Article Number: 2088
Soft Cover, English, Thread Stitching, 349 Pages, 2011, Jovis
Isabella Hollauf

Spaces for Recreation

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Utopian models of society have not been rated so highly since the late 1970s/early 1980s. However, social pilot projects have disappeared with them, projects that aimed to make culture and recreation more widely available.

Expansively laid out parks and swimming pools were the expression of a desire for participation in public life and prosperity for everyone. Today, only a few of these locations and facilities are still intact; most of them have fallen into decay. Isabella Hollauf starts her work with the disappearance of past social utopias. Her interest is directed not only towards post-communist countries, but also towards those with strong socialist tendencies for many decades, such as Austria or Sweden. In a photographic search for evidence, she retraces the manifest changes in values, revealing former utopian pretensions and the often dismal reality of today. The book shows projects dating from 2001 to 2007.

ENGLISH/GERMAN/ITALIAN/POLISH/ROMANIAN