Designing tito capital urban planing modernism and socialism in bellgrade

,
DESIGNING TITO S CAPITAL


CULTURE, POLITICS, AND THE BUILT ENVIRONM ENT
Dianne Harris, Editor


brig itte le norm and

Urban Pl anning, Modernism, and Socialism

UNIVERSIT Y OF PITTSBURGH PRESS


Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press,
Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2014, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Le Normand, Brigitte.
Designing Tito’s Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism, and
Socialism / Brigitte Le Normand.
pages cm. — (Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8229-6299-1 (paperback)
1. City planning—Serbia—Belgrade. 2. Socialism—
Serbia—Belgrade. 3. Socialism—Yugloslvia. I. Title.
HT169.S462B455 2014
307.1’216094971—dc23

2014008208


To my mother, L ayl a Le Nor mand, with love,
in recognition of her accomplishments,
her cour age through adversit y,
and her tremendous generosit y of spirit

New houses, roads, parks will be here. And the life of man improved for one thousand years. When we meet we shall not see
the river, nor remember the marshes and coppices; our meetings
will be novel from greeting to sunset, changed to the core by a
socialist revolution. But the foundations of this are ancient, very
ancient. Since times unknown, this triangle defined by two rivers
and opened to infinity on the third side, the white town, invisible
and always present Belgrade, inseparable from the town on the hill.
From now on, this will be the heart that vigorously pumps life far
to the North and deep into the South, the center of the brotherly
union of Yugoslav peoples.
Milorad Panić-Surep, quoted in Milvoje Kovačević et al., eds.,
Novi Beograd: New Town


Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

ix
xi

1 Modernist Functionalist Planning in
Global Context

3

2 A Blueprint for Modernity

25

3 The Lost Decade and the Dawn of a New Era

73

4 New Belgrade, Capital of Yugoslav Modernity

103

5 Planning Undone: “Wild” Construction and the
Market Reforms

147

6 Modernism under Fire: The Changing Attitudes
of Social Scientists and Urban Designers in
1960s Yugoslavia

189

7 Modernity Redefined: The 1972 Master Plan

213

Conclusion

243

Notes
Bibliogr aphy
Index

249
273
287

vii



Acknowledgments

This book has been many years in the making and owes a great deal to many
people. I wish to extend my deep gratitude first and foremost to all the urban
planners who agreed to share their personal experiences with me: Aleksandra Banović, Milica Jakšić, Branislav Jovin, Ljubomir Lukić, Vladimir Macura,
Vesna Matičević, Vera Paunović, Ružica Petrović, Ljubdrag Šimić, and Borislav
Stojkov. I am indebted to the Institut za noviju istoriju, in Belgrade, for hosting
and assisting me during my stay. I also wish to thank Marta Vukotić-Lazar, Antonije Antić, Miodrag Ferenček, Dragan Arbutin, Andrija Dodić, and other kind
souls at the Urbanistički zavod Beograda for going beyond the call of duty. I
owe much thanks to Branko Bojović, Ksenija Petovar, Sreten Vujović, Ljubodrag
Dimić, and Predrag Marković for their very valuable advice. Darko Ćirić of the
Muzej grada Beograda deserves a very special thank you for his assistance. I extend my thanks also to Dubravka Pavlović and her colleagues at Juginus and to
the helpful staff at the Istorijski arhiv grada Beograda, the Arhiv Jugoslavije, the
Narodna biblioteka Srbije, the Narodna in univerzitetna knjižica in Slovenia, the
Republički zavod za statistiku in Serbia, the Institut za arhitekturu i urbanizam
Srbije, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Finally, I would like to express
my gratitude to Goran Antonić, Dušan Bajagić, Miloš Ković, Lana Marković,
Slobodan Selinić, Igor Tchoukarine, and other friends who enriched the year I

lived in Belgrade both personally and professionally.

ix


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing my dissertation, I received precious guidance from my mentor
Ivan Berend, as well as Arch Getty and Janice Reiff. In journeying from dissertation to monograph, I have benefited immensely from numerous conversations with and detailed feedback from Veronica Aplenc, Eszter Bartha, Daria
Bocharnikova, Ljiljana Blagojević, Tanja Conley, Heather deHaan, Emmanuela Grama, Patrick Patterson, the late Mark Pittaway, Vladimir Kulić, Emily
Gunzburger Makaš, Theodore Sandstra, Kimberly Elman Zarecor, and many
others I fear I am omitting. Bill Nelson deserves credit for the excellent maps
he recreated from originals that could be quite hard to read.
I am deeply grateful for the financial and institutional support I have received in completing this project. The research on which this dissertation is
based was supported by a predissertation fellowship from the Center for European and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and
by a doctoral fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research
Council of Canada. A Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute allowed me to deepen my understanding of housing policy in socialist
Yugoslavia. The preparation of the manuscript for publication was in part financed by a publication grant and other funding from the University of British
Columbia Okanagan.
Finally, this journey has been made possible by the unflagging support of
my parents, Jacques and Layla Le Normand, and my husband, Theodore Sandstra. A very special thanks to Ted and our wonderful son, Marco, for your love,
patience, and good humor while I devoted many long hours to completing this
endeavor.

x


Introduct ion

At the end of the Second World War, the city of Belgrade lay in ruins. Having
been subjected to eleven separate Allied bombing raids, it incurred further destruction from the occupation forces as they retreated during the Belgrade offensive that ended with the liberation of the city. By November 1944, the fighting had completely destroyed the city’s rail network, damaged 80 percent of its

tramway network, wrecked nearly all of its trams and buses, and rendered 18
percent of its water supply and sewage lines unusable. Nearly half of its buildings—12,889 out of 30,000—were either damaged or destroyed.1
The new Partisan regime, led by Josip Broz Tito, immediately began to
plan its reconstruction, appointing a modernist architect, Nikola Dobrović, to
imagine a capital worthy of the new Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.
In 1950, on the sixth anniversary of the city’s liberation, Belgrade’s first socialist master plan was unveiled. Anticipating Nehru’s choice for Chandigarh, the
new capital of Indian Punjab, and Kubitschek’s choice for Brasilia, Brazil’s new
capital, the urban planning team had decided to transform the city into the
modernist ideal of a functionalist city. In order to achieve this, the center of
gravity of the city would be shifted westward, across the Sava River. A new city
center, built in the image of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, would be erected on
what had, until then, been a floodplain.
In 1968, when Belgrade’s planning office began to work on a new master

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I NTRODUCTI ON
plan, it left this functionalist blueprint behind in favor of computer modeling
and continuous planning. By this time, few Yugoslav planners espoused the
utopian vision of the modernist functionalist city, and they were not alone—
across the world, modernist planning had come under attack as a failed model.
What brought about the rise of the modernist functionalist urban planning
model, often attributed to Le Corbusier, in Yugoslavia and elsewhere in the
world, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s? Why was it eventually abandoned
and replaced by other approaches? In our search for answers, we need to cast
our net wider than just the architectural and planning profession. As Stanislaus Von Moos proposed in his seminal study of Le Corbusier’s work, “the
growth and form of cities is not determined by the will of architects, let alone
that of one single architect, but by socio-economic forces and interests, institutional patterns, and a conception of progress and efficiency shared by the
prevailing elites. Architects merely propose recipes that represent these forms

and interests.”2
The Yugoslav socialist regime endorsed modernist functionalist urbanism
both because it was compatible with its values and its project for economic
and social modernization and because it bolstered Yugoslavia’s global image. A
shift in the regime’s modernization strategy ultimately combined with dissatisfaction with the model locally and its obsolescence internationally, leading the
regime to abandon this approach and adopt new, cutting-edge methodologies.
Two excellent monograph-length studies and a number of journal articles
have already begun to address the influence of modernism in socialist Yugoslavia. Architectural historian Ljiljana Blagojević’s detailed study of modernist
architecture and urban planning in Belgrade, Novi Beograd: Osporeni Modernizam, has documented in detail and critiqued the development of a new
modernist settlement in the heart of the capital, Belgrade. In their beautifully
illustrated volume Modernism In-Between: The Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia, Vladimir Kulić and Maroje Mrduljaš have situated Yugoslav
modernism in a broader context, arguing that Yugoslavia innovated a unique
interpretation of modernism, blending socialism with a formal vocabulary developed in the West. Kulić has further explored Yugoslav modernism and its
relationship to the state’s unique geopolitical context in his dissertation and
several articles. These are valuable contributions to the history of modernism
as an architectural movement in Yugoslavia. This study seeks to build on this
foundation by relating it to the political, economic, and social development
of Belgrade and Yugoslavia more broadly. Historian Predrag Marković has

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sought to capture the political, social, and cultural life of Yugoslavia’s capital
after the Second World War. Like Kulić and Mrduljaš, he frames his analysis in
terms of Yugoslavia’s “in-betweeness,” balancing between an ideological model
crafted in the Soviet Union and a diplomatic and cultural attraction to the
West. While much of his analysis relates to the issues discussed in this study,
he only briefly addresses architecture and urban planning. Thus, in a way, the
present study seeks to engage these two different approaches in a productive

dialogue and to examine the implications for Yugoslavia’s built environment
of a variety of factors: the economic priorities and policies adopted by its leaders, demographic pressures, the ways in which inhabitants experienced and reacted to this environment, the influence of cultural trends on their aspirations,
and new trends in urban planning.
Consequently, this monograph engages both with the history of socialist
Yugoslavia and with the global history of planning and modernist architecture. It reveals an unknown chapter of modernism, whose history in connection to socialist states is only starting to be written. While many case studies
of modernism in different national contexts have been published, few have focused on urban planning in the postwar European socialist states.3
This study demonstrates that, in this case, modernist functionalist planning
was not abandoned because it produced “inhumane” or “unlivable” neighborhoods, an interpretation that gained currency among scholars and practitioners in the late 1960s and 1970s and has never been seriously challenged,
but because it lost the support of decision makers. Unlike in Western Europe,
where this loss of support condemned modernist settlements to decline, however, the dynamics of housing provision in Yugoslavia ensured that these
neighborhoods would remain popular and vibrant.
This study also aims at enriching our understanding of the social history of
Yugoslavia by investigating how this idiosyncratic socialist regime functioned
in practice. Specifically, it shows how decisions were made and implemented
by state authorities, and it demonstrates the surprising degree of leverage that
ordinary citizens had to challenge these decisions. It also explores the practical implications of Yugoslavia’s “in-between” political economy—specifically,
the economic reforms undertaken in the mid-1960s for the Yugoslav socialist project, in which a collectivist state-led political and economic model was
replaced by one that was more individualistic and consumer driven. Finally,
it describes the various spaces and places brought into being by the socialist
system, both intentionally and unintentionally.

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I NTRODUCTI ON
It approaches these questions through the analysis of a variety of primary
sources. Archival materials proved a particularly invaluable and relatively
untapped resource, providing not only the state’s perspective on Yugoslavia’s
problems and needs, through the numerous reports and meeting minutes of
decision-making bodies, but also people’s grievances and requests, through

the minutes of neighborhood meetings and requests for housing. The Belgrade
municipal archives and archival materials kept by Belgrade’s Town Planning
Institute were particularly useful. Studies and conference materials from consultative bodies and research institutes, such as the Standing Commission of
Yugoslav Cities and the Yugoslav Institute for Urbanism and Housing, provide
telling data and a window on the concerns of practitioners and social scientists
in Yugoslavia. Newspapers reported on both the successes and the failures in
urban planning and construction, as well as popular opinion of these efforts.
Professional journals documented the architects’ and planners’ evolving understanding of planning and were a rich source of information on particular
projects. And finally, interviews with planners provided personal testimony of
what it was like to participate in the great modernist project in Belgrade.

Defining Modernist Urban Pl anning
The modernist project in Belgrade was a local interpretation of a much
broader urban planning trend. The vision embodied in the city’s first socialist master plan, in 1950, reflected a general consensus about urban planning
that had crystallized in the European community of modernist architects by
the early 1930s. A significant contingent of European architects embracing a
modernist aesthetic and approach to architecture had come together in 1928
to form the International Congress for Modern Architecture (CIAM) to tackle
major social problems by changing the built environment. After first focusing
on how to provide affordable and humane housing to workers by designing a
“minimal existence dwelling,” they turned their attention to the problems of
overcrowding and disorganization in European cities.4 The first years of CIAM
had been marked by a conflict between those who believed that the organization should take an explicitly political stance, following the lead of the Soviet
Union, and those who believed it would be most effective if it remained apolitical. By 1933 events seemed to vindicate the latter, as the Soviet Union adopted
an increasingly ambivalent stance toward modernism, and Italian modernist
architects had begun to work for Mussolini’s fascist state. Consequently, at its

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fourth congress in 1933, CIAM sought solutions to urban problems that could
be deployed by any state, regardless of its political orientation.
During a cruise from Marseilles to Athens and back again held in 1933,
contingents from eighteen different countries, including Yugoslavia, which
was represented by Croatian architect Ernest Weissmann, debated the optimal organization of space in cities in the modern age. While there was some
disagreement on certain aspects—with some participants advocating a concentrated, high-rise urban form and others looking to low- and medium-rise
satellite cities—and while not all of the congress participants believed that sufficient analysis had been done to warrant the formulation of principles, a general consensus did emerge from the meetings. The participants agreed on the
importance of separating different urban functions, conceptualized as dwelling, working, leisure, and circulation. They also endorsed the separation of different types of traffic and its banishment from residential areas, as well as the
provision of collective services to housing districts. Several groups also saw
high-rise construction as an effective way to bring greenery into the city, although this particular conclusion was contested by some. Private ownership of
buildings and land speculation were identified as obstacles to good planning.5
In spite of general agreement on these issues, there were sufficient differences
of opinion that participants were not able to agree on concrete resolutions
at the end of the congress. While the areas of agreement were distilled by a
team of CIAM members into a series of affirmations (constatations), an official
statement of the CIAM’s position on the functional city was never published.6
These affirmations (constatations) were taken up by Le Corbusier, expanded
upon, and published as the Athens Charter in 1943. While Le Corbusier undeniably added some of his own personal views, which were not necessarily
representative of the modernist movement as a whole, this document still
provides a useful summary of the principal preoccupations and prescriptions
of pre−Second World War modernist urbanism, which was so influential in
shaping Belgrade’s first postwar master plan.
The Athens Charter was a manifesto for modernizing the traditional European city. It advocated a holistic approach toward urban planning, envisioning the city as a complex mechanism that had to be dealt with as a totality.
The charter started from the premise that the European city was mortally diseased as a result of two pathologies—private interest and the machine age. In
order for the city to become healthy again, the first evil had to be contained
or even eliminated. In contrast, the second evil—the machine age—had to be

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accepted. It was the city itself that had to change to adapt to it and harness its
potential to better serve mankind.7
Architects, working with a strong public authority, were proclaimed to be
the agents capable of rescuing the city from speculation for private gain and
from the degradation wrought by industrialization and the automobile invasion. The Athens Charter was at its core a technocratic program for realizing
social order and social justice through the judicious deployment of science
and technology. It aimed to eliminate disorder and inefficiency, such as time
wasted commuting to work and home again, badly allocated resources, and
maladapted transportation systems. The solution, it proclaimed, was planning
based on scientific analysis. It also called for the adoption of the latest building technologies to realize the ideal city. These aspects of the charter support
sociologist Mauro F. Guillén’s argument that modernism was an attempt to incorporate Taylorism—that is, scientific management—into architecture.
In the charter, the social good was primarily conceived of in terms of public
health. In order to remain physically and morally healthy, people needed to
have access to clean air, sunshine, and ample space. In the existing European
city, the wealthy enjoyed these amenities, while the underclass lived in squalid
conditions, a situation to which Engels had drawn attention in The Condition
of the Working Class. The charter called for the redistribution of space in order that all might enjoy public health. It provided a series of prescriptions for
realizing this new social order, based on the notion that cities were best understood as the site of four types of human activity: dwelling, working, leisure,
and circulation. The optimal way to organize the first three functions in the
machine city was to separate them from one another, while optimizing circulation in order to facilitate movement between them. The traditional city block
would be abandoned in favor of apartment buildings freely disposed in green
space. Leisure and services, such as nurseries and sporting facilities, would
also be embedded in parks. Industrial zones would be located in proximity to
residential areas, which would be protected from them by a green belt. Optimizing circulation, in turn, involved separating different kinds of traffic and
adapting roadways to the automobile.
The Athens Charter reflected the sense of generalized social and political
crisis that pervaded the 1930s. However, the vision of urbanism it promoted
did not manage to inspire widespread change until the postwar era. As Europe cleared the debris of the Second World War, and modernist architects

succeeded in obtaining key positions in reconstruction efforts across Europe,

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the precepts of interwar modernist urbanism acquired a new resonance as essential ingredients for national regeneration, thanks to their call for sweeping
away the corrupt vestiges of the past in favor of a clean slate in urbanism, their
focus on creating an orderly and egalitarian society, their emphasis on the rational use of space and materials, and their promise to meet housing needs in
a cost-effective manner.8 This technocratic utopian program also captured the
imagination of some non-European states, particularly those gaining their independence or embarking on a modernization project. Because “Athens Charter” urbanism proclaimed itself beyond politics, it was available to any state
that fulfilled its requirement of a strong central authority and shared its vision
of modernity. At the same time, the Soviet Union’s condemnation of modernism as “bourgeois formalism” precluded its adoption by the Eastern European
people’s republics.
This study investigates what made the urban planning approach promoted
by the modernist movement in the mid-1930s appealing to the new communist regime in Yugoslavia and how the regime applied these ideas in the
concrete case of Belgrade. It also examines the extent to which the city that
evolved reflected the modernist master plan and what explains the divergences. Finally, it seeks to understand when and why the Belgrade Town Planning Office changed its approach to urban planning.
The first chapter examines some of the existing literature that has sought to
explain the rise and fall of modernist urban planning, either globally or in particular national or local contexts. It calls into question commonly held beliefs
about the failure of the “Athens Charter” model of urban planning and situates
the Yugoslav case in a broader global context. Chapters 2 through 4 deal with
the Yugoslav state’s adoption, appropriation, and adaptation of the modernist
functional city model for its capital city, Belgrade. Chapters 5 through 7 then
explore the various reasons for the waning of the Athens Charter as an urban
planning model.
Chapter 2 examines the process of conceiving Belgrade’s first socialist master plan after the Second World War and explores the ways in which its authors
appropriated and implemented modernist functionalist planning. Modernist
architect Nikola Dobrović was likely chosen to head the planning efforts because of his demonstrated commitment to the Partisan cause, but the regime
ultimately decided to rebuild Belgrade according to the modernist functionalist model because its emphasis on the efficient use of resources was highly

compatible with the regime’s plans for economic modernization. The interpre-

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tation of the Athens Charter embodied in the master plan reflected not only
the priorities and ambitions of a socialist state and a critique of the previous
capitalist order but also the constraints posed first by reconstruction and then
by the Tito-Stalin split.
Chapter 3 focuses on the first efforts to build new housing settlements and
actual reconstruction in a period of economic austerity and identity crisis,
from the end of the Second World War until the mid-1950s. While architects
and urban planners had struggled to impose some order on the reconstruction of Belgrade in the years following the Second World War, the Tito-Stalin
split and the ensuing ideological redefinition seemed to offer an opportunity
to reassert their vision for a modernist Belgrade. Nonetheless, their hands
remained tied due to economic austerity until the mid-1950s, when the state
decided to invest in the standard of living. Urban planners also harnessed
the language of self-management, Yugoslavia’s reinterpretation of socialism,
in their efforts to reassert a leadership role and put the Athens Charter into
practice.
Chapter 4 analyzes how the improving economic situation, the introduction of self-management, and the evolution of economic policy influenced the
concept of New Belgrade, the centerpiece of the 1950 master plan. In keeping
with decentralization and the new emphasis on raising the standard of living,
the symbolic function of New Belgrade changed from the monumental capital of Yugoslavia to a model settlement catering to the diverse needs of the
workingman. It did not live up to its promise, however, because the need for
housing took priority over all other considerations. This egalitarian model was
further threatened when, in the 1960s, the Yugoslav state adopted market socialism as its new modernization strategy. According to this model, consumers
would play a role in driving the Yugoslav economy, encouraging competition
and therefore productivity through their choices. The state applied this logic to

the costly housing economy, including the possibility of building luxury housing in New Belgrade. The concept for New Belgrade thus transitioned from
being an egalitarian workers’ paradise to being a consumers’ paradise.
The following three chapters examine the gradual erosion of support for the
Athens Charter in Belgrade and its eventual replacement by other urban planning ideas. Chapter 5 examines the impact of market reforms on housing policy and the resulting erosion of the state’s commitment to the modernist functional city ideal. In spite of market reforms in the housing sector, the housing
shortage persisted, and increasing numbers of inhabitants took matters into

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their own hands, building their homes illegally, often on land reserved for
other purposes. This was clearly a problem from a planning perspective, but
the Yugoslav state approved of the fact that these citizens were meeting their
housing needs with their own savings. Ignoring the warnings of urban planners, who believed the answer to the housing shortage was to commit sufficient resources to implementing the Athens Charter, the state attempted to
channel self-builders into legal settlements. This policy shift signaled a weakening of its support for the modernist functional city.
Chapter 6 looks at the emergence of critiques of the Athens Charter both
by practitioners within the modernist movement and outside of it and by social scientists. By the late 1960s, urban planners had a chance to survey the
results of a decade of rapid urban development. Looking at these first realizations, they recognized certain shortcomings, in particular the absence of what
they referred to as ambijent—ambiance or atmosphere. Architects also began
to look on strictly functionalist architecture with a critical eye, seeking inspiration in older architectural forms. Simultaneously, social scientists, and sociologists in particular, began to scrutinize the new settlements, questioning their
ability to create vibrant communities and even holding them responsible for
health problems.
Chapter 7 examines the development of Belgrade’s second socialist master
plan, between 1968 and 1972. While urban planners had resisted the erosion of
the state’s support for the functional city and had defended their work in the
face of criticism from architects and social scientists, the planning profession
was changing. Just as the Yugoslav state and its architect-planners had been
attracted to the Athens Charter at the end of the Second World War because
it embodied modernity at that time, the new generation sought to learn and
use the latest urban planning tools. Turning away from Europe and toward the

United States, the Belgrade Town Planning Institute hired consultants from
Wayne State University to train its personnel in computer modeling. While the
Athens Charter was relegated to the dustbin of history, planners continued to
see themselves as scientific authorities with the power to bring progress to and
impose order on a city prone to disorder.

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DESIGNING TITO S CAPITAL



one

modernist functionalist
pl anning in global context

T

H E F I R ST STEP to understanding the rise and fall of modernist functionalist urban planning in Yugoslavia is to survey what scholars have
written about other contexts. First, these studies can provide hints of what to
look for in the Yugoslav case. Second, modernist functionalist planning is fundamentally an approach that transcends national boundaries, because it was
developed collaboratively by an international (if heavily Eurocentric) group
of architects; because architects the world over put it into practice; and because its success or failure was bound up with economic, political, and cultural
trends that were global in nature.
A variety of thinkers, including social commentators, planning practitioners,
and scholars, have sought to explain the rise of this urban planning paradigm

and its perceived failure. Many have presumed that it is possible to provide universal explanations.
In his scholarly blockbuster Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to
Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, anthropologist James C. Scott explains the formulation and implementation of modernist functionalist town
planning as the product of “high modernism.” He argues that high modernism was a global trend that first emerged during the Enlightenment, in which

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MODERNIST FUNCTIONALIST PL ANNING IN GLOBAL CONTEX T
increasingly powerful and authoritarian states, taking advantage of prostrate
civil societies, allied with technical specialists to render societies legible in
order to better control and perfect them using science and technology. Scott
identifies Le Corbusier’s planning ideas and the Athens Charter more broadly
as a prime example of authoritarian high modernism. In this way, he provides
a simple universal explanation for the adoption of the Athens Charter across
different political, cultural, and social contexts.1
Sociologist Mauro F. Guillén provides a similar but somewhat more nuanced and empirically based explanation for the rise of popularity of modernism across a variety of national contexts. Guillén pays attention to the crucial
relationship between the architectural discipline and state power, and his conclusions essentially support Scott’s argument. Guillén defines modernism as
an attempt to apply the principles of scientific management (Taylorism) and
insights from the engineering profession to the production of architecture and
the ways in which architects work, as well as to develop an aesthetic grounded
in the machine age.2 His inventory of the reasons offered by various scholars
for the takeoff of modernism include the role of industrialization—in providing new materials, imbuing architects with a new sense of their role, and
creating a society of mass consumption that may have constrained creativity;
sociopolitical upheaval; the emergence of new sponsors or patrons; and the
professionalization of architecture.3 He concludes that while the other factors played an important role in some (but not all) cases, the flourishing of
modernist architecture was at its root dependent on the support of sponsors,
whether state or industrial, combined with a transformation of architectural
education that promoted the application of scientific management and engineering concepts to architecture.4
However, neither Scott nor Guillén provides a convincing explanation of

the motivations of the state in adopting modernism. It is questionable that
diverse states operating in widely diverse cultural contexts—Europe’s social
democracies, developing states, European socialist states—had precisely the
same motivations in implementing the Athens Charter model. Furthermore,
Scott’s argument implies the existence of a single, unified state, pursuing a
consistent agenda. But most states, even authoritarian ones, are fragmented,
made up of diverse actors, pursuing diverse agendas. Even if we accept that
all these actors adopted the same gaze toward their populations, we must ask
ourselves what effect the competition between these actors had on policy making. Finally, how useful is the notion of a “prostrate” society? The most recent

4