CIAM and the Cold War. Post-war Discussions on Modernism and Socialist Realism

The research project focuses on the conflict between modernism and socialist realism at the post-war CIAM congresses. The clash of the two ideologies culminated in 1949 at the 7th CIAM congress in Bergamo, Italy, where the Polish architect Helena Syrkus – a committed modernist and the CIAM’s recently elected vice president – rejected modernism in favour of socialist realism and provoked a highly controversial debate within the organization. It is interesting that this debate, which included both positive and negative views, has often been underrepresented in previous histories of the organization, although it ultimately influenced the CIAM’s institutional position towards the East and its architecture during the Cold War. The objective of this study is to understand the conflict as a specific aspect of the Cold War, and to analyse it at biographical, discursive and institutional levels.