Call for Papers: Tower and Slab – perspectives on modernist highrise
developments

Panel at the Eighth International Conference on Urban History - Urban
Europe in Comparative Perspective. Organized by the European Association
of Urban Historians Stockholm 30th August – 2nd September 2006

The modernist highrise development was the most successful urban design
scheme of the 20th century. To date, from the government district of
Brasilia to the Chicago housing projects and from the Paris banlieue to
the Blue Towns of Siberia millions of city dwellers call a standardized,
prefabricated concrete tower their home. Despite its success, no urban
form has roused comparable controversies. In the fifty years since the
completion of the first satellite cities, the tower and slab blocks have
been alternately glorified as the salvation of mankind and scorned as
generators of violence, blight, and misery. They have been ignored,
ridiculed, and occasionally dynamited.

Despite its global proliferation, mass-produced modernist housing has
been anything but a uniform program. The concrete blocks were built under
diverse social, cultural, and political circumstances. Despite their
formal similarities, Roosevelt Island, New York, Paris-Ivry, Berlin-
Marzahn, Stockholm-Rinkeby, Warsaw-Ochota, or downtown Novosibirsk are
very different urban environments and have spawned a wide range of
cultural expressions.

We invite our panelists to investigate the condition of modernist
highrise developments over the course of the 20th century. We
particularly encourage contributions on the controversial perception of
these buildings at different points in time, and on the reciprocal
influence between urban design and cultural practice both at the level of
centralized planning and informal organization. Possible topics could
include architectural and social history, the peripheral condition,
issues of race and migration, or the reception of tower and slab
developments in the arts.

Please e-mail abstracts (max 400 words) and a short CV to both Susanne
Stemmler and Florian Urban.

The deadline for submission: October 1, 2005. You will be notified about
the acceptance by the end of November 2005.

For more information on the Eighth International Conference on Urban
History: http://www.historia.su.se/urbanhistory/eauh/sessions.htm

Susanne Stemmler, Ph. D.
Center of Metropolitan Studies
Technische Universität Berlin
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7 – TEL 3-0
10587 Berlin
Germany
susanne.stemmlermetropolitanstudies.de

Florian Urban
History, Theory and Criticism Section
Department of Architecture
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave, Room 10-390 G
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
furbanmit.edu