While the architecture of fascism and the work of architects like Giuseppe Terragni and Albert Speer fills the shelves of many a research library, its opposite is strangely opaque. Or have you heard of antifascist architecture, let alone books and research devoted to it? This obvious disparity also bothered Andrew Santa Lucia and Daniel Jonas Roche who in view of the global rise of fascist and right-wing (cultural) politics provide the first attempt at creating a working definition of antifascist architecture: „Antifascist Architecture“ has recently been published by Park Books and, this much can be revealed here, is a fascinating, disturbing and deeply eye-opening read.
The authors start off by scrutinizing the academic fetish with fascist architecture, especially in the context of postmodernism, which yielded plentiful publications, essays and discussions praising the Italian fascist architecture in particular: scholars like Sergio Polano and Francesco Dal Co, institutions such as the MoMA in New York and supporters like Philip Johnson helped exculpate fascist architecture and fostered a reading cleaned of ideological considerations. Founded on Heideggerian phenomenology and Foucauldian heteretopia, architectural theory from the 1970s until the present provided the underpinnings for such excesses and gave rise to contemporary starchitecture, cults of personality, neoliberal building politics and an overall moral flexibility.
In the second part of the book the authors survey antifascist architects, artists and designers, i.e. according to the authors’ definition those who positioned themselves within the wide spectrum of the militant political left. These range from the Japanese queer architect and disability activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya to Svetlana Kana Radevic who designed antifascist monuments in Yugoslavia. As the ensuing portraits of buildings show, there is no such thing as an antifascist architectural aesthetic but a shared political positioning that found expression in a wide array of buildings and activities.
Against the background of this fundamental but certainly not exhaustive dive into antifascist architecture, the authors present a timely and topical overview of an as of yet under researched aspect of architectural history that is highly readable and beautifully designed. A must-read!
