Architecture in Soviet fiction

Druzhba Sanatorium © Frédéric Chaubin

Frederic Chaubin's photos of soviet architectures bring Utopia and Science Fiction together : the Georgian Highways Ministry 's concrete blocks piled on top of one another are monumentally alienating, the Druzhba's Sanatorium recalls the space shuttle concept, a time when the Soviet Union overtook the United states in the space race.


Highways Ministry © Frédéric Chaubin

The buildings' eerie surroundings, in locations at the peripheries of USSR, are preserved by the photographic use of the wide angle. By mixing hybrid shapes, passage ways, bubble windows, gold plated decor and flying saucers, this amazing architectural vocabulary expresses a new born freedom from the soviet regime.


Institute of Scientific and Technological Research and Development © Frederic Chaubin

Building the Revolution

Narkomfin Communal house © Richard Pare 

Former soviet architecture is monumental, industrial and cold and that melancholy makes me wonder how life was before the revolution ? 
One photograph by Richard Pare captures almost by accident the loneliness of a communal house in Moscow : with its dinning room and its pilled turquoise walls, the reproduction of Raphael's Sistine madonna above the chimney, the little Pushkin statue and the faded flowery cloth on the table, this apartment is infused with the passage of time, testimonies for a lifetime not spent in leisure but working in factories. 

Pare's photos of Power stations, derelict buildings and abandoned rooms now standing like post-apocalyptic background with their obsolete machines and futuristic enginery brings to mind scenes of surreal work conditions. 


Brazil © Terry Gilliam