Post-socialist landscape: A castle by the road

Abstract

This article explores the proliferation of private housing and business objects along major roads that are modelled to resemble castles. I am interested in the changes these structures make in landscape, the new qualities they bring to the surroundings and the meanings they connote. From a first glance at their flamboyant, surreal and naïve forms it is evident that the structures represent nostalgia, exotic places and fantasies. By employing photography based semiotic analysis I seek to discover how these structures visually convey post-socialist and postwar perspectives and how their stories are connected to the new modernity rising around them.