After the end of World War II, Western Europe loses its leading position in the development of modern architecture. With the exception of some new features, European architecture remains within the framework of the concept of functionalism and its expressive means. This was a consequence of loyalty to pre-war traditions and limited economic and technical capabilities.
The restoration of cities and rural settlements destroyed by the war was of great importance. This became a priority task, the scale and character of which has not yet had a place in the history of architecture. The reconstruction of cities was initially carried out on the basis of already proven principles developed before the war, and only in a few cases new functional systems and their spatial organization were created. The first major post-war work was the restoration of the city of Le Havre (1946-1954), carried out according to the project A, Perret on the basis of the traditional rectangular system of streets lined with closed blocks of houses.
Functionalist principles were used in the restoration of Maubeuge and Saint-Denis (1946-1949, by A. Lurs) in France; Coventry in England; the city center of Rotterdam, where the new concept of the residential and commercial pedestrian center Leenbaan was implemented (1953, authors I. X. Van Den Broek and J. B. Bakema); a residential complex in West Berlin (1957), in the design of individual buildings of which A. Aalto, V. Gropius, A. Jacobsen and Le Corbusier participated. Since the end of the 40s, the general reconstruction of many cities in the USSR begins, where more than 1,700 cities and 70,000 settlements were completely destroyed or significantly damaged during the Second World War. Typical examples are Volgograd, Kiev, Minsk, restored on the basis of unified master plans, the urban planning concept of which, as a rule, was based on a rectangular system of streets. In 1947. the general reconstruction of Warsaw began. A major restructuring, reconstruction with a change in the layout of the destroyed quarters was carried out in Berlin, Dresden, Magdeburg, while during the construction of Nuremberg or Karl-Marx-Stadt, the historically established planning structure of cities was essentially preserved. In Czechoslovakia, immediately after 1945, completely destroyed Lidice, the center of Mirogits, in Slovakia - Terchov and others are being restored. An integral part of the reconstruction work in Europe was the restoration of individual architectural monuments and entire complexes, which were most often returned to their original appearance. The restoration of historical monuments was carried out on a large scale, which was of great ideological significance, especially where they were deliberately destroyed during the war. Typical examples are the reconstruction of the Old Market in Warsaw (1948-1958), the square in Gdansk, the Pskov Kremlin, the Church of St. Sofia in Kiev, a park and various structures in Petrodvorets near Leningrad and many other architectural monuments in the Soviet Union. The Zwinger in Dresden, Michovna and the Manege at the Prague Castle (1947-1952) were reconstructed in a similar way according to the project of P. Janak. These works stimulated extensive historical research and the further development of methods of reconstruction and restoration of architectural monuments.
The architecture of Czechoslovakia of this period was influenced by the theoretical concept and practice of the pre-war years, at the same time, however, its character was determined by the tasks that arose in connection with the new character of social development in Czechoslovakia. The interweaving of these two moments became the initial principle that immediately after the end of the war determined the nature of not only architecture, but also the entire material culture.
The connection with the pre-war period was indicated by new program requirements, similar to those that had been put forward earlier by the magazine Stavba, then at the Congress of Left Architects (1932) and at the founding of the Union of Socialist Architects. These include the requirements of a unified economic and territorial planning, industrialization of construction, the development of research activities and the creation of a unified organization of architects.
The development of the theoretical concept contributed to a deeper understanding of the psychological aspects of architecture and the philosophy of functionality, as evidenced primarily by the theoretical works of K. Gonzik, begun in the late 1930s. These include Architecture as Physioplastic Creativity (1938) and Introduction to the Study of Mental Functions in Architecture (1944). Gonzik's book The Creation of a Living Style (1938-1944) significantly contributed to the formulation of the task of complex creation of a living environment many years later. O. Stary, E. Grushka, L. Jacques and other architects also dealt with theoretical issues. The issues of industrialization of construction and the need for scientific research in the field of architecture found the most consistent theoretical formulation in the work of K. Janu "Socialist Construction" (1946). For the first time, prefabricated elements were used on a large scale in the construction of residential complexes "Solidarita" in Prague (1947-1949) and in Gottwaldov.
Establishing a relationship with progressive ideas and pre-war experiences gave architects the creative confidence that soon after the end of the war gave rise to valuable architectural concepts and their practical implementations, for example, the collectively serviced houses in Litvinov and Gottwaldov, which became together with the house in Marseille designed by Le Corbusier. the first houses of this type in Europe.