A Unit of Homemaking: The Prefabricated Panel and Domestic Architecture in the Late Soviet Union

[摘要] This article investigates the role of an iconic Soviet material — the concrete prefabricated panel — in the making of late-Soviet urban residential architecture. The dominance of the prefabricated panel became possible due to the economic system that sustained its production and use, yet the same economic context also drove the architectural profession and the construction industry into stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s. With the help of archival and legal materials, interviews collected in Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine, professional magazines, and through the object-based history of this basic material unit, this paper reconsiders the traditional notion of professional designers’ dominant role in architectural decision-making, and highlights economic and institutional inertia in the creation of late-Soviet residential architecture.

[学科分类] 内科医学