Garage has published an English translation of its bestselling guide to Moscow’s modernist architecture. This is the first book to examine modernist architecture from Khrushchev to Gorbachev as a total phenomenon, from the naive modernism of the “thaw” period to postmodernist experiments, including the Pioneer Palace, the Ostankino TV Tower, the Rossiya Cinema, the TASS building, the “golden brains” of the Academy of Sciences, and selected lesser-known buildings such as the House for the New ...

This guidebook does not feature the Hermitage or Peterhof because the authors invite you to visit Leningrad. St. Petersburg is present, however, because it determined the character of Leningrad modernism. Rather than rejecting tradition, here modernism reflected upon it. This is the modernism of traditionalism, not “militant” but in dialogue, which is what makes it so appealing. In the space age, Leningrad architects continued to think in terms of ensembles rather than separate buildings, whi...

The first comprehensive publication covering the history of paper architecture, a unique phenomenon of the Soviet 1980s Architect and curator Yuri Avvakumov explores the legendary movement of “paper architects,” of which he was a key representative. Paper architecture—a type of conceptualism that circulated in the form of journal publications, exhibitions, and competitions of ideas—was a product of nonconformist reflection which employed languages and images of various architectural style to ...

From brutalism to modernism, via futurism – the Socialist Hotel is a unique architectural and cultural phenomenon that is collectively documented in these stunning photographs for the first time. Would you check in to a Socialist Hotel from an era when hospitality came second to ideology? These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers, ordinary citizens – and even the occasional capitalist guest from the West. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a Soviet archite...

Built in 1969, Metsamor, Armenia (then the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), was intended as a settlement for employees of a nearby nuclear power plant to be completed between 1976 and 1980. But the power plant would never realise the ambitions of its creators. In 1988, an earthquake caused the facility to be shut down and in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted a complete construction freeze in the city. The symbol of the dream of a technologically advanced nation, Metsamor re...

This second volume of Zupagrafika’s Eastern Blocks expands the photographic survey of concrete suburbs across the former Eastern Bloc. Stretching from Ukraine to Georgia and sweeping through the Baltic Sea to the Balkans, the book captures the socialist-era architecture that reshaped the urban landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II, from modernist grand designs and brutalist monoliths to the often-overlooked prefabricated panel housing estates and their distinctive typolo...

This meticulously researched guide explores the rich architectural heritage of the Uzbek capital through the captivating art of mosaics. Delve into the extraordinary legacy of Alexander, Nikolai, and Pyotr Jarsky, artists whose visionary work reshaped Tashkent's urban landscape after the devastating earthquake of 1966. Their innovative techniques gave rise to breathtaking mosaic-adorned facades, masterfully blending modernist design with intricate Islamic motifs while reflecting the region's ...

This book examines the monumental mosaics that were created in Moscow during the Soviet era. While monumental mosaics became common in other Soviet cities and republics in the 1960s during the age of modernism, mosaics in the capital of the USSR were used for works in the art deco style and for 'pictures' in the socialist realist style. As a result, the entire history of Soviet art is reflected in Moscow's metro stations, palaces of culture, military museums, hospitals, schools, and prefabric...

The Architectural Guide Chechnya and the North Caucasus represents the first pioneering work of its type to shed light on a little-known mountainous region split between Europe and Asia, one of the few places on Earth that can claim a varied amalgam of ethnic cities, -languages, cultures, a remarkable architectural legacy, and human puzzles. This ground-breaking and comprehensive vademecum, collecting unreleased materials and more than 130 buildings scattered throughout seven geographical and...

The architecture of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s and mid -1930s is attracting more and more attention from both domestic and foreign researchers, but in spite of this, entire regions remain unexplored. One of them, until recently, was the South of Russia - an area that encompasses the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasus Federal District.  The state of this architectural heritage deserves special mention. In the South of Russia during the Second World War, there were active...

This guide book is a must-have for all those who are interested in European architecture and its rich history of diverse cultures. Riga is famous for its unique mixture of styles and traces of war and political change: German origins, Art Nouveau at its highest level and Soviet Modernism. Latvia is a young European nation on its way to architectural prominence. In 1997, the central part of Riga was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Daugava embankment and numerous streets dating ...

For many centuries horse-riding peoples populated the steppes to the north of today’s Almaty and the green hills to the south, but the city itself – formerly known as ‘Alma-Ata’ – is not even 180 years old. Its initial development was closely linked to the expansion of the Russian Empire. Today Almaty is Kazakhstan’s largest metropolis, a vibrant milieu where the encounter between different cultures is also reflected in the architecture. Orthodox cathedrals and mosques, Soviet Neoclassicism a...

No other building typology holds such a long record of complicity with the political powers of a nation state as the opera theatre does. As both a shelter for and a display of the fantastic, the extravagant, and the hyperbolic, the opera theatre aptly stages a desired vision of a society unbound by limits of the rational. For a nation as an imagined community, the opera theatre is the designated space of self-imagination.Raising the Curtain centres on two modernist opera theatres built on the...

These photographs of once top-secret institutes reveal both fantastical and futuristic technology, alongside crumbling and decrepit facilities, forming a unique document of the condition and situation of scientific research in the post-Soviet landscape. In Soviet Scientific Institutes photographer Eric Lusito takes us on a journey through time, space and science. Gigantic control panels, monumental telescopes, inexplicable machinery – the facilities he documents might be found in comic book ...

Brutal East by Zupagrafika is a kit of illustrated cut-out paper models, celebrating the post-war architecture of central and eastern Europe, that allows you to playfully explore and reconstruct some of the most controversial edifices erected behind the Iron Curtain and in the former Yugoslavia. From omnipresent pre-cast housing estates to the mighty Soviet-era landmarks awaiting renovation or threatened with demolition, the kit includes 7 illustrated paper models to cut out and assemble, a s...

This guide presents over 120 buildings and projects in the Georgian capital. It serves not only as a helpful guide for tourists but also as a documentation of the city’s social history. The selection of buildings covers a broad spectrum of sights that are not only aesthetically interesting but also shed light on the city’s historical developments.The book gives a comprehensive tour of the stylistic contrasts that enrich the city, filled with all manner of structures, from wooden homes to stri...