The Role of architects in fighting the monotony of the Lithuanian mass housing estates
ENThis chapter will explore the role of the architect as an expert in the individualised design approach to the Soviet mass housing, where construction has been largely regulated by standardisation, industrialisation and economy. The demands issued by Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, as early as 1954 to supply inexpensive, unembellished industrialised buildings, largely expected architects to behave as technocrats. However, the chapter suggests that regional differences in large housing estates could be increasingly introduced by local experts proposing unique architectural solutions. It is therefore important to establish how certain professional criticism of mass-constructed residential districts in favour of individualised design, theory of “humanisation” and urban sociology as well as national (Lithuanian) or regional (Baltic) aspirations were cloaked in a “correct” Soviet rhetoric and whether there existed alternative ways of securing official acknowledgement of a project. The chapter is based on the research of mass housing (high-rise apartment buildings (5–9-12–16 storeys) built in 1959–1990) in the then Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic as a Western periphery of the Soviet Union. [Publisher annotation]
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