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How emerging designers find inspiration in socialist-era brutalist architecture

2018-09-19T09:00:00-04:00

Bold and unforgiving, the Brutalist landmarks and modernist housing estates which sprang up across Europe in the wake of the Second World War still dominate cities in the former Eastern bloc. [...] The Calvert Journal talked to designers and creatives across the New East who are now reclaiming socialist-era Brutalism as a driving force behind their work, changing mindsets, updating old designs for the modern age and making their own statements on gentrification, nostalgia and innovation.

The Brutalism-inspired design products by (mostly Eastern) European creatives Calvert Journal talked to range from stylish Russian flower vases to nostalgic Slovak pre-fab panelák furniture, German post-war housing cuckoo clocks, a Modernist Belgrade Map, and Polish miniature tower block building kits and Polaroid photo projects.

"Cuckoo Block" series by Guido Zimmermann, Germany.

"Brutal East" by Zupagrafika, Poland.

Find more design creations here.

Brutalist collection of vintage postcards highlight iconic Eastern Bloc architecture

2018-09-18T15:45:00-04:00

With flawless blue skies and the latest landmarks of cutting edge design, postcards from across the Soviet Union were miniature propaganda posters for the success of the communist system. Showcasing brutalist hotels, futurist TV towers, and bold concrete tower blocks, each image is a snapshot of the transformative decades between 1960 and 1990: from the endless optimism of Khrushchev's Thaw, to the closing years of the Cold War.

These Soviet Union postcards have been collected as part of a book project, Brutal Bloc Postcards, featuring some of the most iconic brutalist landmarks within the Eastern Bloc. Many of these structures are now abandoned, derelict, or completely gone. Take a look at this unique glimpse into the past:

Eastern Gate of Belgrade or Rudo Buildings, late 1970s. Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia. Image: FUEL.

Memorial to the Marines, 1978. Zhdanov, Ukrainian SSR. Image: FUEL.

Recreation home of the Ministry of the Interior, 1970s. Budapest, Hungarian PR. Image: FUEL.

Residential housing, late 1970s. Chișinău, Moldavian SSR. Image: FUEL.

You can check out more of these brutalist postcards here.

This beautiful short film celebrates Ukraine’s Soviet-era Brutalist heritage

2018-07-18T17:27:00-04:00

Kiev is a city of eclectic beauty, with modernist landmarks that dot the skyline. But as the capital grows and evolves, many of these Soviet-era gems are falling out of favour and into disrepair, with many already cleared away to make room for newer projects.

The short Soviet Modernism, Brutalism, Post-Modernism: Buildings and Projects in Ukraine from 1960 – 1990 was recently released in support of the upcoming book of the same title, examining some of Kiev's remarkable concrete architecture heritage.

Still from Soviet Modernism, Brutalism, Post-Modernism.

While focusing on Ukraine, director Roman Blazhan reflects on the universal conflict of each generation's ever changing appreciation and rejection of the previous generation's understanding of architecture.

Still from Soviet Modernism, Brutalism, Post-Modernism.

"Director of Photography Mikhail Volkov used a vintage lens (made in beginning of the 70s in the Soviet Union) in combination with a Japanese vintage anamorphic lense," reads the film description. "This setup made the picture not very sharp, very light, with warm anamorphic flares. And the fixed focal length of 75 mm enc...

The tower block as a recurring theme in post-Soviet photography

2018-05-04T15:24:00-04:00

In some places, the tower block has never faded from view. The history of mass housing in eastern Europe is complex and uncomfortable. Yet what’s striking is how prominently the tower block features in the work of contemporary photographers from that territory. These artists have every reason to turn their backs on such buildings. They’re ugly and overbearing, not to say reminiscent of an authoritarian past. But the mass housing block is a recurring presence in their work.

Writer and critic Ekow Eshun provides a beautiful overview of the tower block as a recurring architectural, social, and aesthetic theme in the works of post-Soviet-era photographers in Russia, Serbia, the Baltic states, and throughout Eastern Europe.

"However ugly and monolithic such buildings were after all, they provided homes for people and are worth time and scrutiny as sites of possibility and connection," Ekow writes. "They were places where people gathered to sleep and eat, to argue and to raise families. And they continue to be so. Perhaps this is a modest artistic aim. But it’s also a worthwhile one."

The Moscow That Never Was: new VR/AR tour showcases unrealized icons of Soviet architecture

2018-01-04T15:24:00-05:00

New virtual reality tours are giving Muscovites the chance to see the Russian capital as the socialist utopia envisioned by the city’s Soviet architects. The new project, The Moscow That Never Was, lets visitors glimpse shelved Soviet landmarks as they should have appeared on Moscow’s streets using VR goggles.

The 2-hour virtual/augmented reality tours through central Moscow feature utopian architectural projects that never quite saw the light of day, including the infamous Palace of the Soviets (imagined as the world's tallest building, crowned with a 300-ft Lenin statue), an alternate Lenin Mausoleum, Stalin's eighth 'sisters' skyscraper in Zarayadye Park, the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry HQ on Red Square, among others.

More information about the The Moscow That Never Was tours here.

All images via Retro Futuro.

Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science to host an international art fair

2016-08-22T12:53:00-04:00

The Palace of Culture and Science, a 237 meter tall socialist realist high-rise, towers over the city of Warsaw, Poland. Given as a “gift” to the Polish people by the Soviet Union, the building was originally called the Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science. It was built between 1952 and 1955 and, for many Varsovians, is an ugly reminder of the Stalinist era.

Now, it’s about to reinvest in its eponymous program with an international art fair. Hosting some 20 art galleries from Warsaw as well as other European cities, the “Not Fair” is schedule to open on September 22, 2016. Each gallery will present a solo show by one of their represented artist, which must take into account the “special character” of the Palace.

According to the founder of Not Fair, Michal Wolinski, the event is intended to “merge the mood and quality of an art exhibition with the opportunities that art fairs provide for cutting-edge galleries and young artists”.

h/t the Art Newspaper

For more news from Poland, c...

Restricted Areas: abandoned Soviet structures photographed in all their eerie beauty

2016-07-25T20:24:00-04:00

Danila Tkachenko is a Russian photographer whose series Restricted Areas crystallises the tendencies of many artists working on themes of the post-Soviet space. As Calvert 22’s Power and Architecture season demonstrates, there is a healthy interest in the abandoned or neglected buildings that once served as landmarks of Soviet ambition: the rack and ruin of utopia. What sets Tkachenko apart is the unforgiving simplicity of his compositions.

All photos from Danila Tkachenko's series Restricted Areas. For far more of these beauties, head over to Calvert Journal.

On the rapid privatization of public space in post-communist cities

2016-04-21T15:12:00-04:00

From 1917 to 1991 in the former Russian Empire, and from 1945 to 1989 in the countries it dominated after the war, there was no real private ownership. No landowners, no developers, no “placemakers” - in half of Europe. Did this mean public space was done differently, and are attitudes to it different in those countries? [...] observed more closely, public space here is every bit as complex as it is elsewhere in Europe.

Poland to remove Soviet-era memorials

2016-04-05T12:34:00-04:00

The Polish government plans to demolish about 500 Soviet monuments throughout the country, head of the Institute of National Remembrance Lukasz Kaminsky said in an interview with online portal Onet.pl, the RBC news website reported Thursday. Kaminsky — whose institute is responsible for investigating crimes against the Polish nation — said that plans for the demolition of the monuments, would be sent to local authorities in the coming weeks.

According to the report, the monuments will be relocated to museums where they can serve as a "witness of hard times."

Many Soviet war memorial have been vandalized and demolished in Poland, whose population views the Soviet role in the Second World War "with ambiguity or outright hostility."

Russians have reacted strongly to these moves in Poland. In their view, the Red Army liberated Poland from the Nazis.

For related coverage:

Owen Hatherley on a Stalinist city's efforts to "de-communize"

2016-03-24T14:34:00-04:00

The largest remaining statue of Lenin in Ukraine was removed from its pedestal in Zaporizhia last week, the latest victim of the Ukrainian ban on Soviet symbols. But how do you go about “de-communising” an almost entirely Stalinist city?

The Siberian Silicon Valley: the billion-dollar tech hub built on the ruins of a Soviet science city

2016-01-06T14:14:00-05:00

Located in the middle of the Eurasian landmass 3,000km east of Moscow, with a climate that ranges from 30C mosquito-ridden summers to -40C snow-drenched winters, this isn’t the most obvious place for a tech startup hub... The Academpark is not some random outpost in the middle of nowhere, but the latest part of a plan to revive Akademgorodok, the Soviet science town that was established here in 1957, and long since left to languish.

Owen Hatherley on Kiev's struggle with its Soviet architectural heritage

2015-11-06T17:07:00-05:00

It’s a reminder that decommunisation is a project which might actually be physically impossible to execute in full, which hopefully begs the question — if Soviet Ukraine can't be wished away, what should be conserved, and what should be rejected? [...] The nationalist purging of any traces of socialism from the landscape is a fool’s errand at best, gross historical revisionism at worst.

Related on Archinect:

Moscow skaters reclaiming hidden spaces on top of Soviet-era buildings

2015-09-03T13:28:00-04:00

Moscow's landscape is filled with Soviet-era buildings, many of them shuttered after the privatisation programme of the Nineties. Built for the people's benefit, they are now shut away off from public access, patrolled by security guards, most of whom never dream of exploring the upper floors. But it is the roof of the Moscow pavilion that brings us here. Because of its concave shape the roof looks like a giant skate ramp. My friends and I want to see if it can perform like one too.

Head over to Calvert Journal for many more stunning photos by Pasha Volkov.

In other daring-Russian-kids news on Archinect:

Owen Hatherley on the mass housing history of Moscow’s suburbs

2015-06-22T15:23:00-04:00

The ideals of Novye Cheryomushki may have died, but its methods and techniques remain — having managed to make some people very wealthy. Moscow suburbia is not so much the remnants of a great experiment, perhaps, but suburbia like any other suburbia — a place of dreams and boredom, great ideas being implemented and then slowly crushed.

Paradise lost? The enduring legacy of a Soviet-era utopian workers’ district

2014-12-04T14:36:00-05:00

Architecture critic Owen Hatherley travelled to Nizhny Novgorod to visit Avtozavod, a purpose-built “workers’ paradise”. The idealism may have gone, but its legacy remains strong

The Soviet city is dead: long live Beijing

2014-09-05T13:38:00-04:00

Architecture theorist Jacob Dreyer explains how the Stalinist model of urbanism – a centrally planned component within a national economic unity – is thriving in modern China

Ghost town: searching for remnants of Russia in the Chinese city of Harbin

2014-08-25T15:07:00-04:00

It is not rare for a civilisation to abruptly falter, give way and fold into a new one. This insight seems obvious in the territories of the former Soviet Union — a universe transformed into a memory overnight. [...] that a city turned ruin continues to be inhabited, that the collapsing buildings and boulevards stained by a thousand footsteps, after the apocalypse, host new forms of human life, new memories. Harbin, in the far north-east of China, used to be a very Russian metropolis.