An essential exploration of how Russian ideas about the United States shaped architecture and urban design from the czarist era to the fall of the U.S.S.R. Idealized representations of America, as both an aspiration and a menace, played an important role in shaping Russian architecture and urban design from the American Revolution until the fall of the Soviet Union. Jean-Louis Cohen traces the powerful concept of “Amerikanizm” and its impact on Russia’s built environment from early czarist interest in Revolutionary America, through the spectacular World’s Fairs of the 19th century, to department stores, skyscrapers, and factories built in Russia using American methods during the 20th century. Visions of America also captivated the Russian avant-garde, from El Lissitzky to Moisei Ginzburg, and Cohen explores the ongoing artistic dialogue maintained between the two countries at the mid-century and in the late Soviet era, following a period of strategic competition. This first major study of Amerikanizm in the architecture of Russia makes a timely contribution to our understanding of modern architecture and its broader geopolitics.

Brasilia, Caracas, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro ... cities synonymous with some of the most innovative and progressive architecture of the past century.

Brasilia, Caracas, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro ... these are cities synonymous with some of the most innovative and progressive architecture of the twentieth century. The period between 1930 and 1960 in particular, when many Latin American economies expanded rapidly, was an era of incomparable inventiveness and creative production, as the various governments strove to shake off their colonial pasts and make public their modernising intentions. This book focuses on major state-funded architectural projects, featuring not only the high-profile prestigious building like the House of Representatives in Barsilia but also social architecture such as schools and los-cost housing developments. Architects like Pani, Costa, Reidy and Niemeyer, who undertook this work with considerable autonomy and significant financial resources, in effect became social planners, their avant-garde aesthetic and technical experimentation often being teamed with radical social agendas. By 1960, the year in which Brasilia was inaugurated, economic growth in the region was slowing and faith in the modernist project in general was faltering. The English-speaking world, which had previously endorsed and even envied Latin American architectural production, changed its opinion and largely dismissed it from the history of twentieth-century architecture. Building the New World redresses the balance. It provides an accessible introduction to the most important examples of state-funded modernism in Latin America during a period of almost unimaginable optimism, when politicians and architects saw architecture as, literally, a way of building themselves out of underdevelopment and into the new world of a culturally rich and socially inclusive future .

Topics addressed include masters and journeymen, skilled women workers, carpenters, the skilled men of the metal trades in the Hillside workshops, the construction of a political culture based on class and the shifting meanings of that word.

This collection of nearly two dozen detachable, frameable, propaganda posters offer an outstanding selection of examples from East Germany, Russia, Southeast Asia, and China. Reproduced in startling color and printed on high-quality paper, they offer fascinating historical insight, as well as sublime examples of how graphic art can be both highly effective as well as visually stunning. The Russian October Revolution of 1917 marked the beginning of decades of communist rule that spanned large parts of the world. For many years and in many countries, the most reliable means of spreading state propaganda was through posters like the ones included in this beautiful collection. Distinguished by their bold, bright colors, and generally featuring one or two main figures or a single forceful image, they were ubiquitously plastered on the walls of factories, farms, office buildings, transportation centers, and public squares. They exhorted citizens to proclaim their patriotism through hard work, exercise, and loyalty, and celebrated technological advances in science, space travel, and architecture. Representing an impressive array of styles, cultures, and historical eras this collection is suitable for walls and coffee tables alike.

With an original introduction by Luce Irigaray, and original texts from her students and collaborators, this book imagines the outlines of a more just, ecologically attuned world that flourishes on the basis of sexuate difference.

Harnecker offers a useful overview of the changing political map in Latin America, examining the trajectories of several progressive Latin American governments as they work to develop alternative models to capitalism.--Provided by publisher.