Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences

Abstract

Presenting research from her new book, Alla Vronskaya will examine how Soviet architects of the interwar period sought to mitigate Fordist production methods with other, ostensibly more human-oriented approaches that drew on the biological and psychological sciences.

About the speaker

Vronskaya is a professor of the history and theory of architecture at Kassel University in Germany. Her research focuses on the history of the theory of modern architecture, particularly in the Soviet Union and other state-socialist countries, with a focus on architecture’s engagement with modernism’s ideals of efficiency and productivity and their effects upon citizens and nature. Her book Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) is due out this month.

Vronskaya is also an area editor for “The Former Soviet Union” in The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture. Vronskaya received her PhD in the history, theory and criticism of art and architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2014.