Mari Laanemets

Abstract

This article explores how designers and artists working in Soviet Estonia sought to assess and rethink the relationship of the man to his/her surrounding environment. At the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s various attempts to imagine a new kind of humane environment appeared as a response to modernization. The creation of a new integral living environment—the main task of Soviet design proclaimed by VNIITE—included aspects of social agency, and of educating and empowering the user. The conceptions of integrity and humanity, central to these new designs, were developed against the background of a return to the early writings of Karl Marx as well as to the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s.

Keywords

Environment, Soviet Design and Architecture, Marxist Theory of Design, Humane Space

From: Rethinking Marxism 2017 29 (1)

Editor: Wang Yi