{"product_id":"landscapes-of-communism-a-history-through-buildings-9781620971888","title":"Landscapes of Communism: A History Through Buildings","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen communism took power in Eastern Europe it remade cities in its own image  transforming everyday life and creating sweeping boulevards and vast  epic housing estates in an emphatic declaration of a noncapitalist idea. The regimes that built them are now dead and long gone  but from Warsaw to Berlin  Moscow to postrevolutionary Kiev  the buildings remain  often populated by people whose lives were scattered by the collapse of communism.  Landscapes of Communism is a journey of historical discovery  plunging us into the lost world of socialist architecture. Owen Hatherley  a brilliant  witty  young urban critic shows how power was wielded in these societies by tracing the sharp  sudden zigzags of official communist architectural style: the superstitious despotic rococo of high Stalinism  with its jingoistic memorials  palaces  and secret policemens castles; East Germanys obsession with prefabricated concrete panels; and the metro systems of Moscow and Prague  a spectacular vindication of public space that went further than any avant-garde ever dared. Throughout his journeys across the former Soviet empire  Hatherley asks what  if anything  can be reclaimed from the ruins of Communismwhat residue can inform our contemporary ideas of urban life?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45650513068085,"sku":"ByrdShop_1620971887","price":247.43,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781620971888.jpg?v=1781798451","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/landscapes-of-communism-a-history-through-buildings-9781620971888","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}