Would-be investors would face other obstacles even if the embargo were lifted... Cuba is still tightly controlled by its Communist government. [...]

In any case, most architectural work in Cuba today focuses on the restoration of Havana’s immense historic building stock—two-thirds of which is in disrepair—and on bringing Havana into the 21st century without imperiling its heritage. — architectmagazine.com

Blumberg doesn’t understand why a memorial to victims of communism was given such an “incredibly prominent, almost sacrosanct” site. “It is so centrally placed that it would seem to quite overshadow Canada’s true history.” [...]

"I have a massive problem, a huge problem, with this memorial going on that site. I think it completely misrepresents and skews what Canada is all about.” — ottawacitizen.com

ABSTRAKT Studio Architecture was chosen to design Canada's future National Memorial to Victims of Communism in Ottawa...The team was selected out of six finalists at the end of the two-phase national design competition held this summer. The memorial will pay tribute to the more than 100 million people around the globe who suffered or perished under communist dictatorship, as well as educate the public about the heavy consequences caused by communism. — bustler.net

The sterility of the photos, especially the images of prisoner bedrooms, hints at the degree to which the Stasi kept a tight lid on dissenters. In prison culture (or at least prison culture as it’s portrayed in the movies), there’s a lot of graffiti: on the walls, in library books, between cells. “We were searching for any scratching or anything in the cells—usually you would think they were sending messages—but it was very clear you couldn’t see anything” — wired.com

English photographer Rebecca Litchfield braved radiation and KGB-style interrogation techniques to capture the beauty of this bygone era in a series called Soviet Ghosts.

Her work took her to schools, hospitals, factories, and accidentally, a top secret radar installation. “Many of the abandoned buildings are pretty unknown to the public, they are hidden behind tall fences and gates, I think it is easy to just pass without knowing what is inside,” says Litchfield. — wired.com

Buildings perform a variety of functions: They shelter, illuminate, and obscure surrounding people and landscapes. The fundamentally pragmatic purpose of architecture endows edifices with a wide range of functions, but rarely does architecture speak. Curator Joanna Warsza, however, organizes performances and interventions that implore architecture to speak back. — blouinartinfo.com

The new commission for cultural heritage protection, an adviser to the Czech National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) director, has recommended that the state start protecting relatively young works of architecture from the second half of the 20th century [...]

“Unlike the architecture of the interwar Czechoslovakia, the post-war architecture has been omitted by protection programs so far, also because its valuable pieces are more difficult to distinguish." — praguepost.com

The most visible legacy of Communist rule, the grand and often eye-catching buildings have become a source of heated debate in Poland with critics condemning them as an ugly and unwanted reminder of a past best forgotten. Defenders stress their architectural merits and argue that the buildings are now part of the national heritage. — economist.com

Still, Bezjak hasn't refrained entirely from commenting on the architecture. He developed strict formal guidelines for his series, photographing it all with a large-format camera and always with the same lens. "I photographed everything that fit within this frame -- in terms of the buildings' dimensions, but also in terms of the possibilities for distancing oneself from the building -- and not the rest," he says. — Der Spiegel

Artist's assistants and wife released but his whereabouts not disclosed by Beijing authorities — guardian.co.uk