Soviet Modernism:
The City of Tomorrow

"The City of Tomorrow" is an ongoing research and exhibition project on the life and afterlife of the Soviet city. This website serves as the exhibition’s digital dossier, providing introductory articles and additional content on Soviet Modernism and its links to Germany. Consisting of a traveling core and changing local extensions with a focus on architecture and urbanism, the exhibition is presented by the Goethe-Institut with support from Tranzit.at in several major cities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, starting with Yerevan, Minsk, Moscow, and Novosibirsk in 2019/20.

© Research group "Modernism - Tolyatti"
The Saturn Widescreen Cinema, Tolyatti, Russia | Architects: M. Bubnov, V. Lazarev, I. Semeikin, E. Ter-Stepanov, engineer: V. Nemirovsky, 1971 | Photo from Soviet postcard
© Moscow Institute of Architecture
A panoramic cinema, graduation project, Moscow Institute of Architecture | By E. Kuznetsov, supervisors: M. P. Parusnikov, G. Y. Movchan, S. Kh. Satunts, 1959
© George Chakhava's personal archive collected and selected by Vahram Aghasyan, Nini Palavandishvili and Lali Pertenava as a part of Frozen moments. Architecture Speaks Back curated by Joanna Warsza, Tbilisi, 2010
Ministry of Transportation, Tbilisi, Georgia | Architects: George Chakhava, Zurab Jalaghania, T. Tkhilava, V. Kimberg, 1974
© Kyurkchyan Archive
Komitas Chamber Music Theater, Yerevan, Armenia | Architect: Stepan Kyurkchyan, 1968-1977
© Archive Kosmatschof
Karl Marx Library, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan | Architects: Abdullah Akhmedov, Boris Shpak, Vladimir Alekseyev, 1960-1975, sculptor: Vadim Kosmatschof, 1975
© Andrey Kosinskiy
Kalkauz, design for a prototype micro-district development, Tashkent, Uzbekistan | Architects: Sabir Rakhimov, Andrey Kosinskiy, project leaders: Gennady Korobovtsev, Georgy Grigoryants, et al., 1978 (unrealized)
Markus Weisbeck
Residential complex, Almaty, Kazakhstan | Photo: Markus Weisbeck (In the context of the project Local Modernities)
© Avo-Himm Looveer
Augustitorm Arhitektuuris [August Storm in Architecture], Avo-Himm Looveer, 1982
Nvard Yerkanyan
Park of Memory/Crematorium, Kiev, Ukraine | Architect: A. Miletsky, artists: Y. Melnichenko, A. Rybachuk, 1968-1980 | Photo by Nvard Yerkanyan
© V. Mizin
Avrora architecture bureau, landscaping feature in the village of Sokur, design documentation | Architect: Vyacheslav Mizin, 1987

Exhibition
“The City of Tomorrow"

The City of Tomorrow presents the evolution of Soviet modernist architectural heritage from its genesis in the 1920s and its revival from the late 1950s through to the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as this patrimony’s patchwork survival in the former republics of the Soviet empire today. Sometimes as decaying ruin, other times as an adaptive re-use project, this legacy — with its own masters, local dialects, and unsung masterpieces — tells a story that was afflicted by inner contradictions and idiosyncrasy, much as it developed within a seemingly homogenized space. “The City of Tomorrow” explores this landscape and its expansive reshaping at the hands of an architectural culture that sought to build a fundamentally different idea of society than the neoliberal order many Soviet successor states face today.

About the exhibition “The City of Tomorrow”

Project for a Hotel in the Arzakan Gorge, Armenia | Architect: Rafael Israelyan, 1967

Yerevan
Conflicting Modernities

Microdistrict Vostok –I, a complex of 14-16-storey residential buildings of the M-464 series with built-in and attached trade and consumer services on Lenin Avenue in Minsk | Architects: G. Sysoev, I. Popova, I. Zhuravlev (Minskproject), 1971-1972

Minsk
Minsk as a symbiosis of the standardized and individual

Installation “The day before” by Mikhail Tolmachev in the Moscow exhibition “The City of Tomorrow” at the New Tretyakov Gallery

Photo by Alexei Myslitskij

Moscow
Play Tretyakov

Exhibition ⇉

Soviet Modernism

Lounge building of the Writers’ Resort in Sevan, Sevan Peninsula, Armenia | Architect: Gevorg Kochar (Yerevanproekt), 1963-1968

Ruben Arevshatian and Georg Schöllhammer
Soviet Modernism – a parallel history of architecture and urbanism that is an issue of current debate

In recent years, the subject of Soviet modernist architecture has become a topic of enormous international interest in professional circles and for the general public. This growing interest is informed by several factors: chief among them is the global discovery of a new, vastly rich strata of modernist architectural heritage that was detached from the Western historical master narrative as a result of the Cold War. After losing a great number of masterpiece buildings from the Soviet period, post-Soviet societies started to realize not only the significance of those buildings as architectural and historical monuments, but also began to acknowledge these structures as important socio-cultural components of their collective identities.

Building(s) of the month

Three manifesto projects: these are developments from three architectural periods — constructivism, post-war modernism, and post-modernism. Some are unrealized, some are partially realized, and some are unrealized. These three projects are concepts of transformation of the utopian and fantastic into the realistic.

A standard block of brick flats for four households with duplex apartments and a complete set of modern conveniences, from the Gerard system, type C. Kemerovo. Architect J. van Loghem // The 1920s

Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony

A social experiment conducted in 1921-1927 in the territory of present-day Kemerovo

The First West-Siberian Agricultural, Forest, Trade and Industry Exhibition. The Pavilion of Siberian Studies. Omsk. Architect Leonid Chernyshev // 1911

First West-Siberian Agricultural and Industry Exhibition

A site for implementing the boldest architectural fantasies

A street perspective. Architectural graphics. Omsk. A.V. Linetsky // The 1920s

Khudprom College Omsk

The industrial arts college founded under Narkompros

All buildings of the month ⇉

Podcast
"Siberian Modernism"

The Goethe-Institut in Novosibirsk is launching a series of podcasts about architectural modernism in Siberia. In a series of talks with experts, the Novosibirsk artist and curator Anton Karmanov discusses the key phenomena and periods of architectural modernism in Siberia. In his talks with experts, he seeks an answer to the question of what ‘Siberian modernism’ and ‘the Novosibirsk architectural school’ are. Do they exist, and, if so, what characterizes them?

Podcast #5
Andrey Chernov Speaks About Novosibirsk Paper Architecture and the Freedom of Creation

The final podcast is devoted to Novosibirsk paper architecture. We will talk with the representative of the first-generation “paper architects” Andrey Chernov.

All episodes of this pocast ⇉

Longread
"El Lissitzky and Sophie Küppers: A Romance with the Avant-garde"

A cover of Wendingen magazine. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Zum 130. Geburtstag des weltweit bekannten Malers El Lissitzky veröffentlicht das Goethe-Institut Nowosibirsk ein Longread des Nowosibirsker Kunstkritikers Sergej Samoilenko. In diesem verflechten sich das Schicksal von El Lissitzky als hervorragendem Vertreter der russischen Avantgarde und dessen Familie mit seiner Kunst und den Nowosibirsker Underground-Ausstellungen in Akademgorodok während der Tauwetter-Periode zu einer Filmserie, deren Figuren sich auf unvorstellbare Abenteuer einlassen und auf unglaubliche Proben um der Kunst willen gestellt werden.

Short film
Steel-City

In the framework of ‘The City of Tomorrow’ exhibition, Goethe-Institut in Novosibirsk presents a short ballet film titled ‘Stal-Gorod’ (‘Steel-City’). Through the prism of dance, music, and cinema, the modern artists reconsider and interpret the architectural legacy of Soviet modernism.

External Links

Re-reading Soviet Modernism:
The past, present and future of Socialist Modernist Architecture
Symposium in the frames of Keeping it Modern program by Getty Foundation, Yerevan, 2017

Zurück zur Seite „Themen“

Soviet Modernism: The City of Tomorrow

Exhibition“​​The City of Tomorrow"

Yerevan Conflicting Modernities

Minsk Minsk as a symbiosis of the standardized and individual

Moscow Play Tretyakov