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Uzbekistan has officially announced that architecture studio GRACE, led by curators Ekaterina Golovatyuk and Giacomo Cantoni, will oversee the country's National Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia in 2025. The exhibition, titled A Matter of Radiance, will explore Uzbekistan's modernist architectural legacy in response to the Biennale's overarching theme, "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective."
The little-known and remote area of North Caucasus is an intricate assemblage of territories, ethnicities, languages, religions, and, consequently, architectures, from Tsarist-era buildings to mosques, traditional bas-reliefs, and Soviet Modernism. The setting of controversial events and a heterogeneous cultural environment, in many ways, North Caucasus is a borderland between Europe and Asia, the former USSR and the Middle East, Christianity and Islam. Photographs by Gianluca Pardelli, Thomas Paul Mayer and Nikolai Vassiliev provide an introduction to the architectural landscape of the region.
In the second half of the 20th century, Soviet architecture has spread a common aesthetic across highly diverse environments, being an integral part in promoting the totalitarian ideology that disregarded local cultures, envisioning a unified, homogenous society. Nevertheless, in practice, the architecture proved itself susceptible to adaptations and local influences, perhaps nowhere more than in Central Asia. The article looks at the architectural heritage of a geographical area largely excluded from the Western-centric narratives on Soviet Modernism, encouraging a re-reading of a layered and nuanced urban landscape, with images by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego.
Comparing revenues from the previous year, Architectural Record lines up annually a list of the Top 300 U.S. Firms. Based on the 2019 data, Gensler tops again the selection, for the ninth year in a row, and Perkins and Will takes the second position. Third, fourth and fifth places were presented for Engineering Architecture firms HDR, Jacobs, and AECOM. Other companies in the top 10 include HKS and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
What would historic cities look like if scale didn’t exist and functions were manipulated?
Dutch artist Tamara Stoffers found inspiration from an old Soviet Union book published in the early 1960s, which featured images of mass-housing apartment blocks without any ornamentation or color. The book highlighted the symmetry and functionality of Soviet architecture, representing what a communist future strived to look like. It became clear to her that a lot of stories lie in the history of USSR that deserve to be explored.
Stoffers' admiration extended beyond Russian architecture, looking at everyday objects, banners, postcards, and books. In a matter of 4-5 years, she put together a series of surreal collages taken from more than 30 picture books. The images, which seemed intriguing on their own, were mixed and matched with complementary photographs in an exaggerated, amusing way, presenting the Soviet Union as never seen before.
The Republic of Georgia’s past is defined by turbulence and a struggle for identity. A former republic of the USSR, Georgia is perhaps best known as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. The nation's history has been anything but calm, and remnants of the architectural past provide a glimpse into the nation that was.
The country's remaining Soviet landmarks give Georgia an air of being caught between the past and the present. Italian photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego capture this in their photo series, Soviet Architecture Heritage in Georgia, with a compilation of photos that highlights the existing Soviet heritage in Georgian architecture today.
_Garrett_Rowland_Courtesy_of_Gensler_02.jpg?1598951304 "Reebok Headquarters / Gensler. Image © Garrett Rowland")
