introduction to the archive

Assembled in conjunction with the exhibition Retrotopia: Design for Socialist Spaces, this archive focusses on design from the formerly socialist countries of Eastern and Central Europe and ex-Yugoslavia. It provides visitors around the world with access to the region’s design history, which until now has remained largely invisible. In tracing the development of the field, including its circumstances and main players, it highlights particular events and exhibitions, describes pedagogical approaches, and introduces key concepts.
The archive details the history of design within each featured country, maps out the movement of ideas between them, and delineates the lines of exchange between East and West. The concept of the ‘contact zone’, recently introduced as an alternative theoretical framework in the historiographies of architecture and design, informs the archive’s investigations into not only the region’s internal connections, but also the ways in which each country interacted with the global design discourse, despite the existence of the Iron Curtain—which, as the Hungarian historian György Péteri has noted, was more akin to a ‘nylon curtain’. Such contact zones encompass a multitude of activities, including competitions, exhibitions, congresses, biennales, and workshops. In addition to direct interactions, the archive also looks at initiatives and ideas that may not have involved any face-to-face contact but instead an imagined dialogue about shared topics and concerns. In this sense, the archive is not merely a repository of data but rather, in the words of Michel Foucault, ‘a system for relating information to each other’, an exercise in historical imagination.
The archive is structured around six thematic issues: institutions, education, exhibitions, networks, discourses, and collections. The archive relies on collaborative input from international experts in its gathering and contextualizing of key information on design and related topics in formerly socialist countries. Each entry includes a short description and visual documentation. Entries can be listed and rearranged according to various criteria, including thematic keywords, countries, and individual names, allowing for different readings. The archive aims to serve as a general guide—and hopefully as a starting point for further in-depth research.

For their invaluable support in the development of this online archive—through image and text contributions, research, or vital information—special thanks go to the following individuals: Anna Cebula, Réka Czigler, David Crowley, Gražina Gurnevičiūtė, Beata Hock, Kateřina Hrušková, Živilė Intaitė, Dániel Kovács, Olha Melnyk, Peter Molnar, Tetiana Pavlova, Eszter Szőnyeg-Szegvári, and Elnara Taidre.