Architecture, Planning, and Policy Around Two Spanish Trips to the Soviet Union: I Réunions Internationales des Architectes (1932) and V International Union of Architects Congress (1958)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the diffusion of the USSR housing, planning, and architecture related to Spain in the transnational networks through the development of two international congress. The French magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui organized a trip to the Stalinist Soviet Union in 1932. The aims were to stage the I Réunions Internationales d’Architectes (RIA) and to discover the progress of Soviet urban planning and housing after the First Five-Year Plan. At the time, Spain was a newly declared republic that was eyeing the situation in the international context as a reference for development. In 1948, the RIA was transformed into the International Union of Architects (IUA) and organized the second meeting in Moscow, the V IUA Congress, under the support of the Khrushchev regime in 1958. Spain was then a dictatorship attempting to overcome the international isolation of the Franco regime. The chronicles of these meetings show the contradictions and similarities of ideas at two very different points in time for both countries.