Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War (Princeton University Press, 2020)
Henri Lefebvre on Space. Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment by Henri Lefebvre (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Team 10 East. Revisionist Architecture in Real Existing Modernism (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw/ University of Chicago Press, 2014)
Postmodernism Is Almost All Right. Polish Architecture after Socialist Globalization (Warsaw: Fundacja Bęc-Zmiana, 2012)
Urban Revolution Now. Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture (Ashgate/ Routledge, 2014)
Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War
Princeton University Press, 2020
In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East in order to bring modernization to the developing world.
Architecture in Global Socialism shows how their collaboration reshaped five cities in the Global South: Accra, Lagos, Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait City. The book describes how local authorities and professionals in these cities drew on Soviet prefabrication systems, Hungarian and Polish planning methods, Yugoslav and Bulgarian construction materials, Romanian and East German standard designs, and manual laborers from across Eastern Europe. It explores how the socialist development path was adapted to tropical conditions in Ghana in the 1960s, and how Eastern European architectural traditions were given new life in 1970s Nigeria. It looks at how the differences between socialist foreign trade and the emerging global construction market were exploited in the Middle East in the closing decades of the Cold War. The book demonstrates how these and other practices of global cooperation by socialist countries—or socialist worldmaking—left their enduring mark on urban landscapes in the postcolonial world.
Featuring an extensive collection of previously unpublished images, Architecture in Global Socialism draws on original archival research on four continents and a wealth of in-depth interviews. It presents a new understanding of global urbanization and its architecture through the lens of socialist internationalism, challenging long-held notions about modernization and development in the Global South.
Praise:
“Architecture in Global Socialism is a major contribution. This is a brilliantly original book that fundamentally recasts our understanding of architecture in a worldwide frame. It will become a canonical reference point for scholars and students of postwar global architecture.”—Neil Brenner, professor of urban theory, Harvard University
“An indispensable resource for scholars that goes beyond architecture and urban planning to engage with broader historical and political issues.”—Jean-Louis Cohen, author of Architecture in Uniform and The Future of Architecture Since 1889
Henri Lefebvre on Space. Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory
University of Minnesota Press, 2011
This book offers a uniquely contextual appreciation of Henri Lefebvre’s idea that space is a social product. It explicitly confronts both the philosophical and the empirical foundations of Lefebvre’s oeuvre, especially his direct involvement in the fields of urban development, planning, and architecture.
Countering the prevailing view, which reduces Lefebvre’s theory of space to a projection of his philosophical positions, this book argues that Lefebvre’s work grew out of his empirical research on everyday practices of dwelling in postwar France and his exchanges with architects and planners. The book focuses on the interaction between architecture, urbanism, sociology, and philosophy that occurred in France in the 1960s and 1970s, marked by a shift in the processes of urbanization at all scales, from the neighborhood to the global level. Lefebvre’s thinking was central to this encounter, which informed both his theory of space and the concept of urbanization becoming worldwide.
The book offers a deeper and clearer understanding of Lefebvre’s thought and its implications for the present day. At a time when cities are increasingly important to our political, spatial, and architectural world, this reassessment proposes a new empirical and practical, interpretation of Lefebvre’s ideas on urbanism.
Praise:
“Henri Lefebvre’s diverse contributions to sociospatial and urban theory have inspired considerable commentary in recent years. Łukasz Stanek’s brilliant, erudite book takes the discussion to a new level of philosophical sophistication while also grounding Lefebvre’s work in relation to a series of concrete engagements with architecture and urbanism in postwar France. This is a pathbreaking work, indispensable for anyone concerned to understand Lefebvre’s powerful contemporary resonance as an urban thinker.” —Neil Brenner, Univresity of Chicago
“This book is a strong and important reassessment of the theories and writings of Lefebvre. As cities are becoming more and more an essential part of our political, spatial, and architectural world, Lukasz Stanek launches a type of new generational take on Lefebvre, one that is both more contextual and more speculative.” —Mark Jarzombek, MIT
Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment
by Henri Lefebvre
University of Minnesota Press, 2014
Edited by Łukasz Stanek, translated by Robert Bononno
The relationship between bodily pleasure, space, and architecture—from one of the twentieth century’s most important urban theorists.
Praise:
“Henri Lefebvre’s diverse contributions to sociospatial and urban theory have inspired considerable commentary in recent years. Lukasz Stanek’s brilliant, erudite book takes the discussion to a new level of philosophical sophistication while also grounding Lefebvre’s work in relation to a series of concrete engagements with architecture and urbanism in postwar France. This is a pathbreaking work, indispensable for anyone concerned to understand Lefebvre’s powerful contemporary resonance as an urban thinker.” —Neil Brenner, New York University
“This book is a strong and important reassessment of the theories and writings of Lefebvre. As cities are becoming more and more an essential part of our political, spatial, and architectural world, Lukasz Stanek launches a type of new generational take on Lefebvre, one that is both more contextual and more speculative.” —Mark Jarzombek, MIT
Team 10 East. Revisionist Architecture in Real Existing Modernism
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw/ distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Edited by Łukasz Stanek
This volume coins the term “Team 10 East” as a conceptual tool to discuss the work of Team 10 members and fellow travelers from state-socialist countries—such as Oskar Hansen of Poland, Charles Polónyi of Hungary, and Radovan Nikšic of Yugoslavia. The book’s contributors approach these individuals from a comparative perspective on socialist modernism in Central and Eastern Europe and discuss the relationship between modernism and modernization across the Iron Curtain. Team 10 East addresses “revisionism” in state-socialist architecture and politics, showing how architects appropriated, critiqued, and developed postwar modernist architecture and functionalist urbanism both from within and beyond the confines of a Europe split by the Cold War.
Postmodernism Is Almost All Right. Polish Architecture after Socialist Globalization
Warsaw: Fundacja Bęc-Zmiana, 2012
Text by Łukasz Stanek, archival research and interviews: Piotr Bujas, Alicja Gzowska, Aleksandra Kędziorek, Łukasz Stanek
This catalogue of the exhibition Postmodernism Is Almost All Right interrogates the generational experience of Polish architects in the Middle East and North Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, and the impact of this experience on the production of Polish cities after socialism.
Design: Jayme Yen
Urban Revolution Now. Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture
Ashgate/ Routledge, 2014
Edited by Łukasz Stanek, Christian Schmid, and Ákos Moravánszky
This edited volume reconsiders worldwide urbanization processes in the 20th century by means of concepts such as “urban revolution,” “everyday life,” “production of space,” “rhythmanalysis,” and the “right to the city.” It results from two conferences at Delft University of Technology (2008) and ETH Zurich (2009).