Following the fall of communist regimes, most countries in Eastern Europe yearned to turn the page. However, the public buildings and memorials erected in those years, are a traumatic memory of the repressions inflicted. Today, these architectural artefacts are objects doomed to oblivion, many of which were gradually renamed, transformed or destroyed.

The project asks, how can we set aside their political and social context and draw an objective architectural portrait of this heritage?

The heritage of the Modern Movement in Eastern Europe has been for several decades endangered by demolition as our contemporary society no longer recognises itself in these public buildings. Three decades after the fall of communist regimes, it seems necessary to initiate a process of re-appropriation of monumental art and architecture from the socialist period.

The project catalogues over 100 buildings of particularly interested as a result of their formal aspect, notoriety or technical innovations. These projects are characterized by sculptural, even allegorical architecture, deliberately blurring the lines between work of art and architecture. The exhibition “Artefacts of Monumental Spaces” comes as the final stage of a research project about public buildings in Bulgaria and former Czechoslovakia, built during the communist regimes between the 50s and the early 90s.

The core identity of these public buildings lies in the synergy of architects and artists willing to bring together building techniques, materials and available cultural elements. The integration of decorative art to such extent within the buildings represents the specificity of this architecture, which we have designated as total works of art (or Gesamtkunstwerk). Through its symbolic power, artworks used to be been employed as a metaphor for the function of the building, a sublimated representation of everyday life and as an ode to emblematic figures of the communist history. What matters in the context of public buildings is the relation of scale that artworks maintain with the individual and the architectural context. As the building and the work of art tend to merge together, decorative art evolves into a monumental art.

These “monuments” and what they represent as an architectural and artistic choice, lies at the heart of this exhibition. The themes of access, enclosure, envelope, movement, repetition, structure and superposition, are analysed in order to capture the complexity of the total work of art. The exhibition focuses on the fundamental components of monumentality — architectural elements, materials, and decorative artworks to create a kaleidoscope which gives a different understanding of those spaces. The materialisation of these monumental fragments tries to capture the very essence of the conceptual gesture and opens up a door to a new collective image of the past.

The journey through these various artefacts of monumentality leads us to initiate a discussion about the contemporary perception of modernist architecture in Eastern Europe, its utility and its place in the collective memory of these two countries.

The project was developed at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles.

KOOZ Could you expand a bit more on the title "Artefacts of Monumental Spaces"?

IM | CM The title “Artefacts of Monumental Spaces” attempts to capture our intentions of revealing architectural fragments of what we consider to be the most significant buildings in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. These artefacts demonstrate the crystallisation of monumentality, which is the symbiosis of monumental art and its architectural context.

KOOZ What prompted this research project?

IM | CM Due to the similarity of our respective dissertation works, the idea of a project on the architectural heritage of the communist period in Eastern Europe came naturally to us. We each decided make a film portraying a building located in our country of origin. Ivan focused his thesis on the Bulgarian Communist Party house in Bouzloudja, whereas Christian produced the film about the Crematorium in Bratislava, Slovakia. The analysis of these two public buildings with divergent destinies gave us the opportunity to initiate a discussion amongst us on the contemporary perception of modernist architecture, its usefulness and the place it occupies in the collective memory of both countries.

KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?

IM | CM The question that arises refers to the modalities of transmission of architectural and artistic know-how linked to this kind of heritage which is endangered by collective amnesia. How not to give in to the temptation of a subjective judgment induced by the consequences of totalitarian violence? In a cultural and social context transformed by several decades of liberalisation, our project is an attempt to describe an objective picture of this architectural period with the ambition of apprehending the intrinsic qualities of these architectural works.

KOOZ How did you approach the cataloguing of each individual architecture?

IM | CM The use of axonometric drawings allowed us to lay bare the architectural gesture, in order to take a new look at the mass of each individual architecture. By unifying the representation of buildings through this projection, we catalogued one hundred buildings of interest to us as a result of their formal aspect, notoriety or technical innovations.

KOOZ How do these operate both as singular entities and as part of a collective whole representative of an epoch?

IM | CM The identity of these public buildings lie in the desire of their architects to achieve total works of art, by bringing together specific techniques, materials and cultural elements available. These lavish buildings as a whole are representative of the communist political system in Eastern Europe, where housing was almost completely standardised, public buildings served to represent the efficiency of the communist regime.

KOOZ What elements seem to unite and differentiate these "public monuments”?

IM | CM What seems to unite these structures is, on the one hand, the ambition to develop geometric patterns based on the principles of functionalism and a paradoxical desire to abstract oneself from these conditions to create sculptural spatial compositions of grandiose dimensions. On the other hand, what comes as a specficity in each individual architecture is the incorporation of abstract forms and the use of local and traditional materials.

KOOZ What lies in the future for these spaces?

IM | CM Today we are at a crossroads, while life in these countries is still marked in many ways by communism, historical understanding for this period is gradually fading, especially with the younger generations born under a democratic ruling. The fate of these buildings depends on the appreciation of the general public, as much as academic research and political will.