Aliaksandr Shuba

Why are you researching at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar?

The research on the historiography of urban planning in the Slavic languages was initiated under the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and three other European universities under the urbanHIST project. For me, it was a great pleasure to join an ambitious international project such as the urbanHIST, and to have the possibility to develop the research idea and my competences into an individual work. The working university environment in Weimar with the assistance of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia, and consultations with numerous prominent specialists around the globe gave me a great opportunity to develop my work into a promising research project that will be relevant for the academic community.

What is special about your project? Why is it relevant?

My research dwells upon a corpus of sources by elite high-level and less known scholars from the Soviet Union and state socialist countries focusing on history and theory of urban planning, cities and architecture. The published and unpublished sources are contextualised and related to the unpublished archival materials and oral memories that are representative for the professional debates and discourses of the architectural circles. This critical analysis is essential for reflecting on the institutional and architectural history of the post-socialist European countries. The studies aim to bring new interesting perspectives with relevant and valuable materials for interpreting urbanistic and architectural practices, and urban heritage of the 20th century.