COSMIC COMUNIST CONSTRUCTION

The fourth and final age of Soviet architecturePhotographer Freadearic Chaubin reveals 90 buildings sited in fourteen formerSoviet Republics which express what he considers to be the fourth age ofSoviet architecture. His poetic pictures reveal an unexpected rebirth ofimagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990.Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no "school" or main trend emerges here.These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decayingsystem. Their diversity announced the end of the Soviet Union.Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes in thewidening net, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the rootsor freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that theConstructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), othersexpressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Palace of Weddings,Tbilisi). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base,lays claim to Suprematist influence (Prometheus youth camp, Bogatyr). Thencomes the "speaking architecture" widespread in the last years of the USSR:a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), atechnological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Instituteof Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like BigBrother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad). This puzzle of styles testifies toall the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with thecosmos to the rebirth of identity. It also outlines the geography of theUSSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before thecountry was brought to its end.