Institute of Art History, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn

International conference
CONSTRUCTED HAPPINESS
The Domestic Environment in the Cold War Era
20-21 May 2004

The divided world of East and West after World War II, was constantly,
either openly or covertly, ready to clash. An important feature of this
rivalry was the promise of happiness – who can build a more prosperous
life for their citizens, either the communist East or the capitalist West?
One of the primary sites for this happiness to appear was in the home –
the private sphere and the domestic environment. Could these new homes
bring the expected happiness?

The conference addresses this politically and ideologically controversial
period from the everyday level through the domestic environment as one of
the central topics in the genesis of modern architecture. Focusing on the
domestic environment of the Cold War era as a multidimensional social
space we will look at the intertwined network of power relations, islands
of private life and the unseen barriers and prescribed identities that
homes contain.

* Building industry and the society
Mass housing and the industrialisation of the building process in the
post-war years was seen as an opportunity for overall improvement of the
living environment. Simultaneously, the private builder carried out a mass
urbanisation outside the confines of the city centres. What were the
differences in regard to the image of the ideal home and public housing
schemes between the East and the West? What were the different means for
financing them?

* Barriers, borders, identities
In addition to seen physical boundaries that define spaces and operate in
houses, homes are structured by unseen orders of social relations, gender
representations and power networks. Together they define the conventions
of the domestic everyday. This leads to questions on the relationship
between the housing industry and its imagined subject, on the constructed
architectonics of the family and the architecture of the home. Also, what
kind of identities, gendered spaces and new territorialisations evolved in
different cultural contexts?

* Islands of private life
The retreat into the private sphere is generally considered as a strategy
for staying outside the reach of the ideological public life. In the Cold
War climate the private sphere acquired significance as a site of
pretended autonomy, of tactical gestures slipping through the fingers of
big politics. Was such a concentration on the private sphere impelled by
political distress or the radically transformed living environment? Was
the private sphere a site for resistance or a place for escape?

The conference wishes to gather together the different experiences of the
home environment and the everyday during the long period of the Cold War
(1947-1989), to combine different disciplinary understandings and to bring
together scholars from both sides of the former East - West divide.

PROGRAMME
THURSDAY, May 20

9.00-9.30
Conference registration

9.30
Official opening
by Ando Keskküla, Rector, Estonian Academy of Arts

Introduction
by prof. Mart Kalm, Head of the Institute of Art History, Estonian Academy
of Arts

Hilde Heynen
"The Jargon of Authenticity. Modernism and its (Non)political Position"

David Crowley
"The Public Life of Private Spaces: The Uses of the Home in Poland after 1956"

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00

Session I

Dmitrii Sidorov
"Corporate Re-Scaling of the City: The Geographical Construction of Urban
Lightscapes in Soviet and Post-Soviet Moscow"

Jeremy Morris
"The Kitchen Space Reflected in Russian-Soviet Literature"

Susan E. Reid
"Our Kitchen is Wonderful"

Yulia Gradskova
"Beauty Norms and Ideals in Women's Everyday Life in the Post-War Russia"

Discussion

Session II

Julian Holder
"Happiness is a Prefab. Modernism, Domesticity, and the Embarrassing
Success of the First Post-War Housing Campaign in Britain"

Maarit Kaipiainen
"Smooth Construction, Comfortable Rooms, Cozy Communities"
13.40-14.00 Lorenzo Secchiari "The External Spaces and the Services as
Sign of Quality of Life in the INA Casa Quarter of San Leonardo in Massa"

Discussion

14.40-15.10 Coffee break

Anna Minta
"The Authority of the Ordinary: Building Socialism and the Ideology of
Domestic Space"

Michelle Provoost
"The Liberal Dream of Progress and How It Got to Be Built"

Leonardo Diaz-Borioli
"Cultural Assumptions of Mexican Tropical Resort Architecture: An
Other-way close to home."

Aino Niskanen
"The late 1960's Young Generation of Architects: Ideals of Housing, Homes
and Leisure-time"

Discussion

16.45-17.35
Film about architect Hugh Maaskant (author Jord den Hollander, 2003).

FRIDAY, May 21

10.00

Adrian Forty
"Concrete Interiors"

Monique Eleb
"Petits bonheurs dans la "maison du 3e type" ou dans le HLM"

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.00

Session I

Jaak Poom
"Housing Policy In Sweden 1945-2000"

Janis Lejnieks
"Living in Latvia. 1944-1991. Shift in Time and Space"

Asdis Olafsdottir
"The Big Chess-Board. Domestic Environment in Iceland at the Time of the
1972 Chess World Championship"

Irene Cieraad
"The Cold War on the Home Front: the Dutch Post-War Modern Movement Goed
Wonen"

Discussion

Session II

Anu Kannike
"Negotiating Privacy: Individual Strategies and Cultural Change in Soviet
Estonia"

Kirsi Saarikangas
"On the Edges of the Forest. Planning for the Best of the Women and Children"

Marija Dremaite
"Escaping from Soviet Uniformity: Alternative Housing Projects in Soviet
Lithuania in the 1960's"

Discussion

14.40-15.10 Coffee break

Liina Jänes
"Kolkhoz-Village as a Promise of Happiness. A New Type of Settlement in
Estonian Rural Architecture"

Juraj Podoba
"The House as a Symbol of Real Socialist Welfare: The Case of Rural
Slovakia"

Carola Ebert
"Into the Great Wide Open. The Bungalow in 1960's West-Germany between
Housing Industry and Stately Representation"

Raphaëlle Saint-Pierre
"Happiness in French Houses of the Fifties"

Discussion and concluding panel moderated by Jean-Louis Cohen.

Reception buffet in the Tallinn City Hall The organisers reserve the right
to change the programme