Building the State: Architecture, Politics, and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe

Virág Molnár is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and her work focuses on the politics of the built environment and urban culture.

• 1. Introduction 2. Building Socialism on National Traditions: Socialist Realism and Postwar Urban Reconstruction 3. Prefabricating Modernity: Mass Housing and its Discontents 4. Questioning Modernity: Western or Vernacular? 5. The Traditional "European City" in The Global Age: Rebuilding Post-wall Berlin 6. Conclusion

"Building the State importantly demonstrates how architecture and urbanism construct political objectives by other means. In charting the changing roles and evolving self-identity of the architectural profession in two key parts of Central Europe between 1945 and 2000, Virág Molnár adroitly reveals the complex dialogue among modernism, socialism and nationalism."Lawrence J. Vale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA"This book offers a fresh perspective on the interaction between architecture and politics in East Germany and Hungary during state socialism and its aftermath. The author's approach, combining case studies and historical ethnography, is a delight for any reader, including architectural historians."Pál Ritoók, Hungarian Architecture Museum