In this book the legendary Lithuanian architectural creators of modern Vilnius – Algimantas Nasvytis, Vytautas Edmundas Čekanauskas, Vytautas Brėdikis, and Gediminas Baravykas – offer their candid assessments of what it was like to plan, design, and build in the Lithuanian SSR. In ą99 the four architects were interviewed by the visiting Lithuanian-Americal John V. Maciuika, then a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, and currently a professor of art and architectural history at Baruch College and the CUMY Graduate Center in New York city. The interviews are presented in both the original Lithuanian and in English translation.

Introductory essays by the architectural historians John V. Maciuika and Marija Drėmaitė offer contrasting perspectives of the Soviet-Lithuanian historical context, as well as divergent modes for reconsidering the still-controversial Soviet legacy in Lithuania.

This billingual publication is lavishly illustrated throughout with rare archival images as well as photographs from the personal collections of the author and the arhitect-interviewees themselves.