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Wedding Palace (Tbilisi, Georgia, 1985) © Frederic Chaubin
Frederic Chaubin, Cambodian born French-Spanish editor of Citizen K magazine, spent a good part of the 1980s documenting the outlandish, sci-fi architecture behind the Iron Curtain. Though many Western architects also conceptualized utopian cities and monolithic structures, most of those designs were never built. More retro-futuristic buildings after the jump.
“Roads Ministry” (Tbilisi, Georgia, 1975) © Frederic Chaubin
According to Storefront for Art and Architecture, one of our favorite local purveyors of all that is holy and edificial:
The subjects of Chaubin’s photographs, scattered throughout Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, were all constructed during the last two decades of the Soviet era. Very few of their designers achieved anything more than local recognition, and until now these buildings have never been collectively documented or exhibited. The authors of many works remain unknown, and some have been destroyed since Chaubin’s photographs were taken. Concieved and executed during a moment of historical transition, they constitute one of the most surprising and least known legacies of the former USSR.
Soviet Palace (Kalinigrad, Russia, 1975) © Frederic Chaubin
“Druzhba Holiday Center Hall” (Yalta, Ukraine, designed by Igor Vasilevsky 1984) © Frederic Chaubin
Via Grain Edit.
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7 Responses
somebody ring UNESCO
Wedding palace became to private habbitation of one Georgia's oligarch
not unesco, james bond
[...] Iron Curtain went nutty with its architecture during the height of the sci-fi craze. Flavorwire has more images and this to say: Frederic Chaubin, Cambodian born French-Spanish editor of Citizen [...]
[...] Strange Soviet Retro-Futuristic Buildings. [...]
When you go to the former USSR and much of the Soviet Bloc don't diss the clunky dilapidated hotels of the era — they give a unique peek into what Soviets thought tourism should be, and with original curtains! They won't be around long. This is the time to stay in them — then dust off in a newer hotel the day after.
[...] Iron Curtain went nutty with its architecture during the height of the sci-fi craze. Flavorwire has more images and this to say: Frederic Chaubin, Cambodian born French-Spanish editor of Citizen [...]