Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991
Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991

Author: Anna Bronovitskaya

Publisher: Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Published: 2018-08-28

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9788090671461

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Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991 provides descriptions of almost 100 buildings from the most underrated period of Soviet architecture. This is the first guide to bring together the architecture made during the three decades between Khrushchev and Gorbachev, from the naive modernism of the "thaw" of the late 1950s through postmodernism. Buildings include the Palace of Youth, the Rossiya cinema, the Pioneer Palace, the Ostankino TV Tower, the TASS headquarters, the "golden brains" of the Academy of Sciences and less well-known structures such as the House of New Life and the Lenin Komsomol Automobile Plant Museum. The authors situate Moscow's postwar architecture within the historical and political context of the Soviet Union, while also referencing developments in international architecture of the period.

Housing Estates in Europe
Housing Estates in Europe

Author: Daniel Baldwin Hess

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-14

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 3319928139

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This open access book explores the formation and socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in Europe. Are these estates clustered or scattered? Which social groups originally had access to residential space in housing estates? What is the size, scale and geography of housing estates, their architectural and built environment composition, services and neighbourhood amenities, and metropolitan connectivity? How do housing estates contribute to the urban mosaic of neighborhoods by ethnic and socio-economic status? What types of policies and planning initiatives have been implemented in order to prevent the social downgrading of housing estates? The collection of chapters in this book addresses these questions from a new perspective previously unexplored in scholarly literature. The social aspects of housing estates are thoroughly investigated (including socio-demographic and economic characteristics of current and past inhabitants; ethnicity and segregation patterns; population dynamics; etc.), and the physical composition of housing estates is described in significant detail (including building materials; building form; architectural and landscape design; built environment characteristics; etc.). This book is timely because the recent global economic crisis and Europe’s immigration crisis demand a thorough investigation of the role large housing estates play in poverty and ethnic concentration. Through case studies of housing estates in 14 European centers, the book also identifies policy measures that have been used to address challenges in housing estates throughout Europe.

Felix Novikov
Felix Novikov

Author: Vladimir Belogolovsky

Publisher: Dom Pub

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 9783869222899

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It was prominent architect and publicist Felix Novikov (b. 1927) who first coined the term Soviet modernism, which refers to the third, concluding period (1955-85) of Soviet architecture. The value of Novikov’s creative path lies in the fact that it spans the years both before and after Soviet moder­nism. Today, the architect continues to be a prolific writer, critic, and initiator of many inspired ideas that materialize into publications, exhibitions, and conferences. He is the key surviving source for the fullest and most accurate understanding of Soviet architecture after World War II. His principal built works are the Palace of Pioneers in Moscow (1962) and the Science Center of Microelectronics (1969) and Moscow Institute of Electronics (1971) in Zelenograd. His numerous books include Formula of Architecture (1984) and Architects and Architecture (2002).

The Soviet Sixties
The Soviet Sixties

Author: Robert Hornsby

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 0300250525

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The story of a remarkable era of reform, controversy, optimism, and Cold War confrontation in the Soviet Union Beginning with the death of Stalin in 1953, the "sixties" era in the Soviet Union was just as vibrant and transformative as in the West. The ideological romanticism of the revolutionary years was revived, with renewed emphasis on egalitarianism, equality, and the building of a communist utopia. Mass terror was reined in, great victories were won in the space race, Stalinist cultural dogmas were challenged, and young people danced to jazz and rock and roll. Robert Hornsby examines this remarkable and surprising period, showing that, even as living standards rose, aspects of earlier days endured. Censorship and policing remained tight, and massacres during protests in Tbilisi and Novocherkassk, alongside invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, showed the limits of reform. The rivalry with the United States reached perhaps its most volatile point, friendship with China turned to bitter enmity, and global decolonization opened up new horizons for the USSR in the developing world. These tumultuous years transformed the lives of Soviet citizens and helped reshape the wider world.

Art for Architecture. Georgia
Art for Architecture. Georgia

Author: Nini Palavandishvili

Publisher: Dom Publishers

Published: 2019-03

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9783869226910

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Whilst Soviet modernist buildings in Georgia have enjoyed worldwide recognition for several decades, the art for architecture from that era - monumental decorative mosaics - still await discovery and appreciation from an international audience. Then, as now, these richly coloured mosaics were an independent, yet inextricable part of Georgia's architecture: they underlined a building's use, structured its façade, or merged into an elaborate whole. Today, however, many of these works, which were far more than just state propaganda, are under threat of destruction. For the first time, this volume documents these unique remnants of Soviet history alongside their precise locations. Using vivid photos and detailed texts, Nini Palavandishvili and Lena Prents guide the reader through a diverse selection of mosaics that distinguish themselves from those of the other Soviet Republics. By drawing attention to this artistic legacy of a bygone era, and in the process revealing its beauty and cultural significance, the authors highlight the importance of protecting and preserving it for the future.

The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures
The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures

Author: Aga Skrodzka

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 799

ISBN-13: 019088553X

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Looking at monuments, murals, computer games, recycling campaigns, children's books, and other visual artifacts, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures reassesses communism's historical and cultural legacy.

Landscapes of Communism
Landscapes of Communism

Author: Owen Hatherley

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 1620971895

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When communism took power in Eastern Europe it remade cities in its own image, transforming everyday life and creating sweeping boulevards and vast, epic housing estates in an emphatic declaration of a noncapitalist idea. The regimes that built them are now dead and long gone, but from Warsaw to Berlin, Moscow to postrevolutionary Kiev, the buildings remain, often populated by people whose lives were scattered by the collapse of communism. Landscapes of Communism is a journey of historical discovery, plunging us into the lost world of socialist architecture. Owen Hatherley, a brilliant, witty, young urban critic shows how power was wielded in these societies by tracing the sharp, sudden zigzags of official communist architectural style: the superstitious despotic rococo of high Stalinism, with its jingoistic memorials, palaces, and secret policemen’s castles; East Germany’s obsession with prefabricated concrete panels; and the metro systems of Moscow and Prague, a spectacular vindication of public space that went further than any avant-garde ever dared. Throughout his journeys across the former Soviet empire, Hatherley asks what, if anything, can be reclaimed from the ruins of Communism—what residue can inform our contemporary ideas of urban life?

Architectural Styles
Architectural Styles

Author: Owen Hopkins

Publisher: Laurence King Publishing

Published: 2014-09-08

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1780676387

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Have you ever wondered what the difference is between Gothic and Gothic Revival, or how to distinguish between Baroque and Neoclassical? This guide makes extensive use of photographs to identify and explain the characteristic features of nearly 300 buildings. The result is a clear and easy-to-navigate guide to identifying the key styles of western architecture from the classical age to the present day.

The Topkapi Scroll
The Topkapi Scroll

Author: Gülru Necipoğlu

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 1996-03-01

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0892363355

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Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.

Soviet Cities: Labour, Life and Leisure
Soviet Cities: Labour, Life and Leisure

Author: Arseniy Kotov

Publisher: Fuel

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781916218413

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The Soviet dream of modernist architecture for all, portrayed on the brink of its erasure In recent years Russian cities have visibly changed. The architectural heritage of the Soviet period has not been fully acknowledged. As a result many unique modernist buildings have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition. Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov intends to document these buildings and their surroundings before they are lost forever. He likes to take pictures in winter, during the "blue hour," which occurs immediately after sunset or just before sunrise. At this time, the warm yellow colors inside apartment-block windows contrast with the twilight gloom outside. To Kotov, this atmosphere reflects the Soviet period of his imagination. His impression of this time is unashamedly idealistic: he envisages a great civilization, built on a fair society, which hopes to explore nature and conquer space. From the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan to the grim monolithic high-rise dormitory blocks of inner-city Volgograd, Kotov captures the essence of the post-Soviet world. "The USSR no longer exists and in these photographs we can see what remains--the most outstanding buildings and constructions, where Soviet people lived and how Soviet cities once looked: no decoration, no bright colors and no luxury, only bare concrete and powerful forms." This superbly designed volume is the latest in Fuel's revelatory and inspiring series on Soviet-era architecture.