impoverished conditions of working class neigh­
bourhoods. The foundational analysis of industrial 
city and society was crystallized in CIAM’s Athens 
Charter (Le Corbusier 1973 [1943]). The document, 
conceptualised in 1933, gave a general spatial inter­
pretation to the main ‘functions’ of the industrial 
society. In a rather direct way, mass­production of 
goods, organised public consumption of surplus 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
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87 
in social housing and reproduction of labour were 
interpreted as homogenous and mutually exclusive 
metropolitan ‘land­uses’. This reading led to the 
well­known zoning and separation between indus­
trial areas, housing areas and parks for leisure. 
Transport served as the necessary link between the 
three main spatially separated functions. Henri 
Lefebvre underlines the intellectual importance of 
the early modernists’ work, stating that: 
For the Bauhaus did more than locate space in
its real context or supply a new perspective on it:
it developed a new conception, a global concept,
of space. At that time, around 1920, just after
the First World War, a link was discovered in
the advanced countries (France, Germany, Rus­
sia, the United States), a link which had been
already dealt with on the practical plane but
which had not yet been rationally articulated:
that between industrialisation and urbanisation,
between workplaces and dwelling­places. No
sooner had this link been incorporated into
theoretical thought than it turned into a project,
even into a programme. (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]; cf.
Le Corbusier 1973 [1943], 48; 95–96) 
Because modern urban planning viewed industrial 
cities as problems warranting a radical redesign, it 
never took ‘the Urban’, i.e. the key spatial, social 
and political characteristics of existing urban settle­
ments and communities very seriously. In its full­
grown version since the 1930s, modern land­use 
planning systematically overlooked urban reality 
both in terms of historical built form and the intri­
cacies of urban life. Public urban space, especially, 
was neglected. This is exemplified by the fact that 
the Athens Charter does not mention a single 
time the phrase ‘public urban space’. The words 
the Charter (sparingly) uses to address the various 
spaces between buildings or outside cities include 
‘open space’ and ‘verdant space’. The Charter suc­
cinctly states that ‘…sun, vegetation, and space are 
the three raw materials of urbanism.’ (Le Corbusier 
1973 [1943], p. 55) 
Urban interests in Camillo Sitte’s and 
Ebenezer Howard’s works 
The above is well known. Less known – but cen­
tral for our discussion – is that across the form­
ative decades of modern urban planning there 
always was an alternative discourse, an alternative 
A DIAGRAM SHOWING THE KONDRATIEFF’S ‘LONG WAVES’ of economic growth periods and recessions. The author has 
made a heuristic observation that important innovations in urbanism often occur at global recessions. The UK stock market 
graph by courtesy of Allianz Global Investors / deconstructingrisk.com. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
88 
view to cities and urbanity that put high value of 
urban life and public urban space. An early exam­
ple is Camillo Sitte (1843–1903), whose study on 
the mediaeval urban form titled City Planning 
According to Artistic Principles (1889) criticized 
the homogeneity, order and two­dimensionality 
of urban planning and design in the industrial 
metropolises. For Sitte, the most important was not 
the architectural shape or form of each building, 
but the quality of urban space. 
Sitte was contemporary to Ebenezer Howard 
(1850–1928), whose Garden City programme, pub­
lished as To­Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real 
Reform (1898), is often considered as the start of 
modern planning. Howard’s main concern was 
relinking the people to the land. He writes: 
…the key to the problem how to restore the 
people to the land – that beautiful land of ours, 
with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon 
it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that 
moisten it – the very embodiment of Divine 
love for Man – is indeed a Master­Key… 
(Howard 1898, p.5) 
Howard was nevertheless sensitive to urban qual­
ities. Discussing the ‘Town­Country Magnet’, 
he envisions public space and its use very clearly. 
The centre of each Garden City should have 
‘well­watered garden’, ‘great boulevards’ and a 
‘Crystal Palace’, a circular glass corridor which in 
wet weather is ‘one of the favourite resorts of the 
people’ (ibid. p.14). The concept of a Crystal Pal­
ace was Howard’s original innovation. It was actu­
ally a shopping mall, at a convenient walking dis­
tance for every citizen (Hall & Ward 1998, p. 21). 
Furthermore, Howard was not just promoting self­ 
sustained Garden Cities, but a networked ‘Social 
City’ offering metropolitan qualities and services 
as part of a regional system. Rapid railways and 
waterways would link the individual Garden Cit­
ies to form town clusters of roughly 250 000 inhab­
itants (Howard 1898, p.130). In his Megacity Lec­
tures, sir Peter Hall discussed the benefits of that 
moderate size, but actually the Social City could 
proliferate almost without limit, to become the 
basic settlement form of any developed society 
(cf. Hall & Ward 1998, p. 25). During post­war 
decades, the regional settlement form has indeed 
evolved globally, re­positioning the traditional city 
in many areas of the world (Gottdiener & al 2015). 
Patrick Geddes’ and Joze Plecnik’s 
evolutionary strategies 
Patrick Geddes deserves special attention as a key 
figure of the alternative planning discourse during 
the consolidation of the Modern planning para­
digm. Geddes was born in 1854 and had a versatile 
career as a biologist, sociologist, geographer and 
town planner in Scotland, France, Palestine and 
India. He is credited as one of the founders of 
regional planning and the inventor of multi­chan­
nel mapping as a starting point for planning (survey 
method). His main planning publications are City 
Development (1904) and Cities in Evolution (1915) 
and his most important project was the masterplan 
for Tel Aviv and Jaffa (1925). 
Unlike Le Corbusier and other inter­war CIAM
members, Geddes believed that a successful urban
plan should be based on developing the existing
urban whole, not on its replacement by a new struc­
ture. For Geddes, a ‘city’ was an evolving organism
that both carried influences from the past and
involved promises of the future (Koponen 2006,
p. 85). In practice, he engaged in ‘constructive and
conservative surgery’, a careful work that aimed at
improving the city’s social and spatial conditions
with small interventions. Geddes’ view, by necessity,
involves a keen interest in urban space and the
meanings citizens give to it. As an example, his early
survey on Edinburgh involved maps, plans, aerial
perspectives, models, drawings, photographs, writ­
ten documents and statistics, aiming to present the
historical and lived city as an understandable whole,
awakening a sense of the values of place (ibid).
Batty and Marshall (2009) discuss Geddes as 
the fore­runner of ‘evolutionary physicalism’, a 
little­explored and misunderstood dimension of 
the theoretical background of planning and urban 
design. Warning against the intellectual fallacies 
of organic metaphors in urban thinking, they state 
that ‘we can identify an evolutionary paradigm, in 
which the city is not conceived of as a unified whole 
following a developmental programme [of modern 
planning], but is more usefully seen as a collection 
of interdependent, co­evolving parts.’ (Batty and 
Marshall 2009, p. 552) Their argumentation shows 
that Geddes is a forgotten link between the late 
19th century urban design thinking, evolution 
theory and the contemporary interest in emergent 
potentials of urbanity, focusing both on clear built 
form and complex urban process. 
  
 
 
89 
ROOSTER BRIDGE (1931) crossing a tiny stream in Ljubljana, an example of the place-based public space 
interventions by architect Jože Plečnik, working in the city 1920s–50s. Photo by courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 
Joze Plecnik’s work in interwar Ljubljana pro­
vides a fantastic example of slow, adaptive and 
innovative urbanism. Like Geddes, Plecnik used 
small and careful interventions that over time 
amount to big and strategic improvements in urban 
structure and amenities. He also designed several 
key buildings, such as the national library (1936–41), 
integrated in the urban evolutionary vision (Havik 
2014).
Team X – towards ‘Another Modern’ 
In the 9th meeting of CIAM in 1953, new 
approaches started to surface, foregrounding pub­
lic space and citizen power and challenging the 
modernist orthodoxy. The internal critique of mod­
ern movement centred in Team X, a group of archi­
tects active between 1953 and1981. Team X members 
were genuinely interested in users and public space, 
developing ‘an Another Modern’. Team X’s ideas 
led to New Brutalism in Britain and Structuralism 
in the Netherlands, movements that foregrounded 
the user­space relationship over aesthetic concerns. 
By shifting the aesthetic orthodoxy of modern 
architecture, these movements paved way for post­
modernism. 
Discussing the changing role of the architect in 
the post­war architectural culture and modernists’ 
interest in the notion of public(s), Tom Avermaete 
(2010) distinguishes between architect as syndi­
calist, populist, activist and facilitator. Working in 
Avermaete’s ‘facilitator’ role, Giancarlo de Carlo, 
one of the core members of Team X, called in 1960s 
for an equivalent relation between architects and 
users. According to Avermaete, the ‘creative and 
decisional equivalence’ was well exemplified by 
Renzo Piano and Peter Rice in their design for the 
Mobile Workshop:
  
90 
PARTICIPATION, CO-CREATION and site-specific actions are key issues in contemporary urbanism. 
CityBee in action in Hedehusene, a marginalized suburb of Copenhagen. Photo: Jens Brandt. 
This temporary structure, which arrived in a 
container truck, was meant to be set up in the 
center of ancient towns. It was thought to facil­
itate the encounter between professionals and 
inhabitants, who could engage in mutual dia­
logues and collaborative actions on city renova­
tion. (ibid, p.59) 
Clearly, in the new collaborative processes, public 
encounter and thus public space became central. 
The Mobile Workshop seems to predate the current 
proliferation of on­site collaborative spaces, includ­
ing students’ modest design containers, novel 1:1 
design approaches such as ‘CityBee’ by Jens Brandt 
in Denmark or commercial initiatives such as Gug­
genheim BMW Lab. 
The School of Venice and ‘the Other City Planning’ 
In 1966, Aldo Rossi published his milestone book 
L’architettura della città. Rossi analyses cities as 
‘artefacts’, as collective works of human labour and 
social organization over decades and centuries. This 
approach, known as ‘typomorphology’, was built on 
earlier work by a group of Venice­based architects, 
including Giancarlo Caniggia and Saverio Mura­
tori (Moudon 1994). Typomorphology focuses on 
the materiality of the built ‘artifact’. It maps and 
analyses the contingent and slow process – evolu­
tion if you wish – of both the overall urban mor­
phology and local building typologies. To stress 
the difference between typomorphology and main­
stream modernistic planning, it is sometimes called 
‘the Other City Planning’. 
In this context, Rossi was looking at urban pro­
cess through the notion of ‘monument’. Major 
buildings, streets and squares, but also recurring 
large events represented ‘monuments’ for him. They 
drive urban change over long time periods, but may 
become obsolete and thus ‘pathological’ as well. 
Criticising ‘naïve functionalism’, Rossi claimed that 
cities are heterogeneous collages of morphological 
elements that change in a variety of ways and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
91 
rhythms. The similarity between Rossi’s approach 
and the formulation of Batty and Marshall above, 
defining city as a collection of interdependent, 
co­evolving parts, is striking, despite their different 
theoretical backgrounds and professional contexts. 
Structures of urban social life 
In the early 1960s, the conceptual foundations, 
practices and results of planning were heavily crit­
icized both by architects, planners and commen­
tators outside the planning profession. Writing 
in NYC, journalist Jane Jacobs (1961) focused the 
attention to the positive values of urbanity and 
public space. She defended neighbourhoods that 
were wrongly labelled as ‘slums’. Jacobs lucidly dis­
cussed the spatial and social aspects that made 
big cities liveable, and pointed to the fallacies of 
planning. Christopher Alexander (1965) approved
Jacobs’ critique. He argued for the importance of 
mixed public spaces and a certain structural com­
plexity, a shift for ‘tree­like’ network logic towards 
‘semi­lattices’ that allow for multiple meetings and 
overlapping life spheres:
When we think in terms of trees we are trading 
the humanity and richness of the living city 
for a conceptual simplicity which benefits only 
designers, planners, administrators and devel­
opers. (…) For the human mind, the tree is the 
easiest vehicle for complex thoughts. But the 
city is not, cannot, and must not be a tree. The 
city is a receptacle for life. (Alexander 1965, p.17) 
Robert Venturi in his ‘gentle manifesto’ Complex­
ity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) cele­
brates the historic layering and non­obvious hybrids 
of urban architecture. Kevin Lynch’s The Image of 
the City (1960) provided a fresh view to the emerg­
ing regional urban form and user’s perception on 
it. In tune with Jane Jacobs’ ideas, William H. 
Whyte (1980; 1988) argued for the critical impor­
tance of pedestrian life for city culture (Gottdiener 
& al. 2015). In general we can say that if modern 
planning was interested in big systems and deci­
sions, based on the ‘global conception of space’ and 
metropolitan frame of analysis and action, the cri­
tiques trusted in local, historical, evolutionary and 
self­organising urban practices, the city of use 
and users. Regarding the ostensibly rational mod­
ern urbanism, the critiques worked on a number 
of critical dualities, such as simplicity vs complex­
ity; design vs process; global vs local; and abstract 
vs concrete. 
Part 2: Postmodern
– Formative Urban Discourses 
‘Right to the City’ and beyond 
In the urban planning and urban design literature, 
the early 1970s – the moment of Vietnam War and 
the crisis of political legitimacy of many Western 
governments, soon to be deepened by the economic 
turbulence of the oil crisis – are often seen as a 
turning point in reconsidering the importance of 
public space and the views of urban citizens. As 
Gehl and Gemzøe point out: 
…the tide began to turn around the year 1970. 
Modernism began to be challenged and pub­
lic debate took up the issue of urban quality and 
the conditions for life in the city, pollution and 
the car’s rapid encroachment of urban streets 
and squares. Public space and public life were 
reintroduced as significant objects of architec­
tural debate and treatment... (Gehl & Gemzǿe 
2000, p.7) 
Three key philosophical writings challenged the 
old assumptions about urban planning and design. 
In 1974, Henri Lefebvre published La Production 
de l’espace, where he famously put forward a new 
vision about historical and socially produced space 
reflecting the conditions of its production, and 
simultaneously providing seeds for change, for an 
‘urban revolution’. In the same year, Richard Sen­
nett published his analysis on the changing nature 
of public life and society, The Fall of the Public 
Man. Two years later in 1976, the Canadian geog­
rapher Edward Relph’s meditations on the emo­
tional dimensions of place, on feelings of belonging 
and loss are published as Place and Placelesness. 
Together these writings brought the urban dis­
course to a new level (Gottdiener 1994). The impor­
tance of public urban space for emancipation of 
marginal groups, for political action, for individ­
ual and group identities as well as for the overall 
organization of society became acutely understood 
(Lehtovuori 2010). City was (again) an arena of rad­
ical political change. Students, immigrants, women 
and the youth from different European countries 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
92 
THE SCALE MODEL OF HELSINKI’S NEW KATAJANOKKA AREA, the winning competition entry by architects 
Vilhelm Helander, Pekka Pakkala and Mikael Sundman, 1972. Photo by courtesy of Juha Ilonen. 
and the US, found ways to appropriate space and 
fight for their cause. Lefebvre’s slogan, the ‘right 
to the city’, coined just before the revolutionary 
events of May ‘68, drove the debate on who pro­
duces ‘urban values’ and who has the right to them. 
An important example in the early 1970s was the 
popular reappropriation of the Halles Centrales in 
Paris. Lefebvre (1991 [1974]) claims that ‘[f]or a brief 
period, the urban centre, designed to facilitate the 
distribution of food, was transformed into a gath­
ering­place and a scene of permanent festival – in 
short, into a centre of play rather than of work – for 
the youth of Paris’.1 
Examples of postmodern planning and urban design 
In architecture and planning, Bernard Tschumi’s
early writings and projects, such as The Manhattan
Transcripts (1976–1981, published as a book 1995) and
the design of Parc de La Villette in Paris (project
1982, realisation 1984–87) operationalized the radical
thoughts of 1968 in an architectural language of
event montage, superimposition and cross program­
ming. At the same time, postmodernism started to
gain ground. Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia, com­
pleted in 1978 in New Orleans to provide a space for
the Italian community of the city, can be considered
as an early example of postmodern(istic) public
urban space. A significant event that shaped the dis­
course was the demolition of the Modernist estate
Pruitt­Igoe in St. Louis, US in 1972–76. Charles
Jencks, for example, has emphasized the symbolic
value of the demolition, claiming that it signifies the
end of Modernism and birth of Post­Modernism.
However, a more realistic view would place at the
 
 
  
93 
ALVARO SIZA’S MALAGUEIRA ESTATE IN EVORA may be the most faithful Aldo Rossian urban project in Europe. Siza 
expressed the importance of water in the dry climate as rough ‘aqueducts’ in grey concrete brics that organise the white, 
cubist housing tissue. Photo: Panu Lehtovuori. 
root of the problematic nature of the estate, the
deeply entrenched racial and class divisions of St.
Louis, and of many other US cities at the time.
In Finland, the change of urban and architec­
tural scene became palpable in 1972. That year, 
three young architects Vilhelm Helander, Pekka 
Pakkala and Mikael Sundman won an open plan­
ning competition for the Katajanokka development 
in an old shipyard in central Helsinki. Their project 
was vocally based on Helsinki’s historical features, 
such as the subtly varying street grid, hierarchi­
cal relation between classical monuments and ordi­
nary housing, closed urban blocks, and an inter­
est in the 1920s large open yards and their social 
potential. The entry completely turned its back 
to modernistic principles. Their project was real­
ized, and despite its moderate size the ‘New Kataja­
nokka’ became a game­changing example, pointing 
to the values of urbanity, historical continuity and 
public space. Echoes can be seen in Kuokkala dis­
trict in Jyväskylä, a 1978 competition won by archi­
tect Juhani Boman, and many other cases.
In Europe, Aldo Rossi’s Gallaratese housing in 
Milan (1970) and Alvaro Siza’s Malagueira estate in 
Evora (1973–) are celebrated examples of the ‘Other 
City Planning’ that views the city as a real, histori­
cal artefact (as against a collection of abstract ‘func­
tions’) and as a citizen­driven long­term process (as 
against a top­down singular project). Rem Koll­
haas’ early Ij­Plein in Amsterdam (project 1980–
82, realization 1982–88) is an interesting case, as it 
simultaneously speaks both for the stream­lined 
modernistic aesthetics and urban typologies rooted 
in Amsterdam’s urban history. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
94 
In 1979, West Berlin commenced an interna­
tional competition for reconstructing parts of the 
city, respecting (or reintroducing) the city’s orig­
inal urban street plans. This initiative became the 
Berlin IBA ’87, a collection of postmodernistic pro­
jects by Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, John Hejduk, 
Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and others, built in 
the vicinity of Berlin Wall in Kreutzberg and Frie­
drichsstadt. The project laid foundations for ‘criti­
cal reconstruction’, a principle to rebuild the post­
wall Berlin coded as Planwerk Innenstadt. Today, 
this long reconstruction process and symbolic fight 
for ownership of Berlin’s public space is getting to 
an end with the rebuilding of the Berlin Castle as 
Humboldt Forum at the core of the city. – Space 
here does not allow for architectural comments on 
that project, but very interestingly the Humboldt 
Forum may become a highly interesting and rele­
vant global/local cultural space.2 
Reviewing ‘Postmodern Urbanism’: are urban 
values in dangerous decline or just changing? 
The English translation of Lefebvre’s Production 
of Space (1991) made space a key term of critical 
enquiry. European societies were in rapid trans­
formation in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin 
Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which 
led to an unprecedented wave of optimism trans­
lated in urban regeneration, as noted above regard­
ing Berlin. However, the unification rapidly led 
to negative effects, such as the shrinking of many 
Eastern cities and towns. With the Communist 
threat gone, neoliberal social and economic poli­
cies gained ground in many countries beyond the 
UK and the US, with private actors starting to play 
a larger role in the processes of urban development. 
– In this context, we find two main ‘narratives’, one 
of ‘decline’ and one of ‘change’. 
The ‘narrative of decline’ foregrounds the increas­
ingly visible practice of controlling urban public
space through design, policing strategies and elec­
tronic surveillance. The Finnish geographer Hille
Koskela (2000, 2006) has been one of the most crit­
ical voices of the practice of video surveillance and
its implications for urban space. In the UK, Atkin­
son (2003) and Raco (2003) analyse the new spaces
created as a result of the British urban renaissance,
showing that there are signs of Smith’s ‘revanchist
city’ (1996) in the practices of redesigning and man­
aging them. In the Netherlands, Van Melik et al.
(2007, 2009) analyse ‘manifestations of fear and fan­
tasy in the design and management of public spaces’
showing an evident shift in the ways that Dutch
authorities have become more entrepreneurial and
have increasingly provided public spaces mainly for
consumers, combining ‘fear and fantasy’ in the pro­
duction of privatized public space.
In United States, the ‘narrative of decline’ 
unfolds is a different spatial and historical con­
text. First in Los Angeles, commentators raised 
attention to the ‘end of public space’ (Sorkin 1992). 
Critical geographers started to discuss the neg­
ative effects of real­estate businesses, their links 
to neoliberal politics and the increasingly ‘global’ 
socio­economic dynamics. They found public space 
and public culture to be under serious threat, label­
ling this toxic process as ‘postmodern urbanism’ 
(Flusty & Dear 1999). Socio­economic and spatial 
segregation at regional scale, privatization and 
commodification of formerly public spaces, loss of 
authenticity, fragmentation of communities and 
ecological disaster were among the key issues. The 
proliferation of gated communities and CCTV, 
on the one hand, and the construction of fantasy 
parks, Disneyfication of urban space and its ‘paci­
fication by cappuccino’ led to exclusion of many 
groups and infringement of their basic rights 
(Sorkin 1992; Loukaitou­Sideris, 1993; Mitchell 
1995). The more optimistic ‘narrative of change’ is 
much based on planners’ and urban managers’ prac­
tical views and actions in developing cities both in 
Europe and US. The work of Jan Gehl’s team (Gehl 
1971, Gehl & Gemzøe, 1996; 2000) is well known. 
Gehl’s example of how to re­think and re­shape 
cities based on the principles of making them live­
able – walkable, bike­able, enjoyable – has spread 
world­wide. The role of public space in creating 
vibrant urban environments is now rather broadly 
approved.
In the UK, Mathew Carmona has focused on 
understanding the management dimension of pub­
lic space (Carmona, M. & al. 2008) and the crea­
tion of design guidelines for both policy and prac­
tice (2013a; 2013b). His paper Contemporary Public 
Space: Critique and Classification (2010a, 2010b) 
maps in detail the on­going debates on public 
space, categorizing them in under­management and 
over­management critiques. He concludes that: 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
95 
The discussion revealed both the complex and 
contested nature of public space, but also the 
tendency for at least some of the literature to 
over­generalize complex locally situated phe­
nomena, the extent of which (globally) is 
largely untested. What is clear is that contem­
porary trends in public space design and man­
agement are resulting (over time) in an increas­
ingly complex range of public space types… 
(Carmona, 2010b, p. 172) 
Recently, innovative work attempting to quantify 
the publicness of public spaces has been carried 
out by Nemeth and Schmidt (2007; 2011) in the 
USA and Varna (2014) in the UK. These authors 
try to show if indeed privatization and increased 
control of contemporary urban public spaces can 
be demonstrated beyond anecdotal evidence. Their 
results show that in many cities a proliferation of 
new public spaces and socio­spatial innovations 
can be observed, giving credibility to the cautiously 
optimistic ‘narrative of change’. 
Part 3: Now  
– Searching For a New Paradigm 
Lessons from the past paradigm shifts 
From the two previous moments of innovation in 
planning and urbanism in 1930s and 1970s, we can 
learn a number of things that help us to understand 
the contemporary urban landscape. 
Firstly, those two moments are not similar. The 
1930s were characterized by a fundamental inven­
tion of a new societal role for urban planning. 
The ‘global conception of space’, as described by 
Henri Lefebvre, helped architects, planners and 
eventually politicians to manage the industrial soci­
ety through the control and zoning of metropol­
itan land­uses. This conceptual shift essentially 
hi­jacked politics, re­dressing political questions in 
terms of rational planning and progressive architec­
ture. The shift in 1930s was more radical than that 
in 1970s. While in 1930s, a new societal institution 
was conceived, an institution that really started 
to work only in the post­war economic and social 
modernisation, in 1970s this institution remained 
intact. The ideas of participation, citizen power, 
limits of growth and value of historic urban form 
failed to shake and overturn the planning insti­
tution, and the paradigm shift stopped half­way 
(Taylor 1998). The societal role of modernistic plan­
ning and the related practices were not exhausted, 
yet. The well­oiled system that helped to direct 
public funds, stabilize property values, shape mar­
kets and limit competition served well many actors 
still in 1970s and later on. Thus, planning got sup­
port both from business and politics, and continued 
to play vital roles in Western societies and cities. 
Despite strong critique against the ruling regime, 
the challenging new ideas failed to create an alter­
native view regarding the societal role of planning 
and, thus, remained in the margins.
Secondly, in a more positive note, the 1970s 
debates teach about the cultural role of urbanism. 
Especially the interest in urban history, in the rich 
and varied morphology and typology of European 
cities, made clear that city building is one of the 
most important expressions of culture. Not only big 
plans, but the mundane everyday process of indi­
vidual decisions has value and power (Lehtovuori 
& Koskela 2013). As collective works, oeuvres, cities 
could be studied in their own terms, and the ‘Other 
City Planning’ established a certain independence 
and a cultural, even avant­garde, position in art, 
media and politics. I find this observation very 
important today, because too often we as urbanists 
fail to ground our arguments in uniquely urban 
terms, in our own terms. Too often we accept the 
economic argument as the strongest or most rel­
evant, and start to change both our discursive 
anchors and actual plans to better ‘serve’ the econ­
omy. I doubt that this will not help the cause of 
more humane, lively, resource­efficient or resilient 
cities of the future. It takes culture and cunning to 
create an agenda for the future! 
Thirdly, before a major paradigm shift, there is 
always a period of innovation and testing. Artistic 
experimentation in 1910s and 1920s was essential 
for modern architecture and planning, as was the 
long and versatile critique towards the ideas and 
results of post­war urbanization from late 1950s 
till 1968 in arts (eg. Situationists), urban stud­
ies (eg. Jacobs) and planning and architecture itself 
(eg. Team X). In the theory of systemic change 
or systemic transition, the flocking and mutual 
strengthening of several ‘niche innovations’ is one 
of the two main processes of change. Currently, 
temporary uses, tactical urbanism, urban acupunc­
ture and other site­specific approaches represent a 
broad field of new urban practices, developed since 
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
96 
late 1990s (Lehtovuori & Ruoppila 2012; Bishop & 
Williams 2012; Stevens & Ambler 2010; Hou 2010). 
These approaches are relevant both in the relatively 
stable Western cities and in the rapidly evolving 
mega­cities of the ‘global south’; fresh ideas have 
moved both ways. It is very likely that these ideas 
play a continued role in shaping the new urban 
paradigm.
Setting the future urban agenda 
Above, we asked if urbanism is at a turning point, 
and what elements might point towards a paradigm 
shift. Clearly, the broad societal role of urban plan­
ning is a main question. In 1930s planning was 
about spatial management of the main functions 
of industrial society. In 1970s it might have been 
about channelling of political discontents and new 
critical social and ecological views, but the change 
remained incomplete, as discussed. Now, it is high 
time to realise the global scope of urbanization 
and cities’ global status as the main human habitat. 
This year, already 54 percent of people globally live 
in cities (UN Habitat 2016). Humankind is mov­
ing to a new historical phase that may be referred 
to as a totally urban society, planetary urbanization, 
anthropocene, or urban continent (eg. Lefebvre 
1991; Brenner & Schmid 2013; Schmid 2005). We 
have to rethink cities as a resource­efficient mode to 
organise the totality of human life in the post­in­
dustrial, urban era. 
It is a huge task, but the sheer size of the problem 
might show the direction of the solution: people 
themselves. In the current situation, the produc­
tion of the Urban, well­working and self­man­
aged, is the main thing in itself. Cities or city­re­
gions are not instruments for economic prosperity 
or social equity, only, but ends in themselves. Not 
surprisingly, this idea is in tune with many of the 
20th century alternative and critical thoughts dis­
cussed above. A certain valuation and even respect 
of the Urban – defined either as the unfolding daily 
urban life or as the historical urban artefact – unites 
those critiques. Simultaneously, they see urban­
ism as a field of action that deals with the complex 
and emergent urban whole in a subtle and dynamic 
manner. 
We are witnessing history’s largest migration, 
and the remaining rural areas in Africa and South­
East Asia are rapidly urbanizing. While there are 
several urbanization paths and much regional and 
national variety, in general cities are the devices 
that will lead humankind to a sustainable future. In 
the few coming decades till 2050 urbanism – plan­
ning, design and architecture but even more urban 
policies and practices that define how much self­
help, self­organisation and capacity­building is 
tolerated – will largely define the tenor of ‘global 
society’.
21st century urbanism: intangible urban resources 
In our view, the global horizon offers a clue about 
the societal role of 21st century urbanism: to facil­
itate urban processes so that especially the intan­
gible resources cities are good at producing can 
be maximized for collective benefit: networks, 
skills, capabilities, up­ward social mobility, infor­
mal and formal education, economic and social 
standing, political opinion­formation, identity… 
Natural resources are crucial, and resource­effi­
ciency a must, but social capital that is best built 
and sustained in urban processes is the key. The 
importance of intangible resources is beautifully 
elaborated by Doug Saunders in Arrival City (2011), 
a book about first generation rural­urban immi­
grants’ new, or newly defined, neighbourhoods, 
‘arrival cities’, across the Globe: 
Rather than dismissing these neighbourhoods 
as changeless entities or mere locations, we 
need to start seeing them as a set of functions. 
(…) [Social capital] is, in short, what arrival 
cities are: repositories of social capital, 
machines for its creation and distribution. (…) 
The modern arrival city is the product of the 
final great human migration. A third of the 
world’s population is on the move this century, 
from village to city… (Saunders 2011, p.20–21) 
This call can be put in a broad and historical frame. 
Some commentators, for example, propose to 
expand the categories of economic analysis so that 
we would be able to count the value­adding pro­
cesses of not only in primary production (agricul­
ture and mining), secondary production (industry)
and tertiary production (services), but the produc­
tion of the urban itself, including real­estate but 
also the intangible urban resources (commons, net­
works). While this proposition can be debated, 
the centrality of human agency is clear. Space 
plays a key role in human agency, and the complex 
  
  
  
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
97 
socio­spatial hybrids warrant better understanding. 
UN Habitat III accepted in October 2016 the 
‘New Urban Agenda’. The long document develops 
several distinctly urban themes, such as the impor­
tance of public space and participatory ‘bottom­up’ 
practices (UN 2016). Principle 100 states (excerpt): 
We will support the provision of well­designed 
networks of safe, inclusive for all inhabitants, 
accessible, green, and quality public spaces and 
streets, free from crime and violence, including 
sexual harassment and gender­based violence, 
considering the human scale and measures that 
allow for the best possible commercial use of 
street­level floors... 
The principle ends with ‘health and well­being’. 
What is important is the Agenda’s constant recog­
nition of the whole urban society, including infor­
mal markets, bottom­up initiatives and every urban 
dweller, not only formal citizens.
Only after a paradigmatic change in defining 
urbanism, the many and pressing issues of ecolog­
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ENDNOTES 
1.	 See www.notbored.org/space.html for a discussion on this 
quote from The Production of Space. 
2. Personal communication with Alan Prohm, the Head of 
Humboldt Forum’s Digital Communication. 
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
99 
DENNIS RODWELL 
The Values of Heritage:

A New Paradigm for the 21st Century
 
Abstract
The traditional 20th century approach to architec­
tural heritage focused on attributed cultural values.
In the Postwar era, these were predicated on the
hypothesis that only selected, designated examples
of our built heritage would survive the drive to
adapt and modernise our homes, towns and cities.
This assumption conflicts with today’s agendas of
sustainable development and climate change, which
embrace wider societal, cultural and environmental
issues and recognise additional, complementary val­
ues: including community, resource, and usefulness.
Awareness­raising is a critical challenge for the 
preservation and maintenance of Postwar to Post­
modern built cultural heritage in the 21st century. 
This paper explores the importance of promoting a 
holistic understanding of the concept of heritage, 
the range of values which support the protection 
and conservation of our 20th century built heritage 
over and above a narrow focus on often non­con­
sensual cultural ones, and the role of this heritage 
as a driver for sustainable urban development in the 
21st century. 
The 20th century paradigm 
The history of built cultural heritage conservation, 
from its earliest beginnings through the 20th cen­
tury, has presupposed the survival of selected indi­
vidual monuments and buildings, sites and areas 
identified by experts for reductionist cultural rea­
sons (Jokilehto, 1999; Glendinning, 2013), along­
side what has been described as the “fetishism for 
making lists” (Askew, 2010, p.32). Notwithstanding 
the broadening range of this heritage, from ancient 
ruins through rural and urban ensembles, domestic 
vernacular, industrial relics and historic districts 
to buildings of the Modern Movement, the com­
mitment to selectivity allied to the primacy of cul­
tural values has not been seriously challenged in 
academic or practical terms. The result is marginal: 
in Scotland, for example, with a population of 5.25 
million and over 2.5 million buildings, fewer than 
300 from the Postwar period are currently listed for 
protection (out of a total of 48 000 listings) (Rod­
well, 2013). 
In multiple respects, the Second World War con­
stituted a turning point in Europe. With its emer­
gence in the Interwar period, the Modern Move­
ment had already anticipated the disassembling of 
cities and their re­ordering in conformity with a 
simplistic compartmentalisation of human activities 
– chiefly categorised as work, residence and leisure. 
Le Corbusier’s provocative 1925 Plan Voisin for
the reconstruction of central districts of Paris, for 
example, retaining only a handful of highly selected 
monuments, epitomised this (Le Corbusier, 1947). 
Whereas this vision for Paris was opposed and dis­
missed at the time, the underlying concept was 
adopted as the model for the post­1945 re­ordering 
and reconstruction of cities across Europe (John­
son­Marshall, 1966), where the devastation wrought 
by wartime aerial bombardment was acknowledged 
as a “blessing in disguise” (Duwel and Gutschow, 
2013). Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), influential com­
mentator on the history of cities, civilisation and 
urbanism (Mumford, 1963; Critchley, 2004), antici­
pated, when addressing a European audience in 
1942, “replacing an outworn civilization […] for a 
new set of purposes and a radically different mode 
of life”. He continued: “There is a sense in which 
the demolition that is taking place through the 
war has not yet gone far enough. Though many of 
the past structures are still serviceable, and some 
of them truly venerable, the bulk of our building 
  
 
100 
FIGURE 1. DUBLIN, IRELAND. In the 1960s, when solicited by the state owned Electricity Supply Board for his support for the demolition of 
sixteen Georgian townhouses in Fitzwilliam Street, the noted architectural historian Sir John Summerson (1904–92) – an authority on the 
Georgian period but an equivocal champion of the conservation movement – described them as “merely one damned house after another”
(cited in McDonald, 1985, p.20). In a bizarre twist of fate that is symptomatic of changing fashions and the volatility of attributed cultural values, 
the replacement building, shown here, is currently destined to be demolished and replaced by a replica of the Georgian terrace that preceded it. 
Photo: Dennis Rodwell. 
no longer corresponds to the needs and possibilities 
[author’s italics] of human life. We must therefore 
continue to do, in a more deliberate and rational 
fashion, what the bombs have done in brutal hit­or­
miss, if we are to […] produce the proper means of 
living” (Mumford, 1946, p.131).
Mumford’s limited perception of possibilities evi­
denced a mental straitjacket that was typical at the 
time and continues to exert a major influence polit­
ically, professionally and in the public mind. The 
architect Didier Repellin’s articulation, for exam­
ple, that working with a historic building requires 
ten times more creativity than building a new one 
on a greenfield site,1 has only partially insinuated 
itself into an architectural profession whose lead­
ing members prioritise new construction over the 
retention of existing structures, largely irrespective 
of their age, cultural significance, or adaptive capa­
bilities. Indicative of the Postwar ethos is a state­
ment that appears in the 1965 Liverpool City C entre 
Plan: “The essence of Liverpool’s problems today 
stem from the fact that the essential fabric of the 
City dates from a hundred years ago” (City Centre 

Planning Group, 1965, p.55): a liability, not an asset; 

a disposable, limited­life commodity in the Postwar 

consumer economy.

Whereas one could argue that the M odern 

Movement substantively contributed to this ethos, 

the challenges facing awareness of the Postwar to 
Postmodern built heritage (as indeed of the  Prewar 
Modern Movement) are neither new nor e xclusive 
to the late 20th century. Reductionist cultural attri­
butions are essentially constructs ( Rodwell, 2015), 
values that are subject to divergent and at times 
contradictory interpretations by heritage experts 
and their peers; supposedly intrinsic to the objects 
themselves but relative in time and space and essen­
tially extrinsic (Labadi, 2013); and overlaid with 
diverse and variable symbolic and political mean­
ings. Much of this discourse inhibits c onstructive 
conversations about functional continuity and 
adaptive reuse today.
In the British Isles, for example, the a rchitectural 
period that is amongst the most highly valued 
   
101 
FIGURE 2. LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (top left). Also in the 1960s, the Midland Grand Hotel (1868–73; architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott) that 
fronts St Pancras Station was threatened with destruction and narrowly escaped this fate. Now fully restored and refunctioned, a statue on the 
upper concourse commemorates the instrumental role of Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984; poet and founder of the Victorian Society) in the  
campaign to save the building from demolition. Photo: Dennis Rodwell. 
FIGURE 3 & 4. KAUNAS, LITHUANIA (top right and above). Termed “Europe’s Secret Modernist Capital City” for its unrivalled assemblage of  
buildings from the Interwar years (here, the Central Post Office; 1930–31; architect Feliksas Vizbaras), during which period Kaunas was the capital 
of the first independent Republic of Lithuania (1918–40), this vital component of Europe’s built cultural heritage is only now emerging from
decades of deprecation for an assortment of historical and symbolic reasons. Photos: Dennis Rodwell. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
102 
today – the neo­classical Georgian period (1714–
1830), exemplified in the urban transformations of 
Bath and Edinburgh (inscribed in the UNESCO
World Heritage List in 1987 and 1995 respectively), 
Dublin and London – faced continuing threats of 
demolition and redevelopment through until the 
1970s (Figure 1). The built heritage of the subse­
quent Victorian period (1837–1901) suffered equal 
prejudice before returning to favour in the 1990s 
(Figure 2).
In Lithuania, the remarkable Interwar heritage 
of today’s second city of Kaunas was not lauded 
until the present decade (Balčytis, 2013) (Figure 
3 & 4), despite being the European equivalent of 
Asmara, the Eritrean capital and “Africa’s Secret 
Modernist City” (Denison et al, 2003). 
Importantly, reductionist cultural attributions 
are often independent of the broader range of heri­
tage values that determine perceptions in today’s 
host communities, where academically articulated 
characteristics focused on the architecture may well 
carry little weight. As Felicity Goodey has stated: 
“The unlisted buildings enshrine the human stories, 
the memories of the community. They are the real 
heritage. It is they that determine the sense of iden­
tity, of place, and of belonging. These are the places 
where the historic environment is at the heart of 
sustainable communities” (cited in Rodwell, 2014, 
p.14).
21st century agendas 
The commodification of history as heritage that is 
selected for survival, whether as examples of a par­
ticular period, style, typology, association, con­
structional technique, or other, remains in a time 
warp from the third quarter of the twentieth cen­
tury and is inconsistent with late­twentieth through 
twenty­first century broad societal and environ­
mental agendas, including the United Nations 2030 
Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban 
Agenda, and anthropogenic global warming (‘cli­
mate change’). 
As Jukka Jokilehto wrote in 1999: “During the 
twentieth century […] the increase in scale and the 
recognition of diversity in cultures and physical 
conditions have led to a new situation, where the 
meaning of cultural heritage itself, and the policies 
for its safeguard have required reassessment. […] 
Against this new background, one can well ask if 
the conservation movement, as it evolved from the 
eighteenth century, cannot be considered as con­
cluded, and whether modern conservation should 
not be redefined in reference to the environmental 
sustainability of social and economic development 
within the overall cultural and ecological situation 
on earth” (Jokilehto, 1999, p.19). This theme was 
taken up by Anne Parmly Toxey in 2011, writing 
that preservation needs a fundamental rethink, 
extracting it from a fetish with abstracting and pre­
serving selected monuments, allying it with broader 
agendas of environmentalism, sustainability and 
creative continuity, and revaluing the landscape at 
large for its intrinsic worth and usefulness as well 
as its cultural meaning (Toxey, 2011). 
Urban Splash, the pioneering United Kingdom 
heritage rescue and development company founded 
in 1993, which has taken a special interest in post­
war social housing, has expressed incredulity that 
so much of it continues to be demolished without 
evaluating the options. Synthesising the reflections 
of Jokilehto, Repellin and Toxey, Jonathan Falk­
ingham (co­founder of Urban Splash) has written 
(Urban Splash, 2011): “I hope that one thing we 
have demonstrated […] is that it is all too easy to 
give up on old buildings – and that if we apply 
some creativity and lateral thought we can rein­
vent and repurpose them for another generation to 
enjoy. I also believe that in this age of sustainabil­
ity, before coming to convenient conclusions about 
demolition, our first obligation is to give serious 
thought to reuse – this may take a bit more time 
and effort, but continually knocking down our her­
itage (in all its forms) is quite simply unsustainable” 
(Figure 5). Writing further: “It’s often the same 
people who are worrying about plastic bags who are 
happy to tear down perfectly good buildings.” A 
current major project by Urban Splash is the phased 
regeneration and substantive remodelling of Park 
Hill, Sheffield, England, a thousand­unit medium 
to high rise Postwar social housing development; 
completed in 1961 and listed in 1998, it is claimed to 
be Europe’s largest listed building. Urban Splash’s 
ethos conforms to the increasingly acknowledged 
truism that the most sustainable building is the one 
that has already been built.
To take this discourse forward, we need to look 
beyond the constraints that currently condition 
attitudes to the protection and management of our 
built cultural heritage, withdraw from narratives 
which invite non­recognition outside the heritage 
 103 
FIGURE 5. GLASGOW, SCOTLAND. Programmes of demolition of 1960s and ’70s residential tower blocks in the city began in the early 1990s. 

At the time of their erection, 1964–69, the eight blocks of the steel frame construction Red Road flats were reputed as the tallest buildings in 

Europe (two slabs of twenty-eight storeys, four point blocks and two tower blocks of thirty-one storeys; designed 1962; Sam Bunton & Associates, 

Architects). Designed for a population of 4 700, the lack of communal facilities contributed to a number of problems on the estate. Options for 

regeneration were not considered. One slab block was demolished in 2012 and one point block in 2013. This photograph shows the remaining six 

blocks being prepared for demolition in late 2015. Photo: Dennis Rodwell.
 
community, and embrace the opportunities that are 
implicit across the spectrum of twenty­first century 
agendas. Awareness­raising of late 20th century 
heritage which relies on specialist interpretations of 
a delimited set of the cultural values, ones that can 
be difficult if not confrontational to communicate, 
is a challenge that is often as fraught as it is unnec­
essary. The history of the peacetime destruction 
of Europe’s built architectural and urban heritage 
throughout the twentieth century is the history of 
missed opportunities to identify and articulate val­
ues beyond ones esteemed by a minuscule number 
of enthusiasts and professionals. This is aggravated 
by abstruse doctrinal arguments, including obses­
sions with material authenticity (a concept that is 
often both misunderstood and misused), which 
render conservation and adaptive reuse abnormal 
and unnecessarily expensive. 
Towards a new paradigm 
Sustainability is defined in ecology as the c apacity 
of systems to endure and remain diverse and pro­
ductive over time. It signifies durability, is dynamic 
and not static, and presupposes resilience and 
adaptability to change. The agenda of s ustainable 
development was initially articulated in the 1987 
Brundtland Report, and whereas it has been criti­
cised in many quarters for its emphasis on economic 
growth, an oft­overlooked passage reads: “We see 
the possibility for a new era of economic growth, 
one that must [author’s italics] be based on policies 
that sustain and expand the en vironmental resource 
base” (World Commission on E nvironment and 
Development, 1987, p.1). 
This environmental resource base has two compo­
nents: renewable and non­renewable, of which the 
latter divides into the unexploited and the exploited. 
The environmental capital that has already been 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
104 
FIGURE 6. GLASGOW, SCOTLAND. Mass housing in the Anderston Cross Comprehensive Development Area: phase 1, built 1965–67 using the
Bison precast concrete panel system. Planned as part of a 1960s’ regeneration of the area to replace traditional stone-built tenements, this 
development has itself been largely remodelled and rebuilt as part of an ongoing regeneration programme, in which none of the four values of
community, resource, usefulness and cultural was taken into account. This photograph was taken in 1970. Photo: Dennis Rodwell. 
invested in our existing buildings and urban infra­
structures – their embodied materials and energy –
provides an important indicator for the vital contri­
bution that our built heritage has to play in today’s
global agendas beyond a reductionist focus on archi­
tectural or historic interest. In a Europe­wide con­
text, the importance of conserving this resource
is underlined by the estimation that 80 per cent of
the buildings that will exist in the year 2050 have
already been built. This figure varies by country,
increasing for example to 87 per cent relative to
the housing stock in the United Kingdom (Board­
man, 2007, p.16). In order, therefore, to enhance
and accelerate awareness of our more recent built
heritage, it is not merely advisable but essential to
embrace and subsume values that do not currently
form part of the mainstream theory and practice of
selective protection and specialist conservation.
An inclusive spectrum of values can be defined 
in a number of ways (Ripp & Rodwell, 2015 and 
2016). For example, short­listed as: 
• Community – incorporating sense of place, 
belonging and wellbeing. 
• Resource – including material, encompassing 
environmental capital. 
• Usefulness – including continuity and creative 
reuse. 
• Cultural – in the broadest sense: incorporating 
the memory of a community as a whole as well 
as its constituent parts; and including all features 
and aspects that are recognised and appreciated 
by citizens – not just specialists who are often 
outsiders. 
In this, cultural heritage is recognised as an ingre­
dient in a medley of values, for which the protection
and conservation of the built heritage needs to
embrace a far broader spectrum of stakeholders than
is currently represented by the heritage community:
to assume a mainstream rather than peripheral and
politically expendable role, one that performs vital
societal and environmental roles additional to a
closely defined cultural one (Figure 6).
  
 
 
 
105 
Conclusion 
The challenge of awareness that this conference has 
sought to address is not specific to Postwar to Post­
modern built cultural heritage. It is a challenge 
that has faced all advocates of heritage protection 
and conservation since at least the major socio­eco­
nomic mutations prompted by the Industrial Rev­
olution and the associated onset of rapid urban­
isation. The dynamics of fashion have played an 
important part in this challenge, and today’s chal­
lenge of raising awareness of our recent heritage is 
no different from parallel challenges in the past. 
The critical difference today is the opportunity to 
reinforce the delimited cultural aspect by allying it 
to the core agendas of our time: the exhaustion of 
non­renewable material and energy resources; the 
reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and anthro­
pogenic global warming; and sustainable develop­
ment. Although the same words are used, protection 
and conservation when employed by the herit­
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Askew, M. (2010). The Magic List of Global Status: UNESCO, 
World Heritage and the agenda of states, in Labadi, S. 
& Long, C. (eds), Heritage and Globalisation. London, 
Routledge, pp.19–44. 
Balčytis, G. (2013). Architecture of Interwar Kaunas. Kaunas: 
Kaunas Architecture Festival. 
Boardman, B. (2007). Home Truths: A Low Carbon Strategy 
to Reduce UK Housing Emissions by 80% by 2050. Oxford: 
University of Oxford. Available at: https://www.foe.co.uk/
sites/default/files/downloads/home_truths.pdf
City Centre Planning Group (1965). Liverpool City Centre Plan. 
Liverpool: City and County Borough of Liverpool.
Critchley, P. (2004). Lewis Mumford and the Search for the 
Harmonious City. [e­book] Available through: Academia 
website <http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley/Books>
Denison, E., Ren, G. Y. and Gebremedhin, N. (2003). Asmara: 
Africa’s Secret Modernist City. London: Merrell. 
Duwel, J. and Gutschow, N. (2013). A Blessing in Disguise: War and 
Town Planning in Europe 1940–1945. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 
Galbraith, J. (1980). The Economic and Social Returns of 
Preservation, in National Trust for Historic Preservation (ed), 
Preservation: Toward an Ethic in the 1980s. Washington DC: 
Preservation Press. 
Glendinning, M. (2013). The Conservation Movement: A History 
of Architectural Preservation: Antiquity to Modernity. London: 
Routledge.
Johnson­Marshall, P. (1966). Rebuilding Cities. Edinburgh: 
Edinburgh University Press.
Jokilehto, J. (1999). A History of Architectural Conservation. 
Oxford: Butterworth­Heinemann. 
Labadi, S. (2013). UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Outstanding 
Universal Value: Value-based Analyses of the World Heritage and 
Intangible Cultural Heritage Conventions. Lanham: AltaMira 
Press. 
Le Corbusier (1947). The City of To-morrow and its Planning. 
London: Architectural Press. 
age community do not have the same meanings as 
those that are understood in a global environmental 
sense. This non­coincidence places the built heri­
tage community at a severe disadvantage. Vaunting 
cultural heritage as a contributory value, an ingre­
dient in a medley of values whose whole is greater 
than the sum of its parts, offers the key to the suc­
cessful awareness­raising of the multiple values 
of our late 20th century built cultural heritage. It 
places our built inheritance, wherever and of what­
ever era, at the forefront of the drive for sustainable 
development in this twenty­first century. 
Postscript 
“The preservation movement has one great curios­
ity. There is never any retrospective controversy or 
regret. Preservationists are the only people in the 
world who are invariably confirmed in their wis­
dom after the fact” (Galbraith, 1980, p.57). 
McDonald, F. (1985). The Destruction of Dublin. Dublin: Gill & 
Macmillan. 
Mumford, L. (1946). City Development: Studies in Disintegration 
and Renewal. London: Secker & Warburg.
Mumford, L. (1963). The City in History. London: Secker & 
Warburg.
Ripp, M. and Rodwell, D. (2015). The Geography of Urban 
Heritage, in The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 6:3, 
pp.240–276.
Ripp, M. and Rodwell, D. (2016). The Governance of Urban 
Heritage, in The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 7:1, 
pp.81–108.
Rodwell, D. (2013). The celebration and protection of Scotland’s 
20th century heritage, in MoMo World Scotland 2013, pp.11–24. 
Available at: http://content.yudu.com/Library/A2201b/
MoMoWorldScot2013/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=
Rodwell, D. (2014). Heritage as a Driver for Creative Cities, 
in Wiktor­Mach, D. and Radwański, P. (eds), The Idea of 
Creative City. Skopje: European Scientific Institute, pp.11–26. 
Available at: http://eujournal.org/files/journals/1/books/
Cracow 2013.pdf
Rodwell, D. (2015). The Limits of Heritage: What Limits?, in 
Jagodzińska, K. & Purchla, J. (eds.), The Limits of Heritage. 
Krakow: International Cultural Centre, pp.25–40.
Toxey, A. P. (2011). Materan Contradictions: Architecture,
Preservation and Politics. Farnham: Ashgate. 
Urban Splash (2011). Transformation. London: RIBA Publishing. 
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987). 
Our Common Future (known as the Brundtland Report).

Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
ENDNOTES 
1.	 Didier Repellin, Architecte en chef des monuments 
historiques, Lyon, France, speaking at the international 
conference Façadisme et Identité Urbaine, Paris, January 1999. 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
106 
PER STRÖMBERG
Creative Destruction or Destructive Creativity?
Negotiating the Heritage of the Cold War in 
the Experience Economy 
Introduction 
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of 
the Soviet Union completely changed the mili­
tary­political situation in the Nordic countries. 
New precision bombing technology and the move­
ment from invasion defence to input defence in 
countries like Sweden resulted in many of the sub­
terranean modern fortresses of the Cold War no 
longer having any use. Despite the rapid geopoliti­
cal changes in Northern Europe during the recent 
years, there is still a current problem of what to 
do with the superfluous military establishments of 
the Cold War: let them fall into decay, preserve or 
reuse them – and for what purpose?
The article examines the cultural as well as spatial
foundation of a new genre of heritage in Sweden and
in its neighbouring states – the cultural heritage of
the Cold War – whose value is negotiated by various
stakeholders through a range of processes: emo­
tional, social and cultural processes as well as legal
and economic ones. Similar to the built heritage of
industrial society, the derelict bunkers of the Cold
War have become a cultural playground for tourism
and creative industries. For instance in Stockholm,
a commando bunker has been reused for museum
exhibitions and fashion shows. Further north, a sub­
terranean bunker has been used as a scenography
for airsoft games. Does the above concern “creative
destruction” in Joseph Schumpeter’s sense, that is,
new industries that flourish on the basis of the old?
Alternatively, is it an example of sheer “destructive
creativity” in the name of the experience economy? 
The heritage of the Cold War 
The end of the Cold War caused a fundamental 
revision of Swedish foreign and military defence 
policy. The consolidation of new national states, 
democratization processes, national identity crises, 
and regional and ethnic conflicts all characterized 
the political situation in Europe. The military 
threat that had existed during the Cold War was no 
longer a reality.
As a result, the Swedish armed forces began an 
intensive conversion process (and for many employ­
ees, a painful one), known as the LEMO process. 
The number of units was more than halved, while 
international operations became increasingly 
important. All the other European countries were 
involved in similar transition processes. In former 
European communist countries, a two­part process 
was carried out: the creation of national armies 
with new agendas, and the reduction in size while 
phasing out nuclear capacity.
There have been limited ambitions to preserve 
the post­military landscape or to make use of the 
deserted military bases of the Red Army. It is gen­
erally considered a “negative heritage” in view of 
its negative connotations, which evoke the repres­
sion, militarism and environmental destruction of 
the former Soviet domination. In the Baltic States, 
there are few examples of preservation actions that 
focus on the Cold War heritage. The military struc­
tures have either been destroyed, deserted or reused 
for other purposes. 
In contrast, the heritage process has been less 
problematic for the West European countries, 
which were either members of NATO or neutral. 
The Cold War heritage is also a heritage of alli­
ances. Therefore, the international connection is 
as important as the national one. The conversion 
process had a major impact on the fixed fortifica­
tions along the extended coastline: coastal artillery, 
including subterranean bomb shelters, artillery and 
other weapon systems, lodging barracks, service 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
107 
The post-industrial society 
1)	 Political-economical changes: 
de-industrialisation 
A straightforward decline in the output of 
manufactured goods or in employment in 
the manufacturing sector; a shift from  
manufacturing to service sectors. New  
strategic demands of mobility and flexibility 
(for companies). 
2)	 Globalisation: economic & geographic 
expansion 
Industrial outsourcing and move to
low-wage countries; expansion of a global 
market; multinational companies. 
3a) General technological development 
Better industrial production and process
methods. 
3b) Digitalisation: the digital revolution 
Digital technology replaces human labour. 
4) Heritagisation 
The post-military society 
1)	 Political-economical changes:
de-militarisation 
End of war preparation in large scale; reduc-
tion of nation’s army, weapons, and military 
vehicles to an agreed minimum of weapons 
and troop forces; professionalization and 
end of conscription. New strategic demands
of mobility and flexibility (for Defence). 
2)	 Globalisation: economic & geographic 
expansion 
Global warfare; move from invasion  
defence to an internationally engaged input
defence; enterprises of national rebuilding
after conflicts. 
3a) General technological development 
Better industrial production and process
methods; development of weapons with 
more fire power and more precision. 
3b) Digitalisation: the digital revolution 
Digital technology replaces soldiers; 
development of digital precision weapons,
remote-controlled weapons, drones;
development of a “digital fortress”,  
a defence against cyber-attacks. 
The appearance of mental distance and alienation; creation of a new cultural heritage, followed by aesthe-
ticization and valorisation processes; appearance of “vacant spaces”. 
THE SIMILARITIES between the post-industrial and post-military societies. 
structures, training establishments, and coastal 
reconnaissance stations. Cocroft (2003, p. 3) sug­
gests a broad definition of Cold War “monuments” 
which is useful for this article, that is, “structures 
built, or adapted, to carry out nuclear war between 
the end of the Second World War and 1989”. 
The built heritage of the Cold War is also a her­
itage of secrecy, invisibility and silence. Structures 
built in great secrecy during the Cold War, mostly 
invisible to citizens, were then dissolved into obliv­
ion. Moreover, it is a heritage of reassurance – or 
oppression – depending on whose viewpoint you 
take. 
Heritagisation of post-societies 
The heritage of the Cold War is one born out of 
crisis. It is a reflection of structural change in soci­
ety, like its analogous twin­heritage of the indus­
trial society. Daniel Bell (1973, p. 14) coined the 
notion of post­industrial society in order to describe 
economic changes from a manufacturing­based 
economy to a service­based economy, a diffusion of 
national and global capital, and mass privatization. 
There are remarkably similar circumstances behind 
the development of the post­industrial society and
that of the post-military society (see table): (1) politi­
cal­economical changes; (2) globalisation; (3a) gen­
eral technological development; (3b) digitalisation; 
and (4) heritagisation.
The post­military society is an equivalent notion 
coined by Martin Shaw (1991, pp. 184–185) argu­
ing that post­militarism, much like post­industri­
alism and post­modernism, is a defining character­
istic of the end of the 20th century, i.e. a structural 
transition from the Cold War era. Nevertheless, 
just as post­industrialism does not abolish industry, 
or post­modernism modernity, so, too, post­mili­
tarism, while it transforms the military and milita­
  
 
108 
SAAB EVENT AT AEROSEUM staged by AS Systems GmbH. 
rism, does not remove them from central positions 
in the social structure, Shaw argues.
The making of the Cold War­heritage is also 
very similar to the making of the industrial herit­
age in view of the heritage process. In contrast, the 
Cold War heritage in Sweden has emerged through 
a more centralized process than the industrial one, 
principally because the military structures are state 
property. In this process, the Swedish National 
Property Board (SFV) as well as the Swed­
ish National Heritage Board (RAÄ) have played 
essential roles in defining which military struc­
tures should be preserved for the future. The basis 
for valuation generally applied by heritage institu­
tions was pragmatically elaborated by SFV: the cri­
teria of quality and costs were balanced in order to 
sort out objects in good condition with educational 
and touristic potential.
Furthermore, networks of local driving forces 
and retired officers have been important for the 
heritage process as well, by essentially putting pres­
sure on the heritage institutions and politicians 
with the goal of defining ‘their’ former work place 
or local heritage as worthy of preservation. Often, 
the potential of becoming a tourist attraction is 
used as a key argument by stakeholders (Strömberg 
2010).
The making of the Cold War heritage is derived 
through a range of processes which imply a shift 
of function (spatially, legally and socially), a shift 
of representation (culturally and emotionally), and 
finally, a shift of management (administratively and 
economically). With the industrial heritage pro­
cess in mind, the making of the Cold War her­
itage depends on an analogous ‘authorized herit­
age discourse’, to employ the notion of Laurajane 
Smith (2006, pp. 12–13, 29). This discourse consti­
tutes a common two­step­change in different pace 
and internal order. 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
109 
First, from military building to heritage, which 
is a conversion process which implies practices of 
identification and selection (investigations by cultural 
heritage institutions and researchers); declaration
(up­grading decision­making by the authorities); 
salvation (emotional preservation actions by private 
initiatives and driving forces); depiction (nostalgic
and popularized presentations by artists, authors 
and film­directors), and finally preservation (protec­
tion managed by heritage institutions). These prac­
tices characterize what has been called ‘heritagisa­
tion’ which refers to “the process by which objects 
and places are transformed from functional ‘things’ 
into objects of display and exhibition” (Walsh 1992, 
cited in Harrison 2013, p. 69).
Second, from heritage to attractions and educa­
tional devices, which involves valorisation (implied
by planners, museums and tourism entrepreneurs); 
education (uses of heritage for the potential of learn­
ing); and finally, sensation and socialization (appro­
priative activities by visitors on the site) (Strömberg 
2010, p. 660). 
Valorisation as symptom of
creative destruction 
Focusing on the second step in this process, cul­
tural heritage was previously not viewed as being 
a decisive factor for economic development. How­
ever, during recent decades, there has been an 
instrumental and, to some degree, a neoliberal shift 
in memory politics from conservation and national 
manifestation to usage of heritage for economic and 
educational purposes. In view of the new approach, 
culture and heritage are actively used as a resource 
for various purposes in the present (Aronsson, 
2004). Cultural heritage has become increasingly 
available as a strategic resource for regional devel­
opment and raw material for destination develop­
ment. 
The experience­based aviation centre Aeroseum
is a good example of how the heritage of the Cold 
War is redefined in view of the neoliberal discourse 
of experience economy. Aeroseum was originally 
a subterranean air­dock at Säve, close to Goth­
enburg. Here, visitors are able to explore old air­
crafts and helicopters, both virtually and in reality. 
The air­dock was constructed during the Cold War 
to protect the Swedish Air Force against nuclear 
attacks. In addition to guided tours and other 
activities, Aeroseum offers a unique venue for con­
ferences and corporate events. The somewhat spec­
tacular environment has also been used for televi­
sion and commercials. The launch of the new Saab 
9­3 was held at Aeroseum in 2007, a suitable site 
for the Saab Company in view of its background in 
aircraft construction. Meanwhile, the public broad­
caster in Sweden used the airbase as a setting for 
the concert of the week in 2010. 
Another example of adaptive reuse is Bergrum­
met, located in the centre of Stockholm. This is a 
former subterranean headquarters of the Swedish 
Navy that was taken out of military service at the 
end of the Cold War. It has now been made avail­
able by the National Property Board as an exhi­
bition space. In 2013, the Museum of Far Eastern 
Antiquities developed an exhibition concept suita­
ble for the Chinese Terracotta figures, which were 
temporarily displayed in this cavernous interior. 
According to the former head of the museum, the 
underground environment was particularly suited 
to enhance the experience of looking at archaeo­
logical objects, especially when they derive from a 
period of history when the Chinese burial customs 
changed to rock tombs (Strömberg, 2013). Further­
more, the bunker was reused as a stage for a runway 
show during Stockholm Fashion week in 2015.
By experimenting with their spatial, imagina­
tive and historical potential, new activities have 
occurred in the wake of demilitarisation while 
serving as a funky stage and a metaphor for other 
ventures and businesses. Military bases have gone 
from being a part of a national defence economy 
to being involved in the experience economy. This 
corresponds with the theories of the economist 
Joseph Schumpeter who introduced the term ‘cre­
ative destruction’ to explain how declining indus­
tries and businesses are torn down and replaced by 
those that are more viable: in this case, tourism and 
the creative industries. 
In conclusion, there are several potential bene­
fits in reusing the residual materiality of war and its 
constant preparations. Firstly, they can make room 
for new activities and new businesses that might 
generate new development in areas of economic 
decline. Alternatively, they can function as symbols 
of economic regeneration. Adaptive reuse may also 
imply certain forms of preservation: new activities 
may actually prevent the built heritage from falling 
into decay. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
110 
THE CHINESE TERRACOTTA ARMY exhibition at Bergrummet by Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. 
Destructive creativity? 
What happens when post­military heritage becomes
a ‘funky’ stage for potentially more controversial
narratives? In 2007, the event company Berget Event
arranged the fifth in a series of airsoft games in the
Swedish subterranean fortress of Hemsön, dating
from the Cold War. The event – one of the world’s
biggest airsoft games – attracted over a thousand
participants. The plot was based on a counterfac­
tual scenario with a hypothesis of what would have
happened if the Cold War had not ended. Berget
Event’s games may be described as a live role­play
with elements of military simulation, an enhanced
participatory extension of the dramatized narratives,
which have become an increasingly popular way of
communicating and experiencing history. Calling
it a mix of “scouting, role­playing, and military ser­
vice”, the event company made an agreement with
the National Property Board to rent parts of the
fortress as a realistic scenographic backdrop to sup­
port the game’s narrative (Strömberg, 2013).
Airsoft games are provocative, not least because 
of the realism and their emotional closeness to 
contemporary conflicts. This gives rise to a num­
ber of ethical issues that problematize the bound­
ary between perceived reality and the fiction being 
acted out. The airsoft game at Hemsö fortress is 
an example of a radical approach to built heritage, 
which too challenges institutional ways of consid­
ering heritage.
Similarly, in Nemenčinė, on the outskirts of 
Vilnius, there is another radical example. A for­
mer subterranean television station from the Soviet 
era has evolved into a peculiar tourist attraction: 
Soviet Bunker – The Underground Museum of Social­
ism. Here, you can experience Soviet­style repres­
  
111 
DRAMATIZED SOVIET REPRESSION combined with dinner at Soviet Bunker – The Underground Museum of Socialism. 
sion during dramatized guided tours, with din­
ner included. You are drilled to stand in line, to do 
push­ups and get insulted by people playing KGB 
officers. As a souvenir, you receive a gift from the 
Soviet era and a certificate for completed basic dis­
ciplinary training. Although the bunker was never 
used by the KGB, it is a story of Soviet tyranny that 
unfolds, a fictional version of a narrative of oppres­
sion that verges on entertainment. Similar attrac­
tions are Grūto parkas in Lithuania, The Secret 
Soviet Bunker in Ligatne, Latvia, and Bunker -42 in 
Moscow. 
A condition of this radical approach to the her­
itagisation process is the mental distance to the for­
mer activities. Similar to the dirty industrial herit­
age depicted by Robert Willim (2008, pp. 123–124), 
the traces of the military past are now looked upon 
with distance and nostalgia. These processes imply 
a type of cultural sorting that selects and extracts 
positive aspects out of context. Thus, uses of history 
and adaptive reuse entail complications and gives 
rise to a range of ethical questions. First, the radical 
reuse of buildings as makeovers and promiscuous 
re­appropriations might physically damage or triv­
ialize the heritage to the point it can lose its con­
text and authority as a historical site. Second, there 
might also be emotional drawbacks when military 
sites are reused in such contexts. Third, there might 
be problems of falsification, as in the Lithuanian 
case when the attraction has nothing to do with the 
original use, namely the former television station, 
not the headquarters of KGB. 
Finding a sense of balance 
Are the entrepreneurs going too far in search of 
spectacular experiences and profit? Or is it a matter 
  
 
112 
of moral panic when roleplaying no longer is about 
neo­medievalism with crossbows, but threaten­
ing realism in Soviet uniforms? Perhaps the Lith­
uanian example primarily reflects the way people 
in this region process their history of occupa­
tion: to attempt to render the infected memories of 
Soviet era harmless and financially profitable sim­
ply by mocking and satirizing their unpleasantness? 
Another critical question is how economically suc­
cessful and viable creative industries and heritage 
tourism really are.
Ethnographer Birgitta Svensson identifies four 
different values that come into play within the her­
itage process: symbolic values; values of economic 
growth; experience values; and values of human 
dignity. She asks if they really are associable, and 
responds in the affirmative. However, she argues 
that we must consider each of the values rather 
REFERENCES 
Aronsson, Peter (2004): Historiebruk: att använda det förflutna. 
Lund: Studentlitteratur. 
Bell, Daniel (1973): The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Ven­
ture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic books. 
Cocroft, Wayne (2003): Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confron­
tation, 1946–1989. Swindon: 
Harrison, Rodney (2013): Heritage: Critical Approaches. Milton 
Park, Abingdon; Routledge.
Laurajane, Smith (2006): Uses of Heritage. New York: Routledge. 
Schofield, John (2004): Modern Military Matters: Studying and 
Managing the Twentieth-century Defence Heritage in Britain: A 
Discussion Document. York: Council for British Archaeology. 
Shaw, Martin (1991): Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demili­
tarization, and War at the End of the Twentieth Century. Phila­
delphia: Temple University Press. 
than just one of them. Above all, she writes, we 
should care more about quality – the focus and con­
tent – rather than quantity when combining the 
different values (Svensson, 2005, p. 164).
Svensson’s response to her own question is to the 
point. In the same way as sustainability demands 
a pragmatic balance between environmental, eco­
nomic and socio­cultural issues in order to be suc­
cessful, likewise I believe that adaptive reuse and 
uses of heritage demands a sense of balance. In 
other words, finding equilibrium between com­
mercialization and cultural integrity; taking into 
account experiential as well as historical val­
ues; depicting the extraordinary while not forget­
ting the everyday perspective; balancing concep­
tual refinement with genuine simplicity; exploring 
imagination with restrained creativity and balanc­
ing spectacularity with moderation. 
Strömberg, Per (2010) ”Swedish Military Bases of the Cold War: 
The Making of a New Cultural Heritage”. In: Culture Un­
bound. Volume 2. 
Strömberg, Per (2013) “Funky Bunkers. The Post­Military 
Landscape as a Readymade Space and a Cultural Play­
ground”. In: Gary A. Boyd & Denis Linehan (eds.). Ordnance:
War + Architecture & Space. London: Ashgate.
Svensson, Birgitta (2005): ”Industrisamhällets framtidsvärde 
mellan kulturarvs­ och minnespolitik”. In: Annika Alzén & 
Birgitta Burell (eds.). Otydligt, otympligt, otaligt: det industriel­
la kulturarvets utmaningar. Stockholm: Carlsson. 
Willim, Robert (2008): Industrial cool. Om postindustriella fabrik­
er. Lund: Humanistiska fakulteten. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
113 
ANDRZEJ SIWEK 
Protection of the Architectural Heritage
of the Post-war Poland – Current Status 
and Future Prospects 
Chronological framework of the subject 
The term “post­war architecture” appears to be 
unambiguous. It applies to the achievements of 
architects from the end of World War II in 1945 
nearly until today. However, this “nearly” contains 
a trap. When we talk about the protection of heri­
tage, it is not easy to answer the question “what is 
already historical heritage and what is an element 
of contemporary times”. Historical heritage is 
linked to the past, it needs protection. The heritage 
of contemporary times is still being created. Setting 
a precise chronological boundary for the respon­
sibility for architectural conservation is one of the 
main topic currently discussed in Poland. The dis­
cussion is even more difficult because in Polish per­
spective after World War II we observe a great 
dynamics of events and extreme polarization of his­
torical assessments. Therefore, historical caesura of 
the year 1989 plays an important role here. Before 
1989, it is a history of the Polish People’s Republic 
(PRL) which such characteristic features as connec­
tions with the so called “Socialist Bloc”. After 1989, 
democracy and sovereignty are emphasized. Two 
different logics of the state, two eras in political 
history. Thus, there is a tendency in the discussion 
about the protection of cultural heritage to narrow 
the term “post­war” to the period of the Polish Peo­
ple’s Republic and to search for different wording 
for the period after 1989. However, life requires 
widen perspective. For instance, a fierce discussion 
about the future and possibility to protect so called 
“Solpol” in Wrocław, a building from the early 
nineties of the twentieth century (1992–1993), is still 
taking place. 
The final verdict has not been reached yet. The 
fight for chronological boundaries is still on… So 
the story about the post­war architecture starts in 
the obvious point, in 1945, and where it should lead 
is still open question. 
Legal ways to protect post-war 
architectural heritage
The most important is Act on Monuments Pro­
tection and Care. This is a public law document 
of 2003 which contains the definition of a “monu­
ment”. Pursuant of the law: 
a monument (is) – an immovable or movable 
property, a part or collection thereof, made by 
a man or connected with his activity, which 
constitutes a testimony of a bygone era or 
event, which should be preserved for the social 
interest due to its historical, artistic or scientific 
value. (Act on Monuments Protection, 2003, 
Art. 3 p. 1). 
As one can see, there is no explicit time framework. 
It should be a testimony of a bygone era! At the 
same time it should represent values, which deter­
mine that the protection can be provided in public 
interest. The reference to earlier consideration of 
time framework leads to the conclusion that at least 
for the architecture dated back before 1989 there are 
no legal barriers for incorporating them into a con­
servation policy. The period of the Polish People’s 
Republic is undoubtedly a closed and bygone his­
torical era. However, for many reasons, administra­
tive practice shows that protection of works from 
the second half of the 20th century is usually estab­
lished in exceptional cases. The distance of official 
conservators of monuments toward the post­
war architecture made the community of archi­
tects and urbanists undertake an initiative of a new 
form of protection. The Act on Spatial Planning 
and Development of 27 March 2003 introduced a 
  
  
 
114 
WROCŁAW, ”SOLPOL”, design: W . Jarząbek, 1992–1993. Photo: Andrzej Siwek. 
new term of “contemporary cultural property”. The 
statutory definition says that this is: 
cultural property, other than historical 
monuments, which includes memorials and 
statues, places of remembrance, buildings, 
their interiors and details, building complexes, 
urban and landscape planning schemes, being a 
recognized output of the contemporary gener­
ations, if they are characterized by a high artis­
tic or historical value (Act on Spatial Planning, 
2003, Art. 2 p. 10). 
Property as defined in the above provision should 
be protected by operation of law in the new local 
spatial development plans. However, a lot of values 
of such objects are not captured by these plans due 
to their level of generality. Although the provision 
did not fulfil the hopes resting on it, it is worth 
remembering about it. It is a signal of the attempts 
to find a formula for protecting the newest archi­
tecture which caused a broad debate in the envi­
ronment about the criteria for selecting objects that 
should be protected (Atlas dóbr kultury, 2009, pp. 
12–28).
Summing up, among different possible forms 
of legal protection of the post­war architecture in 
Poland, the protection resulting from the Act on 
Monuments Protection is effective and feasible 
(Siwek, 2011, pp. 5–10). This is a new challenge for 
conservators’ offices. 
115 
ZAKOPANE, TATRZAŃSKI INSTYTUT HYDROLOGICZNO – METEOROLOGICZNY (Tatra Institute of Hydrology – Meteorology), 
design: J. Dajewski, 1967. Photo: Andrzej Siwek. 
KRAKÓW, KIJÓW CINEMA, design: W. Cęckiewicz, 1967, ceramic decorations K. Zgud – Strachocka. Photo: Andrzej Siwek. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
116 
Resources of the post-war architecture 
The process of providing protection to selected 
examples of the post­war architecture is slow, 
which is caused by a barrier consisting in still insuf­
ficient scientific recognition and description of 
such resources. Of course, there is a rich literature, 
but it is still a long way to the critical study of the 
resources, especially on regional levels (Szafer, 1987, 
A Land Still Undiscovered?, 2014–2015, pp. 10–21). 
To put it simply, we can say that the first years after 
World War II in Poland were mainly focused on 
restoration, continuation of pre­war patterns and 
methods as well as few individual innovative pro­
jects. The fifties, being a period of reception of 
socialist realism. The sixties, was a moment of short 
political thaw resulted in inspirations derived from 
international modernism. 
The seventies and eighties reflected the local 
version of socialist modernism. In each of these 
periods, there are both average works and works 
important for artistic reasons. The process of scien­
tific recognition takes time; it develops in an aca­
demic rhythm. Decisions of conservators often 
need to be taken under the pressure of threats, 
quickly. That is why the current resources of the 
post­war architecture protected in Poland seem to 
be inconsistent. They are not based on any planned 
activity, but they result from incidental reactions 
to certain needs. Because of diversity of resources, 
it is proposed to rationalize activities, and the 
suggestion appears to categorize resources in order 
to simplify decisions regarding conservation. (The 
concept included in the unpublished report on the 
works of the team for the assessment of cultural 
values of contemporary architecture, National 
Heritage Board of Poland 2013). It is claimed that 
post­war works qualified for protection should be 
exceptional in a certain category. Authenticity and 
integrity of a work should be an additional, but 
necessary, condition. The following categories pre­
destining for protection are proposed: 
1.	 Works of exceptional artistic qualities, charac­
terized by a unique, creative approach to archi­
tecture in the context of artistic or doctrinal 
assumptions, for example in the scope of: 
–	 clear attempt to realize the assumptions of artis­
tic avant­garde of a given period (e.g. the Church 
in Rudy­Rysie dated 1968) 
–	 creative interpretation of the features of region­
alism (e.g. hut of the Polish Tourist and Sight­
seeing Society (Dom Turysty PTTK) in Zako­
pane);
–	 reception of the European/global artistic move­
ments (e.g. buildings is Krakow inspired by the 
works of Le Corbusier); 
–	 domination of artistic decoration over an archi­
tectural form which creates a separate value (e.g. 
the standard pavilion of Czartak restaurant (near 
Wadowice) or Kijów Cinema in Kraków with 
rich ceramic decoration); 
–	 relation with landscape which is conscious and 
rises the whole value of a project (e.g. the moun­
tain hostel in the Five Ponds Valley in the Tatra 
Mountains) ; 
2. Works constituting reference objects for impor­
tant phenomena in the Polish architecture, for 
example in the scope of: 
–	  pioneer application of new construction s ystems 
(e.g. line­base house (Trzonolinowiec) in 

Wrocław);
 
– 	 being a representative for a “series” of  repetitive 
buildings, such as the “Millennium M emorial 
School” (type of a building of an elementary 
school introduced in the sixties on the occasion 
of the millennial anniversary of Poland). 
3. Works with special meaning for the history of 
conservation and restoration of Poland after the 
World War II, such as the Royal Castle or the 
Old Town in Warsaw. 
Meanwhile, the more and more established concept 
is that older monuments can be either r emarkable 
or ordinary because we find a historical value in 
them anyway, but potential monuments of the sec­
ond half of the 20th century have to be remarkable 
in its scale of reference. Averageness and ordinar­
iness is not perceived as a value aspiring to protec­
tion because of the number of the post­war works. 
Between affirmation and rejection 
As for the post­war architecture, when the proposal 
of its protection arises, we often encounter nega­
tive reactions. It is caused by political resentments. 
We can mention the example of a prominent poli­
tician who claimed in many speeches that the Pal­
ace of Culture and Science in Warsaw “had to be 
117 
WARSZAWA, PALACE OF CULTURE AND SCIENCE, design: L. Rudniew, 1952–1955. Photo: Andrzej Siwek. 
118 
KRAKÓW, ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRE OF THE STEELWORKS in Nowa Hut, design: J. Ingarden, 1950–1955. Photo: Andrzej Siwek. 
KRAKÓW, HOTEL CRACOVIA, design: W. Cęckiewicz, 1967. Photo: Andrzej Siwek. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
119 
destroyed”. This attitude results from the belief that 
works of socialist realism are evidence of external 
intervention in the country. Despite such associa­
tions, the Palace of Culture and Science in War­
saw was put under conservation protection in 2007 
as a work of clear style form, belonging to the 
bygone era and constituting a significant historical 
document. (Register of Monuments of the Mazo­
via Province [Rejestr Zabytków Województwa 
Mazowieckiego] No. A­ 735 decision 103/107 of 2 
February 2007). 
Different historical and political circumstances 
determined that another far younger building of a 
modest architectural form was granted protection. 
In 1999, Gate No. 2 of the Gdańsk Shipyard was 
entered into the Register of Monuments of the 
Pomerania Province. In 2014, the gate was marked 
with the European Heritage Label. This is a way 
to protect the memory of the events of August 
1980, which started political changes in Poland. 
Of course, political discussion is not the only trend 
in the debate about the protection of the post­war 
architecture. Other aspects taken into considera­
tion include: integral compositional, formal, archi­
tectural and urbanistic values. For that reason, the 
protection was granted to for example the urban 
layout of Nowa Huta in Krakow, which is a com­
plex of buildings representing the concept of an 
ideal city. The new town built from the scratch on 
the suburbia of Krakow was to be a background for 
the steel corporation and simultaneously an area 
where the new socialist society would be formed. 
The design dates back to 1949, the spatial concept 
is a work of Tadeusz Ptaszycki, and the realiza­
tion of urbanistic assumptions continued to the 
seventies of the 20th century. The social experi­
ment brought unexpected effects because the res­
idents of Nowa Huta were active participants of 
social protests leading to political transformation. 
In the architectural dimension, this is a valuable 
urban unit recording changes of styles through­
out consecutive decades of the 20th century. It is 
worth mentioning that the initiative to protect the 
unit was undertaken by the city authorities. It was 
expressed by establishing “culture park” – a spe­
cific form of protection of monuments dedicated to 
the protection of cultural landscapes (Myczkowski, 
2016). Here we touch upon a serious phenomenon. 
The protection of the post­war architecture is more 
and more frequently forced by social activity, rather 
than initiated by conservators’ offices. The office 
building called “Biprostal” in Krakow can be a 
good example. It was built in 1964 as a fifteen­floor 
cuboid with one of the façades entirely decorated 
with ceramic mosaic. In 2011, the owner planned 
to thoroughly rearrange the façade of the build­
ing. The campaign in social media and press made 
the owner decide to order expensive conservation 
works and maintain the decoration of the façade. 
(Laskowski, 2012). Similar situations are encoun­
tered all over the country. The effectiveness of 
social interventions can be different, but nobody 
should disregard them. They are often initiated by 
young people, for whom the political context of a 
given object is less important than its form and 
aesthetic values. To give more examples from 
Krakow, it is worth mentioning such campaign 
related to the buildings of the Administrative Cen­
tre of the Steelworks (1950–1955, Janusz Ingarden) 
or Hotel “Cracovia” (1960–1965, Witold Cęckiew­
icz).
The example of a former Hotel “Cracovia” per­
fectly depicts difficulties encountered by the propo­
nents of protection. The building became a property 
of a company which plans to replace it with a new 
investment. Enthusiasts of modernist architecture 
are protesting against the demolition with the use 
of legal ways. The Official Conservator of Monu­
ments needs to make a choice: either acknowledge 
architectural, historical and artistic qualities of the 
building and provide it with legal protection or rec­
ognize an economic situation of the owner. Once 
a luxurious hotel, from the current perspective it 
does not fulfil basic norms of usage, and its struc­
ture makes any adaptation or changes impossible. 
The choice means either resignation from the pro­
tection of values that we see in this architecture or 
creation of an expensive to maintain and non­func­
tional document of the era. Any decisions have not 
been taken yet (September 2016). 
To sum up, we can say that the protection of the 
post­war architecture in Poland is between histor­
ical and political ambivalence, enthusiasm of next 
generations discovering universal values in mod­
ernism, slow reactions of conservators’ offices and 
cruel economic calculations. However, one needs 
to remember that the time when works of mod­
ernism were lost unnoticed has passed. Currently, 
no matter what the final result is, every time broad 
debates in mass media take place. 
  
 
120 
Conclusions 
Talking about the current status of the protection 
of the post­war architecture in Poland one needs to 
say that these are just early beginnings. In a limited 
number of individual cases it is difficult to identify 
common motives. However, one can be optimistic 
about the protection of the post­war architecture 
in Poland. The research is being developed, the 
said architecture is becoming a fashionable subject 
of many papers. Its faith is lively commented on 
in social media. The distance between generations 
is rising, disputes are fading, buildings are going 
through the test of time. The legal system for the 
protection of architectural heritage does not have 
formal barriers. There are institutional bad habits 
REFERENCES 
A Land Still Undiscovered? David Crowley talks to Michał 
Wiśniewski, Herito, No. 17–18 (4/2014–1/2015).
Act on Monuments Protection and Care of 23 July 2003, Journal 
of Laws of 2003 No. 162, item 1568. 
Act on Spatial Planning and Development of 27 March 2003, 
Journal of Laws of 2003 No. 80, item 717 (as amended).
Atlas dóbr kultury współczesnej województwa małopolskiego, 
Kraków 2009. 
Laskowski A. (ed.), „Biprostal” i jego mozaika. Historia i  
współczesność, Kraków 2012. 
and distrust to the new topic that have to be over­
come as well as the need to develop a method of 
evaluation. The method which will enable to select 
the best projects from the era. At the same time, 
eliminating repetitive, trivial and marginal pro­
jects. In addition to the above­mentioned discus­
sion about the time boundaries of the responsibil­
ity for architectural conservation, the discussion 
about the selection criteria of the post­war archi­
tecture for conservation protection constitutes the 
most important trend in doctrinal thought of the 
contemporary conservation (Szmygin, 2016). Simul­
taneously, it is still expected that the long­term 
program of protection of such architecture will be 
developed. 
Myczkowski Z. (and others), Plan of the protection of Nowa 
Huta Culture Park, Kraków 2016. 
Siwek A., Między zabytkiem, a dobrem kultury współczesnej, 
Kurier Konserwatorski, No. 10/2011, pp. 5–10.
Szafer Tadeusz P., Współczesna architektura polska, Warszawa 
1987. 
Szmygin B. (ed.), Heritage value assessment systems – the  
problems and the current state of research, Lublin, 2016. 
 
 
121 
Session III:
Management of the Postwar and
Postmodern Built Cultural Heritage 
122
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
123 
SUSAN MACDONALD 
Moving on: approaches and frameworks
for conserving the heritage of the postwar
era and beyond 
Introduction
The current framework for heritage management, 
including the role of government, was established 
in many parts of the world, largely in the second 
half of the twentieth century in response to rapid 
reconstruction in the post­war era and influenced 
by emerging international thinking. However, in 
the last decade or so in many parts of the world, 
direct government support for heritage conserva­
tion has decreased and the shifting role of gov­
ernment in planning, development and heritage 
management means that the responsibility for con­
servation is now more often more evenly shared 
across the government, private, and third sectors. 
These shifts coincided with recognition of the 
cultural significance of places from the postwar 
era. The protection and conservation of places from 
modern and postwar era has on occasions tested 
the well­established approaches to conservation for 
a number of reasons and debate about the appli­
cability and validity of such approaches has been 
ongoing since the late 1980s. With considerable 
professional interest and an admirable body of con­
servation knowledge developed over years of prac­
tice, when reflecting on all that has been achieved, 
it would be easy to surmise that modern heritage 
is well loved, cared for, and conserved. However, 
many important twentieth­century places remain 
unprotected and threatened. There is still little 
research addressing common technical problems 
that impedes successful repair or comprehensive 
attempts to capture oral histories and safeguard the 
records from the creators of these places. Clearly 
we have not yet achieved widespread recognition 
and support for the conservation of the recent past, 
nor a shared vision, approach and methodology for 
doing so. 
What are the implications for these conditions 
for the heritage of the post­war era and beyond? 
Does the current framework still deliver acceptable 
outcomes given the reduction in government inter­
vention, or does it need to be rethought? What role 
can the private and non­government sectors play 
and are there opportunities for the sectors to work 
better together to protect and conserve this herit­
age? Are there useful models that can be adapted to 
the specific local circumstances and that may have 
broad relevance? Important places from all decades 
of the twentieth century as still regularly threat­
ened with demolition, or inappropriately developed 
and it is timely to reflect on this and identify which 
actions is needed and who should be involved. This 
paper attempts to put all these interrelated issues 
on the table, in order to provoke more detailed dis­
cussion on the critical issues, concluding with some 
suggestions on potential approaches. 
The framework for conserving
cultural heritage
Conservation as international activity
The prescribed protection and conservation of cul­
tural heritage has been ongoing in many places
around the world for centuries. However, heri­
tage conservation as an international activity, with
shared approaches gained momentum in the after­
math of WWII. The creation of ICOMOS and the
publication of the Venice Charter in 1964, were sig­
nificant milestones along with the ratification of the
World Heritage Convention in 1972, creating a for­
mal international framework for the recognition
and conservation of heritage places (ICOMOS, 1964
UNESCO, 1972). The rapid regeneration and devel­
opment that occurred in many parts of the world in
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
124 
the post­war era resulted in widespread destruction
of cultural heritage places, catalyzing new planning
and heritage legislation. The framework subsequently
created to support heritage protection and manage­
ment prevalent in many parts of the world is largely a
product of the latter half of the twentieth century.
In Europe, North America and many other 
countries the framework for heritage protection and 
management recognized that good conservation 
outcomes were dependent on a number of areas of 
government intervention including funding, legis­
lation, policy and access to guidance and training, 
based on the recognition that heritage is a public 
good. 
Shifting concepts of heritage conservation 
in late twentieth century 
Early conservation legislation was largely limited to 
monumental buildings, archaeological sites and the 
core of historic towns and cities, with an emphasis 
on conserving built fabric. Over the last few dec­
ades of the twentieth century the concept of heri­
tage gradually expanded beyond these typologies to 
include industrial heritage, cultural landscapes, and
vernacular places. 
The criteria for identifying and assessing heritage 
places developed around the world also expanded 
in the latter half of the twentieth century, beyond 
the monumental, artistic and historic to include 
social value, spiritual value and began to embrace 
non­western concepts of authenticity. There was 
also better recognition that many places play 
host to a multitude of values both intangible and 
tangible. This also expanded the typologies of her­
itage places worthy of recognition and protection. 
The evolving framework included greater recog­
nition for the value of places from the recent past. 
Reflection on human achievements and an interest 
in conserving places that represent these, typically 
occurs at roughly at the 50­year mark. The Victo­
rian Society in England for example was formed 
in 1958, the Twentieth Century Society (formerly 
the Thirties Society) in 1979, and many countries 
use a 30 or 50­year time span before a place can be 
legally protected. The time lag between a building’s 
creation and its protection and conservation has 
never been as compressed as for the heritage of the 
post­modern era. Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus was 
forty years old when it was listed in 1964; the City 
of Brasilia, designed in 1956, was inscribed on the 
World Heritage List in 1987. Attempts to inscribe 
the Sydney Opera House began a mere 11 years 
after its completion in 1973. Despite early efforts to 
protect and conserve the most iconic places of the 
modern era it was not until early 1990s that con­
serving modern heritage emerged as a distinct area 
of practice. That decade witnessed intense activ­
ity by a growing group of practitioners to address 
the conservation of twentieth­century heritage and 
a number of government, nongovernment and non­
profit organizations began to act.
As the types of heritage places being protected 
and needing conservation have expanded, so too 
has the range of approaches to their care. Recogni­
tion of the need to sustain all the values of the place 
beyond the monumental and aesthetic, shifted the 
conservation paradigm from preservation to con­
servation, the term conservation used here to 
describe a range of actions from preservation to 
adaptation. This recognizes that in order to sustain 
the majority of protected places, they need a via­
ble use. Heritage places are owned and managed by 
governments at every level, non­profit institutions, 
and a large number are in private hands. Today 
conservation is often framed as the appropriate 
management of change and there has been much 
discussion as heritage as a driver for regeneration 
and sustainable development. This repositioning of 
heritage has sought to shake off negative percep­
tions about heritage protection preventing growth, 
development and change, today powerful economic 
drivers that are core to many governments’ policies. 
Typical components of the heritage system 
The current government system of heritage man­
agement operating in many countries is based on 
balancing the carrots and the sticks, the premise 
being that legislation on its own is not as effec­
tive as when there are mechanisms in place to 
encourage and support owners to invest in the 
care of heritage places. The components of govern­
ment heritage systems common to many countries 
includes a combination of the following: 
• Legislation to protect heritage places and identify 
the role of government in its administration, and 
inventories of protected heritage places, 
•	 Policy and guidance that serves to set standards 
for conservation and appropriate levels of impact 
and change, 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Policy and gu,dance (sett ,ng 
standards of care and 'NOrk~ 
HERITAGE 
CONSERVATION 
FRAMEWORK 
125 
TYPICAL COMPONENTS of the government heritage system.
Illustration: Susan Macdonald, The J. Paul Getty Trust. 
•	 Information and support to owners of heritage 
places including professional advice from skilled 
staff, technical information and support, 
•	 Research to strategically address knowledge 
gaps, and 
•	 Incentives to help fill what is sometimes called 
the heritage deficit – acknowledging that heri­
tage is a public good and helping owners share 
the financial responsibility for its care. 
Government heritage systems and actions are a 
response to community interest in and advocacy 
for its heritage this is especially true for the heri­
tage of the modern era and beyond. A large num­
ber of special interest groups, including professional 
organizations from allied fields such as architec­
ture, have stimulated public interest and pressured 
governments to identify, protect and conserve heri­
tage places from the modern era. Advocacy organ­
izations such as the Twentieth Century Society in 
the UK, the Art Deco Society, Docomomo and 
ICOMOS have been instrumental in the conser­
vation of the recent past and have undertaken sig­
nificant work to identify heritage places, develop 
policies and address a number of the challenges 
identified for modern heritage. Typically, govern­
ments play catch up – after spending number of 
years reacting to threats of demolition and the 
community’s demands for action. For example, the 
Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA) and 
Docomomo and their national groups have been 
preparing inventories of modern architecture for 
decades, in many instances considerably in advance 
of the government bodies responsible for heritage 
in their respective countries. 
Challenges to conserving postwar
heritage and beyond 
The main difficulties in conserving modern and 
post­war heritage have been much discussed over 
the last twenty years as conserving modern heri­
tage had become a distinct area of practice, at times 
challenging the well­established conservation 
approaches. The most commonly cited and interre­
lated challenges include the following: 
•	 Lack of recognition and protection; 
•	 Material and technical challenges and life span 
(durability, lack of knowledge and experience 
on material conservation, repair versus 
replacement); 
•	 Quantity and scale; 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
126 
•	 Social and functional obsolescence and 
challenges of adaptability, sustainability; and 
•	 Lack of a shared and well understood 
methodological approach. 
Post­war heritage presents a further challenge:
•	 Reduction of government services, ownership 
and asset management. 
•	 Some decades on there has been much progress 
in addressing a number of the above challenges, 
but they remain relevant for post­war heritage 
and some will equally be relevant for the heritage 
of the post­modern era. 
Protecting the yet to be loved; lack of 
recognition and protection
There are still outstanding issues surrounding the 
identification, protection and interpretation of the 
recent past and action is still needed to grow appre­
ciation and support for its protection and contextu­
alize it within the annals of history. Whilst many 
countries have inventoried their post­war heritage 
they are rarely comprehensive or systematic and 
there is still much work to be done. In some parts 
of the world there remains nervousness about pro­
tecting anything but the icons of the modern era; 
‘there is so much of it, we don’t like it and it’s too 
hard to deal with’ are common criticisms. In many 
areas post­war structures dominate the urban land­
scape and for older generations their realization 
not necessarily a positive memory. These places are 
yet to go through the Darwinian natural selection 
process where the survivors will automatically be 
appreciated as heritage places, raising questions 
about what to protect and how to establish com­
parative levels of significance within the existing 
frameworks used in the heritage identification and 
assessment process. 
Material and technical challenges and life span 
The technical challenges posed by conserving 
twentieth­century places are undoubtedly where 
the most difficult philosophical and practical chal­
lenges arise. Expanding the repertoire of know­
ledge to encompass modern construction systems 
and materials is clearly needed. The move from 
craft to industrialized based construction intro­
duced many new materials, component­based sys­
tems, used traditional materials in different ways, 
abandoned traditional detailing and often claimed 
buildings were maintenance free. In the fiscally 
austere post­war era, limited budgets and short­
ages of materials such as steel and timber, together 
with the deskilling of the building industry meant 
that building quality was sometimes compromised. 
All these factors have resulted in a building stock 
with a reduced lifecycle, shorter cycles of repair 
and higher rates of functional and material obsoles­
cence; problems have been discussed in the past at 
length.
Over the last decades there has been limited 
advancement in developing new and adapting exist­
ing repair methods to conservation needs. There 
is no infrastructure for modern repair as exists 
for traditional conservation, partly due to the vast 
number of materials and systems used and partly 
due to the fact that the knowledge is still in its 
infancy. Research is needed to develop technical 
solutions to dealing with some of the most com­
mon and enduring problems such as the repair of 
exposed concrete, cladding systems, and plastics. 
More information is needed on how modern mate­
rials deteriorate and how to repair them that builds 
on the body of literature from the 1990s. Guidance 
on diagnosing problems and systematically work­
ing through the repair options as practiced in tradi­
tional conservation and communicating this meth­
odology to new audiences would also advance the 
field, as would case studies illustrating how others 
have balanced philosophical decisions. 
Issues relating to materiality have occupied much 
of the discussion with regard to conserving modern 
heritage. Ultimately conservation is case specific 
and different practitioners will make different deci­
sions. Current limitations on technical knowledge 
and available repair methods mean that the ability 
to adopt traditional conservation principles may 
be challenging. Where significance is at the core 
of decision­making, balancing design and material 
matters becomes a rational process, with room for 
individual interpretations. In some instances, the
materiality of the place may be less important than 
its social, use, or planning values or its historic 
associations and meanings. Where architectural 
and material values is less important, more physical 
change may able to be accommodated. 
Adaptation and sustainability 
Recent discussions have shifted focus from the 
materiality dilemma to the issue of obsolescence, 
  
127 
reuse and sustainability. Early conservation efforts 
dealt with the most iconic sites, demanding strin­
gent application of conservation principles, thus 
questions related to material authenticity received 
the most attention. Now we are dealing with places 
where their survival is more often reliant on the 
ability to accommodate change for new purposes, 
and adaptive reuse is preeminent. Conservation, 
for the bulk of the world’s protected places is about 
managing change in ways that retains significance, 
be they industrial sites, cultural landscapes or post­
war buildings.
The explosion of building types over the twen­
tieth century to provide for new ways of living and 
working and the centrality of functionalism within 
the modernist ideology are often cited as problems 
specific to twentieth­century heritage (Macdonald 
1997, 38). However, it is debatable whether func­
tionality and therefore adaptability are any more 
problematic for modern buildings than those of any 
other era. There is a large body of information on 
successful adaptive reuse of historic buildings that 
is also relevant for modern buildings. Access to 
successful case studies that exemplify some of the 
specific issues faced by modern buildings has been 
identified as a much needed addition to the litera­
ture (Normandin and Macdonald, 2013) There are 
also increasing numbers of good examples of work 
to buildings accommodating new green buildings 
imperatives balanced with cultural heritage conser­
vation. 
Lack of consensus on a shared approach and 
methodology for conservation 
The challenges discussed above all trigger questions 
about whether conserving modern heritage should 
follow existing approaches or, if conserving the leg­
acy of the modern era demands a new paradigm. 
Much eloquent and thoughtful discussion has been 
devoted to this topic and whilst it is always useful 
to reflect on what we are doing and how, the dis­
cussion has become somewhat repetitious. 
After the initial flurry of contention about this 
in the early 1990s some consensus was achieved, 
largely that the existing philosophical approaches 
as expressed in the conservation charters, were 
broadly applicable to the conservation of the recent 
past; still there were some specific technical chal­
lenges that necessitated judicious, case­by­case con­
sideration. The aim for some working in this area 
was to mainstream modern conservation, to reduce 
the controversy, identify a common methodology 
and embed it within the continuum of conservation 
culture. It was recognized that some of the issues 
had been tackled when conserving industrial heri­
tage sites, cultural landscapes, and on sites of pre­
dominantly social significance. But the debate reg­
ularly reappears for reasons discussed below.
Modern architecture has attracted a new genera­
tion of practitioners to its conservation. The swell­
ing of the ranks of those practicing in this area 
with architects less familiar with conservation the­
ory, methodology and practice, but who bring a 
deep understanding of modernist theory, continu­
ally fuels the debate and the calls for specific doc­
trinal texts to guide modern heritage’s conserva­
tion. Those more conversant with conservation 
practice have argued that existing conservation 
principles work and that it is counter­productive 
to identify modern heritage as different and define 
a separate set of principles. The injection of new 
voices into the sometimes insular conservation fra­
ternity has served to catalyze re­evaluation of some 
of the existing manifestos and tools, highlighting 
areas of confusion or where conservation has not 
been well integrated into general planning, devel­
opment and architectural practice. The confluence 
of these sectors of practice provides opportunities 
to integrate conservation into architectural practice 
more broadly reinforcing the fact that conservation 
is a creative process where design skills are as 
important as technical knowledge. 
The architects of the postwar era, whose work we 
are now conserving, have also played an important 
role in the conservation process, first by advocating 
for the protection of their own buildings, second in 
bequeathals of their houses, and third by providing 
access to the living memory about design, construc­
tion and the materiality of their buildings. This 
has sometimes meant that conservation has priv­
ileged architectural or design significance. Some 
architects faced with the conservation of their own 
building seek to improve them; some will want to 
evolve them, introducing new architectural ideas 
that they have developed over time. Whilst it’s 
important to engage with the creators where pos­
sible; it is also important to be able to place their 
advice in a framework or context for making con­
servation decisions and to recognise the differing 
perspectives between creator and conservator. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
128 
Arguments about the distinct nature of mod­
ern/postwar heritage have in some instances led to 
a softening of the application of some of the most 
fundamental principles of conservation – conserve 
as found, do as little as necessary and only as much 
as possible. Have we been making excuses about 
what can or cannot be achieved, as we have not 
been willing or able to tackle the impediments to 
achieving good conservation? Will future gener­
ations look back and criticize us for giving up to 
easily, for not being conservative enough, or the 
reverse, of being too precious? Only time will tell. 
But new knowledge will inevitably change what 
is possible. Better information about how materi­
als deteriorate and potential repair will shift opin­
ion. What seems too difficult or expensive now may 
become cheaper, easier and more widespread. New 
non­destructive diagnostic tools, the wider applica­
tion and development of methods such as cathodic 
protection as a repair and preventative approach to 
steel frame and concrete buildings, will continue 
to reduce the impact of repair on historic fabric. 
Future technologies and repair methods and mate­
rials will inevitably make some of our actions seem 
heavy handed in the same way our generation has 
critiqued conservation work from previous eras. 
Pushing the boundaries, undertaking research, bro­
kering new approaches and question the status quo 
is important. 
The changing role of government 
and implications for post-war heritage
and beyond 
Many parts of the world have experienced a decline 
in government support and resourcing for heritage 
conservation over the last few decades, gradually 
whittling away at three of the complimentary com­
ponents of the system, reducing the government 
role largely to the sticks – the regulatory process. 
This trend has coincided with the recognition that 
post­war heritage is important and the momentum 
that started to build in the 1990s to conserve it 
through government leadership stalled through the 
2000s. In the push to ‘cut red tape’, legislation has 
been simplified, sometimes weakened. Direct fund­
ing of heritage conservation or grants have been 
reduced. In many countries heritage management 
has been delegated to local governments, often 
without additional resources; many struggle to ful­
fill their obligations. 
There are specific implications for recent heri­
tage as a result of this decline in support. Reluc­
tance to expand inventories to include post­war 
places, reduced policy work, standard setting, 
reduced technical advisory services and less pro­
vision of guidance materials are also all observ­
able trends in many nations’ government heritage 
services. These are important components of the 
heritage system, especially for new and emerging 
areas of practice such as recent heritage. It is diffi­
cult for the private and non­government sectors to 
address strategic needs for research to solve prob­
lems and create guidance and information for own­
ers. These activities ultimately shape policy and 
support the legislation. Conserving postwar heri­
tage has some distinct challenges as discussed; 
strategic effort is needed to undertake research, 
provide guidance and set standards for conserva­
tion. Inevitably the shortcomings of the current 
scenario results in pressure to reduce the level of 
legislation to ‘ease the burden’ on owners, therefore 
a reluctance to protect them and the erosion of the 
level of care a conservation of heritage places. Dur­
ing English Heritage’s initial post­war listing work 
in the 1990s, owners were concerned about the lim­
ited information on how to conserve the places pro­
posed for protection what would be expected of 
them in terms of standards of conservation. Eng­
lish Heritage’s investment in providing technical 
advice, undertaking research and providing techni­
cal advice was an integral part of the post­war her­
itage listing program, helped build confidence and 
reduced resistance to listing by owners. With fewer 
resources and less proactive work it will be inter­
esting if governments continue to push the bound­
aries toward emerging areas of heritage such as 
post­modern and beyond or will they be increas­
ingly unwilling to protect them as development 
and commercial imperatives continue to gain 
momentum. 
As the number and type of heritage places 
has grown, government resources have not kept 
pace, adding further pressure on already stretched 
resources. The non­government sector has made 
significant efforts to fill this void over the last 20 
years. International and local advocacy groups have 
played an important role, but ultimately govern­
ment leadership is needed to demonstrate commit­
ment to conserving a nation’s heritage and to con­
tinue to recognize the next era of heritage places. 
129 
SIRIUS APARTMENTS, designed by Theo Gofens and completed in 1979, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Glen Harper. 
The decline in government ownership of a sig­
nificant stock of heritage buildings also has reper­
cussions for heritage management in a number of 
ways. The body of knowledge and experience that 
builds up over the years by managers of these assets 
has real benefits in conservation terms, particularly 
when government has been purposefully leading by 
example. For the heritage of the post­war era there 
is an added dimension. The post­war era in many 
parts of the world was characterized by significant 
government investment in infrastructure, health, 
education and public housing. A huge number of 
these government, post­war buildings, are now rec­
ognized as culturally significant, however the ethos 
of social welfare provision has changed and there is 
no longer the commitment to the delivery of public 
services or facilities. Governments are often reluc­
tant to protect places they are anxious to dispose 
of; the private sector is often unwilling to invest 
in former government properties without reason­
able financial returns. With a need to increase the 
density of urban areas, public space is often seen as 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
130 
a commercial opportunity and accordingly we are 
seeing the loss of important post­war landscapes 
and planned public spaces. 
 Government ownership and management often 
has historic and social significance in its own right. 
Privatization and the often resulting gentrification 
of former public housing and other social services 
can have a negative impact of the heritage signi­
ficance of the place, and the communities that 
inhabited or used them. The largely single use and 
single ownership circumstances of public buildings 
and areas results makes management and conserva­
tion simpler. It is almost impossible to achieve the 
same level of unified management by the private 
sector, particularly when there is not strong policy 
in place and resources to ensure standards of con­
servation are met. 
The brutalist, Park Hill estate in Sheffield, Eng­
land provides an example. The public housing com­
plex of some 2300 apartments, shops and pubs was
completed by 1966. Designed by Ivor Smith and
Jack Lynne and inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité
d’Habitation, it was listed in 1998 following calls for
its demolition. Initially well received by residents,
poor management and maintenance eventually led
to its controversial, recent redevelopment, targeted
at Sheffield’s growing creative class. Public percep­
tions of the complex at the time of listing ranged
from eyesore and social experiment gone wrong, to
valued heritage item. The public­private­partner­
ship redevelopment, involved extensive changes to
the fabric and essentially reduced the building to
its structural shell and reimagined it as an exciting
high­rise modern complex. Whilst the urban revi­
talization project has brought new life and a new
generation of appreciative residents to sustain it,
it has also been criticized as representing ‘nothing
less than the ruin of the ideals upon which the wel­
fare state is based, signaling the abandonment of the
socially progressive vision that lay behind the design
of the original estate’ (Dobraszczyk, 2015).
In Sydney, Australia the state government 
recently declined to follow the recommenda­
tions of its appointed expert body, the NSW Heri­
tage Council, to list the brutalist Sirius apartment 
block. Designed by Theo Gofens and completed in 
1979; this social housing complex occupies prime 
real estate. The government plans to sell the prop­
erty and claims it would lose significant revenue 
should it be listed. The controversy demonstrates 
the shift in government commitment to public 
housing as well as a gap between public support for 
buildings of this era and government’s recognition 
of its value. If governments are unwilling to con­
serve their buildings it is difficult for heritage agen­
cies to demand the conservation of non­govern­
ment assets. 
Responding to the current context
and needs 
Where do all of the factors discussed position us in 
the evolution of conservation theory and practice, 
its relevance to emerging heritage typologies from 
the postwar and post­modern eras and the current 
framework that supports this work? How can we 
effectively navigate and respond to the current ter­
rain to secure the recognition, protection and con­
servation of the next era of heritage places and the 
inevitable challenges they will raise? Is there poten­
tial to shape the shifting framework for heritage 
conservation so that it meets some of the challenges 
of conserving the heritage of the more recent 
past. Ultimately a more porous model is needed, 
with more flexible roles between government and 
non­government stakeholders, more cooperation, 
to be more strategic and targeted and to have some 
level of consensus about how to approach conser­
vation.
The need for a shared approach: values based 
conservation 
The importance of a shared view to approaching 
the conservation of modern heritage, is highlighted 
when dealing with the post­war ear and beyond. 
Lack of understanding about the approach to the 
identification of 20th century heritage and the 
absence of thematic frameworks for its assessment, 
means many important buildings remain unpro­
tected.
Shared understanding of approach also brings 
consistency in decision­making. Agreeing on the 
approach and securing its legislation, with clear 
policies and consistent application is ever important 
in securing conservation outcomes. Lack of shared 
vision between planners, assessors, and conserva­
tors and architects results in conflict, confusion and 
ultimately poor support across the sectors. Whilst 
we continue to promulgate the differences between 
modern heritage and that of the more distance past 
we reduce certainty and consistency in practice. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
131 
The values based approach to conservation pro­
vides the framework conservation internationally
and is now standard practice in most places. Many
countries have specific principles enshrined in leg­
islation or other means in day­to­day practice. The
simple and basic concept of values based conser­
vation is that by understanding what is important
about a place and the degrees of significance you can
make rational decisions about how to conserve it.
The Madrid Document: Approaches for the 
Conservation of Twentieth-Century Architectural
Heritage (ICOMOS ISC20, 2014) arose out of the 
need to demonstrate how the fundamentals of con­
servation practice could apply to modern heritage. 
This widely embraced text has been translated 
into more than six languages. The Madrid Docu­
ment provides a basis for identification via signifi­
cance assessment and steps through the usual pro­
cess of conservation, and has helped to reach new 
audiences. For those places or practitioners unfa­
miliar with the values based approach, or have leg­
islation, which does not yet recognize younger heri­
tage places, it is an important tool for advocating 
for modern heritage. 
Most would argue that post­war heritage is now 
part of the continuum of history and deserves rec­
ognition, and protection and celebration. It is now 
time to recognize its conservation is part of the 
continuum of evolving conservation thought, which 
should be integrated into practice. 
Stakeholder roles and responsibilities for
conserving postwar heritage and beyond 
Assuming that government role in heritage conser­
vation is unlikely to be increased and may continue 
to decrease, there is a need to either reconsider the 
framework for heritage conservation or at least 
reappraisal the roles and responsibilities of the var­
ious players. Community and advocacy groups will 
continue to demanding action to conserve post­war 
heritage and will inevitably need to be the protago­
nists for the next generation of heritage places. Pro­
fessionally based conservation organizations such as 
Docomomo, ICOMOS and non­profits have also 
long played an active role but will be increasingly 
called on to fill the policy, guidance and informa­
tion gap. The education sector also needs to step up 
and address the need to include conserving the her­
itage of the recent past in their curricula. Over the 
last decade the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) 
has recognized its shifting role as an actor in the 
delivery of cultural heritage, and this influenced the 
approach when establishing its Conserving Modern 
Architecture Initiative. Efforts are increasingly tar­
geted at developing policy type guidance, more 
fundamental level research and training to fill the 
gap in governments’ heritage services.
Where government is unable to deliver the var­
ious components of the system they still play an 
important leadership role. To be successful in meet­
ing conservation needs, governments could pro­
vide high level strategic frameworks across the 
various areas of need, to ensure efforts are better 
coordinated, directed and prioritized and to forge 
stronger partnerships with the other sectors who 
can help play an increasingly important role in 
advancing the conservation of emerging areas of 
conservation. There are good models for govern­
ment and the NGO and educational sectors work­
ing together to leverage experience, knowledge and 
skills and fill resource gaps. Some thoughts where 
this may be beneficial are discussed below. Training 
and education is another important area in its own 
right, but beyond the scope of this paper. 
Advocacy 
Effective advocacy is critical to for emerging areas
of heritage. Governments need good, professional
advocacy organizations and in the past have often
supported their efforts. There is greater potential
for advocacy groups to reach wide and diverse audi­
ences facilitated by social media. Many countries
are increasingly host to multicultural societies,
where identity is less related to long­term relation­
ships with place and this affects how people value
their heritage. Bringing new audiences to heritage is
essential, recognizing a broader range of values and
understanding the impact of this on conservation is
where advocacy groups can play an active role.
Inventories
Inventories are at the core of heritage management. 
Given we do not yet have comprehensive inven­
tories for the heritage of the postwar era let alone 
beyond that, and governments are finding it dif­
ficult to continue to evolve their inventories, we 
need to better engage the non­government sector 
in identifying places of importance in a way that 
is rigorous, meets the established standards for 
heritage inventories in the 21st century and makes 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
132 
RESPONDING TO THE CURRENT SITUATION – government role within a network of NGO, other government, professional 
and private sector organisations, sometimes as leader, sometimes facilitator and sometimes as participant. 
Illustration: Susan Macdonald, The J. Paul Getty Trust. 
efficient and effective use of good inventory systems 
for storing and sustaining data. 
There are models from countries who have lever­
aged their resources from passionate and dedicated
advocacy and professional groups to populate their
inventories and protect new heritage areas. For exam­
ple, TICCIH has been undertaking thematic histories
of a range of industrial heritage typologies, identified
internationally as priority areas. Docomomo has been
preparing inventories of heritage places for decades
and there are opportunities for universities and others
to play an active role too. The ICOMOS ISC20 initi­
ated the creation of a historic thematic framework for
the twentieth century, now being developed by the
GCI, which will greatly assist in the assessment pro­
cess at the international and national levels and help
advance badly needed studies about modern heritage
to improve its understanding and protection. (Mac­
donald and Ostergren 2011).
In order to best coordinate and secure the valu­
able work undertaken across sectors on inventories 
some standardization of information is important 
and utilizing common open source software sys­
tems is a way to achieve this efficiently. Otherwise 
the information is unlikely to meet agreed inven­
tory standards and the transfer of data will be too 
onerous and the data too difficult to sustain. The 
Arches heritage management system (www.arches.
org) developed by the GCI and World Monuments 
Fund is an open­source inventory and management 
system specifically for heritage that meets inter­
national inventory and data standards and is the 
type of system that can provide for this cooperative 
approach to inventory work. 
Research 
Whilst there are more students than ever before 
undertaking research on the heritage of the recent 
past, it could be much better targeted and coordi­
nated to meet the needs of the field. Government 
could ably assist the field by identifying and pri­
oritizing research needs for universities and others 
involved in research. Research frameworks ensure 
that efforts are effectively targeted to needs and 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
133 
provide opportunities for cross­sector involvement, 
leveraging research work further than is currently 
being achieved. Government networks such as the 
Monitoring Group on Cultural Heritage in the 
Baltic States may be well placed to develop regional 
frameworks.
Creating and dissemination of information
and guidance documents 
In the 1990s, professional, NGO and government 
heritage agencies in Europe and North America, 
organized conferences, workshops, and publica­
tions including information on specific technical 
issues that also contributed to practice internation­
ally. However, of late there has been less of the nec­
essary technical information produced, despite this 
being an area of identified need. Again there are 
useful models of NGO and professional organi­
zations working together to leverage government 
efforts to produce necessary information. The Aus­
tralian Institute of Architects for example success­
fully worked with the state heritage agency to pro­
duce policy documents relating to adaptive reuse 
and infill design, which was an excellent way to 
develop a shared vision across the government leg­
islative agency and their key stakeholder (Heritage 
Council of NSW, 2005 and 2008). 
REFERENCES 
Dobraszczyk, Paul. ‘Sheffield’s Park Hill: the tangled reality of 
an extraordinary brutalist dream’ The Guardian, 14 August, 
2015 
ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites). 
1964. International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration 
of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter 1964). Paris:
ICOMOS. www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf (accessed
19 January 2017).
ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), 
International Scientific Committee on Twentieth Century 
Heritage. 2014. Approaches for the Conservation of Twentieth 
Century Architectural Heritage, The Madrid Document. 2nd ed. 
(Madrid), ICOMOS. http://www.icomos­isc20c.org/pdf/
madrid_doc_10.26.pdf (accessed 19 January 2017).
Macdonald, Susan. 1997. Authenticity is more than skin deep: 
Conserving Britain’s post­ war concrete architecture.  
APT Bulletin 28 (4): 37–44. 
Macdonald, S. Ostergren, G. 2011, An Initiative of the ICOMOS 
International Scientific Committee on Twentieth-Century Heri­
tage, Meeting Report. Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation 
Institute. http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_
resources/pdf_publications/pdf/develop_historic.pdf 
Conclusions 
Heritage conservation has always been a commu­
nity led activity. For the heritage of the post­war 
and modern era there has been a great groundswell 
of professional and community groups involved, 
catalyzed by the architectural community. For the 
emerging heritage of the post­modern era this may 
equally be the case.
Assuming government heritage agencies may 
continue to struggle to meet the demands of the 
current framework, it is important to identify and 
exploit the opportunities that the other sectors 
offer. Perhaps this is a new era for heritage, where 
it is better supported, more participatory and bet­
ter understood. For government heritage agencies 
they can continue to provide important leadership 
by focusing even more strategically, locating them­
selves within a network of private, non­government 
actors each with more clearly defined roles. 
Government is needed to connect and inform all 
the players, and facilitate more cooperative work­
ing to reach shared objectives. Ultimately the aim 
is a high quality environment, where the cher­
ished places from the past co­exist with the heri­
tage of the future – the challenge is how the differ­
ent actors can work together to achieve this. 
Macdonald, Susan, and Gail Ostergren, eds. 2013. Conserving 
Twentieth-Century Built Heritage: A Bibliography. 2nd ed.  
Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute. http://hdl.
handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/twentieth_centruy_built_heritage
Heritage Council of New South Wales and Royal Australian 
Institute of Architects, New South Wales Chapter. 2005.  
Design in Context: Guidelines for Infill Development in the  
Historic Environment. Sydney: NSW Heritage Office. 
Heritage Council of New South Wales and Royal Australian 
Institute of Architects, New South Wales Chapter. 2008.  
New Uses for Heritage Places: Guidelines for the Adaptation of 
Historic Buildings and Sites. Parramatta: Heritage Office of 
NSW, NSW Department of Planning. 
Normandin, Kyle C., and Susan Macdonald. 2013. A Colloquium 
to Advance the Practice of Conserving Modern Heritage: March 
6–7, 2013: Meeting Report. Los Angeles: The Getty Conserva­
tion Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/colloqui­
um_report
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisa­
tion (UNESCO), 1972. Convention concerning the protection of 
the world cultural and natural heritage Adopted by the General 
Conference at its seventeenth session Paris, 16 November 1972. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
134 
TORBEN KIEPKE & KATJA HASCHE 
Between Rejection and Adaption.
 
Listing buildings of the period 1950–1990
 
In recent years quite a lot has been published on 
late modern architecture, and a number of build­
ings have been listed as cultural monuments. But 
which ones are listed, and is this selection suffi­
cient? The process of listing modern heritage is the 
subject of the research project WDWM (Which
Monuments, Which Modernity?) at the Bauhaus 
University in Weimar, Germany.1 The research 
project evaluates different strategies for listing 
buildings built between 1950 and 1990 as cultural 
heritage. According to our title, there are great dif­
ferences regarding the legal consequences of tenta­
tive lists, inventories or protections in the European 
countries. One main problem of listing buildings 
from the latter part of the 20th century is the large 
stock of buildings. Another challenge is the fact 
that redevelopment and reconstruction as well as 
rapidly growing demands of energy efficiency are 
threatening these buildings with demolition or 
modification before the society is even aware of 
their cultural value. 
While some European countries already have 
implemented appropriate heritage lists for build­
ings of the period from 1950–1990, others are just 
beginning to turn their attention to this recent 
building stock. In some countries a minimum age 
for listing buildings complicates this process, but in 
most countries the evaluation of buildings as cul­
tural heritage starts after 30 years. With this dis­
tance of one generation a larger objectivity can be 
obtained. On the other hand, even this time span, 
in many cases, is too long to keep the buildings in 
their original states. It is remarkable that most of 
the heritage agencies assure that existing evaluation 
criteria are sufficient for the protection of buildings 
from the latter part of the 20th century, but in fact, 
very few buildings are protected. The reason for 
this paradox is founded in different forms of rejec­
tion as well as insufficient financial and personnel 
resources. In some cases non­government institu­
tions and private initiatives are initiating or sup­
porting the listing process. 
The differences regarding the protection of 
buildings within Europe are readily visible in the 
region of the Baltic Sea States. In countries like 
Finland, progress is being made in research and 
information in the direction of “Welfare Archi­
tecture”. In other states, strict regulations regard­
ing the minimum age, as well as social or political 
objections prevent the listing of younger buildings. 
Precisely in these countries, including Latvia, 
Poland and also Germany, where buildings of the 
1960s and ‘70s are often only sporadically being 
inventoried, at the same time, we see the formation 
of action groups, citizen’s initiatives or researchers 
concerning themselves with the furthering of these 
preservation goals, through whose activities and 
networks, public awareness is awakened; in more 
than a few cases, their work builds the framework 
for the work of the heritage agencies.
The differences concerning the listing process 
are also visible in the searching for the right 
expression for architecture of these years. Presently 
in Europe, there is no standard term for the archi­
tecture of the 1960s and ‘70s, which often leads to 
misunderstandings. In surveys conducted as part 
of our research project WDWM (Which Monu­
ments, Which Modernity?) in 2014, comparing the 
status of documentation among various countries in 
Europe, the seemingly neutral label, “architecture 
of the 1960s and ‘70s” was often replaced by terms, 
which were more commonly understood in those 
  
 
135 
specific regions. From this accrued a sort of “name 
mapping”, showing differences within Europe, also 
remarkable in the Baltic Sea region.
In the western part, the term “postwar architec­
ture” is commonly used in many countries. Addi­
tionally, in Germany, there are other names, which 
attempt to capture this late modern building stock 
through a geographical­historical precision, as in 
the term “Ost­Moderne” (East­Modern), in the 
region of the former socialist GDR, or “Ruhr­Mod­
erne” in North Rhine­Westphalia in the western 
part of Germany.2 The name “Soviet Modernism” 
or “Soz Modernism”, widely used in former Eastern 
Block Countries, is not transferable to the remain­
ing western European States.3 To add to this list 
there are additional terms, primarily used in the 
North European Baltic Sea region which charac­
terize the usage, like “Built­Welfare” in Finland, or 
“Welfare Architecture”, which focus on the social 
aspects of the architecture of the prosperous years 
in which they were built.
On the eastern side, the considered time frame 
(1960s/70s) is seen as the now completed historical 
epoch of a “Soviet Modernism”, which terminology 
primarily deals with the political dimension of the 
DIFFERENT TERMS of modernity. 
Illustration: Julia Vetter & Torben Kiepke. 
architecture of those years, and which explains why 
the built results (in the Moscow­driven form of 
prefabricated slab housing estates and large­scale 
structures) in the now sovereign states so strongly 
resemble each other, as seen in the examples of 
Halle­Neustadt, Germany and Lazdynai, Vilnius, 
Lithuania. 
This generalizing point of view, in many formerly 
Soviet­influenced countries is however being 
replaced by a much more differentiated one, clearly 
pointing out, that there were also regionally spe­
cific, and otherwise locally significant buildings 
erected in those years. The term ”Soviet Modern­
ism”, at a glance, may well describe a system of col­
lectivization and typing of building processes and 
forms, but, through the current studies of late mod­
ern building stock in many former Soviet sphere 
countries, obtains a new attribute of regional dis­
tinction, as ”regional shade of Soviet Modernism”. 4 
Remarkable is, that it took more than 20 years 
until, for example in Latvia, that a young gener­
ation of architects, historians and trustees at the 
Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2014 asked, if a 
Postwar­Modern architecture exists in their coun­
try, showing not only Soviet, but also regional spe­
 136 
HOUSING PROJECTS OF THE LATE 1960S: 

Halle-Neustadt (Germany), left;
 
Lazdynai, Vilnius (Lithuania), below.
 
Photos: Torben Kiepke.
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
137 
cifics. 5 In light of the possible loss of numerous 
buildings of this period, the (until recently) purely 
politically categorized Soviet Modern Architecture 
is now being increasingly described according to 
creative and social criteria, which, in an advancing 
process of inventorying building stock, is being 
convincingly presented, and the public response is 
also quite positive, when one examines the entries 
in the social networks. This is an attempt to see 
modern architecture no longer purely chronologi­
cally, or in the limited terms of a political period, 
but to examine spatial, artistic and societal issues 
as well, in order to meaningfully expand the termi­
nology.
The terminology collected here for Late Mod­
ern Architecture of the 1960s and ‘70s well depicts 
the complexity and variety of the architecture of 
the Baltic Sea region, describing the political, 
social and regional circumstances of that time, but 
also reflecting this time of regarding the buildings 
anew. The terms used today in all European coun­
tries progressively technically attempt to character­
ize these buildings as accurately as possible, how­
ever, some of the terms are themselves negatively 
charged, as is clear to see in the example of the 
Soviet legacy in the former Eastern Block coun­
tries.
The effort to find an adequate terminology for 
buildings of the post­war era is part of a process 
of objectification and evaluation of this built leg­
acy, which in various regions in Europe (as well as 
in the Baltic Sea region), will yield varying results. 
The classification of the urban planning and archi­
tectural output of the time frame discussed here 
(1960s and ‘70s) is not finished, as the historiogra­
phy of this era is still in full operation. The differ­
ent terms for the modernism of the 1960s and 1970s 
are expressing the desire to acquire adequate access 
to the architecture and urban planning of this time. 
The opposing terms mirror the complex conditions 
under which the buildings came into being, such as 
public housing programs, cold war and reconstruc­
tion.6 
Selection and placement; antiquities and
monuments offices and agencies 
As in many other European countries, the discus­
sion about the built heritage of the early post war 
period in Germany began in the 1980s. In the for­
mer GDR post war buildings were often listed as 
protected monuments more immediately, but due 
to different criteria. The discussion about buildings 
of the 1960s and 1970s started in the year 2000. 
Today, the number of protected buildings from the 
period 1950–1990 in Germany is different depend­
ing on federal state. As the listing process in Ger­
many is the task of each federal state, there is the 
challenge to value the buildings in a certain geo­
graphic area while ranking them in the national 
context at the same time. In the last decades there 
have been some systematical geographical or typo­
logical focused listing projects. One pioneer is 
Baden­Württemberg, with several projects in the 
district of Stuttgart. One main project was a coop­
eration with the University Stuttgart for listing 
housing estates of the 1960s and 1970s. The study 
was carried out from 2009 until 2011 and published 
in an exemplary manner, as it not only shows 
the different estates, but also the process of list­
ing.7 There is no systematical listing for late mod­
ern buildings, but singular protections. One excep­
tional example of a systematical approach is a study 
for housing estates from the 1940s and 1950s, which 
was carried out by the Danish Agency for Culture 
between 2013 and 2016. This project identified 60 
interesting estates, out of which the 21 most out­
standing estates were selected (see one example fig. 
4). The aim was not to protect all these estates, but 
first to draw attention to the values of these estates, 
and second to give guidance concerning renovation 
work. This attempt resulted in two publications.8 A 
similar approach can be found In Finland, where 
the National Board of Antiquities carried out sev­
eral systematical studies for late modern buildings. 
This project, called “Built Welfare Project”, dif­
ferentiated the buildings by typology.9 There are
completed and published studies for buildings of 
national health care services, recreational environ­
ments (see fig. 5), campuses and evangelical­ 
lutheran funeral chapels. The aim of these stud­
ies was to produce information by analyzing these 
buildings and to raise awareness of this cultural 
heritage. 
Public involvement and initiatives 
Today, an isolated listing can hardly be achieved 
successfully anymore without public information 
and communication. Therefore, active partner­
ships between authorities and the interested public 
(universities as well as private people) are a prom­
  
 
 
 
138 
ising way of co­working. In Germany there have 
been an increasing number of initiatives fighting 
for modern buildings in the last two decades. In 
2005 there was an initiative against the demoli­
tion of the “Palast der Republik” in Berlin, which 
was not successful. The initiative “Mensadebatte”, 
founded 2009 by students and employees of the 
Bauhaus University Weimar, succeeded in protect­
ing this building, in the same year students fought 
successfully for the preservation of the protected 
“Beethovenhalle” in Bonn. In Sweden the National 
Heritage Board started research work concerning 
buildings from the period 1950–1970 during the 
1990s, in cooperation with the County Administra­
tive Boards. There are only few buildings protected 
from this period, but meanwhile the consciousness 
is quite high. In 1999–2001, the Swedish National 
Heritage Board was the leading head of the survey 
project “Metropolitan Architecture and Cultural 
Environment”, that was carried out for buildings of 
the period 1945 until today and focused on the three 
biggest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. 
The aim of the project was to acquire knowledge 
of the modern built environment, and to develop 
new ways of improving it, and of cooperating 
with the citizens. The project acted on the insight 
that “since cities are a mix of people and build­
ings it becomes imperative to include the inhabit­
ants in the process of planning their living environ­
ment”.10 In consequence, the acting group included 
national, regional and municipal organizations such 
as county and city museums, as well as universities 
and individuals.11 
The previous examples show initiatives for single 
buildings, building types or limited regions. In 
Latvia on the other hand, until 2014 there was no 
significant advancement in assessing buildings 
built after 1945, in terms of their preservation value. 
There were very strong reservations regarding the
architecture of the time of the Soviet occupation. 
Because of this, there were very few notable initi­
atives toward preservation of Late Modern build­
ings. This changed in 2014. In reference to the fact, 
that the history of Latvian modernism had neither 
been studied nor written, Latvia took part in the 
Venice Biennale of Architecture, with their contri­
bution, ”Un­written­how to write a research about 
post war modernist architecture in Latvia”. With 
this exhibition, the question was provocatively 
put, why building stocks from after 1945 remained 
unnoticed in terms of architectural history and his­
toric preservation, as is also seen in a number of 
publications.12 The discourse initiated here became 
the first written building history of post war mod­
ernist architecture in Latvia, which, among other 
things, contains a collection of outstanding build­
ings. The initiative addressing the ”unwritten 
building history” of modernism in Latvia would 
also be successful here: through the involvement of 
the trustees, a wider public was created, which soon 
was able to convince government institutions, as to 
the value of several structures. A forum arose, to 
discuss Latvian Post War Modernism, and place it 
in the context of the international building produc­
tion of that era. 
International Collaboration 
In 1985 the Council of Europe complained: 
“Although we are now somewhat better informed 
about the forms and state of inventories of the 
artistic, architectural and cultural heritage, our 
research has revealed that they differ considerably 
in quality, substance and reliability from country 
to country. The terminology also lacks uniformity 
and concepts are often difficult to understand even 
within a single country, let alone across frontiers.”13 
Today, after 30 years of further work, these differ­
ences in quality, substance and reliability of exist­
ing inventories still exist. Especially for buildings 
of the recent decades there is a great lack of system­
atical approach. As this architectural period was 
very strong influenced by international exchange, 
this context should be regarded while evaluating, 
selecting and protecting the buildings. The national 
monuments laws governing selection and preser­
vation will continue to make comparison difficult. 
It is, however, preferable, that especially the meth­
ods of selection, and growing public involvement 
through initiatives and research groups, become a 
basis for the international exchange. To save the 
internationally influenced modern architecture, the 
European States need to show solidarity in preserv­
ing these buildings as common heritage. The Bal­
tic Sea States Heritage Cooperation is an exem­
plary association of different countries. As Sweden, 
as the Chair of the Monitoring Group, is planning 
to do more research work for buildings 1970–2000 
in the next years, the Baltic Sea Region Cultural 
Heritage Forum 2016 could be the starting point 
for doing this work in international cooperation. 
 139 
DRONNINGEGÅRDEN HOUSING (top left), Copenhagen/Denmark (1943–1958, Kay Fisker, C.F. Møller, Svenn Eske Kristensen).
 
Photo: Helene Høyer Mikkelsen.
 
INITIATIVE CAFETERIA (top right), Weimar/Germany (1979–1982, Anita Bach). Photo: Gilbert Weise.
 
SWIMMING HALL (above), Kouvola/Finland (1964, Jorma Järvi). Photo: von Bonin, National Board of Antiquities, Finland.
 
140 
ENDNOTES 
1. 	 http://welchedenkmale.info/welche­denkmale­welcher­ 
moderne/info/english (15.07.2016). 
2. 	 The term “Ostmoderne” arose a few years after German 
reunification, and is used in literature since 2004, cp. Ulrich 
Hartung, Andreas Butter (ed.): Ostmoderne – Architektur in 
Berlin 1945–1965, Berlin 2004; Mark Escherich (ed.):  
Denkmal Ost­Moderne und Denkmal Ost­Moderne II,  
Berlin 2012 and 2016; The term “Ruhrmoderne” appeared 
in 2015, through the founding of the public initiative group 
bearing that name, dedicated to the study and protection of 
the modern building stock in the Ruhr region;  
http://ruhrmoderne.com (15.07.2016). 
3. 	 Regarding ”Soviet Modernism”, there are already publica­
tions and exhibitions, such as ”Soviet Modernism 1955–1991. 
Unknown History” (7.11.2012–25.02.2013), curated by  
Katharina Ritter, Ekaterina Shapiro­Obermair and Alexan­
dra Wachter. catalog from Park Books. An English language 
database “Soviet Modernism 1955–1991” on the Internet shows 
some 650 buildings and projects built in the 14 republics of 
that country http://wiki.azw.at/sovietmodernism_database/
home.php?l=deu (15.07.2016). 
4.	  Vgl. Vladimir Bologovsky, in: Unwritten, Katalog zur Aus­
stellung auf der Architektur Biennale Venedig 2014, p. 87–98. 
5. 	 The Exhibition concept of the team of curators asks the  
question, why the architectural history of post war modern­
ism in Latvia has not yet been written, and studied the rea­
sons for this. Not only experts, but also the general public was 
invited to participate, via social networks (https://www.face­
book.com/unwrittenlv/info/?tab=page_info). The results were 
compiled in the catalog ”Unwritten – how to write a research 
about post­war architecture in Latvia” (https://issuu.com/
nrja/docs/unwritten). 
6. 	 Ruben Arevshatyan coined the phrase ”conflicting moderni­
ties” in a lecture, to describe the different modernist styles of 
architecture in his native country, Armenia: CONFLICTING 
MODERNITIES: THE HIDDEN STORIES OF THE 20th 
CENTURY ARCHITECTURE IN ARMENIA, 11. Novem­
ber 2014, Architekturfakultät Zagreb. 
7. 	 Hopfner, Karin / Simon­Philipp, Christina / Wolf, Claus 
(Hrsg.): Größer, höher, dichter. Wohnen in Siedlungen der 
1960er und 1970er Jahre in der Region Stuttgart, Stuttgart 
2012. 
8.	  Dansk Bygningsarv (Red.), Bygningskultur og bevarings­
værdier. 1940’ernes og 1950’ernes murede boligbebyggelser, 
Tarm 2015. 
9. 	 http://www.nba.fi/en/cultural_environment/built_heritage/
built_welfare_project (11.07.2016).
10. Swedish National Heritage Board, Urban News, Stockholm 
2010, p. 27.
11. Swedish National Heritage Board, Urban News, Stockholm 
2010, p. 27.
12. The catalog of the exhibition is also available online, at  
http://issuu.com/nrja/docs/unwritten (10.7.2016); The catalog 
essay contains the suggestion to the National Heritage Board, 
to list a predetermined number of buildings as cultural heri­
tage monuments: “We continue to lose them through vari­
ous strategies of absorption – rebuilding or demolishing. If 
we continue this way and at the current rate, we will not leave 
future generations the opportunity to see and evaluate the 
design and buildings of this period. Taking into account that 
both the local and international community and architectural 
professionals are interested in the Latvian post­war modernist 
architecture, we asked the State Inspection for Heritage Pro­
tection to include these building in the list of protected cul­
tural heritage monuments.” p. 277.
13. Council of Europe, Architectural Heritage, Reports and 
Studies 2. Inventories of the artistic, architectural and cul­
tural heritage in European countries. Strasbourg, 1985, p.3. 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
141 
KARIN HERMERÉN 
What about the art? 
Challenges of Authenticity and Preservation
of Art Related to Buildings and Architecture 
Abstract 
Public art is a significant part of Sweden’s modern 
built environment and constitutes an important 
cultural heritage, in terms of both history in gen­
eral and art history. Tens of thousands of works of 
art commissioned by various parties form part of 
environments which, in various ways, bear witness 
to the ideas and tendencies that shaped Sweden’s 
development into a democratic welfare society.
The current lack of knowledge about this art 
within conservation practice, and the lack of 
methodological knowledge of the values it repre­
sents, entails serious risks to its conservation, not 
least in view of ongoing social changes and con­
struction projects. These risks may involve change 
or demolition of the artworks. How an object or a 
work of art is regarded and valued is crucial to the 
preservation strategy and the protection options 
from a legislative point of view. The underlying 
values in the decision­making process concerning 
preservation must therefore be clarified and made 
explicit to enable assessment, prioritisation and 
management. The discussion in this paper focuses 
on challenges, methods and strategies that can be 
implemented in conservation practice concerning 
building­related art, in order to improve, if possible,
the management and long­term conservation of 
this heritage of the recent past. 
Introduction 
Since the early 20th century, Sweden has seen 
extensive social investment in building­related art, 
including works by a great many prominent Swed­
ish and international artists. These artworks con­
stitute important source material, not only from an 
art history perspective, but also in historical, social 
and economic terms. The current lack of knowledge 
and information about these building­related art­
works, and the lack of methodological knowledge 
of the values they embody, seriously jeopardises the 
long­term conservation of the works, regardless of 
whether they were publicly or privately commissi­
oned, and regardless of their setting. The conse­
quent lack of management and of opportunities for 
the public sector to support conservation is placing 
many such works at risk of damage or destruction.
Unlike buildings, for instance, public art lacks 
effective legal safeguards and financial incentives 
for its management and conservation. This is 
increasingly apparent as the artworks age and their 
need for maintenance increases. Arguably there 
should be shared public responsibility for art pur­
chased with public funds. It belongs to us all and 
should be protected and cared for as part of a com­
mon cultural heritage that is worth preserving. 
Building-Related Public Art In Sweden 
Historical Background: Early 20th Century 
In early 20th­century Sweden, building­related 
art – art created specifically for a particular loca­
tion inside or adjacent to a building or other struc­
ture – was commissioned through initiatives by 
private and voluntary sectors. In 1937, the com­
missioning of building­related art became official 
public policy through the so­called one­per­cent 
rule, whereby one per cent of central government’s 
costs for construction projects had to be allocated 
to artistic features. A majority of Sweden’s local 
and regional authorities subsequently introduced a 
“one­per­cent rule”, and as a result there are now 
tens of thousands of artworks in public buildings 
and spaces across the country. 
 • 
142 
HYLLNING TILL IVAR LO-JOHANSSON/Tribute to Ivar Lo-Johansson (1971), painted concrete, by Atti Johansson, at Gudlav 
Bilderskolan, Sollefteå, architect Jan Thurfjell Arkitektkontor AB. Photo: Karin Hermerén. 
FLAKING PAINT, with the original paint layer clearly visible. Details. Photos: Karin Hermerén. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
143 
Ideological Background: The Postwar Years 
Support for public art was consistent with the social 
democratic concept of the welfare state in Swe­
den. The initiative created the economic conditions 
for promoting cultural and social values in shared 
public spaces by means of artistic features. Work 
opportunities would be created for artists, both in 
decorating public buildings and in creating inde­
pendent artworks. Good art would be made acces­
sible to everyone. Exhibitions toured the country, 
like the one organised by Nationalmuseum in part­
nership with various popular movements (God konst 
… 1945), and original prints were sold at reasonable 
prices through Konstfrämjandet, an organisation 
founded in 1947. 
Expansion: The 1960s and 70s 
With the rapid expansion of the Swedish public 
sector in the late sixties and early seventies, increas­
ing numbers of artworks were needed for all the 
new public buildings. New government agencies 
were created with offices throughout Sweden. 
The first national targets for cultural policy were 
adopted in 1974, which led to a closer working rela­
tionship between central and regional government, 
and to the expansion of regional cultural institu­
tions. At this time, responsibility for public art 
was shared among central, regional and local gov­
ernment, and local authorities were given primary 
responsibility for the outdoor environment (1965 års 
musei­ och utställningssakkunniga 1974).
Local government expanded. Recreation centres 
were built, and most of Sweden’s indoor swimming 
pools date from this time. Libraries, arts centres, 
cinemas and art galleries were built. Legislation 
was passed to improve the physical working envi­
ronment (Arbetsmiljölag 1977:1160). Major public 
art projects were undertaken in all these venues, as 
well as by crown corporations like the Swedish Post 
Office and state­owned manufacturing and engi­
neering businesses. There were also major art initia­
tives in the private sector.
In the context of housing policy, too, the public 
sector invested in art. Between 1965 and 1975 a mil­
lion homes were built under the so­called Million 
Homes Programme. These new neighbourhoods 
needed public art, which, it was hoped, would 
inspire residents to creative life patterns and 
personal creativity. A special programme of grants 
and loans for artistic projects in residential areas 
had been introduced in 1962 to supplement govern­
ment funding. The loan amount was equivalent to 
about one per cent of the construction costs. Pub­
lic and private property developers were eligible 
to apply for these loans in addition to government 
loans for residential construction. As the pace of 
construction slowed, funding arrangements were 
reviewed, and from 1985 onwards it was instead 
possible to obtain a government grant for up to 40 
per cent of the costs of an art project. The remain­
der could be made up by a loan on the same terms 
as the residential construction loan. 
Late 20th and Early 21st Century 
The 1990s brought far­reaching changes in public 
property management. Government­owned prop­
erties were hived off into arm’s­length property 
management companies. Legally speaking, build­
ing­related art belongs to the property for which 
it was created (Jordabalk 1970:994), but many art­
works consequently passed into new ownership. 
Although these artworks had been commissioned 
with public funds, the new owners often lacked 
the necessary expertise, supervision and financial 
resources to look after and preserve them in the 
long term.
In the late nineties, the role of the state in com­
missioning art changed after the Swedish parlia­
ment by decision emphasised government’s respon­
sibility to promote positive social values through 
good architectural and artistic design of public 
spaces, regardless of ownership (Ingen regel … 2013,
p. 42). Statens konstråd (Public Art Agency Swe­
den) was put in charge of funding public art in 
residential areas. The agency’s remit is to pursue 
public art projects in partnership with local and 
regional government and private property devel­
opers. These projects have taken various forms and 
involved a variety of partners. From 2015 to 2018, 
Statens konstråd is collaborating with local organ­
isations and civil society on artistic enhancements 
to residential neighbourhoods built under the 
Million Homes Programme, as these neighbour­
hoods undergo large­scale renovations (Proposition 
2014/15:1, p. 35–36). Thus the state’s commitment to 
a good living environment for all citizens contin­
ues, albeit in a somewhat different form from the 
original 1937 programme. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
144 
Problems and Challenges 
Management and Preservation 
So how does society treat building­related art­
works? How are they managed by their owners? 
Previous studies (Hermerén & Orrje 2014) painted 
a somewhat grim picture of the management situ­
ation. The ownership, management and oversight 
structures are often complex, to the detriment of 
conservation. In a national context, there is an 
absence of knowledge regarding the number, iden­
tity and location of public artworks. Many property 
owners are unaware as to the relevant laws, reg­
ulations and conservation­related considerations.
In addition, the legal safeguards for such art are 
weak, and oversight and management tools are 
non­existent. The study showed that there is fre­
quently a lack of knowledge regarding what needs 
to be done, and how, and sometimes even a lack 
of awareness that art is present in the building. 
Often, emergency action is taken after damage has 
already occurred, rather than long­term preven­
tive measures. Individual staff members often have 
detailed knowledge of artworks, but there is rarely 
any record of this. The financial capacity of prop­
erty owners to manage public art also varies widely. 
When ownership or management changes, the 
risks to artworks increase. Building­related art can 
be adversely affected by operational changes and 
the need for renovation of the surroundings every 
20–30 years. Another risk factor may be a lack of 
understanding of (contemporary) art on the part 
of property owners, managers, supervisory bodies 
and “users” close to the artwork. The study showed 
that contact between individual property owners or 
managers and conservation authorities may be the 
critical factor when it comes to long­term preserva­
tion, but that such contact is generally rare.
Although building­related artworks are wide­
spread in Sweden, they do not fall within the pur­
view of the heritage conservation authorities. What 
is more, there are extensive regional differences in 
attitudes to public art within the conservation sec­
tor and its regulatory authorities. Artworks are sel­
dom mentioned in connection with the processes 
governing planning, building and environmental 
protection at local level. When the surroundings 
change – through renovation, remodelling or new 
construction, for instance – how the artworks are 
treated is currently a matter of chance. As debates 
in the media concerning the demolition or modifi­
cation of properties containing building­related art 
show, there is a great and growing need for know­
ledge and evaluation methods. 
Methods and Strategies 
Evaluation 
What we consider worth preserving, how we eval­
uate it, and from whose perspective are all factors 
that can lead to different decisions concerning 
preservation and the relevant conservation options 
(Hermerén 2014, p. 96–97). These decisions affect 
whether and how building­related art is to be pre­
served, what methods and materials are to be used, 
which artefacts are to remain intact for future gen­
erations, and in what condition. The choices and 
the decisions made revolve around various values 
concerning authenticity, history, etc. It is important 
to highlight these choices, especially if decisions 
have to be made on which artefacts have priority, or 
if the consequences may restrict future choices and 
interpretive possibilities.
How should building­related art be evaluated? 
What values make an artwork worthy of preserva­
tion – in relation to other cultural artefacts and art­
works? What are the important factors: creator, 
location, materials, history, adjoining building, 
setting or activity? What do changes in the sur­
roundings, for instance, mean for the evaluation of 
the artwork? Do such changes have implications for 
how the work is preserved?
Swedish conservation legislation emphasizes 
“cultural heritage assets” as being especially deserv­
ing of preservation, especially if they are “particu­
larly noteworthy”. The definition of these assets 
is the subject of constant discussion in the Swed­
ish cultural heritage sector (e.g. Unnerbäck 2002, 
Schwanborg 2002, Fredengren, Jensen & Wall 
2012, Génetay & Lindberg 2014). The Cultural 
Heritage Act (Kulturmiljölag 1988:950) governs 
inspections, and it is possible to obtain assistance 
with additional conservation­related costs – includ­
ing for art and furnishings in the case of historic 
churches. Building­related art is not yet covered 
by this legislation, although in recent years the 
cultural heritage sector has started paying atten­
tion to 20th­century public art. This is timely, since 
change can happen quickly when buildings, spaces 
and environments are renovated or demolished. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
145 
If building­related art is instead evaluated as part 
of the built environment, it falls under the scope of 
the Planning and Building Act, which allows local 
authorities to incorporate safeguards in develop­
ment plans for historical, cultural heritage, envi­
ronmental or artistic reasons (Plan­ och bygglag 
2010:900). However, previous studies have shown 
that only in exceptional cases building­related art 
is considered on the basis of the building or setting 
in which it is located, perhaps because this is a new 
field within conservation (Hermerén & Orrje 2014).
From an art history perspective, too, there are 
difficulties. There is little in the way of academic 
art criticism on the subject of public art, and there 
are no venues equivalent to museums where the 
works can be considered in a wider context. If 
building­related art is to be considered “art” in legal 
terms, it ends up divorced from its setting, with the 
Copyright Act as its sole safeguard (Lag [1960:729] 
om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk). 
The Act applies for only 70 years after the artist’s 
death, and in the event of infringement of artistic 
reputation or individuality, the matter has to be 
pursued by the artist or a close associate. In the 
context of art and copyright, the concept of “dis­
tinctiveness” is often mentioned as a criterion, as a 
measure of quality and originality.
Legislation is an expression of what society
considers worth preserving and may also express 
how the assets are to be managed. In practice at 
present, management may be more akin to main­
tenance (e.g. repainting) than to the application 
of conservation principles in respect of materials 
and methods. In management terms, the artworks, 
like buildings, are complex structures requiring 
the involvement of multiple skillsets and organisa­
tions. Conserving a metal sculpture, for instance, 
may involve a crane operator, a metal conservator, 
a bricklayer, a project manager, a plumber and a 
blacksmith (Lindbom & Hermerén 2014, p. 14). 
Shortcomings from a conservation perspective
also emerge when an artwork has to be removed 
because of changes. Current practice (in a best­case 
scenario) is to document the work in photographs 
before dismantling, but this tells us nothing about, 
for example, painting technique, layer sequence or 
pigment choice. What does the location tell us? 
What does the work say about the artist? 
MARMORINSTARSIA/INTARSIA OF MARBLES (1955) by Endre 

Nemes, at Högsbo medborgarhus, Axel Dahlströms torg, 

Gothenburg, architects Sven Brolid och Jan Wallinder.
 
Photo: Karin Hermerén.
 
The lower part of the artwork is changed. The original stairs have 

been replaced by a slope to facilitate access, the groundcover has 

been changed and a bench is placed in front of it. The Planning and 

Building Act (PBL) regulates building permit procedures and should
 
have been used when permit was given for rebuilding of the space. 

The law protects buildings with historical, environmental or artistic 

values. The artwork is also protected under the Copyright Act, which 

prescribes that “a work may not be changed in a manner … prejudi-
cial to the … artistic reputation or ... individuality…” 

(Chapt 1, Article 3).
 
Authenticity 
Authenticity may be relevant to the conservation 
process, if by authentic we mean that something is 
what it claims to be, and if we believe that authen­
ticity is an important factor in how the work is 
viewed. We then make assumptions regarding the 
identity of the work and the artist’s original inten­
tion, and assume these are worth preserving.
What is considered “authentic” in building­re­
lated art from a cultural heritage perspective has 
yet to be defined. An artwork may change. The 
  
146 
LJUSBRYTNING/Breaking of light (1940), interior, mixed materials, by Alf Munthe, at Karolinska sjukhuset, Solna, architect 
Carl Westman. Photos: Karin Hermerén. 
GRÄNSBILD MELLAN MÖRKT OCH LJUST/ Limit between dark and light (1975), textile, by Lenke Rothman, at Ljusets kapell, 
Eslövs krematorium, Eslöv, architect Birger Larsson. 
Placement is important. An art object placed in a church or a chapel is protected by the Heritage Conservation Act, which protects 
both historic buildings and churches. There is an established inspection procedure offering some financial support and also, in the 
case of historic churches, for conservation of movable art or furnishings. If the same object were placed elsewhere, it would stand 
without all this. 
 147 
material may darken or fade, recent conservation 
efforts or maintenance may have an effect, or dam­
age may have occurred. Locations alter: build­
ings are demolished, vegetation grows taller, activ­
ities change. The location the artwork was once 
designed for may have vanished. Changes in these 
parameters may affect analysis, interpretation and 
evaluation – and preservation.
Access to knowledge is crucial to decision mak­
ing, as is the ability to distinguish between what we 
know and what we think we know. New knowledge 
may come to light, and what we believed to be true 
may turn out to be false – or a misconception. New 
methods affect our ability to ask and answer ques­
tions. Values and assessments are not static either, 
but change over time (Hermerén 2016, p. 9). 
Priorities 
A sound basis of knowledge regarding initial 
parameters and changes is therefore essential to 
decisions on the management of building­related 
art. Which artworks should be preserved? What is 
it important to preserve: the location, the setting 
or the work itself? What courses of action does our 
knowledge lead to? There are often several options. 
Should all damage be repaired? What purpose does 
preservation serve? What is to be preserved: original 
material, method used, work process, tool marks? 
How are the artworks to be preserved in the long 
term? What interventions do we need to consider? 
Decision making involves prioritisation: comparing 
different types of artefact and different values. How 
do we compare value? Does the fresco dating back 
thousands of years have the same value as a modern 
artwork – or political art? Does an artwork have 
the same value in a church as in an urban space? Is 
it even possible to compare artefacts in this way? 
It is sometimes said that art has eternal value. Are 
there eternal values, or are values always contempo­
rary? Perhaps artefacts can be said to have (a) a his­
torically defined value and (b) a relative value at any 
given time, where the only value that diminishes 
is the novelty value. The important point here is to 
distinguish between different types of value (artis­
tic, aesthetic, historical, social, sentimental, etc.). 
How changeable or eternal each is may depend on 
the value in question.
Who makes the selections and sets the priori­
ties for preservation? Who has the final say in the 
decision­making process? Whose values will pre­
vail? What people decide to do also depends on 
the courses of action open to them, how these are 
described, and the information available on the 
consequences of their choices. Different stakehold­
ers regard artworks in different ways. This is often 
evident in connection with public art, where the 
organisation commissioning the art and the users 
of the building or other facility may hold opposing 
views on the artwork and its value. It is therefore 
important to make clear who the stakeholders are, 
and to record and clarify what they wish to accom­
plish and avoid, in both the short and the long term 
– in other words, what their values are. 
It is also important to make clear which deci­
sions are taken by individuals and which by groups. 
Who decides this, and how are the representatives 
chosen? What mandate do they have? What consti­
tutes the “best interests” of the artwork, the own­
ers, or national and international cultural heritage? 
And how are those interests best accommodated? 
Conclusion 
The values we attach to an artefact affect the deci­
sions we make regarding its management – and 
may change if our knowledge and assessments 
change. Evaluation criteria sometimes pull us in 
different directions, and depending on the issue, we 
may have different ideas on how the criteria should 
be ranked. Our knowledge base, in which we try 
to distinguish what we know for certain from what 
is uncertain and the gaps in what we know, is not 
the sole basis for defining our approach to manag­
ing building­related art. We also need clearly for­
mulated value premises. In addition, the objectives 
associated with preserving the art need to be clearly 
laid out. Where are we headed, and what do we 
wish to avoid? Who are “we”? Whose objectives are 
these? Any obstacles between the status quo and 
the objective(s) should be tackled using a variety of 
strategies – and the criteria for comparing strategies 
have yet to be analysed.
There are major challenges involved in preserv­
ing building­related art and in devising methods 
for conservation, investigation, evaluation and doc­
umentation. These challenges also present opportu­
nities to manage systematically a new field of con­
servation for future generations. The issues to be 
addressed include the attitude of the cultural her­
itage sector to artistic values, how artistic features 
in various settings can be evaluated by the conser­
  
 
148 
vation authorities, and how the care requirements 
of the Planning and Building Act can be applied 
to public art. The key factors in the decision­mak­
ing and selection process with regard to preserva­
tion should also be analysed, as should the scope 
for institutional collaboration intended to equip us 
with greater knowledge of modern society’s cultural 
heritage. 
REFERENCES 
1965 års musei­ och utställningssakkunniga (1974). Offentlig
konst: överväganden och förslag beträffande konst i statliga bygg­
nader och lokaler. [Stockholm]: [Liber/Förlag].
Arbetsmiljölag (1977:1160) [Work Environment Act].
Fredengren, Christina, Jensen, Ola W. & Wall, Åsa (ed.) (2012). 
I valet och kvalet: grundläggande frågor kring värdering och urval 
av kulturarv. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet [Swedish 
National Heritage Board].
Génetay, Cissela & Lindberg, Ulf (2014). Plattform Kulturhisto­
risk värdering och urval [Electronic resource for cultural his­
tory evaluation and selection]: grundläggande förhållningssätt 
för arbete med att definiera, värdera, prioritera och utveckla 
kulturarvet. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet [Swedish 
National Heritage Board].
God konst i hem och samlingslokaler: Nationalmuseum 19 oktober–2 
december 1945 (1945). Exhibition Catalogue No. 115. Stockholm: 
Nationalmuseum. 
Hermerén, Karin (2014). Den utsatta konsten: att förvalta konst i 
offentlig miljö – etik, lagstiftning och värdeförändring. Licentiate
thesis. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2014.
Hermerén, Karin & Orrje, Henrik (2014). Offentlig konst: ett 
kulturarv – tillsyn och förvaltning av byggnadsanknuten konst. 
2nd, revised edition. Stockholm: Statens konstråd [Public Art 
Agency Sweden]. 
Hermerén, Karin (2016). Conservation: Increasing or Decreasing 
Value. ICOMOS. Publication pending.
Ingen regel utan undantag. Enprocentregeln för konstnärlig gestalt­
ning av offentlig miljö (2013). Stockholm: Konstnärsnämnden 
[Swedish Arts Grants Committee].
Jordabalk (1970:994) [Land Code].
Kulturmiljölag (1988:950) [Cultural Heritage Act].
Lag (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga 
verk [Copyright Act].
Lindbom, Jenni & Hermerén, Karin (2014). Riktlinjer för för­
valtning av offentlig konst. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet 
[Swedish National Heritage Board].
Plan­ och bygglag (2010:900) [Planning and Building Act]
Proposition 2014/15:1. Budgetpropositionen för 2015. Utgifts­
område 17: Kultur, medier, trossamfund och fritid [2015  
Budget Bill. Expenditure Area 17: Culture, Media, Religion 
and Recreation].
Schwanborg, Ingrid (2002). Kulturhistorisk karakterisering och
bedömning av kyrkor: en handledning för kulturmiljövården och 
Svenska kyrkan. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet [Swedish 
National Heritage Board].
Unnerbäck, R. Axel (2002). Kulturhistorisk värdering av bebyg­
gelse. 1st [edition]. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetets förl. 
[Swedish National Heritage Board]. 
  
149 
CISSELA GÉNETAY & ULF LINDBERG 
A contemporary approach to assessment 
and prioritisation of cultural heritage 
In the spring of 2015 the Swedish National Herit­
age Board launched the Platform for Cultural His­
torical Assessment and Prioritisation, a policy doc­
ument describing a fundamental approach to 
handling issues of assessment and prioritisation 
regarding cultural heritage.1 The platform is a result 
of the Swedish National Heritage Board’s devel­
oping project during the years 2011–2014. Some 
important point of departures were set out when 
the project started; the platform should focus on 
describing the process of assessment and prioritisa­
tion with emphasis on clarity, traceability and flex­
ibility and advocate decision­making founded on 
both theory and practice. Since the questions con­
cerning assessment and prioritisation of cultural 
heritage are of great interest among practitioners, 
policy­makers and academics, the project included 
a lot of people in various ways, as well inside as out­
side the Swedish National Heritage Board. That 
way of working gave a very important in­put and 
was crucial for the result. 
The approach described in the platform is 
thought to be a point of departure when assessing 
and prioritising all kinds of cultural heritage, from 
objects, remains, constructions and buildings to 
more complex environments and landscapes – and 
their tangible and intangible content. The platform 
is not a universal model or checklist that can be 
used to answer specific questions in a certain situa­
tion. For these cases specific methods can be devel­
oped that proceed from the approach described in 
the platform (see for example Mebus 20142).
The platform explains the meaning of and the 
difference between value and the process of assess­
ment. It also distinguishes between different 
aspects of assessment, which emanate from dif­
ferent fields of expertise. Furthermore, a reflected 
and structured working process is advocated, which 
raises awareness of the different steps and differ­
ent kinds of decisions within the process of assess­
ment and prioritisation, as well as the different 
factors that might, directly or indirectly, have influ­
ence on the work. The platform investigates com­
monly established concepts within the cultural her­
itage management and defines some of the most 
central concepts. 
Aspects of assessment 
The platform describes five fields of expertise or 
aspects of assessment that are frequently used in 
the cultural heritage management. These aspects 
are often confused or mixed up under various sub­
categories with the suffix -value and more or less 
ambiguous content referring to information, expe­
rience, attraction or rareness. The platform, how­
ever, recommends separate assessments and argu­
ments founded in respective field of expertise, for 
which it takes different kinds of relevant compe­
tence – within as well as outside the field of cul­
tural heritage management. Although the fields 
of expertise can be seen as partly overlapping they 
are mainly independent and can represent dif­
ferent kinds of interests and arguments. The cul­
tural historical aspects designate how different traits 
or characteristics in an object – a construction, a 
building, a complex environment or a landscape – 
reflect and can be seen as expressions of the dif­
ferent developments, events, contexts, periods of 
time, activities and viewpoints behind its origin 
and shaping. The aesthetical aspects are about fig­
uration and execution, shape, colour, function but 
also conditions regarding light, sound and smell. 
Social aspects concern people’s individual and col­
lective experiences of, relations to and desires for 
  
 
 
 
 
 
Kind of decision 
A. Descriptive 
- background, traits and 
characteristics 
~ Definition of the cultural 
historical context 
B. Analytical 
- knowledge, understanding, 
wholeness and cultu ral 
historical relevance 
~ Cultural historical 
assessment and gradation 
• C. Planning 
- conditions and threats 
~ Prioritisation regarding 
cultural historical values 
• D. Formal 
- regulations, finance, 
management, monitoring, 
evaluation and development 
~ Choice of instruments 
Answers questions 
What is there? 
What has happened? 
What is ref/ected? 
Which values & which 
grades af values? 
What is reasonable? 
What is possible? 
What toda? 
Howtodo? 
150 
THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF DECISIONS related to the work 

of assessment and prioritisation, sorted as four steps in a 

chronological process.
 
places and objects (not necessarily concerning cul­
tural heritage factors). Ecological aspects refer to the 
biological content and ecological function. Aspects 
regarding economy are founded on the economic 
importance for businesses, properties, society and 
environment. 
Process and influence factors 
The different kinds of decisions related to the work 
of assessment and prioritisation are in the platform 
sorted out and grouped into four separate steps that 
can be considered as a chronological “ideal image” 
of the process of cultural historical assessment and 
prioritisation. The descriptive step gathers deci­
sions regarding survey, demarcation and definition 
of the cultural historical context of, for example, an 
object, a construction, a building, a complex envi­
ronment or a landscape. The analytical step com­
prises assessment and grading of cultural histori­
cal values. The planning step contains prioritisations 
and considerations on the basis of what is reasona­
ble and possible. The formal step involves decisions 
about protection, conservation, finance, dissemi­
nation, monitoring, evaluation and development of 
the different values assessed to the object, construc­
tion, building, environment or landscape. 
The platform also describes different types of 
influence factors which are compiled and divided 
into four separate thematic categories. Steering con­
sists of, among other things, political objectives, 
regulations, organisation, the role of the customer, 
the purpose of the mission and its demarcation and 
resources. Knowledge concerns, for example, avail­
able competence, existent knowledge­base and 
its flaws. Demands illustrate claims and requests 
from public as well as private stakeholders and 
parties concerned. Change tackles conscious and 
unintended, fulfilled, on­going and forthcoming, 
changes of, for example, an object, a construction, 
a building, a complex environment or a landscape. 
It is important to be aware of and as far as possible 
account for what factors that can, in different ways 
and in different grades influence, and be influenced 
by, the work with assessment and prioritisation of 
cultural historical objects, remains, constructions,
buildings, complex environments or landscapes. 
Thus, it becomes easier to detect if, for example, an 
argument is founded on economic basis and avoid 
that to influence the assessment and grading of cul­
tural historical values. 
Concepts and meaning 
The platform investigates thoroughly several con­
cepts that are used within the cultural heritage 
management. Their background, meaning and use 
in legislation and its preparatory work is illustrated. 
The diverse and changed meaning of these con­
cepts in publications and practice is also problema­
tized. In order to increase the clarity and therefore 
the understanding of the arguments for cultural 
heritage clear definitions for the most important 
concepts within the cultural heritage management 
have been developed. Cultural heritage concerns
all kinds of, tangible and intangible, expressions 
(traces, remains, objects, constructions, places, sys­
tems, structures, activities, traditions, terminol­
ogy, knowledge etc.) of human influence. Cultural
 
 
 
 
 
lmpact: 
· time 
~ 
Regulations 
:90 
0~ 
Competenee 
8 
~O;: 
------:::::.--....:::::-- - Documents 
Cultural historical 
assessment and 
prioritisation 
8 
Stakeholders 
b<:, 
s ~<::' 
q,~ 
<:) 
151 
historical value concerns the possibilities (ascribed 
to cultural heritage) to obtain and communicate 
knowledge and understanding of different events, 
developments and contexts – and thereby human 
living conditions throughout all times, including 
the present. Cultural value concerns a combination 
of assessments on the basis of cultural historical, 
social and aesthetical aspects. 
Aspects of assessment regarding
buildings and built environments from
the post-war era and late 20th century – 
some examples from Swedish practice 
To enable fair considerations of prevalent inter­
ests and values in the buildings and built environ­
ments from the post­war era and late 20th century, 
it’s necessary to distinguish between the different 
aspects of assessment that have been recorded for 
previously in this article. These aspects derive from 
academic disciplines such as cultural history, sociol­
ogy, aesthetics, ecology and economy. The different 
aspects of assessment commonly represent different 
views and/or claims on the same features within a 
specific environment, building or object. Here are 
A MIND MAP illustrating the different
kinds of influence factors. 
some examples from Scandinavian city planning, 
where the process of assessment and prioritisation 
has been ambiguous or controversial. 
Brädstapeln, Stockholm, built 1972–77 
The complex Brädstapeln is situated in central 
Stockholm and was commissioned in the mid­
1970th by a large insurance company to cover their 
needs for one entire office for its 2000 employ­
ees. The architects were Anders Tengbom and 
Stefan Salomon. The Stockholm City Museum 
has assessed the complex and considers it to have 
very high cultural historical values. That decision 
is founded on professional judgement that ema­
nates from profound cultural historical knowledge. 
That kind of expertise is necessary for these assess­
ments and more knowledge is needed than just the 
direct experience a visit to the place can give. The 
Museum is a unit within the municipality of Stock­
holm, and it is also appointed as the consultation 
body regarding these kinds of assessments.
The complex consists of three contrasting build­
ings with different size, height and character. The
materials chosen and the execution reflect a high
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
152 
ambition in the architects’ work. The buildings are
gathered around and thus connected by a public park
which was designed by the Stockholm city gardener
Holger Blom. Several works of art are integrated
into the buildings and the park. The construction
plan of the interior reflects the ideology of the mid­
1970th regarding large scale solutions for offices and
the hexagonal form was seen as the ideal shape for
that purpose. It is the holistic approach concerning
the composition of the whole complex that shows
the 1970th thoughts on working environment on
one­hand, but on the other it also shows how a large
company wanted to manifest itself in the city and
build nearby other official buildings of high quality.3 
What happened with this assessment? Changes 
were proposed for this complex – changes that 
THE COMPLEX BRÄDSTAPELN.
 
Photo: Cissela Génetay, 

Swedish National Heritage Board, CC BY.
 
meant tearing down the lowest of the buildings and 
replacing it with a much taller building – which 
the Museum declined. The role of the Museum and 
the assessment was then questioned by one of the 
leading politicians, who were also responsible for 
the city planning. She argued that the assessments 
performed by the Museum had degraded and no 
longer had any importance and that the munici­
pality in the future would not pay any attention to 
them.4 That kind of remark is but a mere opinion 
expressed by someone without any cultural histor­
ical knowledge and it is crucial to meet such views 
with expertise and well sorted arguments that actu­
ally explain what the different characters stand for 
and how significant they are. Finally, the proposed 
changes were not realised, but now other plans of 
  
 
153 
changing the complex have emerged. So the story 
goes on…5 
Plankan, Stockholm, built 1964–68 
The complex Plankan is also situated in central 
Stockholm and it was commissioned by the munici­
pality of Stockholm in the mid­1960th for housing 
purposes. Architect was Lars Bryde. The Stock­
holm City Museum has assessed the complex and 
considers it to have high cultural historical values.6 
It consists of large­scale buildings surrounding a 
vast and open semi­public yard (designed by Holger 
Blom as in the complex Brädstapeln) with many 
plantations, bushes and trees, and small areas for 
play and recreation that together make a contrast 
towards the buildings. It is a well­executed whole­
THE COMPLEX PLANKAN. 
Photo: Cissela Génetay, 
Swedish National Heritage Board, CC BY. 
ness and typical example of public housing areas of 
the 1960th, representing the ideology of that time. 
Also for this complex some radical changes were 
proposed – a large round building (five stories and 
standing on six meter high pillars, containing about 
100 apartments) should be constructed in the yard. 
The inhabitants of the complex were strongly 
against the proposal since the new building would 
have an enormous impact on their living environ­
ment. The proposal went through a long juridical 
process in the Land and Environment Court of 
Appeal and finally it was decided that the building 
could be erected since the assessment of the City 
Historical Museum concluded that the cultural 
historical values were high, but not very high. 
 
 
 
154 
This is an example of how the arguments regard­
ing cultural historical values are interpreted in 
negotiations and who finally makes the considera­
tions (in this case, the court). 
Regjeringskvartalet (the Government 
quarter), Oslo, built 1906–2012 
Regjeringskvartalet covers an area in central Oslo, 
comprising several buildings successively erected 
for the offices of the Norwegian government from 
1906–2012. Some of Norway’s leading architects 
and artists have been involved in the creation pro­
cess. Very high cultural historical values have been 
assessed to Regjeringskvartalet, which is also con­
cluded in the government’s conservation plan from 
the spring of 2011.7 The motives for the assessment 
are the environment’s strong representation and 
legible reflection of the development of the govern­
ance of modern Norway. The buildings and out­
door areas reflect the societal and architectonic ide­
als as well as the shifting conditions for planning 
and regulation during different time periods. The 
conservation plan states to preserve the interiors 
and exteriors of six buildings as well as parts of the 
surrounding ground areas. The purpose is to pro­
tect the architecture, material use and details of the 
individual objects and at the same time the quali­
ties of the built environment as a whole. 
On 22 July 2011 a car bomb exploded in front of 
“The Cabinet Building” (a.k.a.The Highrise), kill­
ing eight people and injuring over 200 as well as 
ENDNOTES 
1. 	 Génetay, Cissela & Lindberg, Ulf, Plattform Kulturhistorisk 
värdering och urval, 2015, http://samla.raa.se/xmlui/handle/ 
raa/8235. 
2. 	 Mebus, Fabian, ed., Fria eller fälla – En vägledning för  
avvägningar vid hantering av träd i offentliga miljöer, 2014, 
http://samla.raa.se/xmlui/handle/raa/7812. 
3. 	 Decision made by the Stockholm City Museum on April 17th  
2009, registration number 4.6/2585/2009. 
4.	  Svenska Dagbladet May 19th 2009, http://www.svd.se/ 
k­markt­70­talshus­splittrar­alliansen. Accessed 31/07 2016. 
5. 	 The texts about the complexes Brädstapeln (p.4) and Plankan 
(p.5) are built upon mutual discussions in the seminar Bebyg
gelse – perspektiv från Sverige, held at the Swedish National 
Heritage Board’s Autumn Conference, November 12th 2015, 
http://www.raa.se/aktuellt/vara­evenemang/hostmote/ater­
blick­tidigare­hostmoten/aterblick­hostmote­2015/seminari­
um­3­bebyggelse­perspektiv­fran­sverige/. 
­
causing severe damage to some of the buildings. 
The attack has dramatically changed the situation 
regarding the future management and development 
of Regjeringskvartalet. The conservation plan has 
been revised8 and a new planning program has been 
adopted9. The complexity of the situation makes 
it very difficult to separate the arguments of the 
debate and to identify the influence factors behind 
the decisions made in the process. This was well 
concluded by the Norwegian journalist Magne 
Lerø; “Eventually we get a debate about taste and 
preference, about urban development, aesthetics, 
buildings worthy of conservation, areal claims, 
architectural perspectives and what is the best way 
to take care of the memory of the 22 July terror. It 
becomes a mixed bag of reasons and emotions”.10 
Conclusion 
These examples from Scandinavian practice illus­
trates the importance, but also the difficulties, 
of “keeping a clean process” i.e. to identify and 
account for existing influence factors, to separate 
and respectfully weigh between different aspects of 
assessment, to acknowledge competences and dif­
fer between profession and opinion. It is necessary 
for societal democracy and sustainability to avoid 
arbitrary and short sighted decisions. This is espe­
cially evident in times when community planning 
becomes less regulated by politics and more ruled 
by market interests. 
6.	  Decision made by the Stockholm City Museum on April 28th  
2009, registration number 4.6/2594/2009. 
7. 	 Særtrykk av verneforslaga i samband med lvp FAD for  
Departementskontora, 28 juni 2012, https://www.regjeringen.
no/globalassets/upload/fad/vedlegg/bst/verneplan_dep.pdf. 
Accessed 31/07 2016. 
8.	  Regjeringskvartalet – Riksantikvarens utredning om verne­
verdi og ny bruk, 2013, accessible as pdf­file at site http://
www.riksantikvaren.no/Tema/Klimaendringene­og­kultur­
minner/Publikasjoner­og­lenker. Accessed 31/07 2016.
9. Nytt regjeringskvartal – planprogram statlig reguleringsplan 
med konsekvensutredning 13.06.2016, https://www.regjerin­
gen.no/contentassets/987e3ef1a0134884852a30f25d243510/plan­
program_nytt_regjeringskvartal.pdf. Accessed 31/07 2016.
10. Magne Lerø, ed., Dagens Perspektiv, April 27th 2015, http://
www.dagensperspektiv.no/riv­hoyblokka. Accessed 31/07 
2016. Quote translated into English by Ulf Lindberg. 
  
 
 
155 
RIIT TA SALASTIE 
Policy making – Preservation Methodologies for
the Modern Built Cultural Heritage in Helsinki 
Introduction
The theme of this paper is policy making for the 
modern built cultural heritage in Helsinki. In the 
past years a number of approaches and practices 
have been developed in the context of urban con­
servation in Helsinki. One of the key motors has 
been the rise of Modern in the focus of urban con­
servation. Aside protective town plans these pol­
icies involve proactive inventories and in­depth 
preservation surveys, new type of assessment and 
evaluation methodologies as well as tailored repair 
guidelines especially for the built cultural heritage 
of the post­war period. 
When compared to other European capitals 
with their medieval city centres, Helsinki is a rel­
atively young city, where the share of historical 
buildings is exceptionally low: less than one per­
cent of buildings are built before the 20th cen­
tury. In other words, most of the buildings are built 
in the last century. So when we are discussing the 
policy making in Helsinki, we are speaking very 
much of the preservation of the modern heritage. 
PUU-KÄPYLÄ, illustration for the restoration of overgrown courtyards. Landscape architect office Loci /Helsinki City Planning Department. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
156 
Modern heritage is an integral part of Helsinki’s 
urban identity not only through the legacy of Alvar 
Aalto’s works, but also through the works of many 
less known but talented planners and architects. 
One example of this is the many fine post­war sub­
urban housing areas outside the historical city cen­
tre of Helsinki. 
From Monuments to Everyday Heritage 
The first larger area to be protected was Puu­ 
Käpylä, a wooden housing area from 1920s that the 
City of Helsinki initially wanted to demolish, but 
which was protected in 1974 after a heated preser­
vation fight. This fight itself marked the beginning 
of urban preservation in Helsinki as it is practiced 
today. The town plan is still surprisingly up to date 
with protected courtyards, wooden buildings and 
even protected interiors. The buildings and large 
common courtyards were for the first time reno­
vated in 1970s. Today a second generation repair 
and restoration process in the municipally owned 
housing companies is taking place. The relevancy 
of 1970s renovation and discussion on appropriate 
conservation methods are now topical in a situation 
where we find courtyards with overgrown trees and 
the original 1920s layout of gardens degrading. 
Since the protection of Puu­Käpylä, the focus of 
urban preservation has been not only in individual 
buildings but also in the preservation of larger areas 
and environments, in other words, in the built cul­
tural heritage as a whole. Today aside historical 
monuments, ordinary buildings as well as their ver­
nacular urban settings are being preserved as exam­
ples of the development of society and the historical 
layers of the city. Single­family housing areas from 
the post­war reconstruction period as well city’s 
industrial heritage are now sites for preservation, 
in very much the same way as monuments were in 
the previous periods. Interiors, roof landscapes and 
modern school buildings have become objects of 
cultural historical assessment and protection. Aside 
repair and restoration, conversion and infill build­
ing are indispensable part of the urban preserva­
tion today.
In the Finnish planning system the major legal 
protection tool are the land use plans. The urban 
preservation, as integral part of the town planning 
processes, takes place through rounds of public 
consultation and in cooperation with the City 
Museum and other municipal authorities. The 
MAUNULA WITH SAHANMÄKI – one of the post-war urban 
settlements now preserved through a protective town plan. 
Maanmittauslaitos / Helsinki City Planning Department. 
number of protected buildings has doubled com­
pared to the beginning of 1990s, due to the active 
urban preservation policies and the increasing 
awareness among the public. Today there are over 
4 000 buildings and 2 000 cultural historical sites 
in Helsinki that are protected by land use plans. 
The volume of preservation is increasing every year. 
With the increasing number of protected heritage 
also the concept and content of urban conservation 
has radically changed.
The Rise of Modern in the Focus 
of Urban Preservation 
Since 1990s the focus of policy making has moved 
from the oldest, historical building stock to a more 
recent, Modern heritage. Modern represents a 
growing area of protection, which substantially 
increases the potential number of protected build­
ings and sites. Practically every town plan nowa­
days involves some degree of historic preservation 
and a remarkable number of this is modern her­
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
157 
itage. With this process also the understanding 
for what is worth to be protected and the methods 
of protection has grown. The protection rules are 
often minute, extend from landscape and town 
planning entities to details and describe the aim of 
protection in a very tangible way.
A kind of watershed in the policy making was 
the Helsinki Master Plan 2002, where a large num­
ber of suburban settlements from 1940s to 1970s 
were identified and their cultural historical signifi­
cance recognized. Among them were four DOCO­
MOMO­areas: Pihlajamäki, a mass housing area 
from 1960s; the Helsinki Olympic Village from 
1930s; Sahanmäki from 1950s and Taka­Töölö 
from 1930–1950s. Among these, the Olympic Vil­
lage, Sahanmäki and Pihlajamäki have today an up 
to date protective town plans – Pihlajamäki being 
the first mass­housing area from 1960s and a radi­
cally new type of urban heritage that has achieved 
official preservation status so far. 
Today the policy making in Helsinki can be 
divided into three major areas that support each 
other: 
• Proactive identification and assessment 
of tangible characteristic sand cultural 
historical significance: inventories, in depth 
preservation surveys, evaluation and assessment. 
• KNOWLEDGE, KNOW HOW: repair guidelines. 
• LEGAL PRTOTECTION: Master and detail plans, 
special building conservation laws (marginal). 
In this paper Pihlajamäki is discussed as an example
of the evaluation and protection processes for the
newer layers of modern heritage. In Helsinki Pihla­
jamäki has been a pioneering pilot project both as
to the methods of assessment as well as the pioneer­
ing quality of its preservation. The project has been
presented in the Finnish Architecture 0607­exhibi­
tion organized by the Museum of Finnish Archi­
tecture (www.MFA.fi). In the end this paper dis­
cusses the role of in­depth preservation surveys and
repair guidelines. They illustrate new approaches
that have been developed especially for the preser­
vation of the suburban post­war heritage. Through
them the emphasis of urban preservation has moved
from abstract town scape values to the preservation
of tangible attributes and characteristics. Aside pro­
tecting and keeping essential values, repair guide­
lines guide the necessary technical improvements
such as renewal of infrastructure.
Contradictions and Paradoxes of
Modern Preservation 
The preservation process of Pihlajamäki’s 1960’s 
mass housing area illustrates contradictions and 
paradoxes when trying to preserve this radically 
new type of urban heritage. The protective town 
plan together with repair guidelines was approved 
by the Helsinki City Planning Committee in 2006. 
The cultural historical significance of the area 
had, however, been proactively recognized already 
ten years earlier, when the area was chosen in the 
national DOCOMOMO­register in the early 1990s. 
In Pihlajamäki the historicity or authenticity 
could not be used as the starting point for renova­
tion and conservation in the same way as in urban 
sites of earlier periods. When the preservation pro­
cess began, 70% of the facades had already lost their 
authenticity through later, often unskilfully made 
repairs such as new aluminium windows or addi­
tional insulation layers or renderings on the rein­
forced concrete slab facades. The first repairs to 
facades were made already soon after the construc­
tion period was finished. The repairs have meant 
radical changes to facades, loss of their minimalis­
tic 1960s architecture and their cultural historical 
value. 
The documentation material gathered 
during the inventory and planning process was 
extensive and offers interesting material for 
discussion also in the context of this conference. 
Many of the principles that are recommended 
in the Madrid Document (2012) had to be solved 
and tested in a pioneering way. The preserva­
tion survey (Salastie et al. 2002), that preceded 
the protection plan, took more than five years 
to accomplish and was compiled as an interdis­
ciplinary survey by a wide range of profession­
als such as experts in architecture and land­
scape architecture history including the analysis 
of the original 1960s town plans, municipal 
green area plans and the study of fore builds 
and parallels, in Finland and abroad. As one of 
the key documents became the Landscape Sur­
vey (Sinkkilä, Timonen 2002), which raised the
integration with the landscape as one of the essen­
tial values. Accordingly, the original landscape 
vision of Pihlajamäki – the 1960s forest city ide­
ology – was adapted as the starting point and 
guiding principle for the preservation plan and 
aside buildings, the surrounding landscape,
  
 
158 
THE LARGE SCALE SCULPTURAL form of Pihlajamäki was intended
to be seen from the air. The planner, architect Lauri Silvennoinen 
had worked as fighting pilot during the war. Helsinki City Planning
Department. 
THE MINIMALISTIC 1960S ARCHITECTURE is lost through later 
repairs. Sari Saresto, Helsinki City Museum. 
the woods, rocks and forested areas, were pre­
served as important features of 1960s built cul­
tural heritage.
One of the biggest challenges was the technical 
deterioration of the reinforced concrete slab facades 
which can be repaired only by rebuilding or adding 
an extra layer on them. The problem in the repair 
of concrete slabs was thus not so much the lack of 
professional experience or know how in their repair, 
but the sheer fact that it was technically impossible 
to conserve or repair them in any traditional sense. 
As a result of the evaluation process the empha­
sis of preservation was laid in the restoration of the
original design idea rather than preserving original 
material or concrete panels themselves. 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
159 
The repair guidelines (Salastie, Tainio 2007) 
that were made in connection with the protective 
town plan had to be compiled on case by case basis, 
depending on different wall­panel types and their 
repair histories. This work itself took one year to 
accomplish. Even though Pihlajamäki was orig­
inally built using industrial building methods, 
there was no single repair method appropriate 
for the entire area ­ a paradox in itself. The col­
our guideline (Salastie 2007), which was compiled 
for the HAKA sub­area, is based on the original 
Kolorit­colour cards from 1960s which were found 
during the inventory process from architect Sulo 
Savolainen (b. 1933), one of the original designers 
of the area. He is still living in the area in the 
experimental terrace house designed by him. 
Along with the iconic black and white Pihlajamäki 
depicted in the photos from the building time, 
another image now emerged in which colour plays 
an important role enabling the restoration of origi­
nal 1960s colour scheme even up to the kitchen cab­
inets. Since the protective town plan has come into 
effect some of the original colours have also been 
restored with good success for instance in some 
HAKA towers.
Both traditional and new approaches were nec­
essary to protect the relevant values of Pihlajamäki. 
This was due to the industrial building methods 
(slab walls) as well as the urban concept of the 
modern heritage itself. Aside mere conservation, 
the protection of Pihlajamäki has been a revitaliz­
ing process, an effort to bring back essential values: 
the protective town plan contains infill building in 
some critical spots such as shopping centre and one 
empty spot that has been unfinished since the con­
struction period.
Preserving Intangible Values
through Tangible Characteristics 
The destruction of the architectural quality due 
to over­repair or alterations in original details and 
materials, such as installation of new “care­free” 
aluminium windows, is often even a bigger threat 
to the built heritage than over­eager demolition 
was fifty years ago. Renewal of water pipe and elec­
tricity lines together with the new energy efficiency 
and barrier free environment ­standards are topi­
cal issues that often lead to unwanted changes and 
interventions. The modern heritage with its few 
but delicate details is especially vulnerable to such 
changes. The insensitive change of even one detail 
can destroy the architectural integrity of the whole 
neighbourhood. An important role in the proactive 
identification and protection of the heritage play 
today in­depth preservation surveys that Helsinki 
City Planning Department together with other 
municipal authorities has developed and initiated 
especially for post­war urban settlements. Initially 
combined with repair guidelines these surveys pro­
vide not only a tailored, in­depth analysis of intan­
gible and tangible characteristics of each settle­
ment, but through guidelines necessary repairs and 
technical improvements can be met in terms of the 
context of preservation. This means: they are linked 
to both methods of evaluation and methods of 
repair, renewal and conservation. 
In Helsinki such guidelines and in­depth sur­
veys cover already from 12 to 13 post­war neigh­
bourhoods. In some cases we speak already of sec­
ond or even third generation preservation surveys.
Although lacking legal status theses surveys are one
example of good policy making practices. Their aim
is not only to raise awareness of the values and char­
acteristics of the built cultural heritage, but also,
to give tangible tools how to protect what is essen­
tial and worth to be preserved. The emphasis in the
guidelines is in the cautious intervention (In Finn­
ish: varovainen korjaaminen). This means: avoid­
ance of unnecessary demolishing or destruction of
original building parts, application of traditional
repair techniques and respect for original materials
and details. Aside buildings, the analysis of land­
scape and green courtyards is an important part of
these surveys. Typical themes for courtyard analysis
are, for example, surface and plant materials, land­
scaping and design principles, courtyard furniture,
lightning and other relevant issues. This way guide­
lines function not only as a reference point for reno­
vation but also as a kind of design manual.
At the present moment the city planning para­
digms are in a radical process of change. The new 
Helsinki Master Plan 2050 approved this autumn 
aims – among other things – at a radical densifica­
tion of suburban settlements. The forest city ide­
ology is questioned again and seen as outdated – if 
not a totally negative concept, at least anti­urban. 
The idea of demolishing has become a positive con­
cept and absorbed as part of city planning toolkit 
with densities that are even fourfold compared to 
what originally was built. The idea of urban streets 
   
 
 
IKKUNAT 
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160 
COVER PAGE, the Helsinki Olympic Village Repair Guidelines (2015). 
and dense urban blocks is being brought to areas 
whose planning was based on completely different 
ideologies. 
Conclusion 
This paper discusses policies that the City of Hel­
sinki has initiated especially in relation to the con­
servation of the post­war Modern heritage. As 
the paper shows, there are now a large number of 
in­depth surveys and repair guidelines and the cul­
tural historical significance of many post­war urban 
settlements have been recognized. Some of the key 
settlements in the history of Finnish Modern hous­
ing architecture have also got an official preserva­
tion status through protective town plans. The pro­
cess has meant a re-evaluation of some of the key 
values of the modern post­war heritage: the inte­
gration of the buildings with the landscape and 
the re­evaluation of the Finnish forest city ideol­
ogy. It remains to be seen how the shift of para­
digm brought with the new Master Plan will affect 
on these policies. 
REFERENCES 
Docomomo Architectural Master Pieces of Finnish Modernism – 
Modernismin erkkiteoksia Suomen arkkitehtuurissa. 2002.  
Helsinki: Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA).
Helsinki Master Plan 2050. (2016). Helsinki: City Planning  
Department. 
Madrid Document. (2012). Madrid: ICOMOS International 
Scientific Committee on the 20th Century Heritage.
Salastie, Riitta et al. (2003). Pihlajamäen arvot ja aatteet –  
suojelun viitekehystä hakemassa. (Re­evaluation of Pihlajamäki 
­ Approaches to Assessment). Helsinki: City Planning  

Department. 

Salastie, Riitta, Karisto, Maria et al. (2015). Olympiakylän
korjaustapaohjeet (Repair Guidelines for the Helsinki Olympic 
Village). Helsinki: City Planning Department. 
Salastie, Riitta, Tainio Mikko. (2007). Pihlajamäen korjau­
stapaohjeet (Pihlajamäki Repair Guidelines. Helsinki: City 
Planning Department.
Salastie, Riitta. (2007). Värillä on väliä (Color Guideline for 
HAKA sub­area in Pihlajamäki). Helsinki: City Planning 
Department.
Sinkkilä, Jyrki, Timonen, Heta. (2003). Pihlajamäen maisemasel­
vitys (Pihlajamäki Landscape Survey). Helsinki: City Plan­
ning Department. 
161 
Outside the conference programme 
162
 
163 
NILS MEYER 
Architecture of the 1960s and 
1970s on Kiel University Campus 
– Heritage Value and Assessment 
In 2008, significant parts of the campus of Kiel’s 
Christian Albrecht University (CAU) dating from 
the period after 1945 were listed as historic mon­
uments and placed under protection. Their listing 
provoked major protests from politicians, the uni­
versity’s administration and parts of the student 
body and led to a wide­ranging debate known as 
the ‘Kiel Heritage Conflict’. So as to place the dis­
cussion on a factual basis and provide a systematic 
set of guidelines for future architectural interven­
tions, the listed university buildings were thor­
oughly documented and their value assessed in 
2009–2010.1 The purpose of these efforts was to 
sort out as well as simplify the treatment of this 
extensive and heterogeneous group of buildings in 
accordance with accepted preservation principles; 
the principal instrument for achieving this goal was 
a preservation action plan. 
CAU NEW CAMPUS. Bird’s eye view (from left to right): university library (background), lecture theatre (foreground), 
shop area (background) university church (background), student house and studio stage. Photo: Nils Meyer. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
164 
The ‘Kielische University’ was founded in 1665 by 
Duke Christian Albrecht of Schleswig­Holstein­
Gottorp (1641–1695). Known as the ‘Christiana 
Albertina’, it was housed in the Heilig­Geist­Hos­
pital, a former Franciscan monastery in a city cen­
tre location. 
Schleswig­Holstein’s annexation by Prussia in 
1864, though reducing the duchy to a Prussian 
province, reinvigorated the University and led to 
its structural expansion. Most significant was the 
construction of the university building in the park 
of Kiel Palace, built between 1873 and 1876 to the 
designs of Berlin architects Martin Gropius (1824–
1880) and Heino Schmieden (1835–1913).
During the Second World War, the university 
buildings sustained heavy damage between 1942 
and 1944, resulting in the evacuation of the Insti­
tutes. By the end of the Second World War, the 
university had lost 60% of its building stock, among 
these the main building, the ruins of which were 
blown up in 1954, its rubble not being cleared until 
1956. 
Despite these losses, Kiel was able to maintain 
its tradition as a university city. In August 1945, 
Schleswig­Holstein’s British military governor 
ordered buildings of the Third Reich’s arms firm 
Electroacustic K.G., known as ELAC, located
north of the city centre, to be re­purposed for the 
Christian­Albrechts­University, a deadline for the 
reopening of the entire university being set for 
November 1945. In the ensuing years, the ELAC
buildings were refurbished, modified and extended 
for use by the university.
The first expansion plans, drawn up by the 
Regional Office for Construction in 1949, envisaged 
both development potential for the ELAC site, 
as well as a southerly expansion of the university 
beyond Olshausenstrasse. A perpetuation of the 
architectural style of the ELAC site was foreseen 
both in terms of the buildings themselves and their 
relationship with their urban surroundings.
While the ELAC site was to be further expanded 
to include institutes, other plans were drawn up for 
the new development land – above all to provide 
student accommodation, apartments for teaching 
staff as well as a shopping area along the West 
Ring. In doing so, the aim was to create a closed 
university area along the lines of an Anglo­Saxon 
university campus. But there were as yet no signs 
within this first master plan of the guiding princi­
ples of a modern, urban development with an open, 
green layout.
In 1956, with the submission of a further study 
plan, the New Forum did show the first signs of 
becoming an ‘open’ campus site. ‘Modern’ buildings 
were now envisaged, such as a high­rise adminis­
tration building, with a lecture theatre and student 
house as well as institutes, while eschewing resi­
dential buildings altogether. Planners largely gave 
up the urban relationship to the ELAC site, efforts 
being made instead to develop a modern architec­
tural language. Not until 28 May 1956 did the uni­
versity agree on a ten­year plan for the expansion 
of the university2, which precluded a return to the 
centre of Kiel. At the same time, it was decided to 
construct a new main lecture hall to replace the old 
one. 
The student house with its standalone studio 
stage by Friedrich Wilhelm Kramer was built 
between 1963 and 1966 on the southern edge of 
the Forum. This was followed in 1965 by the com­
pletion of the university church3 on the south­east 
corner of the site to a design by the Egon­Eier­
mann students Weidling, Weidling and Kettner. 
The university library, built between 1960 and 1966 
by Günther Schween, completes the eastern side of 
the University Forum. Serving as the architectural 
and functional heart of the ensemble, the main lec­
ture hall was built between 1965 and 1969 as the 
final building to the designs of Wilhelm Neveling, 
with a shopping area added in 1972. As a building 
ensemble directly bordering the University Forum 
to the south­east, the so­called ‘village green4 
buildings provide their own urban signature. The 
serially built institute buildings with their individ­
ual lecture buildings were designed, planned and 
built by the Kiel State Building Authority II in 
cooperation with the architects Ernst Stoffers and 
Otto Schnittger.
The striking, towering university high­rise build­
ing both defines and borders the university’s New 
Forum and stands as a self­confident architectural 
statement vis­à­vis the post­war rebuilding of the 
new Kiel University. Planned by Ellen Krotz, it was 
erected between 1959 and 1964. The nearby, low­rise 
lecture building is a cohesive structure imbued with 
both transparency and restraint.
The Kiel student house5, with its adjacent studio 
stage built between 1963 and 1966 to plans by 
Friedrich Wilhelm Kraemer, is one of the New 
  
 
165 
Forum’s central buildings. With its visible ferro­ 
concrete construction, this two­storey structure is 
built on a rectangular ground plan. The canteen 
lies at the core of one part of the building, with its 
attached atrium courtyard bordered by three wings. 
The set­back lower level, predominantly behind 
free­standing concrete studding, gives the build­
ing’s block­like upper level an impression of float­
ing lightness and elegance. The organic design of 
CAU NEW CAMPUS. High-rise administration
building, with lecture theatre. Photo: Lande-
samt für Denkmalpflege Schleswig-Holstein. 
CAU LECTURE THEATRE, large lecture theatre.
Photo: T. Kiepke. 
the atrium by Wolfgang Roedenbeck creates a ter­
race­like open space and publicly accessible ‘court­
yard landscape’, containing geometrically arranged
benches, stepped plant beds and a large fountain. 
The studio stage, with its monolithic hexagonal 
structure, stands like a sculpture on the campus. 
To a large degree it has remained unchanged, still 
maintaining its interior fittings. 
166 
CAU NEW CAMPUS. University church. Photo: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Schleswig-Holstein (top left) and Nils Meyer (top right). 
CAU SPORTS FORUM. Indoor swimming pool. Photo Nils Meyer. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
167 
The construction of the student house was
accorded the highest urgency, so much so that
Schleswig­Holstein’s state government, together
with the student union, set up a design competition
with a prize. A prize was also offered for the design
of the main lecture hall. In the end, the jury decided
to split the first and second prizes equally, awarding
them to the architects Neveling and Kraemer.
As a stand­alone building, Kiel University’s main 
lecture hall6 makes a striking urban statement in its 
central location within the new University Forum. 
With the towering high­rise slab serving as a back­
drop to the west, and framed to the south and east 
by the restrained and widely­spaced blocks of the 
student house and library, the main lecture hall, 
with its hexagonal, sculptural structure opens onto 
Olshausenstrasse. The low­rise shopping area along 
the West Ring was built as a perimeter to protect 
against road noise, while nonetheless ensuring the 
creation of vistas and passageways into the Uni­
versity Forum. The lecture hall’s hexagonal ferro­ 
concrete skeleton, with its suspended concrete 
slab frontage, which contrasts with the triangular 
expanses of glass, the set­back glazed ground floor 
and similarly triangular roof surfaces, creates a dis­
tinct sculptural effect. Neveling’s design draws on 
the geometric triangular and hexagonal forms. He 
consciously incorporates this motif throughout the 
building: from the ground plan down to the tiniest 
detail of the façades and roof. Wilhelm Neveling 
was influenced among others by the architecture 
of Hans Scharoun and his Berlin Philharmonic 
building.
With the construction of the university library7 
from 1960–66, a further important functional 
building was added to the ensemble. In an urban 
design sense, the library represents the Forum’s 
completion to the west, creating a spatial counter­
part to the vertical dominance of the high­rise uni­
versity building. Designed by the Hamburg archi­
tect Günther Schween, the building is a low­rise 
building of three­storeys on a rectangular ground 
plan with a fully­glazed, set­back ground floor. 
Its compact, cubic form is softened by two inner 
courtyards. The building is lent its creative appeal 
through the nuanced interplay of flat concrete block 
cladding and glazed zones. Inside, the upper floor 
is dominated by the imposing former catalogue 
and reading room, with its suspended galleries and 
generously proportioned stairway. 
Planned and built between 1966 and 1976 by the 
Hamburg architects von Gerkan, Marg and Nick­
els, the sports forum is among the most important 
of the post­war university buildings. Not until 1965 
the new design for Kiel University’s sports centre 
could be implemented, although demands had 
already been made as early as the 1950s for the con­
struction of a building to replace the Physical Edu­
cation Institute, which had been destroyed in 1944. 
The sports forum was built on a 40 hectare parcel of 
land earmarked for the university’s expansion, a site 
lying to the west of the campus and to the north of 
Olshausenstrasse. 
The architectural value of the ensemble, and of 
the individual buildings comprising the New Uni­
versity Campus, lies in particular in their modern 
appearance, typical of their time. Apart from 
their large expanses of glass, the façades are con­
structed principally of concrete, shaped into the 
most diverse forms. Many of the ground floor areas 
give the impression of being optically transparent 
and open, thanks to the elevation of the upper 
floors and the incorporation of large, cut­out open­
ings. Of particular value is the modern concept of 
‘flowing’ space, which can be seen in the interplay 
between interior and exterior, as well as in the spa­
cious interiors themselves, which effortlessly flow 
into each other, occasionally over several storeys. 
Among these special interiors are the catalogue and 
reading room of the old university library, the foyer 
and the interactions of the main lecture hall, the 
access space for the small lecture theatre, the foyer 
of the university high­rise building, the church 
interior as well as the stage and auditorium room of 
the studio stage with its lower foyer. Also included 
in the list are the lecture theatres located in the 
main lecture hall and small lecture theatre. 
The construction of the buildings of the New 
Campus, as well as the arrangement of their rooms 
and interior design, have a clarity typical of their 
time, using a reduced palette of materials which are 
nonetheless of high quality. When each individual 
architectural expression and function is considered 
in the context of the whole, a series of identical or 
similar design elements of architectural value can 
invariably be found within the building ensemble.
Today, the individually conceived, often very 
large buildings of the campus state can be found 
in various states of originality. While the student 
house and the university library have been subject 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
168 
to major modifications, thereby compromising their 
original design concept, other buildings such as 
the main lecture hall or the small lecture theatre 
building have survived relatively unscathed. Even 
in these buildings though, the high quality of the 
original structures are now under threat above all 
through poor planning and uncoordinated main­
tenance, renovation and reconstruction measures. 
ENDNOTES 
1.	 Astrid Hansen and Nils Meyer: Universität als Denkmal.  
Der Campus der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel.  
Beiträge zur Denkmalpflege in Schleswig­Holstein Volume 1. 
Kiel 2011. ISBN: 978­3­86935­040­0.
2. Landesarchiv Schleswig­Holstein (LASH), Abt. 47, No. 4073: 
Volume 1, 1956–1960. 
3. Braunert, Horst: Die Universitätskirche. In: Christiana  
Albertina. Kieler Universitätszeitschrift I (1966), p.17–19.
4. Jaeger, Rudolf: Die Angerbauten. In: Christiana Albertina. 
Kieler Universitätszeitschrift I (1966), p.1–11. 
Therefore, the above mentioned target plan 
comprises a uniform and structured collection of 
recommendations, illustrations, plans and infor­
mation. This work serves both as basic information 
and as a foundation for further studies regarding 
the monuments’ evaluation and can be put to use 
as a coordinated instruction manual for subsequent 
dealings with the State Office for the Preservation 
of Monuments. 
5. Kraemer, Friedrich Wilhelm: Strukturen der Architektur 
– Studentenhaus in Kiel. In: Detail (1968), Sonderdruck, 
p.233–248. See also LASH, Abt. 47, No. 4074 – Studentenhaus 
– Aufbaupläne. 
6. LASH, Abt. 47, No. 4087: Bauentwurf für den Neubau des 
Hörsaalgebäudes am Westring (Auditorium Maximum, 
1965–1966) 
7.	 Krotz, Ellen: Universitätsbibliothek Kiel. In: Die Bauverwal­
tung 5 (1967), p.220–223. See also: LASH, Abt. 47, No. 2842. 
  
 
 
 
169 
HANNU MATIKKA, CHAIR 
Working Group Coastal Heritage 
In a time of increasing tension between East and 
West in Europe it is more important than ever to 
communicate and promote the cultural and histori­
cal ties between the Nordic countries and the coun­
tries of the Baltic Sea Region.
In June 2016 a historic ship called Gamle Oksoy 
started her voyage and travelling exhibition from 
Bergen, Norway, to visit ports and meet the public 
in eight countries around the Baltic Sea. Onboard 
there were exhibitions and film screenings focus­
ing on maritime heritage and coastal culture of the 
Region. The initiative behind the voyage came from 
the Working Group on Coastal Heritage within 
the Baltic Sea Cultural Heritage Cooperation. 
The most important goal of the voyage was to 
inspire the development of partnership between 
museums, cultural heritage institutions and NGOs 
in the participating countries, and to show the his­
torical relations between the people of the region. 
Thousands of guests visited Gamle Oksoy during 
her voyage.
A movie, The Baltic – a sea of connections, was 
made out of the voyage, and the film had its pre­
miere at the 6th Baltic Sea Region Cultural Her­
itage Forum in Kiel in September 2016. In addi­
tion all WG members produced a selection of short 
films, the idea of which is to tell stories about the 
most important, acute or otherwise interesting top­
ics picked up by the WG members themselves. All
films are available on the service www.coastlight.
net and also on Baltic Region Heritage Commit­
tee’s (BRHC) website.
In addition to the films and the voyage the WG 
produced Baltic Seascapes – booklet. The idea of 
the booklet is to promote Baltic Sea Region mari­
time heritage and coastal culture. All members of 
the WG contributed to the content of the booklet 
either by writing the texts or sourcing suitable illus­
trations and photographs for the publication. The 
WG hopes that those familiarized themselves with 
the booklet will understand the concept of Sea­
scape differently and will get a broader understand­
ing of maritime and coastal heritage across the Bal­
tic Sea Region. The Baltic Seascapes – booklet can 
be downloaded from the BRHC’s website. 
The Voyage was financially supported by the Arts
Council Norway, and The Nordic Cultural Found
granted aid for the production of the booklet. 
MS GAMLE OKSOY. Photo: Jan Robert Jore (CC-BY-ND). 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6th8altic Sta Region Ctiftural Htrita.ge forum '" Klel 2016: 
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170 
SALLAMARIA TIKKANEN, CHAIR 
Working Group Underwater Cultural Heritage
The theme of the Forum, From Postwar to Post­
modern – 20th Century Built Cultural Heritage, 
was challenging but also inspiring for the members 
of the underwater cultural heritage working group. 
The simple reason for this is that our common daily 
work concerns mainly older shipwrecks located 
under water. But how can the theme be applied to 
the underwater cultural heritage? We wanted to 
raise questions and points of views, to activate visi­
tor’s own thinking and to lure citizens to find more 
information. The main questions without precise 
answers were: 
• How can the theme Postwar and Postmodern  
be applied on the underwater cultural heritage? 
• How is modern underwater heritage protected 
legally?
• How can memories of war and modern maritime 
disasters be handled respectfully? 
• What is the legacy of modern underwater  
heritage?
• Are there values and symbols? 
• Did ships have a role in creating modern western 
way of life? 
• Are there common principles and challenges 
regarding preservation and maintenance of  
postwar underwater heritage? 
• How much do we know of modern ship wrecks 
in the Baltic Sea? 
• How can environmental hazards connected to 
the modern wrecks be solved? 
• How can we raise awareness regarding modern 
underwater heritage?
• What is modern maritime and underwater  
landscape? 
POSTER G. Peacetime maritime disaster: the case of the M/S Estonia. 
Photo in the poster: Maili Roio. 
The ten posters were on display in the lobby of 
the Kiel University Audimax. The posters were 
designed and prepared by the National Maritime 
Museum in Gdańsk (Poland). The aim was that the 
audience of the Forum could learn that the mari­
time and underwater heritage is not always ancient. 
It can also derive from the 20th century and there 
are various interesting and challenging questions 
regarding how to handle it. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
171 
List of contributors
 
Mart Kalm 
Rector of Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia
Prof. Dr. Mart Kalm is an Estonian architecture 
historian and critic, since 2015 Rector of the Esto­
nian Academy of Arts. He has authored several 
books, incl. Architect Alar Kotli (1994), Estonian 
Functionalism. A Guidebook (1998), Estonian 20th 
Century Architecture (2001), Pärnu City Architect 
Olev Siinmaa (2012) etc. He was the editor and one 
of the main authors for the History of Estonian 
Art. Vol. 5, 1900–1940 (2010). Kalm has co­chaired 
the Estonian Delegation at the UNESCO World
Heritage Committee 2010–2013 and has been active 
member for DOCOMOMO. 
David Chipperfield
David Chipperfield Architects, UK
David Chipperfield established David Chipperfield 
Architects in 1985. The practice’s offices in London, 
Berlin, Milan and Shanghai contribute to a diverse 
international body of work including cultural, resi­
dential, commercial, leisure and civic projects as 
well as masterplanning exercises. Ongoing current 
projects include the Nobel Center in Stockholm; a 
new building for the Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzer­
land; the restoration of Mie van der Rohe’s Neue 
Nationalgalerie in Berlin; and the James Simon 
Galerie, a new entrance building to Berlin’s historic 
Museum Island. 
Peter Aronsson 
Linnæus University, Sweden
Peter Aronsson is professor in history and prorec­
tor at Linnaeus University. The role of historical 
narrative and consciousness to direct action has 
focused both on the role of historiography proper 
and the uses of the past in the historical culture at 
large. Recently he has co­ordinating several inter­
national projects exploring the uses of the past in 
National Museums and the general concept of his­
tory. See, www.eunamus.eu, www.histcon.se. His 
most recent publication is National Museums and 
Nation­building in Europe 1750–2010. Mobilization 
and legitimacy, continuity and change. (Routledge, 
2015). 
Marija DrĖmaitĖ
Vilnius University, Lithuania
Marija Drėmaitė holds a PhD in History of Archi­
tecture (2006) and is an Associate professor at Vil­
nius University, Department of Theory of History 
and Cultural History. Her academic interest is 
focused on the 20th century architecture, social­
ist modernism, and industrial heritage. She is 
involved in DOCOMOMO Nordic­Baltic coop­
eration, where she investigates architecture of the 
Baltic States. In 2011 she received post­doctoral 
grant from the Lithuanian research council for the 
research “Heritage of Modernist Architecture in 
Lithuania” and co­authored a book “Architecture 
in Soviet Lithuania” (2012). In 2016 she published 
a book about industrial architecture in Interwar 
Lithuania (1918–1940).
Małgorzata Rozbicka
Head of National Heritage Board, Poland
Małgorzata Rozbicka, D.Sc., Eng. in Architecture 
– Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture 
Warsaw University of Technology, head of the 
Unit of the History of Polish Architecture. Direc­
tor of the National Heritage Board of Poland. An 
appraiser of the Ministry of Culture and National 
Heritage. Member of the Polish National Commit­
tee of ICOMOS, since 2014, a Chairperson of the 
Committee for World Heritage in Poland. Author 
of many scientific and research papers, expert anal­
yses and projects in the field of Polish Architecture 
and the protection of cultural heritage. 
Siri Skjold Lexau
University of Bergen, Norway
Siri Skjold Lexau is professor, Dr. Art. at the Uni­
versity of Bergen, Norway. Lexau is an art historian 
who has specialized in the history of 20th century 
  
 
 
 
172 
architecture and city planning, especially connected 
to the heritage of industrial sites and after WW2 
architecture. She has published extensively within 
these topics. 
Jānis Lejnieks, Latvia 
Jānis Lejnieks, born in Riga, Latvia, graduate of 
Riga Technical University, Dr.arch., thesis “Func­
tionalism and Neoecleciticism in Latvia in 20th 
century”. From 1995–2007 Founding Director 
of Latvian Museum of Architecture, since 1995 
Founding Editor in­Chief of bi­monthly magazine 
“Latvijas architektura”, since 2011, Asoc. Prof. in 
RISEBA FAD. Forty years of experience in the field 
of urban planning and research of integration of 
cultural heritage in contemporary environment and 
publications on those themes. Books “Never built 
Riga”, “Riga in images” a.o. 
Håkan Hökerberg
The Swedish Institute in Rome, Sweden 
Håkan Hökerberg has a PhD in Conservation 
from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Until 
recently, he was a research fellow at the Swedish 
Institute in Rome where he conducted the research 
project “A controversial heritage. Architecture and 
rhetoric in fascist Italy”. He is still associated with 
the Swedish Institute in Rome, now editing a con­
ference volume of the contributions to the interna­
tional conference “Architecture as Propaganda in 
Twentieth­Century Totalitarian Regimes. History 
and Heritage” that was held at the Swedish Insti­
tute in 2015. He is also writing a popular book (in 
Swedish) on controversial heritage. 
Wessel de Jonge
Wessel de Jonge Architecten BNA B.V., Netherlands
Wessel de Jonge graduated in architecture from TU 
Delft, the Netherlands. As a practicing architect, 
his portfolio includes the restorations of the Neth­
erlands Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (G. Riet­
veld, 1953) and the former Sanatorium ‘Zonnes­
traal’ in Hilversum (Duiker & Bijvoet, 1926–31), as 
well as the rehabilitation of the Van Nelle Factory 
in Rotterdam (Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, 1926–
30). He is partner in the design team for the resto­
ration and adaptation of the 1938 Olympic Stadium 
in Helsinki. Since 2015 he is full professor in Her­
itage & Design at the Faculty of Architecture and 
the Built Environment at TU Delft. 
Panu Lehtovuori 
Tampere University of Technology, Finland
Panu Lehtovuori is the Professor of Planning 
Theory at the Tampere University of Technology, 
School of Architecture. Before the current posi­
tion, he was the Professor of Urban Studies at the 
Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Lehtovuori’s 
research interests focus on contemporary forms of 
public urban space, new urban design approaches 
and the resource efficiency of built environment. 
Lehtovuori is partner of Livady Architects, one of 
Finland’s leading experts in heritage evaluation and 
conservation. 
Dennis Rodwell, UK 
Dennis Rodwell, architect­planner, works interna­
tionally in the field of cultural heritage and sustain­
able urban development, focused on the promotion 
and achievement of best practice in the manage­
ment of the broadly defined historic environment. 
Previously a principal in private architectural prac­
tice, he has also served in local government posts as 
architect, conservation officer, urban designer, prin­
cipal planner and project manager. He writes and 
publishes widely on the theme of conservation and 
sustainability in historic cities. Further informa­
tion including a bibliography of publications may 
be found on: www.dennisrodwell.co.uk. 
Per Strömberg
Uppsala University, Sweden, and University
College of Southeast Norway
Ph.D. Per Strömberg, art historian from Uppsala 
University, defended his thesis Tourist Environ­
ments in the Era of the Experience Economy in 
2007 on the spatial conceptualization and symbiotic 
processes between consumption, business and aes­
thetics in today’s tourism environments. Recently, 
he finalized his postdoctoral project on adapted 
reuse of buildings as a cultural innovation strat­
egy in tourism, event and retailing. One example 
is “Funky Bunkers. The Post­Military Landscape 
as a Readymade Space and a Cultural Playground” 
(2013) published at Ashgate’s architecture series. 
Since 2012, Strömberg works at University Col­
lege of Southeast Norway as an Ass. Prof. in tour­
ism management, but have also been associated 
with Uppsala University for the last two years by 
research. 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
173 
Andrzej Siwek
National Heritage Board, Poland
Andrzej Siwek has a Master degree in history and 
history of arts (Jagiellonian University, 1987, 1991) 
and a Ph.D. degree in architecture and urban 
science (Cracow University of Technology, 2014). 
In the period of 1992–2006 he was employed in 
Regional Conservation Officer’s Office in Cracow. 
Since 1997 deputy Regional Conservation Officer 
in Cracow. Since 2006, he has been a manager in 
Regional Office of the National Heritage Board of 
Poland in Cracow. Lecturer at the Institute of Art 
History at the Jagiellonian University. Specialist 
in the field of cultural heritage protection includ­
ing historical landscapes and World Heritage sites 
in particular. 
Cissela Génetay
Swedish National Heritage Board
Cissela Génetay, adviser and landscape archaeolo­
gist at the Swedish National Heritage Board. She is 
currently working with the implementation of the 
Swedish National Heritage Board’s Platform for 
Assessment and Prioritisation of Cultural Heritage 
(launched in April 2015) and is continuing devel­
oping methods for prioritisation (regarding criteria 
for estimating the sensitivity of cultural heritage 
in order to understand the impact of suggested 
changes). She is also working with the Swedish 
National Heritage Board’s supervision of the prac­
tice of the archaeological heritage legislation. 
Ulf Lindberg
Swedish National Heritage Board
Ulf Lindberg, adviser at the Swedish National 
Heritage Board, has experience in a wide range of 
cultural heritage issues involving different aspects 
of the historic environment – mainly on the basis of 
heritage, environmental and planning regulations. 
This includes historic buildings and monuments 
as well as larger areas or landscapes. Among other 
matters, his work has concerned development, and 
evaluation of culture reserves and areas of national 
interest for their cultural heritage values. Lately he 
has participated in the development and implemen­
tation of the Swedish National Heritage Board’s 
Platform for Assessment and Prioritisation of Cul­
tural Heritage. 
Riitta Salastie 
City Planning Department, Finland
Riitta Salastie was until 2016 architect, city planner
and expert for historic preservation in the City Plan­
ning Department of Helsinki where her focus has
been in the preservation of postwar built heritage
including policy making, assessment methodolo­
gies and preservation planning. Many of the projects
have been pioneering pilot projects such as the pres­
ervation process of Pihlajamäki Docomomo­area,
which is the first protected 1960s mass housing area
in Helsinki. The theme of her doctoral thesis was
urban preservation of Kyoto (2000). Voting expert
member of the ICOMOS International Scientific
Committee on 20th Century Heritage. Docent of
Oulu University in historic preservation. 
Susan Macdonald 
The Getty Conservation Institute, USA
Susan Macdonald trained as an architect and has 
an MA (Conservation Studies) University of York/
ICCROM and has worked in Australia, England 
and the USA. Currently the Head of Buildings and 
Sites at the Getty Conservation Institute, she over­
sees some twenty­five international projects includ­
ing the Conserving Modern Architecture Initia­
tive. She is a former Secretary of Docomomo UK, 
member of the Docomomo ISC Technology and 
the ICOMOS ISC 20th century committee. She has 
authored and edited various books and papers on 
the conservation of modern heritage and prepared 
and provided advice on a number of world heritage 
nominations of modern sites. 
Katja Hasche
Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
Katja Hasche is an architect. She studied architec­
ture in Karlsruhe, Braunschweig (DE) and London 
(GB). After working as an architect in Germany 
and Switzerland, Katja Hasche completed 2005 
her specialization on preservation of monuments at 
ETH Zurich. Afterwards she worked in Switzer­
land and Germany with the focus on analysing and 
inventorying post­war buildings. Since 2014 Katja 
Hasche is working on the research project WDWM
(Welche Denkmale welcher Moderne? / Whose 
Heritage, which Modernism?) at the Bauhaus­Uni­
versität Weimar (Germany). The subject of her 
research and dissertation is the listing process of 
post­war housing estates in Western Europe. 
174 
Torben Kiepke
Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
Torben Kiepke studied architecture heritage/con­
servation in Berlin and Venice. From 2005–2012 he 
worked as a teacher at the Technical University of 
Dresden in the department of heritage and archi­
tectural design. Conclusion of his dissertation on 
the architectural redesign of facades in the 1920s in 
Berlin in 2013. Since 2014 Torben Kiepke is work­
ing on the research project WDWM (Welche Den­
kmale welcher Moderne? / Whose Heritage, which 
Modernism?) at the Bauhaus­Universität Weimar 
(Germany) (together with Katja Hasche) on a com­
parison of methods of selection and listing of late 
modern architecture in Europe. 
Karin Hermerén 
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Karin Hermerén, conservator NKF­S, B.A. and 
Ph.Lic. in Conservation, Ph.D. to be completed, 
B.A. in Art History. Hermerén has worked at the 
Swedish Public Art Agency on building­related 
public art as cultural heritage (expert advisor 2011–
2013), the Swedish National Heritage Board (expert 
advisor/head of unit 2007–2009) and the Swed­
ish National Maritime Museums (expert advisor 
2008–2009). She was a conservator­restorer at the 
Museum of Helsingborg (1996–2013), an expert in 
provincial collection management (1999–2008) and 
has worked with several museum constructions, 
Kiruna’s urban transformation and larger art col­
lections. She writes, arranges courses, teaches and 
lectures on ethics, conservation, cultural heritage 
and public art. Hermerén is currently a PhD stu­
dent in conservation, with management of pub­
lic art as research area, and also runs a studio for 
painting conservation since 1991, Konservering­
sateljé syd AB. 
Nils Meyer
Schleswig Holstein, Germany
Dr. Ing. Architekt Nils Meyer is working with 
Schleswig­Holstein’s State Office for the Preserva­
tion of Monuments as a territory referent. 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
175 
The Baltic Region Heritage Committee
 
The regional heritage cooperation was initiated by 
the Ministers of Culture of the Baltic Sea States in 
1997. Thereby the Baltic Region Heritage Commit­
tee (former named Monitoring Group of Culture 
Heritage in the Baltic Sea States) started its collab­
oration, streamlined by the Ministerial meetings. 
The members of Baltic Region Heritage Com­
mittee (BRHC) represent the national agencies in 
charge of cultural heritage management. Since 2011, 
the BRHC acts as an Intergovernmental committee 
of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) con­
tributing to its long­term priority on regional iden­
tity. The BRHC chairmanship normally follows the 
CBSS Presidencies by a troika model composed of 
in­coming, acting and senior Chairs. 
Baltic Region Heritage Committee has three work­
ing­groups and is a member of the EUSBSR PA
Culture Steering Group. In addition, it collaborates 
with other regional stakeholders, and follows work 
of relevant regional, European and international 
organizations and projects. 
The Baltic Region Heritage Committee’s website: 
www.baltic­heritage.eu
Chairs July 2016 – June 2018 
Anita Bergenstråhle­Lind, Chair
anita.bergenstrahle­lind@raa.se
Swedish National Heritage Board 
Małgorzata Rozbicka, Senior Chair
kplazynska@nid.pl
National Heritage Board of Poland 
Agnese Rupenheite, In­coming Chair
agnese.rupenheite@mantojums.lv
State Inspection for Heritage Protection, Latvia 
The Thematic Working Groups
20th Century Built Heritage
Cathrine Mellander Backman, Chair 
cathrine.mellander.backman@raa.se
Swedish National Heritage Board 
Coastal Heritage
Hannu Matikka, Chair 
hannu.matikka@museovirasto.fi
National Board of Antiquities, Finland 
Underwater Heritage
Sallamaria Tikkanen, Chair 
sallamaria.tikkanen@museovirasto.fi
National Board of Antiquities, Finland 
BRHC Coordinator & Contact Point 
Marianne Lehtimäki 
marianne.lehtimaki@outlook.com 
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The 6th Baltic Sea Region Cultural Heritage Forum took place in Kiel 28–30 Sep­
tember 2016. The conference was arranged within the framework of the Baltic Region 
Heritage Committee. The conference addressed the historical legacy of postwar 20th 
century architecture in the context of the Baltic Sea Region and the different values 
that are ascribed to the architecture of this period through the end of the 20th cen­
tury. It also raised awareness of the challenges involved in preserving and maintaining 
postwar 20th century architecture and cultural heritage. The lectures from the con­
ference, presented in this report, underline the importance of closer cooperation in 
order to tackle the specific challenges of postwar 20th century built heritage.