Monika Platzer Cold War and Architecture: The Competing Forces that Reshaped Austria after 1945

After the liberation of Austria in spring 1945 and the occupation by the four victorious powers of Great Britain, France, USA, and the Soviet Union, Vienna became a central stage for the Cold War. In contrast to Germany, Austria is not generally viewed as an arena of politicised architecture debate during the Cold War era. During its occupation, Austria made the transition from an authoritarian system of government to democratic consumer society. Following its liberation by the Allied troops, each of the four occupying forces set up its own diverse cultural program. Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union used architecture exhibitions as a platform for cultural, ideological, economical, and technological transfers. The architecture that was exhibited and the accompanying discourse became the instruments of an “educational program” for the new world order and societal order that reflect the global rivalry of the Cold War.

The victors’ cultural-political measures became a catalyst for their respective ideological mindsets. A survey of the cultural campaigns of all four occupying powers reveals their different approaches. Next to the Allied Forces’ respective political vested interests, their influence-seeking cultural measures were directed at different target groups. Yet these measures encountered local traditions, heterogeneous advocacy groups, and networks that used the cultural transfer and the Cold War’s potential for conflict to pursue their own professional advancement.

This lecture is a plea for anchoring a transnational perspective on national narratives underlining the need for a reframing of the canon on postwar architecture history.

Monika Platzer studied art history at the University of Vienna. She is a curator at the Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) and heads its collections department. Research focus: twentieth-century cultural history. International curatorial activity at leading institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and the Getty Research Institute (GRI). Her exhibitions include: 'Vienna. The Pearl of the Reich.’ Planning for Hitler (2015); a_show: Austrian Architecture in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AzW, permanent exhibition); Lessons from Bernard Rudolfsky (2007–2008); Kinetism. Vienna Discovers the Avant-Garde (2006); and Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe 1890–1937 (1999–2001). Monika Platzer teaches at the University of Vienna and the Vienna University of Technology; she is editor of icamprint, the journal of the International Confederation of Architectural Museums. In 2014, she was a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. Her current research focuses on transnational architectural history.