Degree Programs

This course offers a new view of European-wide tendencies in design and architecture by examining a remarkable body of work that has often been ignored or suppressed in conventional accounts of the period. Focusing on the visual and material culture of Central Europe (in particular Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia), this course will explore issues of national identity, the vernacular, and modernity as expressed in a range of architecture, design, dress, and craft. Encompassing both urban and rural centers, it will explore how the particular political and cultural conditions of Central Europe influenced and shaped such design activity. Much of the course will be concerned with the movements of national romanticism and modernism and with the relationship between regional, national, and international tendencies in this politically turbulent era. 3 credits.