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 Calvert Journal

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. — calvertjournal.com

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. — Calvert Journal

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. — Calvert Journal

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. — Calvert Journal

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. — calvertjournal.com

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. — theguardian.com

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. — the Moscow Times

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? — calvertjournal.com

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. — the Guardian

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. — calvertjournal.com

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.  — calvertjournal.com

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. — calvertjournal.com

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 — calvertjournal.com