Frdric Chaubin. CCCP. Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed

(Hardback, Multilingual edition)

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Elected the architectural book of the year by the International Artbook and Film Festival in Perpignan, France, Frdric Chaubin's Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed explores 90 buildings in 14 former Soviet Republics. Each of these structures expresses what Chaubin considers the fourth age of Soviet architecture, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990.

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).

In their puzzle of styles, their outlandish strategies, these buildings are extraordinary remnants of a collapsing system. In their diversity and local exoticism, they testify both to the vast geography of the USSR and its encroaching end of the Soviet Union, the holes in a widening net. At the same time, they immortalize many of the ideological dreams of the country and its time, from an obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity.

Reviews

The wonderfully titled CCCP is the perfect coffee table book for unrepentant Marxists. * Huffington Post *
...an eye-opening experience for those who assumed that Soviet architecture died with the rise of Stalin. * The New York Times *
...one of the most splendid of recent architecural publications and a revelation. * Apollo Magazine *
This book is an extraordinary achievement, and Chaubin's haunting photographs only improve with looking. * World of Interiors *
A revolutionary read. * Architectural Digest *
Soviet brutalism is not something traditionally thought of as beautiful, but Frederic Chaubin's stunning photographs should go some way to changing this. This book is a bold foray into an architectural period that is barely documented, either in the former Soviet Union or the west. * The Observer *

Author Bio

Frdric Chaubin has been, for twenty years, editor-in-chief of the French lifestyle magazine Citizen K. Since 2000 he has regularly featured works combining text and photography. His CCCP collection research was carried out from 2003 to 2010 and published in 2011. He also authored the TASCHEN title Stone Age. Ancient Castles of Europe.