Place attachment in the Solidarita Housing Estate Prague-contested use and meaning of the socialist architecture in the current city
Abstract
Solidarita Housing Estate was built as one of the first prefabricated housing estates in Prague between 1947 and 1951, in the period of a post-war reconstruction in Czechoslovakia. The architects of the project were looking for a balance between individualistic private family houses and collective housing estates with all of the benefits of these various housing types included.
They designed a simple urban plan of row houses and four-floors blocks of flats. The project drew on the international housing standards popular in Scandinavia such as a collective approach to neighbourhood life, public and cultural facilities, and green surroundings with gardens and park.
Today, this neighbourhood stands out as an example of how the physical aspects of space influence the social aspects and reinforce the attachment to the place. According to the anthropological concept of Place attachment (Altman & Low,1992; Scannell, & Gifford 2010), I want to discuss, what the relationship to the Solidarita housing estate is, and how this environment, based on the cooperation, ideal of social solidarity, and human scale has changed.