East European Modernism: Architecture in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland between the Wars

The inter‐war years evidently saw the appearance of hundreds of examples of modern architecture in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, but until fairly recently very few people seem to have taken much notice(Pevsner’s Penguin Dictionary of Architecture of 1966 had next to nothing to say about modernism in Eastern Europe). In the preface to this book Wojciech Lesnikowski blames the influence of Soviet Communism: Stalinist “cultural ideologies” tended to see themselves as “guardians of the Western historical heritage” by supporting architecture that was “historically derived, monumental, static, centralized” and based on “hierarchical principles”. They regarded modern architecture as “artificial, detached, speculative,...