Casa del Fascio vs. Stalinist Architecture

As told 5

“Architecture brought out the truth. If you said this in public... you would have disappeared in Gulag.”
24:12 Digital Consortium Lecture - Reality as Materialized Ideology Inaugural lecture by Slavoj Zizekpub. 2021-06-12 · 1:52:09

“the first thing to do is to relativize it... the absolute cult of American Fordist efficient Ford was almost a saint”
1:22:12 Slavoj Žižek: Architecture as a Critique of Ideology2009 · 1:46:39

“I think that simply what is called postmodern architecture is closely related to the term that I use a lot the term of parallax”
0:28 The Failure of Performance-Arts Venues to construct a Communal Space2009-06-16 · 1:15:32

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

contents · one story, 3 jobsuses

return of the repressed ×3 unknown knowns ×2 political unconscious ×2

Its cast and sources

populated by

Rem Koolhaas4 Alejandro Zaera-Polo3 Daniel Libeskind3 Kim Il-sung3 Frank Gehry3 Norman Foster2 Adolf Loos2 Oscar Niemeyer2

alongside works

Yokohama Port Terminal2 Tate Modern2 Sydney Opera House2 Do Dual Organizations Exist?2 Tristes Tropiques2 The Political Unconscious2 Lord of the Rings2 Performing Architecture: Opera Houses, Theaters and Concert Halls for the 21st Century1

Told together with

40% Korean DMZ theater / North Korean fake village 2 shared talks 33% Alphonse Allais joke, woman naked beneath her dress 2 shared talks 20% Kinder Surprise Egg 2 shared talks

Every retelling 5

24:12 Digital Consortium Lecture - Reality as Materialized Ideology Inaugural lecture by Slavoj Zizekpub. 2021-06-12 · 1:52:09

Contrasts Mussolini's fascist architecture (neo-imperial pastiche vs. modernist glass) and Stalinist 'wedding cake' buildings. Argues that architecture reveals the 'truth' of the ideology (hierarchy/authoritarianism) even when the official ideology claims equality., illustrating Material Existence of Ideology

1:22:12 Slavoj Žižek: Architecture as a Critique of Ideology2009 · 1:46:39

The claim that Stalinist architecture's monumental style originated not from Gothic obsession but from the Bolshevik cult of American Fordist efficiency and New York's vertical expansion laws., illustrating history,capitalism

0:28 The Failure of Performance-Arts Venues to construct a Communal Space2009-06-16 · 1:15:32

The Stalinist neo-Gothic style (Lomonosov University, House of Culture in Warsaw) enacts the return of the repressed of official egalitarian ideology: the fantasy of hierarchy and social distinction that cannot be stated in the official text is staged in the mute language of the buildings., illustrating return of the repressed,ideology never lies,architecture as symptom

Slavoj Žižek: Architecture as a Critique of Ideology2009 · 1:46:39

Stalinist buildings (Lomonosov University, House of Culture in Warsaw) enact the 'return of the repressed' of socialist ideology: the hidden desire for hierarchy and class distinctions, which official texts claim to reject., illustrating return of the repressed,ideology

1:02:32 On Architecture and Aesthetics2010-06-10 · 1:06:36

Soviet communist architecture, officially egalitarian, adopted an extreme neo-Gothic hierarchical style, materializing in stone the hierarchical desire the regime had to deny publicly, the paradigm case of 'unknown knowns' in architecture., illustrating unknown knowns,political unconscious of buildings,return of the repressed