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Frederic Chaubin Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed by Chaubin, Frederic [Taschen,2011]
Frederic Chaubin Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed by Chaubin, Frederic. Published by Taschen,2011, Hardcover
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
January 29, 2022
"CCCP" is heavy on the pictures and light on the explanations, but not overtly so.
Frédéric Chaubin offers a short introduction explaining both his interest in communist buildings, and the context of these buildings in history; why was so much communist architecture the same? Why are some buildings different? What are the interesting differences that these buildings exhibit and what led to them?
There could be more information, but that's fine. The photos often speak for themselves.
Frédéric Chaubin offers a short introduction explaining both his interest in communist buildings, and the context of these buildings in history; why was so much communist architecture the same? Why are some buildings different? What are the interesting differences that these buildings exhibit and what led to them?
There could be more information, but that's fine. The photos often speak for themselves.
May 31, 2011
Knowing next to nothing about architecture, I was impressed by the accessibility and context provided by the introduction, but obviously a book like this lives or dies on its visual content, and the photos are fantastic. Monstrous 1960s-style science fiction buildings loom out of the mist or squat in town centres like invading spacecraft. Makes me want to book a flight on the next plane to Tashkent.
November 10, 2011
Mesmerizing photographs of monumental, otherworldly, and innovative architecture. The shots have a melancholy beauty of lost grandeur.
February 6, 2021
"In the vast post-Soviet world, with its diverse landscapes and uncertain, abandoned terrains, that transitional period lives on in vestiges such as these. These buildings are happy accidents for some, and for others lapses of taste, but most of them, whether modest or not, somehow managed to dodge the norms. Neither modern nor postmodern, like free-floating dreams, they loom up on the horizons like pointers to a fourth dimension. The ultimate dimension of the Soviet world."
Frédéric Chaubin
***
I am not going to lie: I bought this book for the pictures. It may seem pretty obvious, I know, but this statement implies that this book is (even) more rich than a photography book. These Soviet buildings/monuments, built between 1970 and 1990, are worth a deeper look, a look that goes beyond the eye, a look that we can acquire through knowledge: Frédéric Chaubin does that beautifully in the introduction, he tries to frame this constructions under the ideology and the contingencies of those times. Suddenly, some of these don't look so displaced, I mean, they are strange, different, otherworldly sometimes, but in context they make a lot of sense: they are means to create and maintain power within geographical areas; they are the attempt to create something in a world where artists and architects didn't had much contact with the outside realities; they end up being a reflection of the political agenda (the creation of something new, a promising and prosper future where space exploration and the evolution of science are the centerpiece)...
I absolutely loved it, and I am sure I'll be revisiting it soon.
Frédéric Chaubin
***
I am not going to lie: I bought this book for the pictures. It may seem pretty obvious, I know, but this statement implies that this book is (even) more rich than a photography book. These Soviet buildings/monuments, built between 1970 and 1990, are worth a deeper look, a look that goes beyond the eye, a look that we can acquire through knowledge: Frédéric Chaubin does that beautifully in the introduction, he tries to frame this constructions under the ideology and the contingencies of those times. Suddenly, some of these don't look so displaced, I mean, they are strange, different, otherworldly sometimes, but in context they make a lot of sense: they are means to create and maintain power within geographical areas; they are the attempt to create something in a world where artists and architects didn't had much contact with the outside realities; they end up being a reflection of the political agenda (the creation of something new, a promising and prosper future where space exploration and the evolution of science are the centerpiece)...
I absolutely loved it, and I am sure I'll be revisiting it soon.
February 1, 2023
Woaaaaah
March 28, 2018
Much like a lot of other things about the former Soviet Union, turns out the architecture was really weird and cool and it's actually us who put a shitty brown box on every corner and put, like, a Chipotle in it.
February 20, 2024
there could be possibly a bit more information or explanation about each of presented buildings. yet still - super impressive!
May 25, 2025
I wish there was more interior pictures
Want to read
May 16, 2011I saw an exhibit of some of these in a tiny gallery just up the street from me and now they're published in a book which I Must Have.
February 26, 2021
Found this in high school and scribbled endless notes over photocopies of the images inside. In retrospect not much else has left such an impression.
September 7, 2021
Informative introduction and amazing photo documentation of Soviet era architecture. I’d love to visit all these buildings and will definitely bring this book on a next trip to Russia!
Ukraine and Uzbekistan were obvious standouts in the book, with many mesmerizing buildings! Interesting also to see the specific needs of Soviet ideology: lots of circus buildings and references to cosmic travel. Also wedding palaces to take the place of churches, young pioneer camps and party retreats as well as many, many health resorts.
Ukraine and Uzbekistan were obvious standouts in the book, with many mesmerizing buildings! Interesting also to see the specific needs of Soviet ideology: lots of circus buildings and references to cosmic travel. Also wedding palaces to take the place of churches, young pioneer camps and party retreats as well as many, many health resorts.
Read
May 19, 2025banger.
June 17, 2025
Bellissima raccolta fotografica
June 17, 2025
A bit of a pretentious introduction and the locations could be more clearly identified in the captions to the photographs. Despite this a fascinating look at late Soviet architecture. Despite the flaws in the Soviet system, the provision of public facilities can be awe-inspiring. How many remain in use is not clear. Certainly, some have been demolished.
January 6, 2022
The only thing that was missing is a bit more info on the background of the buildings pictured.
November 29, 2018
Uno dei migliori libri di fotografia d'architettura, di sicuro il migliore sull'architettura brutalista sovietica. Adoro.
December 30, 2019
The librarian gave me a look of pity when I checked this one out. It was the last day to borrow this book and I had so much stuff in my back that I was already walking with a hunch. She tried to say something like "Heavy book...carry with your hands" in broken English but I took this enormous large print book and shoved it in right in my backpack. I'm glad now that I had decided to borrow this because..the Soviet Architecture is probably the only thing humans managed to build that resembles some fantasy land tied with history. I don't know A of Architecture, but something tells me every building portrayed in the book is some bold attempt, and I'm sure the bolder it was the more money and deaths were thrown at it to make them a reality. Overall a great compilation.
March 1, 2019
Excelente libro de fotografías que se centra en toda aquella arquitectura soviética de los años 70's y 80's que parecen inspirados en una visión del futuro. Retrofuturismo soviético le llamaríamos ahora. Edificios que parecen naves espaciales, construcciones que retan a la física, interiores casi surrealistas que parecen arrancados de una novela de ciencia ficción de los Hnos. Strugatsky... y ahora que el tiempo que ha erosionado parte de su belleza dejando a la vista el acero y el concreto de sus huesos se convierten también en la metáfora de una utopía futurista que quiso ser, pero nunca fue...
Un deleite verdadero que no se limita a una sola mirada.
Un deleite verdadero que no se limita a una sola mirada.
August 6, 2014
Huge collections of photographs by Chaubin of numerous buildings across the former Soviet Union with an emphasis on concrete. I happen to really like brutalist architecture and this book not only has that, it has some out there, futuristic, sci-fi looking structures. Needless to say, I'm into this kind of stuff in a big way.
December 9, 2012
Amazing vision of the future from the past. Magical
February 27, 2021
Extensive and enlightning. .If one loves to indulge into a Soviet hauntology or is a brutalist maniac, it is by all means a purchase worth consider.
November 10, 2020
In Estonia and Lithuania, for example, new generations are calling for certain buildings to be listed. Rejecting ideological assumptions, they are simply realizing that it is better to preserve an ambiguous heritage than to face a historical void. P 10
Whichever hypothesis we opt for, these buildings designed at the hinge of different worlds, in which a i-fi futurism conjoins with monumentalism, constitute one of the most disconcerting manifestations of the dying USSR. The disconcerting effect of a house of mirrors. P 13
Indeed this fourth age began with "contextualism," a rising tendency of the age, which at the very highest levels asserted the postulate that all buildings should express their environment. All architecture must manifest it's local specificity-its "address" to use Vakhtang Davitaia's word. As it developed, so thai vision confirmed a reality already manifest in many Republics. Nonetheless, it was highly significant. It reinstated the idea that all culture is specific, and not universally soviet. Or, to put it simply, that the USSR did not constitute a single unity, which would have justified architectural uniformity, but rather a whole set of particular realities. To take into account the heritage of history and regional diversity was to contest Soviet spatiotemporality. P 15
The fact was, on the ideological and cultural levels, that the dice had been cast ever since the American National Exhibition took place in Moscow in 1959. It all began, precisely, with the "kitchen debate" in which khrushchev and Nixon, standing under one of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, swapped jokes around a washing machine. By showing off his colour televisions the US vice-president, playing the role of a traveling salesman, had down the seeds of doubt. The superiority if the american model shook collectivist convictions. From now on it's hedonistic triumph would haunt Russian minds. This was America's most powerful weapon. P 16
... They had to find their own stimuli for the imagination, and they did so by looking to the powerfully attractive idea of the cosmos. ... Weather an astronaut or a cosmonaut, the new man was breaking free of gravity. Gagarin proudly proclaimed that he had seen no sign of God in space. Progress was going to shed light on the great mysteries, but this triumphant rationalism did not keep men from dreaming. On the contrary, science engendered its own mythology: science fiction. A genre shared by both blocs. P 18
Like religion, science fiction is concerned with the unknown source of things. In a world that was officially atheist, it this became the vector of belief. In a world that was officially atheist, it this became the vector of belief. It's mythology was steeped in the irrational but had the advantage of espousing the official dogma of the day: the race to the future. P18
Unable to offer the masses a glowing present - that of triumphant capitalism - they promised them the "bright tomorrow" of communism. The Soviet world was one big construction site for the future, and it was against this background that the "flying saucers" first appeared - within the specific register of public monuments, the only kind of building with a licence and vocation to be spectacular. P 18
For some practitioners the Soviet chaos gave access to a surprising freedom. Unconstrained and unguided, they came up with architecture that is as naïve as it is extraordinary. An architecture of solitary pleasures. P 23
This profusion of forms marks a return to expressionism, as an uninhibited phantasmagoria gives free reign to a glowing palette, evoking the "speaking architecture" of the French utopian architects, and in particular the credo articulated by Eriene-louis Boullee in his Essay on the Art of Architecture (1797) : "...our buildings - and our public buildings in particular - should be to some extent poems. The impression they make on us should arouse in us sensations that correspond to the function of the building in question." P. 24
It is as if, during the twilight of the regime, architects found fresh inspiration, and freedom, in the unbuilt utopias of their elders - in the founding myths. P 25
Visible from afar and unfailingly spectacular, they are effectively monuments, ideological markers endowed with an almost mystical aura by their positioning in space and expressive power. "by it's incongruity, by it's inhuman stature," writes the philosopher Jaques Derrida, "the monumental dimension serves to empathize the non-representable nature of the very concept that it evokes." This concept, wether in Grodno, Kiev, or Dushanbe, is might. The might of power. A power that would soon become illusory and whose crumbling is indeed manifested by the growing stylistic diversity of this Architecture. P 25
Neither modern nor postmodern, like free-floating dreams, they look up on the horizons like pointers to a fourth dimension. The ultimate dimension of the Soviet world. P 25
Whichever hypothesis we opt for, these buildings designed at the hinge of different worlds, in which a i-fi futurism conjoins with monumentalism, constitute one of the most disconcerting manifestations of the dying USSR. The disconcerting effect of a house of mirrors. P 13
Indeed this fourth age began with "contextualism," a rising tendency of the age, which at the very highest levels asserted the postulate that all buildings should express their environment. All architecture must manifest it's local specificity-its "address" to use Vakhtang Davitaia's word. As it developed, so thai vision confirmed a reality already manifest in many Republics. Nonetheless, it was highly significant. It reinstated the idea that all culture is specific, and not universally soviet. Or, to put it simply, that the USSR did not constitute a single unity, which would have justified architectural uniformity, but rather a whole set of particular realities. To take into account the heritage of history and regional diversity was to contest Soviet spatiotemporality. P 15
The fact was, on the ideological and cultural levels, that the dice had been cast ever since the American National Exhibition took place in Moscow in 1959. It all began, precisely, with the "kitchen debate" in which khrushchev and Nixon, standing under one of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, swapped jokes around a washing machine. By showing off his colour televisions the US vice-president, playing the role of a traveling salesman, had down the seeds of doubt. The superiority if the american model shook collectivist convictions. From now on it's hedonistic triumph would haunt Russian minds. This was America's most powerful weapon. P 16
... They had to find their own stimuli for the imagination, and they did so by looking to the powerfully attractive idea of the cosmos. ... Weather an astronaut or a cosmonaut, the new man was breaking free of gravity. Gagarin proudly proclaimed that he had seen no sign of God in space. Progress was going to shed light on the great mysteries, but this triumphant rationalism did not keep men from dreaming. On the contrary, science engendered its own mythology: science fiction. A genre shared by both blocs. P 18
Like religion, science fiction is concerned with the unknown source of things. In a world that was officially atheist, it this became the vector of belief. In a world that was officially atheist, it this became the vector of belief. It's mythology was steeped in the irrational but had the advantage of espousing the official dogma of the day: the race to the future. P18
Unable to offer the masses a glowing present - that of triumphant capitalism - they promised them the "bright tomorrow" of communism. The Soviet world was one big construction site for the future, and it was against this background that the "flying saucers" first appeared - within the specific register of public monuments, the only kind of building with a licence and vocation to be spectacular. P 18
For some practitioners the Soviet chaos gave access to a surprising freedom. Unconstrained and unguided, they came up with architecture that is as naïve as it is extraordinary. An architecture of solitary pleasures. P 23
This profusion of forms marks a return to expressionism, as an uninhibited phantasmagoria gives free reign to a glowing palette, evoking the "speaking architecture" of the French utopian architects, and in particular the credo articulated by Eriene-louis Boullee in his Essay on the Art of Architecture (1797) : "...our buildings - and our public buildings in particular - should be to some extent poems. The impression they make on us should arouse in us sensations that correspond to the function of the building in question." P. 24
It is as if, during the twilight of the regime, architects found fresh inspiration, and freedom, in the unbuilt utopias of their elders - in the founding myths. P 25
Visible from afar and unfailingly spectacular, they are effectively monuments, ideological markers endowed with an almost mystical aura by their positioning in space and expressive power. "by it's incongruity, by it's inhuman stature," writes the philosopher Jaques Derrida, "the monumental dimension serves to empathize the non-representable nature of the very concept that it evokes." This concept, wether in Grodno, Kiev, or Dushanbe, is might. The might of power. A power that would soon become illusory and whose crumbling is indeed manifested by the growing stylistic diversity of this Architecture. P 25
Neither modern nor postmodern, like free-floating dreams, they look up on the horizons like pointers to a fourth dimension. The ultimate dimension of the Soviet world. P 25
March 9, 2023
A strangely beautiful and sad photo album.
Strangely beautiful, because Soviet architecture isn't everybody's cup of tea. A lot of it may be considered hideous and awkward, but it is interesting and in some cases mindblowing.
Sad, because the cover of the book carries the picture of a sanatorium in Crimea that was annexed in 2014. A lot of the structures featured in the book are currently in danger of being "deconstructed" by Volodya's rockets. That amazing nugget of walking-breathing shit loves the Soviet Union so much, yet is currently demolishing a lot of it's architectural legacy with the grace of a troll in a china shop.
I was born in LSSR: lived, studied and worked in Soviet buildings. The one thing I always thought watching pirated movies as a child was how beautiful western architecture was and how ugly our blocky-buildings were. Only with age did I realise that they carried their own funky charm and visually represent a point in history.
Sure, for many, they carry negative feelings or even hate associated with Soviet occupation, but we don't disassemble the Pyramids because they were built by slaves and we don't dismantle the Colosseum to avenge all of the innocent lives lost there. If we did that, we'd need to burn Vatican to the ground, just to make Christianity pay for the Crusades.
Aaaaaaanyway~!
What I did find surprising was how heavily represented Lithuania was throughout these pages: Palanga, Juknaičiai, Vilnius, Druskininkai, Kaunas, Nida, Sventoji, Nida and even my hometown of Klaipeda. No wonder HBO and Netflix visit us to fill their shows with that spicy Soviet flavour.
Strangely beautiful, because Soviet architecture isn't everybody's cup of tea. A lot of it may be considered hideous and awkward, but it is interesting and in some cases mindblowing.
Sad, because the cover of the book carries the picture of a sanatorium in Crimea that was annexed in 2014. A lot of the structures featured in the book are currently in danger of being "deconstructed" by Volodya's rockets. That amazing nugget of walking-breathing shit loves the Soviet Union so much, yet is currently demolishing a lot of it's architectural legacy with the grace of a troll in a china shop.
I was born in LSSR: lived, studied and worked in Soviet buildings. The one thing I always thought watching pirated movies as a child was how beautiful western architecture was and how ugly our blocky-buildings were. Only with age did I realise that they carried their own funky charm and visually represent a point in history.
Sure, for many, they carry negative feelings or even hate associated with Soviet occupation, but we don't disassemble the Pyramids because they were built by slaves and we don't dismantle the Colosseum to avenge all of the innocent lives lost there. If we did that, we'd need to burn Vatican to the ground, just to make Christianity pay for the Crusades.
Aaaaaaanyway~!
What I did find surprising was how heavily represented Lithuania was throughout these pages: Palanga, Juknaičiai, Vilnius, Druskininkai, Kaunas, Nida, Sventoji, Nida and even my hometown of Klaipeda. No wonder HBO and Netflix visit us to fill their shows with that spicy Soviet flavour.
July 18, 2020
Just enough context and a healthy variety of subject, material, location and scale.
Fascinating that under communist leadership there weren't churches, so the former USSR is littered with ceremony palaces, which were elaborate wedding venues sans deity.
Fascinating that the state juxtaposed crap living conditions for the average person with lavish resorts.
Fascinating that these structures are so out of the ordinary and thoughtful, but there are elements to each one that screams cheap; shitty visible welds, overbuilding supports, visible fasteners, sloppy construction, etc. While those are distracting to the overall unearthly quality of the overall gesture, those flaws are very much a part of the aesthetic. The form may be out of this world, but the evidence of human hands are everywhere.
Fascinating that under communist leadership there weren't churches, so the former USSR is littered with ceremony palaces, which were elaborate wedding venues sans deity.
Fascinating that the state juxtaposed crap living conditions for the average person with lavish resorts.
Fascinating that these structures are so out of the ordinary and thoughtful, but there are elements to each one that screams cheap; shitty visible welds, overbuilding supports, visible fasteners, sloppy construction, etc. While those are distracting to the overall unearthly quality of the overall gesture, those flaws are very much a part of the aesthetic. The form may be out of this world, but the evidence of human hands are everywhere.
January 18, 2022
Not too much to read but plenty of great big pictures of brutal (some more, some less) Soviet concrete buildings. The introduction explains how the changes in Soviet Union architecture starting from mid '70s reflected the country's path towards the end of the USSR. An interesting read for someone (like me) who is not 100% into just pure architecture. Picture-wise I was hoping more of those colossal concrete monsters in the middle of nowhere. The book now concentrates on the more unusual (at least through the eyes of a European born in the '70s) buildings found throughout the ex-Soviet states. Great picture book but as it was not exactly what I was expecting I felt a bit disappointed in the end.
June 8, 2025
Para apreciar este libro hay que explicar en primer lugar qué no es.
No es un libro de arquitectura sino estrictamente de fotografía sobre un tema arquitectónico concreto.
De hecho su parte ensayística se reduce a 7 páginas de valiosa introducción (triplicados por la edición trilingüe) y los textos de las fotos. No está mal pero se echa en falta más, bastante más.
Tampoco es una obra sobre brutalismo, aunque su influencia subyace en el tema representado.
Lo que sí es es un recorrido muy coherente en cuánto al estilo arquitectónico, periodo histórico, área geografica (básicamente la URSS) y tono de la fotografía, que realza en cada fotografía una grandilocuencia exótica decadente, no exenta de cierta condescendencia moral.
No es un libro de arquitectura sino estrictamente de fotografía sobre un tema arquitectónico concreto.
De hecho su parte ensayística se reduce a 7 páginas de valiosa introducción (triplicados por la edición trilingüe) y los textos de las fotos. No está mal pero se echa en falta más, bastante más.
Tampoco es una obra sobre brutalismo, aunque su influencia subyace en el tema representado.
Lo que sí es es un recorrido muy coherente en cuánto al estilo arquitectónico, periodo histórico, área geografica (básicamente la URSS) y tono de la fotografía, que realza en cada fotografía una grandilocuencia exótica decadente, no exenta de cierta condescendencia moral.
November 21, 2024
This book literally takes you to another world - i.e., the dying decades of the Soviet Union, when somebody somewhere decided to greenlight a bunch of highly unusual construction projects. With seriously limited materials available, and essentially cut off from Western technology for a half-century, the architects of these projects gave birth to some real wonders. Some are majestic, some are gracious and soulful, some are kooky as hell. These photos will seriously make you want to travel to forbidding mountain ranges and grubby riverside scrublands to experience these breathtaking, arguably insane miracles of imagination and construction.
November 12, 2023
Da ich so gut wie nichts über Architektur weiß, war ich sehr beeindruckt von der Zugänglichkeit und den ganzen Zusammenhängen, die die Einführung abliefert, aber natürlich lebt ein Buch wie dieses hauptsächlich von seinem visuellen Inhalt, und die Fotos sind einfach nur fantastisch. Monströse Science-Fiction-Gebäude im Stil der 1960er und 1970er Jahre tauchen wie aus dem Nebel auf, thronen über Seen und Meere oder hocken in Stadtzentren wie gelandete Raumschiffe. Am liebsten möchte ich gleich in ein Flugzeug steigen und diese architektonischen Wunder mit eigenen Augen sehen!
July 10, 2020
In the vast post-Soviet world, with its diverse landscapes and uncertain, abandoned terrains, that transitional period lives on in vestiges such as these. These buildings are happy accidents for some, and for others lapses of taste, but most of them, whether modest or not, somehow managed to dodge the norms. Neither modern nor postmodern, like free-floating dreams, they loom up on the horizons like pointers to a fourth dimension. The ultimate dimension of the Soviet world. – Chaubin
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews