Following the launch of the mass housing campaign under Nikita Khrushchev, the cityscape of Soviet Samarkand still remains some changes and continuities of it. This paper examines the planning, building, appropriation, and renovation of public and private housing on the level of practices rather than policies and discourses. It relates these practices to the specific temporalities of Samarkand’s landscape, such as the life cycles of inhabitants, the change of seasons, or the timelines of material decay, among others. Continue reading “The Soviet city as a landscape in the making”
Public Lecture: The City as Spectacle of Self-Colonization – the Modernization of Sofia 1878–1914
We are happy to invite you to the keynote lecture by Prof. Alexander Kiossev, Head of the Cultural Centre at Sofia University, on Wednesday, December 01. The lecture is part of Mittwochsvorträge in Specks Hof, a series of lectures by GWZO. It will be held online.