How do you care for something that is deemed ultimately ugly? This question occupies imaginations of planners, architects, and city officials all across Central and Eastern European cities dealing with socialist-period architecture on a daily basis. With urban aesthetics becoming an increasingly relevant political and economic tool, socialist buildings share a tragic fate. In this talk, I will shift our attention away from the dominant discourse of socialist-period built environments’ ‘ugliness’ towards actual practices of valuing and devaluing architecture. This shift, as I argue, will allow us to see what kinds of work—emotional, symbolic, and material—goes into turning socialist-period architecture into ‘aesthetic eyesores’ and worthless matter. Drawing upon the fieldwork in Wrocław in Poland and Klaipėda in Lithuania, I will show what it takes to care for the ‘obdurately unloved’ architecture, as well as what role architectural professionals’ aesthetic judgements and practices play in the increasingly aestheticized urban politics.

All are invited to attend this lecture organised by the Junior Chair for European Cities and Urban Heritage and the Institute for European Urban Studies. For more information, please click here / see poster.