On the Uses of the Miniature: The Fabrication of Mass Housing of the Cold War Period

Abstract

This thesis discusses the architectural miniatures depicting mass housing projects of the Cold War period. After the end of the Second World War, the international mass housing movement reached an unprecedented scale. However, it also coexisted along with the Cold War tensions between the socialist and the capitalist blocs. Within these contexts, post-war dwellings became both physical and imaginative places serving to represent socialist and capitalist values. These notions of residential architecture are studied through the lens of the small-scale models. They were self-sufficient mediums that simultaneously carried meanings and constituted a complex network of significations for mass housing through their size, various modes of public displays, and the performative power. This thesis compares the miniatures from capitalist and socialist countries. It seeks to explore the ways in which they became a means by which post-war dwellings were fabricated as ideological and conceptual constructs expressing architectural, political, and cultural issues.