Shaping the Great City looks at modern architecture and the city in a vast geographical area over nearly fifty years of tumultuous social and political change, bringing to light architectural developments that are only now emerging as subjects for international inquiry.

How did modern architecture construct “meaning” in relation to the complex cultural traditions, conflicting political agendas, and historical narratives of modernizing urban society in the cities of central Europe? What role did the cities themselves—as the principal arenas of public culture in the multinational, polyethnic, and pluricultural Hapsburg Empire, then in the successor republics—play in the evolution of modern architectural culture? These questions remain pertinent to the current relationship between cities and the increasingly diverse cultures within them, and to the role of the great city today in the age of globalization.

Edited by Eve Blau and Monika Platzer
Essays by Friedrich Achleitner, Renate Banik-Schweitzer, Eve Blau, Moritz Csáky, András Ferkai, János Gerle, Andrew Herscher, Petr Krajči, Aleksander Laslo, Charles S. Maier, Breda Mihelič, Ileana Pintilie, Monika Platzer, Jacek Purchla, Rostislav Švácha, Iain Boyd Whyte, and Ihor Žuk
Graphic design by Rainald Schwarz

Published in French as L’idée de la grande ville : L’architecture moderne d’Europe centrale, 1890–1937
Published in German as Mythos Großstadt: Architektur und Stadtbaukunst in Zentraleuropa, 1890–1937
Co-published in 1999 with Prestel Verlag
Hardcover or softcover, 272 pages

Related exhibition: Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890–1937