Lawrence Chua, Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910–1973 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021), 296 pp. incl. 36 colour and 34 b&w ills, ISBN 9780824884604, £70.50

Abstract

Romania and Hungary, the book reveals a complex overlapping of layers that reflects shifts in internal and foreign policies, as well as the complexity of discourses around labour and technologies. While the book offers a unique account of these networks of collaboration, it also engages with a compelling set of themes that emphasise not only architecture’s instrumental role in the socialist endeavour, but also its ability to open up modes of worldmaking. In doing so, the book enriches and adds nuance to contemporary postcolonial discourses, which often overlook the presence and mediating role of these socialist countries in processes of decolonisation and state-making, and it demonstrates that the cold war context cannot be thoroughly addressed without a consideration of the intersections between the global north, south and east. With its impressive investigation of multilingual archival material across multiple countries, Stanek’s book is an extraordinary account of these heterogeneous rapports and changing sovereignties, and a ground-breaking contribution not only to the historiography of modern architecture, but also to the cultural history of the cold war.