engleski

Centralisation vs. Decentralisation: Post-war Housing in Socialist Croatia (1945-1960)

The paper deals with the post-war housing in socialist Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia) by examining the mutual dependency between administrative mechanisms of the housing strategies and its final architectural materialisations. The post-war housing strategies in socialist Yugoslavia, often defined as socially-organised housing strategies, consisted of a complex network of administrative tools and financing mechanisms. The analysis of this complex network within wider decision-making processes offers the possible trajectory for understanding the influence of political impact on housing, precisely the impact of political centralisation and decentralisation. Namely, due to political circumstances in the relatively short period of 1945-1960, Yugoslavia underwent through both processes and both processes strongly reflected on architectural production In the immediate after war period Yugoslavia adopted Soviet-style socialism and introduced the centralisation in managing all aspects of the new society while administration became the crucial tool in controlling the transformation. Following political changes, namely Tito-Stalin split, at the beginning of the 1950s the opposite processes have begun, those of decentralization, that would ultimately led to unique self-management system of governance. While the centralisation processes shaped the conditions of architectural activity through proscribed organisation of design practice, required production methods and technology, demanded standards and norms, decentralisation process ostentatiously offered to architects newly emerging creative freedom. The research follows the line of political framework defined by processes of centralisation and decentralisation while tracing the transformation of the pertaining architectural discourse. By analysing and comparing architectural production in the domain of housing in both periods (even in a oeuvre of a single architect) the paper evaluates the impacts that particular processes actually had upon it. The repercussions of these political processes upon architectural discourse was extensive and ranged from influencing design decisions in an indirect way to those whose impact was more proximate and can be traced from the primary choices of housing typology to the final decisions on aesthetic. The key issue that the paper problematizes is the potentials of the autonomous and specific tools of architectural discipline within the frameworks determined by particular political framework.

socialism, housing, centralisation, decentralisation

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