Docomomo Journal #71 is first Open Issue of the Docomomo Journal. Creating the opportunity for scholars, practitioners, policy makers, activists or any other group of authors to publish in our journal without having to wait for a thematic Special Issue on a theme that would fit their topic felt like the logical next step in (the continued) continuing professionalization of the Docomomo Journal.
Docomomo International aims to publish an open issue of the Docomomo Journal every year. Papers, part of the Open Issue undergo the same peer-review process as defined for the thematic issues, under the direct responsibility of the editors-in-chief.

In 2022, Docomomo International launched a call for papers on Modern Movement in Ukraine together with Docomomo Ukraine. More than 20 proposals were received, most of them from authors based in Ukraine itself—despite the difficult circumstances. The Docomomo Journal 67 presented a first selection of those articles to display regional and architectural particularities and current challenges of archiving, documenting, protecting, and preserving the modern heritage.

This Docomomo Journal 70 continues with Modernism in Kharkiv. The modern Ukranian architecture was
dominated by Constructivism from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, with Kharkiv as the epicenter of production, while Socialist Realism with the Stalin Empire emerged from 1932, lasting until 1955, with Kyiv as the capital of Ukraine. From December 1919 to January 1934, Kharkiv was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the cultural, economic, and educational center of the new Ukrainian Republic. The status as new capital led to prestigious master plans and construction projects.

Guest Editors: Kuukuwa Manful, Ola Uduku, Christian Burkhard, Anica Dragutinovic, Taibat Lawanson, Mark Olweny
Editors: Uta Pottgiesser, Wido Quist

Docomomo International is proud to present the results of the international project Shared Heritage Africa: Rediscovering Masterpieces and other selected papers from our call for papers Shared Heritage Africa – Campuses, published in December 2022. The SHA project itself, coordinated by Docomomo Germany, focused on rediscovering post-war modern buildings from the 1950s-1980s in the partner countries Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda.

This Docomomo journal highlights the importance of the combination of local workshops, including student writing and photography workshops, exhibitions and ‘digital fellowships’ using the internet for dissemination. Exploratory interviews and narratives are used to collect testimonies of contemporary users⎯applied in the SHA project as well as in the other articles. Aspects discussed are, among others, the physical; deterioration (technical, functional, social), the cosmological; through the sense of identity, community, place attachment, maintenance and taking care, ownership and appropriation, and the environmental; considering the quality, and sustainability of spaces, and also conditions of comfort and satisfaction.

This special issue of the Docomomo Journal dedicated to the investigation and comparison of Middle Class Mass Housing in Europe since the 1950s. MCMH has been generally underestimated in urban and architectural studies and there is still a lack of comparative analysis and global perspectives.

This special issue is linked to the EU-COST-Action on the same topic (https://mcmh.eu) that aims to develop new scientific approaches by discussing, testing and assessing diverse case studies, their social and cultural context, interventions and public policies.

Most housing research still focusses on social and affordable housing and while the definition and identification of MCMH is still under construction (definitions). It is evident that MCMH has different forms of urban and architectural representation and various models of governance. The editors like to invite contributions from Europe and from other parts of the world that document, discuss and compare typologies (cases) of this modern heritage as a key resource for a sustainable urban and social development. Articles should display concepts and actions at social, cultural and political levels that will contribute to the formulation of new planning and intervention strategies (policies) for existing MCMH.

Editors: Uta Pottgiesser, Wido Quist
Keywords: Ukraine, Modern Movement, Modern architecture, interwar modernism, soviet modernism

This special issue of DOCOMOMO Journal reflects on the different influences and forms of Modern Movement on the current territory of Ukraine during the 20th Century. The Journal provides an overview of buildings and sites and the threat that this modern heritage encounters as it is not listed at a national or international level and in times of the ongoing war.

Editors: Uta Pottgiesser, Wido Quist
Guest editors: Zsuzsanna Böröcz, Robert Loader, Silvia Naldini
Keywords: Plastic materials, synthetic materials, interior design, interiors, Modern Movement, Modern architecture

This Docomomo Journal 66 on plastic is the result of collaboration between the Docomomo International Specialist Committees of Technology (ISC/T) and that of Interior Design (ISC/ID) bridging the disciplines from product to interior design and to architecture. It is an expression of the broadened dialogue within Docomomo International. Combining methodologies and knowledge of a wide range of disciplines has become a prime goal within Docomomo International encouraging and facilitating the exchange between the International Specialist Committees (ISCs) and the national and regional Working Parties. The present publication is the first manifestation of this new effort and combines the spirit of the multi-facetted technology dossiers into a fully-fledged journal bridging documentation and conservation.

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Zara Ferreira
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing, Post-war housing, Welfare architecture, Mass housing.

Addressing a broader vision, entitled “Housing for All”, this issue is dedicated to the welfare era, when governments across the world established ambitious housing programs to provide housing for the greatest number and improve the citizens’ living conditions, as a symbol of a modern and democratic society. This bold course of action involved radical changes in the built environment, through new approaches to architectural design and experiments in the use of materials and techniques, the creation of space, and social transformation. Nowadays, understanding how to deal with this legacy presents a major challenge, in a continuously changing context, from the technical obsolescence of buildings that no longer meet today’s demanding standards, or fast-moving sociocultural, political and economic values. The aim of this docomomo Journal 65 is to outline how these vast cultural and political ambitions were materialized in various countries, and to analyze the contemporary challenges they face. More than five decades later, are these buildings and neighborhoods resilient or obsolete? In addition to the changes that postmodern society has brought in ways of living, issues such as the demand for spatial and functional transformation, and the updating of regulations on fire, seismic stability, user safety and energy efficiency, are now part of the contemporary agenda. How can these sites be kept alive while satisfying sustainability and contemporary ideas of comfort?

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Louise Noelle, Horacio Torrent
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing, Post-war housing, Welfare architecture, Mass housing.

Devoted to the theme of single-family houses, given the key role they played in the ideal definition of the Modern Movement architecture, as a symbolic and functional affirmation of the utopian turning of dreams into reality, the aim of this issue is to consider the transformation of daily life, and to address the architectural challenges that arose from the joy contained in what we might call the “architecture of happiness.” As we continue to endure a pandemic that has now lasted for more than a year, docomomo wishes to declare that “till the moment, the best vaccine to prevent contagion was invented by architects: the house”. Thus, in response to the question “How should we live?”, it is intended to debate the house and the home agenda as an important topic at the core of Modern Movement architecture. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern houses were “machines à habiter” and is closer to an idealistic vision of a stimulating shell for humans, which is shaped by imagination, experimentation, efficiency, and knowledge.

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Pedro Guedes, Johannes Widodo
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Tropical architecture, Modern diaspora, Design with climate.

Getting back to the point of “Tropical architecture,” architecture in the humid tropics is collaboration with nature to establish a new order in which human beings may live in harmony with their surroundings. As publications at the time concentrated on French and British colonies, to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the Modern Movement diaspora, it is essential to revisit, analyse, and document the important heritage built south of the Tropic of Cancer, where the debate took place and architectonic models were reproduced, and in many cases subjected to metamorphoses stemming from their antipodal geography. Notable for the modernity of its social, urban, and architectonic programs, and also its formally and technologically sustained research, the modern architecture of these latitudes below the tropics constitutes a distinctive heritage.

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Daniela Arnaut
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Healthcare architecture, Form and Function, Healing architecture.

Investigation into healthcare facilities involves dealing with multiple spheres beyond the technological, physical and psychological. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern buildings were cleansing machines, or that modern architecture and urbanism were shaped by bacteria. Presenting some stimulating philosophically-orientated essays, this journal makes a link between the Modern Movement and what we have entitled the “Cure and Care” concept, connecting health and the environment, body and design. Considering healthcare buildings and their role in the welfare policy of societies, the discussion addresses future challenges, driven by developments in technology and medicine, envisaging a key role for healthcare facilities in ensuring a sustainable built environment.

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Michel Melenhorst
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Architectural education, Reuse, Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus had a pioneering influence on design worldwide which still endures today; through education, experimentation and materialization, a revolution took place in architecture, urbanism and design for mass production. In 1918, during the immediate post-war period, Walter Gropius (1883-1969) achieved a fusion between the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Weimar, with the creation of an interdisciplinary school of design and crafts. In April 1919, he was elected director of the school which was by then called the Staatliches Bauhaus. He also published the Bauhaus Manifesto, which remains as a pioneering moment in history, with irreversible consequences at a global scale. The Bauhaus as a school, as a method of experimentation, education, and research, embodies the idea of science applied in service of the society. At the Bauhaus, utopia was combined with pragmatism, agitation and propaganda with public service, poetry with utility, Neue Sachlichkeit with creation and freedom. Its premises continue to be relevant today with the great issues of sustainability and democracy needing to be addressed through art and technology.

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Susana Lobo
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture.

In 1937, CIAM 5 specifically linked the housing question to leisure, considering it an absolute necessity to acknowledge that the most privileged places will be chosen for the location of these leisure areas. Taking possession of these places by large masses will allow for rest and outdoor exercise, the indispensable recuperation of the forces lost in the city. As Charlotte Périand (1903–1999) asserted, the need to create machines à recréer, the goal was definitively to assure “the happiness of men”. From the first optimistic architectural swimming-pool complexes to discovering the enjoyment of beaches or of winter sports in the mountains, these “architectures of the Sun” began to link the power of landscapes with the relaxation and pleasure of the human body. Associated with healthy living and claimed for all, for the first time, the beaches, mountains, lakes and forests became identified as places for vacations.

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Henrieta Moravčíková
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Eastern European architecture, Cold War architecture.

While visiting the MAO (Museum of Architecture and Design) in Ljubljana one can appreciate the architectural power of Stanko Kristl’s work. The impressive buildings of this Slovenian architect revealed through the exhibition "Humanity and Space", illuminate the beauty of the museum space with some astonishing works and show why Eastern Europe deserves to be included in the historiography of the Modern Movement, to clearly demonstrate the contribution of Iron Curtain countries to the modern avant-garde. As Matevz Celik recognizes, “through his architecture he worked to provide responses to the needs of the people — for whom it was intended. This basic premise served as a guiding principle in experiments and his search for spatial and social innovation in architecture."

Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: David N. Fixler
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Louis Kahn, Modern monumentality, Conservation of modern architecture.

Louis I. Kahn fascinate us all with his passion for Mediterranean culture. Precisely at the moment when the centre of the dominant culture moved from Europe to North America, he was able to immerse himself in the Roman brick structures of the great classical buildings, interpreting the timeless forms of antiquity. When the glass curtain of the bureaucratic International Style became trivialized, he turned to the archaic sources of architecture to discover light, matter and desire, in the pyramids of Gis. or in the ruins of the Caracalla Baths. Kahn is a unique case in the history of 20th-century architecture: he introduced the question of monumentality, a matter heretical to the Modern Movement, and emphasized the value of permanence, and the tectonic character and materiality of constructive elements. He was able to read History creatively, interpreting the permanent value of the monuments for the community and rescuing their public sense of place. Posing questions such as “what do you want, brick?” or “does the inside of a column contain a promise?”, he produced an impressive body of work and a doctrine with originality, often appearing philosophical, poetic or even mystical. Moving away from dogmas, but never losing the functional and constructive sense of modulation, he broke the systematic use of fluid space and reintroduced a sense of ritual and the value of solemnity, while achieving the most suggestive syntheses between modernity and tradition, as Otávio Paz recognized, between the use of technique and memory.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Setiadi Sopandi, Yoshiyuki Yamana, Johannes Widodo, Shin Muramatsu
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Southeast Asian architecture, Modern urban planning, Tropical architecture.

Coming from a common goal of preserving and promoting a sustainable future, a platform has been created to discuss documentation, conservation and reuse of modern architecture based on three main concepts: regeneration, equality and openness. Regeneration by, through training and education, involving the younger generations in the process of recognition and conservation. Equality, based on the respect for difference with no imposition of ideas or methodologies. Openness by promoting exchange through thoughtful cooperation. Although ASEAN is coming to be united in terms of politics, economy and culture, the background of its member countries is varied, having experienced diverse European colonization. In an increasingly global world, these nations are facing changes in the significance of their colonial past in relation to the postcolonial present. Between identity and nationalist demand, local knowledge and universal education, modern materials and tropical climate, different architectural discourses have been produced showing that the most interesting way to approach the postcolonial issue is through the idea of exchange.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Christian Raabe, Daniel Lohmann, Norbert Hanenberg
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe, International Style, Rehabilitation of modern architecture.

Mies enjoyed great prominence in Europe and America. Starting in Europe, his first incursions resulted in the German Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exhibition (1929), the Tugendhat House (1930) and the Krefeld silk factory and houses. The Illinois Institute of Technology (1943-1957), the Lake Shore Drive (1951), the Farnsworth House (1951), the Seagram building (1958) and the Toronto-Dominion Centre (1969), bear witness to his work in North America. Back in Berlin, The Neue Nationalgalerie (1968) testifies to the sublime and perfect achievement of his path towards Baukunst and Zeitwille. These ideas, which one may translate, respectively, as the art of building and the will of the time, are anchored in the Mies’s belief that architecture should be metaphysically charged with creative life force. This led him to the modern achievement of developing a new kind of freedom of movement in space, following his sense of order and his very unique conception of urban space.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: João Belo Rodeia
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Lisbon modern architecture, Estado Novo, Modern urban planning.

In the words of José-Augusto França, Lisbon is the last of the old European cities and the first of the modern cities, as confirmed by the 1758 Baixa Pombalina plan undertaken for the reconstruction of the city destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, as a pioneering example of modern urban planning. Following the avant-garde plan, modern architecture in Portugal may be envisaged through three main moments according to specific policies undertaken during the long Estado Novo dictatorship (1926-1974).

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Franz Graf, Giulia Marino
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing, Mass housing, Post-war housing.

Post-War Housing Complexes in Europe are symbols of architectural, technological and social aspirations. These grands ensembles of Mass Housing have nowadays begun to be appreciated by users and authorities, as integral part of the current city. Whether discussing demolition (as faced by the Smithsons' Robin Hood Gardens and Toulouse's Le Mirail, and commonly seen as a focus for social marginalization), or the growing phenomenon of heritagization (as implicit in the type of person now using the Marseille Unité d’Habitation), the debate today has mainly become centered on the question of: how to keep these large structures alive, while meeting contemporary standards of comfort? Characterized by adventurous experiments in the use of new materials and techniques, space creation and gender transformations, the obsolescence of these big complexes is determined on two different levels: the technical one (regarding comfort, such as thermal or acoustic, and the need for mechanical and safety improvements, as infrastructures, systems, elevators), and the functional one (involving space dimensions, organisation, orientation, and the introduction of new uses); all while complying with current regulatory standards. In addition, these buildings have frequently been intensively used and modified.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Benedicte Gandini, Michel Richard
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Le Corbusier, Conservation of modern architecture, World Heritage.

Le Corbusier (LC) prolific personality as theorist, painter, sculptor, architect, urban planner, researcher, disseminator, thinker, and provocative activist, helped to make him a universal author. His dual and inseparable theoretical and practical activities represented a source for LC’s balanced inspirational and systematic method. Envisaging “la planète comme chantier”, LC drove his obsessive constructive impulse around the whole world, to nations such as Japan, Russia, Argentina and India. Thinking deeply about the human condition in the contemporary age, he looked for solutions to solve social, technical and spatial problems, believing that architecture could have the power to improve the world. To the question “architecture or revolution?” he answered “revolution can be avoided” through modern architecture.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Reuse, Renovation, Restoration.

The Modern Movement has demonstrated its long term legitimacy, as a concept endowed with an extraordinary and lasting longevity. Either way, it becomes increasingly important to acknowledge and value this heritage, in order to enable a skilled, informed and enlightened intervention. Such matters as materials and technology reuse, spatial and functional transformations as well as updating legislation, are part of the contemporary agenda. Knowing that many modern architects sought new heights of functionality and changeability, the challenge for today is how to deal with the heritage in relation to its continuously changing context, physical, economic and functional, as well as socio-cultural, political and scientific. I consider that the reuse project is starting to “make history” and I share the idea that heritage transforms itself with us. Therefore, modern architecture can be a resource that asks for our attention in terms of quality, economy and sustainability.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Josep Maria Montaner, Zaida Muxí Martínez
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Living heritage, Modern housing, Housing preservation.

Housing is a central program in contemporary architectural production. Incorporating civilizing values of 19th century culture, the house arrives in the 20th century at the time notions of private space and domestic comfort come to the fore in Western Culture as values inseparable from the emergence of the family in domestic space: the home. In 1951 Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), in his Darmstader sprache, “Bauen, Wohnen, Denken”, relates the word building (bau) with the verb “to be” and the action of “being” (bin), to conclude that dwelling is the fundamental trait of being, the mortals’ living condition. Looking to reframe the sense of construction and to identify the meaning of “being”, Heidegger’s criticism is moved by the failure of the so-called rational materialistic solution, and opens the discussion up to the re-evaluation of the design action as a unique, magical and creative action.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Eui-Sung Yi
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, High density architecture, Urban growth, Modern urban planning.

The debates that followed the World Design Conference (WoDeCo, Tokyo, 1960) on the search for a “total Image for the 20th Century” pointed out among worldwide designers, architects and planners, viewpoints and intellectual ideas concerning the future of the city, particularly in the wake of technological and scientific advancement in industry. At the time of the WoDeCo, progressive architects formed the “Metabolism” group and proposed their concepts for dealing with the increasing complexity of the cities rising. Debating over the ideal city and promoting a kind of experimental architecture based on ideas of life styles and communities for a new era, its biological name suggests that buildings and cities should be designed in the same organic way that the material substance of a natural organism propagates adapting to its environment by changing its forms in rapid succession.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Ivan Blasi
Guest editors: Gonçalo Canto Moniz
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Architectural education, Education of modern architecture.

The variety of discussions on architects’ mission, on architectural discipline and the recall on some key figures explain the argument of this Journal entitled For an Architect’s Training. The title quotes Walter Gropius’ “Blueprint for an architect’s training” spread through the French magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in February 1950 (number 28), dedicated to “Walter Gropius, the spread of an idea” and realized by Paul Rudolph under the direction of Gropius himself who developed his ideas on design education between art and technique, creation, research and applied science.

Editors: Ana Tostões, Ivan Blasi
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Tropical architecture, Design with climate, African modern architecture.

Since the 1990s architectural historians discovered Modern architecture in Africa as part of a cultural production related to colonialism. With the introduction of postcolonial theory in the historiography of architecture, an exclusively ideological critical sense has been developed preventing disciplinary autonomy or practice of architecture and finally condemning any objective look. Recently, the development of concepts such as hybrid or the otherness has been promoting a nuanced historical analysis about architecture and politics in the 20th century in Africa. The recognition that a widespread awareness of Modern Movement architecture has always been serving colonization involves rethinking the basic principle of Modern welfare society and practiced architecture as a mission: how Modern principles have been exchanged, resulting from a Eurocentric culture with the cultures from the East and Africa. In addition, it must be said that the case of Sub–Saharan Lusophone Africa is now beginning to be studied in depth putting together peripheral universes.