Enjoyed leafing through this at the Taschen bookshop on Sunday. A lot of it is a bit baroque but there are also some amazing structures from what I assume is a fairly uncharted period in a fairly uncharted region (ie Russia just before the collapse of communism). See also Richard Pare's 'The Lost Vanguard' for a relatively sober comparison!
I was given a few names recently of notable contemporary Russian architects and the only one I've investigated so far is Alexander Brodsky who created a series of drawings with Ilya Utkin mainly in the 1980s, often submitted as entries to architectural competitions in Japan and the US. Well worth a look, particularly if you like Boullee, Piranese etc
'Dome', Brodsky & Utkin 1989-90 from 'Brodsky & Utkin The Complete Works' Lois E. Nesbitt, Princeton Arch.Press
One of the more interesting pieces of orphaned USSR architecture in North America is the USSR Pavilion of Expo 67 World Exposition in Montréal, Canada: http://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_ussr_p1.html
ReplyDeleteThanks John, is that still there? Montreal '67 was full of interesting building wasn't it (see Iqbal Aalam's flickr site) - a fantasic Fuller dome, Habitat, Frei Otto and much as I like Basil Spence i don't think the UK pavillion was so great.
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