Search

The cultural heritage of modern architecture is a widely acknowledged phenomenon; however, unique urban landscapes that have witnessed a fundamental transformation in urban life in the 20th century are still underrepresented on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In this paper the built urban heritage of Kaunas city (1919–1939) is investigated as an example of a modern urban heritage site with a problematic focus on defining the attributes of urban heritage, especially when intangible heritage values are added to the tangible built heritage. In this paper the attributes of modern urban heritage are discussed on the example of "Modernist Kaunas (1919–1939): Architecture of Optimism", the nomination dossier for the UNESCO World Heritage List. Three groups of attributes are described using historical research and later discussed by applying the method of comparative analysis. The conclusion proposes that Modernist Kaunas can fill the gap by representing Eastern European modern urbanity and enhance the understanding of the modern global city by reflecting the metropolitan aspirations in modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new national states that emerged on the European map in 1918 following the collapse of the great European empires in the wake of World War I became enthusiastic participants in the race to modernise, hoping to keep pace with global trends and become more European in the process. Renewal was the central goal of many European cities. This was particularly so in the newly restored cities or those newly designated as administrative capitals such as Kaunas, which became the provisional capital of the Republic of Lithuania from 1919 to 1939. These cities faced similar challenges: ridding themselves of imperial pasts, architectural legacies and symbols, changing their urban environment, creating new political centres and constructing new government facilities. The question of national architects became similarly important. Through the lives of the modern architects who were compelled to change their citizenship or suffered exile, forced migration or genocide, we can study the effect of social and political change, and in particular political ruptures. This paper follows how architects, collectively as well as individually, developed as a modern group of socially engaged intellectuals in 1930s. It then considers how they reacted to political changes, such as the first communist occupation of Lithuania in 1940, the subsequent Nazi occupation in 1941, and the return of the Red Army in 1944, when most of the architects in private practice emigrated to the West. Finally, it illustrates how those architects who remained adapted to the new political rule in Soviet Lithuania in the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Menotyra is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article looks at mono-industrial cities in the Baltic States during the Soviet era. In terms of economy, ethnicity and their urban appearance these heterotopic towns were outposts in the integration of the occupied European-like territories into the Soviet Union. Thanks to the principles of planning and state-favoured development that were applied across the Soviet Union, these towns, built for Russian speaking immigrants, stood out from the surrounding patterns of settlement that had developed naturally over time. The uranium producing town of Sillamae in Estonia was built in secret and with lightning speed amidst the panic concerning the atom bomb immediately after the war, and provides us with a perfect model of Stalinist urban development. Stucka, built in the 1960s near a hydro-electric power station in Latvia and Snieckus, built in the 1970s next to a nuclear power station in Lithuania, were less separated from the surrounding landscape, but both provide a perfect example of Soviet modernism, which had been learned from mass-housing in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]