The Ambition for Centralized Control. An Organizational History of the Czechoslovak State Design Institute Stavoprojekt Between 1948 and 1953

The article explores the formative years (1948–1953) of Stavoprojekt, the largest state design institution in state-socialist Czechoslovakia. As part of an ongoing research project, it traces organizational changes using the previously inaccessible archive of the Stavoprojekt Directorate, now held in the National Archives of the Czech Republic. The research is based mainly on the analysis of this fund, which contains fragmentary documents of Stavoprojekt’s operations. The state of the fund itself reflects the early development of the Stavoprojekt organization: inconsistent, ambiguous and chaotic. This article aims to clarify the milestones of this development by relating this material to the contemporary literature, periodicals, and legal changes in the fields of architecture and construction.