Imagining Slovene Socialist Modernity: The Urban Redesign of Ljubljana's Beloved Trnovo Neighborhood, 1951-1989

by Veronica E. Aplenc

Overview

After the Second World War, Yugoslavia’s small regional cities represented a challenge for the new socialist state. These cities’ older buildings, local historic sites, and low-quality housing clashed with socialism’s promises and ideals. How would the state transform these cities’ everyday neighborhoods? In the Slovene republic’s capital city of Ljubljana, the Trnovo neighborhood embodied this challenge through its modest housing, small medieval section, vast gardens, acclaimed interwar architecture, and iconic local reputation. Imagining Slovene Socialist Modernity explores how urban planners, architects, historic preservationists, neighborhood residents, and even folklorists transformed this beloved neighborhood into a Slovene socialist city district. Aplenc demonstrates that this urban redesign centered on republic-level interpretations of a Yugoslav socialist built environment, versus a re-envisioned Slovene national past or design style. This interdisciplinary study sheds light on how Yugoslav state socialism operated at the republic level, within a decentralized system, and on the diverse forces behind success or failure. With its focus on vernacular architecture, small-scale historic sites, single-family homes, and illegal housing, this book expands our understanding of the everyday built environment in socialist cities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612498140
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2023
Series:	Central European Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Veronica E. Aplenc is Senior Program Manager at the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She received her M.S. in historic preservation and Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the everyday built environment, historic preservation, and the intersection of the traditional with the socialist modern. Her work on the everyday built environment in socialist Yugoslavia has been supported by IREX and Fulbright grants. In addition to her scholarship, she has collaborated on international research teams, participated in international teaching exchanges, and serves as a preservation and planning consultant.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Visions of Upscale Socialist Modernity: “Above-Standard” High-Rises in the Trnovo Neighborhood’s Historic Core
2. High Socialism’s Promises for Socialist Living: Murgle’s Single-Family Homes and the Individual’s Paradise
3. Where the Socialist Folk Live: Rakova Jelša’s Vernacular but Unsanctioned Architecture Pushes the Boundaries of the Socialist City in High Socialism
4. The Historic District That Wasn’t: History Revisited and Jože Plečnik’s Eternal Architecture Surpassed
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"An engaging, tightly researched, yet very accessible evocation of a historic neighborhood in Ljubljana and of its modernist transformation. The book enriches our accounts of socialist urban planning to include debates about preservation, local architectural forms, self-built vernacular, and the single-family house, and reveals how rapid urbanization came hand-in-hand with the construction of tradition." —Juliana Maxim, Associate Professor of Architectural History, University of San Diego, and author of The Socialist Life of Modern Architecture: Bucharest, 1949–1964

"Bringing a folklorist's love of language and everyday practices to a study of European urban growth, Veronica Aplenc offers a vivid and wonderfully textured account of the development of Ljubljana's Trnovo neighborhood in its socialist decades. Churches, gardens, villas, and postwar high rises coexisted in this place long associated with famed architect Jože Plečnik—a combination that provides rich material for this careful and illuminating analysis." —Kimberly E. Zarecor, author of Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960

From the Publisher