Importing Words to Build a City: The Socialist Modernization of Hunedoara between the Architects’ Designs and the Politicians’ Projects, 1949-1952
Importing Words to Build a City: The Socialist Modernization of Hunedoara between the Architects’ Designs and the Politicians’ Projects, 1949-1952

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the shifting borders of institutional functioning in the trans-nationalization of public space, which had to redefine the collective identities of the newly formed socialist communities, by looking at how the built environment in Hunedoara was the outcome of negotiated agreements between architects and politicians. Given the Romanian authorities’ isomorphic institutional behavior, according to which implementing a Soviet bureaucratic order in a different socio-economic context had to legitimate the system politically, while not to fluidizing the decision-making mechanisms, carrying out the program became the illustration of versatile practices and conflicting creation choices. As such, the built environment’s ideological reading was added various new facets, while the meaning was revisited every time the political context changed.

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