Rural modern. Themes and contexts

Modernity is almost always associated with cities, where urban planning and architecture have contributed to rationalizing space. However, the rural-backwardness binomial cannot be taken for granted: throughout the 20th century, rural modernization overturned the physical and settlement geography of many regions in different geopolitical realities. The role of architectural design in these processes must be examined on a case-by-case basis. The contributions of this issue embrace some of the most significant ones: from the management of refugee emergency in Greece in the 1920s, to the better-known ruralisation of Fascist Italy. In Portugal, as in Italy, rural architecture offered a contextual counterpoint to the dictates of the Modern Movement. In the countries of the Soviet Bloc, collectivization brought with it the urbanization of the countryside: prefabricated condominiums with standardized collective buildings, at least until the thaw of 1956. Experimentation resumed, in the 1970s and 1980s, with the large administrative centers of collective farms, trying to give expression to diverse identity demands.