A Modern Vernacular? Mass Housing as a Place-specific European Heritage
Prof. Miles Glendinning will deliver a public lecture entitled “A Modern Vernacular? Mass Housing as a Place-specific European Heritage” on Wednesday, December 3, 2025 at 11 a.m. at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, in Hall 7 (Ivana Lučića 3, ground floor).
This lecture argues that the role of tangible cultural heritage in the development of local cultural identities in Europe need not be confined to easily-preservable traditional-style monuments, but can also be potentially expanded by including one of the broadest categories of everyday built heritage, namely the vast areas of state-sponsored housing complexes that were built especially in the postwar reconstruction decades between 1945 and 1990. Most of the paper is devoted to defining and characterising this potential heritage historically, stressing its combination of thematic unity and regional diversity. The last part of the paper speculates rather more briefly about how, with its immediacy in the lives of citizens, mass housing might help in developing a locally-embedded heritage for all, and, if seen as a cultural asset, can actively help in local community building and community struggles against forces such as residual isolation or social cleansing.
Miles Glendinning is the Professor at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies. His research interests focus on the history of architectural heritage conservation and, in particular, on the history of modern mass housing on a global scale. He is involved in the international modernist heritage organisation DOCOMOMO, including founding its International Specialist Committee on Urbanism and Landscape. His published works include the award-winning Tower Block: Modern Public Housing in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (co-authored with Stefan Muthesius, Yale University Press, 1994), The conservation movement – a history of architectural preservation (Routledge, 2013), Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Hong Kong Public Housing An Architectural and Policy History (Routledge, 2024).
The lecture is part of the project The Right to Housing: The Production of Space for Everyday Living in Yugoslavia (1945-1991) , which is being implemented at the Institute of Art History (ERC-CoG Housing.Yu, no. 101171985), organised in collaboration with the Department of Modern Art and Visual Communications at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, and the Cabinet for Residential Buildings at the Department of Design at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb.
More informatio on the project here.
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Cover image: Studio ABC (Vjenceslav Richter, Berislav Šerbetić, Ljubomir Iveta, Olga Korenik), model for residential complex “Vrbik” in Zagreb, skyscrapers popularly called “rockets”, project 1966, realization 1968–1969 (Photo archive Branko Balić, Institute of Art History, BB-R-00050)
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