The Cultural Power of the Cold War

The Cold War was the highest expression of the attempt by the USSR and the USA to impose their power on the whole world during the second half of the 20th century.
This clash expressed itself, among other things, in the building a reciprocal fortified line between West and East Europe. In this context, NATO built in Italy numerous architectures and installations to monitor the activity of the Warsaw Pact.
In the first part of the conference, we will present our studies analysing the relationships between the architecture of the Cold War with the Italian architectural theories of the second half of the 1900s. In the second part, the Italian North-Eastern military architectures will be described.
In the third part, a participatory mapping exercise will be presented. This will consider test installations and architectures on which citizens worldwide will be invited to provide feedback and impressions. Through various facilitation techniques by the pibinko.org network (including music), the inputs collected from the community in relation to historical aspects, or to the future, of these architectures and installations will be connected to the architects’ view, thus suggesting an avenue to new forms of collaboration between the power of experts and of citizens in this field.