Frédéric Chaubin. CCCP. Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed. 40th Ed.

Frédéric Chaubin’s Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed features 90 Soviet buildings throughout the former USSR, each built between 1970 and 1990. It is a journey through time. With local exoticism, outlandish ideas, and a puzzle of styles, these weird and wonderful buildings are unearthly reminders of a fallen ideology.

Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), others expressed 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). Then comes the “speaking architecture” widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Institute of Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like Big Brother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad).