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Irina Seits

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University of Zagreb

Uppsala University

University of East London

University of Leicester

Gwen Robbins Schug

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Gabriel Gutierrez-Alonso

University of Salamanca

Macquarie University

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Swansea University

Jesper Hoffmeyer

University of Copenhagen

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Books by Irina Seits

Architectures of Life-Building in the Twentieth Century: Russia, Germany, Sweden

Architectures of Life-Building in the Twentieth Century: Russia, Germany, Sweden , 2018

Abstract (English) The modernist concept of life-building as an architectural method for improvin... more Abstract (English)
The modernist concept of life-building as an architectural method for improving the conditions of everyday life originated in Europe during the 1920s. This book explores three modes of functionalism by way of a comparative analysis of both the theoretical discourses and architectural practices associated with functionalism in Russia, Germany, and Sweden. These three countries made significant contributions to the application of functionalism within mass housing construction, the overarching purpose of which was to transform the traditional home into a rational living space.

This study provides both close readings of foundational modernist texts as well as an empirical study of the avant-garde heritage in Russia, Germany, and Sweden. As a special case study, a visual analysis of IKEA catalogues is presented, the purpose of which is to provide an illustrated history of modernist aesthetics within mass-produced living spaces, from the era of functionalism up to the present day.

Abstract (Svenska)
Det modernistiska begreppet livsbyggande, som en arkitektonisk metod för att förbättra vardagslivets villkor, uppstod i Europa under 1920-talet. Denna bok undersöker tre former av funktionalism via en komparativ analys av teoretiska diskurser såväl som arkitekturpraktiker i Ryssland, Tyskland och Sverige. Dessa tre länder gjorde viktiga bidrag till funktionalismens tillämpning inom storskalig bostadsproduktion, med det övergripande syftet att förvandla det traditionella hemmet till en rationell bostad.

Denna studie innehåller både närläsningar av grundläggande teoretiska texter inom modernismen och en empirisk studie av avantgardets arv i Ryssland, Tyskland och Sverige. En speciell fallstudie utgörs av en bildanalys av IKEA:s kataloger, med syftet att ge en historia i bild av modernismens estetik inom storskalig bostadsproduktion från funktionalismen till idag.

Proportion, (dis)Harmonies, Identities - PHI 2015

by Mário Kong, Maria do Rosario Monteiro, Maria João P Neto, Irina Seits, Nuno de Mendonça Raimundo, Maria João Pereira Neto, Madalena Folgado, Alexandra Ai Quintas, Sarah Frances Dias, Silvana Ferraro, Oresta Remeshylo- Rybchynska, António Canau, Ana Leonor Madeira Rodrigues, and Eduardo Durão Antunes

Proportion, (dis)Harmonies, Identities - PHI 2015, 2015

Complete Book divided in thee main chapters: Architecture, Urbanism and Culture. 320 p.

Papers by Irina Seits

Oil, water, and the Russian narratives of heritagization through times and spaces

CRC Press eBooks, Oct 24, 2023

The history of oil in Russia is a well-established narrative that was initiated by the Nobel brot... more The history of oil in Russia is a well-established narrative that was initiated by the Nobel brothers, who in 1879 founded the Branobel company, soon to become the Russian largest oil-industry. This article suggests reflecting on the anniversary books that the Branobel published to celebrate their 25-and 30-year jubilees in 1904 and 1909, not long before their oil Empire was washed away by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. I analyze the narrative that the Nobels produced while forming grounds for the new world order that still floats today on the sticky waters of the 'black gold,' and that caused the crucial change in human-nature relations. These relations have been recently challenged in search of a new means of sustainable existence that allow to drain the dependency on oil and establish a new world order for the sake of protecting nature from its own dangerous resources. Yet these efforts are far not limited to the development of the green renewable natural resources and require political, ideological, and cultural reconstruction of contempor ary social and natural landscapes. Hence, the study of the origins of the oil history is essential to the analysis of the mechanisms behind oil's rise from being merely a natural resource to a political and cultural legacy that identifies the world's 'superpowers,' outlines their political ambitions, and condi tions their ideologies.

From ignis mundi to the world’s first oil-tanker

Approaching Religion, Aug 31, 2023

his article analyses mechanisms of her i tagisation that transformed oil from a natural to a cult... more his article analyses mechanisms of her i tagisation that transformed oil from a natural to a cultural resource through the case study of the Branobel corporation, which operated in Azerbaijan from the late nineteenth century, and by reflecting on the role of the Branobel corporate narrative in heritagisation of oil and in justification of the world order based on fossil fuels. The narratives developed by the Branobel corporation introduced their business legacy as a part of global heritage. In the art icle I refer to the 'The Thirty Years of Activity of the Oil Production Association of the Brothers Nobel. 1879-1909' published in 1909, that not only reports on Branobel's industrial achieve ments, but promotes the history of oil, propagat ing its civilisational importance, while describing the company as an evolutionary part of this his tory. In their branding strategy, Branobel referred to the ancient religious cults and mythologies of Azerbaijan, for example in the case of the world's first oiltanker 'Zoroaster', designed by Ludvig Nobel. The images of Ateshgah, 'The Fire Temple of Baku', were used on the company's emblems to connect symbolically the industrial oil min ing with the 'eternal fires' worshipped at the Absheron Peninsula as 'the lights of life'.

What is the Aesthetics of the Everyday? : (Some Thoughts on a Journey to the IKEA Museum in Älmhult)

The foundation myth of St. Petersburg in the city guidebooks: Creating heritage through mind and emotions

CRC Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2022

The essay addresses the aspects of heritagization of St. Petersburg history, analyzing the myth o... more The essay addresses the aspects of heritagization of St. Petersburg history, analyzing the myth of the city's foundation from the perspective of the role of emotions and mind in the production of its urban space. I turn to the guidebooks published in St. Petersburg in the eighteenth-to early twentieth centuries to explore the paths that the heritagization took in order to construct the narrative and the image of the former Russian capital

From the garden city to the red village: Howard’s utopia as the ground for mass housing in Soviet Russia

The ruined fantasies of intelligent minds: ‘The Nobel’s town’ and neglected Swedish heritage in St. Petersburg

The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family's living in Russia an... more The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family's living in Russia and to the generally unknown architectural heritage in St. Petersburg that Nobels had left before fleeing the country after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and that still exists in a rather neglected state. This heritage resembles and symbolises many Nobel's technological and social inventions that were complexly applied to the overall improvement of the average peoples' everyday life through the development of the new type of housing for the workers -the so-called Nobel's worker's town. I touch upon the themes of creativity and intelligence, fantasies and materialisation of utopian dreams that were defining features of several generations of the Nobels through the case of the family's Russian period. To think on where fantasies of the seemingly pragmatic entrepreneurs and serious scientists had brought them and how their heritage had become a subject to oblivion on one side and an object of universal appreciation on the other, I trace the destiny of Nobels' architectural heritage formed in St. Petersburg by Swedish and German architects. This urban heritage is a part of the creative outcome of intellectual work ongoing within the family and a bitter symbol of efforts to materialise their "fantasy" of developing the system of "social responsibility", which, as they believed, could sustain and revitalise another fantasy -the successful existence of the so-called "fair capitalism.

Renaming the industrial heritage in post-revolutionary Petrograd: Innovative use of an old tradition

CRC Press eBooks, Jun 21, 2021

Mickey Mouse - the perfect tenant of an early Soviet city

Baltic Worlds, 2017

The article provides a closer reading of Walter Benjamin’s essays Experience and Poverty and Mosc... more

The bitter gifts of progress: Russian revolution, “barrackization” of living space and the poverty of experience

Revolutionised through glass: Russian modernism in the age of the Crystal Palace

From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto t... more From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto to the technological progress but as the constructive frame for the future society as well. Glass symbolized purity, equality and liberation from social chains; it became a paradisiacal material of modernity. Glass had become material of Russian socialist utopias since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) for the 1851 World's Trade Fair in London inspired the dreams of Vera Pavlovna in Chernyshevsky's What is to be done? (1863) and up to the projects of the Palace of Soviets of the1930s. Various aesthetic concepts that were associated mostly with the development of socialist and communist ideas were visualised through the wide use of glass in architectural projecting and construction. Yet glass remained a utopian material even for the Constructivists very apologetic architectural practice since due to mostly economic reasons, its application to the real construction in early Soviet Russia was rather limited. In the present paper, I turn to the major milestones of the aesthetic discussion around glass projects, which include the works by Nickolay Chernyshevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evgeniy Zamyatin and Sergei Eisenstein to analyse the nature of the glass age as well as to give an overview of its critique in Russian literature and aesthetics.

Architectures of Life-Building in the Twentieth Century : Russia, Germany, Sweden

Muted histories and re-united memories : Swedish industrial heritage in St. Petersburg

Swedish Heritage in St. Petersburg : The Policies of Remembering and the Practices of Oblivion

What is the Aesthetics of the Everyday? : (Some Thoughts on a Journey to the IKEA Museum in Älmhult)

Södertörns högskola, 2020

The ruined fantasies of intelligent minds: ‘The Nobel’s town’ and neglected Swedish heritage in St. Petersburg

Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy, 2019

The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family’s living in Russia an... more The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family’s living in Russia and to the generally unknown architectural heritage in St. Petersburg that Nobels had left before fleeing the country after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and that still exists in a rather neglected state. This heritage resembles and symbolises many Nobel’s technological and social inventions that were complexly applied to the overall improvement of the average peoples’ everyday life through the development of the new type of housing for the workers – the so-called Nobel’s worker’s town. I touch upon the themes of creativity and intelligence, fantasies and materialisation of utopian dreams that were defining features of several generations of the Nobels through the case of the family’s Russian period. To think on where fantasies of the seemingly pragmatic entrepreneurs and serious scientists had brought them and how their heritage had become a subject to oblivion on one side and an objec...

Revolutionised through glass: Russian modernism in the age of the Crystal Palace

Modernity, Frontiers and Revolutions, 2018

From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto t... more From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto to the technological progress but as the constructive frame for the future society as well. Glass symbolized purity, equality and liberation from social chains; it became a paradisiacal material of modernity. Glass had become material of Russian socialist utopias since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) for the 1851 World's Trade Fair in London inspired the dreams of Vera Pavlovna in Chernyshevsky's What is to be done? (1863) and up to the projects of the Palace of Soviets of the1930s. Various aesthetic concepts that were associated mostly with the development of socialist and communist ideas were visualised through the wide use of glass in architectural projecting and construction. Yet glass remained a utopian material even for the Constructivists very apologetic architectural practice since due to mostly economic reasons, its application to the real construction in early Soviet Russia was rather limited. In the present paper, I turn to the major milestones of the aesthetic discussion around glass projects, which include the works by Nickolay Chernyshevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evgeniy Zamyatin and Sergei Eisenstein to analyse the nature of the glass age as well as to give an overview of its critique in Russian literature and aesthetics.

The bitter gifts of progress: Russian revolution, “barrackization” of living space and the poverty of experience

Progress(es) – Theories and Practices, 2017

From the garden city to the red village: Howard’s utopia as the ground for mass housing in Soviet Russia

Architectures of Life-Building in the Twentieth Century: Russia, Germany, Sweden

Architectures of Life-Building in the Twentieth Century: Russia, Germany, Sweden , 2018

Abstract (English) The modernist concept of life-building as an architectural method for improvin... more Abstract (English)
The modernist concept of life-building as an architectural method for improving the conditions of everyday life originated in Europe during the 1920s. This book explores three modes of functionalism by way of a comparative analysis of both the theoretical discourses and architectural practices associated with functionalism in Russia, Germany, and Sweden. These three countries made significant contributions to the application of functionalism within mass housing construction, the overarching purpose of which was to transform the traditional home into a rational living space.

This study provides both close readings of foundational modernist texts as well as an empirical study of the avant-garde heritage in Russia, Germany, and Sweden. As a special case study, a visual analysis of IKEA catalogues is presented, the purpose of which is to provide an illustrated history of modernist aesthetics within mass-produced living spaces, from the era of functionalism up to the present day.

Abstract (Svenska)
Det modernistiska begreppet livsbyggande, som en arkitektonisk metod för att förbättra vardagslivets villkor, uppstod i Europa under 1920-talet. Denna bok undersöker tre former av funktionalism via en komparativ analys av teoretiska diskurser såväl som arkitekturpraktiker i Ryssland, Tyskland och Sverige. Dessa tre länder gjorde viktiga bidrag till funktionalismens tillämpning inom storskalig bostadsproduktion, med det övergripande syftet att förvandla det traditionella hemmet till en rationell bostad.

Denna studie innehåller både närläsningar av grundläggande teoretiska texter inom modernismen och en empirisk studie av avantgardets arv i Ryssland, Tyskland och Sverige. En speciell fallstudie utgörs av en bildanalys av IKEA:s kataloger, med syftet att ge en historia i bild av modernismens estetik inom storskalig bostadsproduktion från funktionalismen till idag.

Proportion, (dis)Harmonies, Identities - PHI 2015

by Mário Kong, Maria do Rosario Monteiro, Maria João P Neto, Irina Seits, Nuno de Mendonça Raimundo, Maria João Pereira Neto, Madalena Folgado, Alexandra Ai Quintas, Sarah Frances Dias, Silvana Ferraro, Oresta Remeshylo- Rybchynska, António Canau, Ana Leonor Madeira Rodrigues, and Eduardo Durão Antunes

Proportion, (dis)Harmonies, Identities - PHI 2015, 2015

Complete Book divided in thee main chapters: Architecture, Urbanism and Culture. 320 p.

Oil, water, and the Russian narratives of heritagization through times and spaces

CRC Press eBooks, Oct 24, 2023

The history of oil in Russia is a well-established narrative that was initiated by the Nobel brot... more The history of oil in Russia is a well-established narrative that was initiated by the Nobel brothers, who in 1879 founded the Branobel company, soon to become the Russian largest oil-industry. This article suggests reflecting on the anniversary books that the Branobel published to celebrate their 25-and 30-year jubilees in 1904 and 1909, not long before their oil Empire was washed away by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. I analyze the narrative that the Nobels produced while forming grounds for the new world order that still floats today on the sticky waters of the 'black gold,' and that caused the crucial change in human-nature relations. These relations have been recently challenged in search of a new means of sustainable existence that allow to drain the dependency on oil and establish a new world order for the sake of protecting nature from its own dangerous resources. Yet these efforts are far not limited to the development of the green renewable natural resources and require political, ideological, and cultural reconstruction of contempor ary social and natural landscapes. Hence, the study of the origins of the oil history is essential to the analysis of the mechanisms behind oil's rise from being merely a natural resource to a political and cultural legacy that identifies the world's 'superpowers,' outlines their political ambitions, and condi tions their ideologies.

From ignis mundi to the world’s first oil-tanker

Approaching Religion, Aug 31, 2023

his article analyses mechanisms of her i tagisation that transformed oil from a natural to a cult... more his article analyses mechanisms of her i tagisation that transformed oil from a natural to a cultural resource through the case study of the Branobel corporation, which operated in Azerbaijan from the late nineteenth century, and by reflecting on the role of the Branobel corporate narrative in heritagisation of oil and in justification of the world order based on fossil fuels. The narratives developed by the Branobel corporation introduced their business legacy as a part of global heritage. In the art icle I refer to the 'The Thirty Years of Activity of the Oil Production Association of the Brothers Nobel. 1879-1909' published in 1909, that not only reports on Branobel's industrial achieve ments, but promotes the history of oil, propagat ing its civilisational importance, while describing the company as an evolutionary part of this his tory. In their branding strategy, Branobel referred to the ancient religious cults and mythologies of Azerbaijan, for example in the case of the world's first oiltanker 'Zoroaster', designed by Ludvig Nobel. The images of Ateshgah, 'The Fire Temple of Baku', were used on the company's emblems to connect symbolically the industrial oil min ing with the 'eternal fires' worshipped at the Absheron Peninsula as 'the lights of life'.

What is the Aesthetics of the Everyday? : (Some Thoughts on a Journey to the IKEA Museum in Älmhult)

The foundation myth of St. Petersburg in the city guidebooks: Creating heritage through mind and emotions

CRC Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2022

The essay addresses the aspects of heritagization of St. Petersburg history, analyzing the myth o... more The essay addresses the aspects of heritagization of St. Petersburg history, analyzing the myth of the city's foundation from the perspective of the role of emotions and mind in the production of its urban space. I turn to the guidebooks published in St. Petersburg in the eighteenth-to early twentieth centuries to explore the paths that the heritagization took in order to construct the narrative and the image of the former Russian capital

From the garden city to the red village: Howard’s utopia as the ground for mass housing in Soviet Russia

The ruined fantasies of intelligent minds: ‘The Nobel’s town’ and neglected Swedish heritage in St. Petersburg

The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family's living in Russia an... more The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family's living in Russia and to the generally unknown architectural heritage in St. Petersburg that Nobels had left before fleeing the country after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and that still exists in a rather neglected state. This heritage resembles and symbolises many Nobel's technological and social inventions that were complexly applied to the overall improvement of the average peoples' everyday life through the development of the new type of housing for the workers -the so-called Nobel's worker's town. I touch upon the themes of creativity and intelligence, fantasies and materialisation of utopian dreams that were defining features of several generations of the Nobels through the case of the family's Russian period. To think on where fantasies of the seemingly pragmatic entrepreneurs and serious scientists had brought them and how their heritage had become a subject to oblivion on one side and an object of universal appreciation on the other, I trace the destiny of Nobels' architectural heritage formed in St. Petersburg by Swedish and German architects. This urban heritage is a part of the creative outcome of intellectual work ongoing within the family and a bitter symbol of efforts to materialise their "fantasy" of developing the system of "social responsibility", which, as they believed, could sustain and revitalise another fantasy -the successful existence of the so-called "fair capitalism.

Renaming the industrial heritage in post-revolutionary Petrograd: Innovative use of an old tradition

CRC Press eBooks, Jun 21, 2021

Mickey Mouse - the perfect tenant of an early Soviet city

Baltic Worlds, 2017

The article provides a closer reading of Walter Benjamin’s essays Experience and Poverty and Mosc... more

The bitter gifts of progress: Russian revolution, “barrackization” of living space and the poverty of experience

Revolutionised through glass: Russian modernism in the age of the Crystal Palace

From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto t... more From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto to the technological progress but as the constructive frame for the future society as well. Glass symbolized purity, equality and liberation from social chains; it became a paradisiacal material of modernity. Glass had become material of Russian socialist utopias since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) for the 1851 World's Trade Fair in London inspired the dreams of Vera Pavlovna in Chernyshevsky's What is to be done? (1863) and up to the projects of the Palace of Soviets of the1930s. Various aesthetic concepts that were associated mostly with the development of socialist and communist ideas were visualised through the wide use of glass in architectural projecting and construction. Yet glass remained a utopian material even for the Constructivists very apologetic architectural practice since due to mostly economic reasons, its application to the real construction in early Soviet Russia was rather limited. In the present paper, I turn to the major milestones of the aesthetic discussion around glass projects, which include the works by Nickolay Chernyshevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evgeniy Zamyatin and Sergei Eisenstein to analyse the nature of the glass age as well as to give an overview of its critique in Russian literature and aesthetics.

Architectures of Life-Building in the Twentieth Century : Russia, Germany, Sweden

Muted histories and re-united memories : Swedish industrial heritage in St. Petersburg

Swedish Heritage in St. Petersburg : The Policies of Remembering and the Practices of Oblivion

What is the Aesthetics of the Everyday? : (Some Thoughts on a Journey to the IKEA Museum in Älmhult)

Södertörns högskola, 2020

The ruined fantasies of intelligent minds: ‘The Nobel’s town’ and neglected Swedish heritage in St. Petersburg

Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy, 2019

The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family’s living in Russia an... more The present article aims at giving a brief introduction to the Nobel family’s living in Russia and to the generally unknown architectural heritage in St. Petersburg that Nobels had left before fleeing the country after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and that still exists in a rather neglected state. This heritage resembles and symbolises many Nobel’s technological and social inventions that were complexly applied to the overall improvement of the average peoples’ everyday life through the development of the new type of housing for the workers – the so-called Nobel’s worker’s town. I touch upon the themes of creativity and intelligence, fantasies and materialisation of utopian dreams that were defining features of several generations of the Nobels through the case of the family’s Russian period. To think on where fantasies of the seemingly pragmatic entrepreneurs and serious scientists had brought them and how their heritage had become a subject to oblivion on one side and an objec...

Revolutionised through glass: Russian modernism in the age of the Crystal Palace

Modernity, Frontiers and Revolutions, 2018

From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto t... more From its very beginning, the glass architecture was perceived in Russia not only as a manifesto to the technological progress but as the constructive frame for the future society as well. Glass symbolized purity, equality and liberation from social chains; it became a paradisiacal material of modernity. Glass had become material of Russian socialist utopias since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) for the 1851 World's Trade Fair in London inspired the dreams of Vera Pavlovna in Chernyshevsky's What is to be done? (1863) and up to the projects of the Palace of Soviets of the1930s. Various aesthetic concepts that were associated mostly with the development of socialist and communist ideas were visualised through the wide use of glass in architectural projecting and construction. Yet glass remained a utopian material even for the Constructivists very apologetic architectural practice since due to mostly economic reasons, its application to the real construction in early Soviet Russia was rather limited. In the present paper, I turn to the major milestones of the aesthetic discussion around glass projects, which include the works by Nickolay Chernyshevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evgeniy Zamyatin and Sergei Eisenstein to analyse the nature of the glass age as well as to give an overview of its critique in Russian literature and aesthetics.

The bitter gifts of progress: Russian revolution, “barrackization” of living space and the poverty of experience

Progress(es) – Theories and Practices, 2017

From the garden city to the red village: Howard’s utopia as the ground for mass housing in Soviet Russia

Renaming the industrial heritage in post-revolutionary Petrograd: Innovative use of an old tradition

Tradition and Innovation, 2021

Mickey Mouse - the perfect tenant of an early Soviet city

Baltic Worlds, 2017

The article provides a closer reading of Walter Benjamin’s essays Experience and Poverty and Mosc... more