Karl D. Qualls

Through the politics and aesthetics of urban reconstruction planning many Soviet constituencies scripted myths that re-legitimized the regime and provided a sense of place and self to an urban population beleaguered by devastating losses from wars and terror. Challenging notions of top-down rule and bolstered by evidence from my case study of Sevastopol, this multi-city project will examine central plans for rebuilding and memorialization and how, with local input, planners created new memorial spaces and rewrote urban biographies and history. Architectural journals, design manuals, memoirs, travel guides, city histories, maps and more will illuminate the understanding of self and others in this multidisciplinary project on contested space and ideas, collective memory and urban experience.