Table of Contents

Introduction: The Communist Surround 1. Art, Technology and Design in the Soviet Thaw 2. Senezh Studio and the Emergence of a Critical Practice 3. Semiotics, Environment and the Historical Turn 4. Design and the Projective Imagination 5. A Quiet Conversation Among Things: Memory, Agency and Materiality at the End of History Conclusion Appendix I: Complete List of Senezh Projects Appendix II : Key People Index

Promotional Information

Drawing on a wealth of entirely original sources, this is the first book to explore the fascinating topic of critical design practice in the Soviet Union in the post-War period.

About the Author

Tom Cubbin is Senior Lecturer in Design Studies and head of Campus Steneby, part of the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a design historian and has a background in Russian and Soviet history. He has contributed to the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design and has had several articles published in Home Cultures, Estonian Art, and the Calvert Journal.

Reviews

For many years, it seemed as if there were only two kinds of Soviet design: visionary Constructivism or Stalinist kitsch. Cubbin’s vividly written and deeply researched study offers an entirely new picture. Illuminating the long history of modernism in the USSR, he examines how critical designers sought to create utopia on a human scale.
*David Crowley, Head of the School of Visual Culture at NCAD, Ireland*

What happens when principles of Russian avant-garde of the 1920s are retooled for the needs of Soviet science and technology? In his book, Cubbin traces the emergence and demise of “technical aesthetics” created by Soviet artists-engineers in the 1960s-1980s as a communist alternative to capitalist design. Highly informative and richly documented, this book reconstructs fascinating yet barely known moments in the history of material culture and aesthetic theory of the twentieth century.
*Serguei A. Oushakine, Director of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Program at Princeton University, USA*

The book provides insight to the activities of Senezh studio, an important part of the USSR Union of Artists. It also explores the phenomenon of 'paper design', a particular kind of project work, characteristic of the Soviet cultural milieu. Senezh studio operated for more than twenty years, although only a fraction of its projects were ever realized. Despite this, the studio's design practices were of remarkable national importance.
*Alexandra Sankova, Director of the Moscow Design Museum, Russia*