The Rainbow Edges: The Legacy of Communist Mass Housing and the Colorful Future of Czech Cities

Abstract

<p>Almost twenty years after the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, more than 30% of the inhabitants of the Czech Republic still live in structural panel buildings—the anonymous concrete apartment blocks that occupy the edges of teh country's towns and cities. In these fully prefabricated buildings, constructed by the thousands from the mid-1950s until the end of the 1980s, every wall, floor, and ceiling panel is structural. Massive stair towers provide additional stability in the absence of structural skeletons. The first post-Communist president, Vaclav Havel, famously referred to them as 'rabbit warrens' since the interiors are a series of boxy rooms, always the same size, and packed full of people.</p>