Ambitions. The Architecture of the Eighties

The book traces the driving forces and processes taking place in the architecture of the eighties. It focuses on the growing efforts for critical internal self-reflection, realistic evaluation of the possibilities of our construction industry and efforts to revitalize it or respond to current social or international challenges. And with ambitions, it also indicates the circumstances of their (non)fulfillment in real creation. Against the background of the institutional and ideological background, he presents the architecture of the 1980s as a complex and in many ways contradictory mosaic. It reflects both a relaxed consumer-oriented lifestyle and the ubiquitous unified construction in an economically and morally weak regime. It includes both the inertia of the state's social policy and exclusive services to prominent people. Carefully moderated ideological representation through flamboyant buildings as well as slightly "subversive" seepage and finally the filling of Western inspirations. Massive exploitation and destruction of nature and at the same time plans to create a sustainable environment. The technocratic organization of architects' work, as well as their ability to find positive private niches in an alternative culture. If the era of the eighties seems extraordinarily contradictory, then architecture could not be more different.