The pandemic in the time of an ecological crisis and increasing social inequality has made architects and urban planners review their approach to design. What is a fifteen-minute city idea? What will happen to city transport and public spaces in the future? Will we witness the death of office culture and how is the countryside going to develop? Should we expect a new exodus from the cities?
Answers to some of these questions can be found in the research project by Soviet architects and urban planners. The talk will be devoted to the deurbanization theory developed by Soviet sociologist, economist and theorist, member of the Organization of Contemporary Architects in the 1930s, Mikhail Okhitovich, and the projects presented by the NER group (New Element of Settlement; formed at the Moscow Institute of Architecture in the 1950s) at the Milan Triennial in 1968 and at the World Expo in Osaka in 1970.
