Vanessa Grossman: Architecture and the communists.

About this episode

Ambrose Gillick interviews architect and historian Vanessa Grossman about her book on the relationship between communism and modern architecture in postwar France.

In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to architect and historian, Vanessa Grossman, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, about her 2024 book, A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France , published by Yale University Press. Sampling only the most tantalizing soupçon of the book’s ideas, Vanessa and I discuss the relationship between the French Communist Party and postwar modernist architects, and how for them concrete served not just as a symbol of avant-garde taste but also political commitment. Architects like Oscar Niemeyer, Renée Gailhoustet, Paul Chemetov and Patrick Bouchain, and the networks of actors and actants, programs and artefacts that were activated to deliver social housing and cultural and working spaces in communist municipalities across France, as a means of delivering, ultimately, a countersociety of architects that sought to put a new vision of modernism to work towards a better version France’s nascent Fifth Republic. Vanessa can be found at work here and she’s on the socials too; the book is linked above. If you want and can, please support the…

People in this episode

Host: Ambrose Gillick

Guest: Vanessa Grossman

Topics covered

• architecture
• communism
• modernism
• social housing
• postwar France
• political commitment

Keywords

• architecture
• communism
• modern architecture
• social housing
• postwar France
• Vanessa Grossman
• Oscar Niemeyer

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Pennsylvania, Yale University Press

Books & works: A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France

Places: France, Fifth Republic

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