Tom Cubbin is Senior Lecturer in Design Studies and head of Campus Steneby, part of the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a design historian and has a background in Russian and Soviet history. He has contributed to the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design and has had several articles published in Home Cultures, Estonian Art, and the Calvert Journal.

For many years, it seemed as if there were only two kinds of Soviet design: visionary Constructivism or Stalinist kitsch. Cubbin’s vividly written and deeply researched study offers an entirely new picture. Illuminating the long history of modernism in the USSR, he examines how critical designers sought to create utopia on a human scale.

• Introduction: The Communist Surround1. Art, Technology and Design in the Soviet Thaw2. Senezh Studio and the Emergence of a Critical Practice3. Semiotics, Environment and the Historical Turn4. Design and the Projective Imagination5. A Quiet Conversation Among Things: Memory, Agency and Materiality at the End of HistoryConclusionAppendix I: Complete List of Senezh ProjectsAppendix II : Key PeopleIndex

Tom Cubbin is Senior Lecturer in Design Studies and head of Campus Steneby, part of the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a design historian and has a background in Russian and Soviet history. He has contributed to the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design and has had several articles published in Home Cultures, Estonian Art, and the Calvert Journal.

For many years, it seemed as if there were only two kinds of Soviet design: visionary Constructivism or Stalinist kitsch. Cubbin’s vividly written and deeply researched study offers an entirely new picture. Illuminating the long history of modernism in the USSR, he examines how critical designers sought to create utopia on a human scale.

• Introduction: The Communist Surround1. Art, Technology and Design in the Soviet Thaw2. Senezh Studio and the Emergence of a Critical Practice3. Semiotics, Environment and the Historical Turn4. Design and the Projective Imagination5. A Quiet Conversation Among Things: Memory, Agency and Materiality at the End of HistoryConclusionAppendix I: Complete List of Senezh ProjectsAppendix II : Key PeopleIndex

Tom Cubbin is Senior Lecturer in Design Studies and head of Campus Steneby, part of the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a design historian and has a background in Russian and Soviet history. He has contributed to the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design and has had several articles published in Home Cultures, Estonian Art, and the Calvert Journal.

For many years, it seemed as if there were only two kinds of Soviet design: visionary Constructivism or Stalinist kitsch. Cubbin’s vividly written and deeply researched study offers an entirely new picture. Illuminating the long history of modernism in the USSR, he examines how critical designers sought to create utopia on a human scale.

• Introduction: The Communist Surround1. Art, Technology and Design in the Soviet Thaw2. Senezh Studio and the Emergence of a Critical Practice3. Semiotics, Environment and the Historical Turn4. Design and the Projective Imagination5. A Quiet Conversation Among Things: Memory, Agency and Materiality at the End of HistoryConclusionAppendix I: Complete List of Senezh ProjectsAppendix II : Key PeopleIndex