Kenny Cuppers has a cool set of papers on the rise of shared “cultural centers” in major Postwar European cities. His is the first substantive chapter in a not-yet published book, which seems tailor-made for his research line, and which acts as a kind of companion piece for his published article “The Cultural Center: Architecture as Cultural Policy in Postwar Europe.”

You can criticize him for moving through his paces too quickly, but the main thrust of the argument, that before these formal state-oriented “cultural centers” popping-up in major European cities, which were predicted on massive architectural decisions associated with standardized housing, as it happens, peoples all over Europe were already a step ahead of the urban planners and established public houses for the European non-rich years before the state showed-up to spread welfare architecturally.