Abstract

Analysing the contemporary housing development Minsk World as a paradigmatic case of the authoritarian neoliberal shift in housing delivery in Belarus, this paper focuses on the intersections of law, finance and architecture. This paper makes three contributions to the debate on the neoliberal shift in housing delivery and the role architecture plays within it. First, it challenges the widely held opinion that the neoliberal shift in housing delivery never happened in Belarus. Second, it explores how building codes and regulations governing certain aspects of housing delivery can be overcome through political intervention by an autocratic head of state. In so doing, the paper introduces the concept of “legitimized architecture” as a way of describing the spatial dimensions of laws, codes and regulations. Third, it highlights the role of architecture, as professional practice, in normalizing the legal reforms that have facilitated the commodification of urban housing in Belarus.

摘要

本文将当代住房开发明斯克世界作为白俄罗斯住房交付中威权主义新自由主义转变的典型案例进行分析，重点关注法律、金融和建筑的交叉点。本文对关于住房交付的新自由主义转变以及建筑在其中所扮演的角色的辩论做出了三个贡献。首先，它挑战了人们普遍持有的观点，即白俄罗斯从未发生过住房交付方面的新自由主义转变。其次，它探讨了如何通过独裁国家元首的政治干预来克服管理住房交付某些方面的建筑规范和法规。在此过程中，本文引入了“合法化建筑”的概念，作为描述法律、法规和法规的空间维度的一种方式。第三，