This document provides context on key ideas, individuals, and events that shaped the 1940s and beyond, including:
1) Utopian visions of the future from writers like HG Wells and Oscar Wilde are discussed, as well as dystopian visions from works like We, 1984, and Brave New World that criticized totalitarianism.
2) Philosophies like existentialism, explored by Jean-Paul Sartre, focused on themes of freedom, commitment, and the search for meaning in an absurd world.
3) Architecture in the Soviet Union after WWII took on a triumphal style with tall buildings intended to showcase their power and draw visitors, while other modernist designs emerged in Europe as
2. QUIZ What significance do the following series of slides have to today’s theme – the Second World War and the immediate post war period that followed?
11. “An air raid is approaching Everytown, take cover, take cover…!”Still from Things to Come (1936) – adapted from the book of the same name by H.G. Wells
17. Utopian visions… “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”Oscar Wilde: The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
19. "We will glorify war - the world's only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.”F.T. Marinetti The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 1909
21. HG Wells (1866 - 1946) “T]he ethical system which will dominate the world-state will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity.... And for the rest - those swarms of black and brown and yellow people who do not come into the needs of efficiency? Well, the world is not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go.”
22. Sir Francis Galton and Eugenics "It has now become a serious necessity to better the breed of the human race. The average citizen is too base for the everyday work of modern civilization."
23. YevgenyZamyatin: We (1921) In We, human imagination - a threat because of its power to imagine alternatives is eradicated through ‘fantasioptomy’
24. George Orwell (1903 - 1950) “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” George Orwell 1984
25. "The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1
26. The ambiguity of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (1931) -Utopia, dystopia or satire?
27. The philosophical current of existentialism…Like “rationalism” and “empiricism,” “existentialism” is a term that belongs to intellectual history. Its definition is thus to some extent one of historical convenience. The term was explicitly adopted as a self-description by Jean-Paul Sartre, and through the wide dissemination of the postwar literary and philosophical output of Sartre and his associates—notably Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus—existentialism became identified with a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950shttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
29. On the existential view, to understand what a human being is it is not enough to know all the truths that natural science—including the science of psychology—could tell us. The dualist who holds that human beings are composed of independent substances—“mind” and “body”—is no better off in this regard than is the physicalist, who holds that human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
30. Existential philosophy Key themes:DreadBoredomAlienationThe AbsurdFreedom CommitmentNothingness… Ultimately the search for a new categorical framework together with its governing normhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
31. Monuments to FreedomAlthough the principles of Socialist Realism had been declared in the 1930s, Soviet architecture was not unchanged by war. In fact, a ‘new’ building type, the vysotnyezdaniia(tall building) was introduced in the 1940s an expression of the triumphalism of the late Stalin period. The Soviet Union had saved the world from Fascism, now its capital was to become the hub of a new Empire that would draw admiring visitors from across the globe. A set of eight buildings, ostensibly initiated to commemorate Moscow’s eighth centenary, was announced by a Council of Ministers’ proclamation in 1947. They were to be ‘in terms of size, technology and architecture, a new form of construction, seen for the first time in our country’.Crowley, C. and Pavitt, J.(2008) Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970, V&A Publishing
36. TadeuszTrepkowski – poster promoting the World Congress of intellectuals in Defence of Peace in Wroclaw, 1948
Editor's Notes
Some surprising sources for totalitarian military architecture – right - German Jewish Erich Mendelsohn’s ‘Einstein Tower’, Potsdam 1919 – 1921 (see also Prora Complex
While the Tiger I was feared by many of its opponents, it wasover-engineered, used expensive and labour intensive materials and production methods, and was time-consuming to produce. Only 1,347 were built between August 1942 and August 1944. The Tiger was prone to certain types of track failures and immobilisations, it was however, generally mechanically reliable but expensive to maintain and complicated to transport due to its interlocking wheels. In 1944, production was phased out in favour of the Tiger II.
Hitler planned and built the Autobahn. Or did he?In reality, the first section of what would later become the legendary German autobahn network was constructed and built before Hitler came to power. Construction on the Köln-Bonn Autobahn began in 1929. During opening ceremonies on August 6, 1932, none other than Konrad Adenauer was on hand to inaugurate the 20 km (12 mi) section of autobahn running between Cologne and Bonn. http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth08.htm
Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
But while it is true that the major existential philosophers wrote with a passion and urgency rather uncommon in our own time, and while the idea that philosophy cannot be practiced in the disinterested manner of an objective science is indeed central to existentialism, it is equally true that all the themes popularly associated with existentialism—dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, nothingness, and so on—find their philosophical significance in the context of the search for a new categorial framework, together with its governing norm.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/
The first and most famous of these buildings, also known as CitéRadieuse (radiant city) and, informally, as La Maison du Fada (French - Provençal, "The House of the Mad"), is located in Marseille, France, built 1947-1952. One of Le Corbusiers's most famous works, it proved enormously influential and is often cited as the initial inspiration of the Brutalist architectural style and philosophy.The Marseille building, developed with Corbusier's designers Shadrach Woods and George Candilis, comprises 337 apartments arranged over twelve stories, all suspended on large piloti. The building also incorporates shops, sporting, medical and educational facilities, a hotel which is open to the public [1], and a gastronomic restaurant, Le Ventre de l'Architect. The flat roof is designed as a communal terrace with sculptural ventilation stacks, a running track, and a shallow paddling pool for children. The roof, where a number of theatrical performances have taken place, underwent renovation in 2010. It has unobstructed views of the Mediterranean and Marseille.Inside, corridors run through the centre of the long axis of every third floor of the building, with each apartment lying on two levels, and stretching from one side of the building to the other, with a balcony. Unlike many of the inferior system-built blocks it inspired, which lack the original's generous proportions, communal facilities and parkland setting, the Unité is popular with its residents and is now mainly occupied by upper middle-class professionals.
The organization was hugely influential. It was not only engaged in formalizing the architectural principles of the Modern Movement, but also saw architecture as an economic and political tool that could be used to improve the world through the design of buildings and through urban planning.As CIAM members traveled worldwide after the war, many of its ideas spread outside Europe, notably to the USA. The city planning ideas were adopted in the rebuilding of Europe following World War II
The World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace convened in Wrocław, Poland on August 6, 1948, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Notable politicians, academics, and artists attended, including Pablo Picasso, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie, Bertolt Brecht, Paul Éluard, Aldous Huxley, Julian Huxley, Dominique Desanti, Ilya Ehrenburg, Martin Andersen-Nexo, Sir John Boyd-Orr, Olaf Stapledon, Alexander Fadeyev, Julien Benda, William Gropper, Eugénie Cotton, Jerzy Borejsza, and Anna Seghers. The Congress was marked by an anti-American and pro-communist tone.Julia Pirotte, a photojournalist known for her work in the French Resistance, covered the event.