Modernism and the Architecture of a Future Socialist Society

Memorial for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1926) by Mies van der Rohe

In the obituary of Oscar Niemeyer, Modernist architect (1907-2012) Marc Rattray writes in The Financial Times, 7th December 2012: “Oscar Niemeyer, who has died at the age of 104, was first catapulted into the international limelight in the 1950's by his designs for the main public buildings of Brasilia. His use of reinforced concrete often verged on the futuristic and his buildings in many cases came to resemble sculptures.  He wrote: “The straight line, hard, inflexible, created by man does not attract me. What does draw me is the free and sensual curve that I find in the mountains of my country, the sinuousness of her rivers, in the clouds of her sky and the waves of the sea. The whole universe is made of the curve.”  His works represented nothing less than a belief in Brazil's future.
Niemeyer's socialist political beliefs were formed early in life. Even as a child he felt disgust at the way his family's servants were sometimes treated and at the social divisions that scarred Brazilian society. This ultimately led to his lifetime membership of the Brazilian Communist Party.
Niemeyer was much influenced by Le Corbusier, the world-renowned Swiss-born architect who derived a bold new architecture out of reinforced concrete for the industrial age.  The Corbusian style is particularly evident in the early works of Niemeyer and they were to work together on the UN headquarters building in New York.
In the 1940's Niemeyer was commissioned by Juscelino Kubitschek , mayor of Rio to design a leisure complex. Kubitschek and Niemeyer formed a strong friendship. After becoming president in 1956, Kubitschek began an intense period of industrialisation and modernisation, which saw the building of Brasilia, under the motto of “50 years in five”.
Kubitschek's determination to build what he called “the most beautiful capital in the world”, led him back to Niemeyer who shared his communist beliefs. The aim was to build a capital that would symbolise the future and open up the centre of the country. The work was completed in three years at great expense. Niemeyer accepted civil employee wages and life in a zinc cabin in return for the chance to design buildings of reinforced concrete on a scale that has never been equalled. In all, he designed five palaces and a cathedral.
The finished products would contribute to a new sense of collective identity and hope for the Brazilian people. Niemeyer's  vision was that Brasilia should be built for “free, fortunate men, without racial or social discrimination”. Through his design of simple, low-rise housing blocks, he hoped to produce a non-hierarchical civic life.”

Niemeyer's 600 plus architectural projects in a 75 year career included the Secretariat building and domed general assembly of the United Nations headquarters in New York City (1952),  many modernist curving concrete and glass structures in Brasilia in the period 1956-62: such as the  Brazil National Congress, the presidential palaces (Palacio da Alvorada, Palacio do Planalto, Palacio do Jabura), the Cultural Complex of the Republic, and the Supreme Federal Court.
In 1964 bourgeois democracy in Brazil was overthrown in a military coup d'etat and the military would rule until 1985. Niemeyer went into exile and would return to Brazil after 1985 where he continued his work of modernist architecture with such buildings as the Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum (1996)  whose saucer-shaped design resembles a UFO, the Novomuseum in Curitba (2002) with its lenticular eye tower, gallery space, and reflecting pool (“a place for education, culture and peace”), and in 2011 in Aviles in Asturias, Spain he designed the International Cultural Centre.

The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer, 2000:
"Our concern is political too – to change the world, ...Architecture is my work, and I've spent my whole life at a drawing board, but life is more important than architecture. What matters is to improve human beings."
"It's a fantastic Universe which humiliates us, and we can't make any use of it. But we are amazed by the power of the human mind … in the end, that's it—you are born, you die, that's it!".
“I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein” 

The architecture of a future socialist society has already been built. We already have the models and templates. Bourgeois capitalist society has already done a lot of work for us.

Architecture is a profession that has produced many socialist and visionary practitioners who wanted to build a better world for the future. Modernist architecture, the 'International Style', Brutalism still appear “futuristic” and science fiction today, and surely would be ideal templates to how we could physically build the environment in a future socialist society. Aesthetics married to functionality would be a keystone. Building for human needs and use and not for profit and not to house governments and political leaders.

William Morris, John Ruskin, Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus will have their place in a future socialist society.  Marxist architect Hannes Meyer, appointed Bauhaus director in 1928 moved away from aesthetics and artistic intuition towards functionality and building theory. He believed buildings should be low-cost and fulfil social needs: “the people's needs instead of the need for luxury”.  In the 1930's exiled German Jewish architects built 4,000 fantastic Bauhaus and international style buildings in the White City of  Tel Aviv  in what was then the British mandate of Palestine.  In the USA Frank Lloyd Wright's house 'Fallingwater', Mill Run in Pennsylvania (1937) must be one of the greatest residential designs ever, and surely the template for organic building in harmony with nature in a socialist society.

Le Corbusier's government buildings in Chandigarh, India (1952-59) can serve as structures for the “administration of things” in a socialist society.  Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK Airport (1962) and the Washington Dulles Airport Terminal (1958) are superb aviation buildings. Museums, art galleries, cultural centres, libraries have already been built; Niemeyer's Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum (1996),  the Novomuseum in Curitba (2002) and the International Cultural Centre in Aviles, Spain (2011);  Alvar Aalto's  Viipuri Library (1935) and Finlandia concert Hall (1971). In London we have the Royal Festival Hall (1951), Hayward Gallery (1968), Queen Elizabeth Hall (1967), National Theatre (1976), and the Barbican Centre (1982). The Egg Building (1978) is a futuristic structure which is a performing arts venue in Albany in up state New York.  At the present time Ove Arup's brutalist Preston Bus Station (1969) is under threat of demolition. Ove Arup built the Sydney Opera House which was designed by Jorn Utzon.

These are all fantastic architectural achievements of capitalist society.  Marx and Engels wrote that the capitalist class  “has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals”.

Memorials to socialists and the working class were once built in Germany; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed the Memorial to Socialists Rosa  Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht  (1926) who had been murdered in 1919 during the 'spartacist' uprising in Berlin, and Walter Gropius designed the Monument to the March Dead (1921) which commemorated workers who had died in fighting the right wing Kapp putsch of 1920. Both these monuments were torn down by the Nazis.

The architecture of the future socialist society will be a world of function and beauty in accordance with the needs of people living in harmony with the earth. The modernist architecture of the capitalist  20th century has already showed us the way we can design the built environment in socialism. 

Steve Clayton