Socialist class

摘要

The Friday Market Square, one of the central squares of Ghent, is not the sort of place you visit for 'socialist architecture'. In among this elegant space of gabled houses and cobbles, you'll find neither pompous Socialist Realist palaces nor functionally questionable beton brut Houses of Culture; certainly, nothing looks less 'Soviet'. But if you look in one corner, you'll find the buildings of an impressive, gaudily ornamented late Victorian department store, just slightly taller than the historical gables. Two buildings, encrusted with neo-Baroque accoutrements, and at the top - along the cornice, above a grandiose, bulbous, iron and glass picture window with an ornate clock - are the words 'socialist workers' societies', outlined in pompous serifs. It's dramatic architecture, and it's socialist propaganda, but not as either is conventionally understood.