Re-scaling the Environment: New Landscapes of Design, 1960-1980 (East West Central: Re-building Europe, 1950-1990)

From 1960-1980, both eastern and western Europe experienced a construction boom of new dimensions. Cybernetics, the science of planning, and sociology, as well as the new possibilities offered by technology and production, paved the way to large-scale processes and systems in architecture and urban design, which favored technocratic and utopian concepts. Increasingly, architects and planners saw themselves as designers of comprehensive infrastructure and mega-structures in a technology-focused world. The authors assesses these developments on the back of a knowledge transfer between East and West. It confirms a change in attitude that can still be felt today - recession, social changes, and environmental problems led to criticism of the then contemporary concepts of modernity.