Invisible Agents. Ministries and Architecture (1908-38)

The first half of the twentieth century was a period of intense activity on the public building sector. In the Habsburg monarchy the imperial-royal Ministry of Public Works was responsible for this issue. In its successor states, these duties were carried on by a sub-department of the Ministry for Trade and Traffic in the First Republic of Austria, while in the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, an own Ministry for Public Works was re-created. Unfortunately, we hardly know anything about the scope and appearance of these public buildings, because the dominant discourse in architectural history still mainly examines renowned architects and buildings that were outstanding in the development of modernism, while ignoring those minor building tasks and the public authorities as major actors. Therefore, we do not know whether these official bodies actually rejected modernist architecture or whether they supported it or saw it as one of several possible variants. To understand architecture more profoundly and to get a broader picture of the development of architecture at that time (including the question of how multi-layered modernist architecture actually was), we shift the research perspective towards ministries as key commissioners. By situating past and present attitudes to the interaction of architects and institutions in Central Europe, this project aims to reveal not only state architecture in its diversity, but also the prejudices which still attend the scholarly discussion. We aim to explore new perspectives on state commissions and consider how they contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the building production. Shifting the perspective towards the underexplored field of state institutions opens up a new way of evaluating the history of modern architecture. We will scrutinize initiatives, practices and personalities of the ministries in the Cis-Leithanian part of Austria-Hungary and the first Czechoslovak and Austrian Republics to get a clearer picture of the quantity, quality, and range of state tasks in the field of architecture. Examining the official building agenda in different countries will question the policies in heterogeneous political systems and state priorities in times of radical transformations. The project aims to shed new light on the relationships of cultural and political elites in times of key transformations in Europe. We hope to get a clearer picture on the question whether for two different states that build on a common legacy, continuities and ruptures are the same, similar or different. Understanding architectural history as a transnational heritage, we want to foster cooperative research bilaterally by investigating the relationship and interaction between superior and subordinate authorities (190818) and between ministries of two nation-states (191838).