Communist Architecture blows my mind

So I can’t pretend to be an expert on the subject of Communist Architecture at all, in all honesty, until this week I never really even knew buildings like the ones featured below existed until THIS BOOK by FredericChaubin for Taschen came to my attention this week –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CCCP-Cosmic-Communist-Constructions-Photographed/dp/3836525194/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300464518&sr=8-1

I seriously had no idea how amazing some Communist constructions were! I had previously flirted with the subject on account of the insane Romanian Palace of the Parliament building from the Ceausescu regime in  Bucharest, which is just of an absolutely insanely, unnecessarily massive scale (it is the largest and heaviest Parliament building in the world I believe), but it was about the depth of my knowledge –

but almost all of the structures in this book were completely new to me, and pretty much blew my mind. Chaubin’s photography is beyond brilliant also, look at some of these (the top photo I have posted of each building is the Chaubin photograph) –

The Druzhba sanatorium in Yalta, Ukraine – I believe that this is a holiday hall that people can stay in, amazing :

The Ukrainian Institute of Scientific and Technological Research and Development, which looks like a flying saucer landed at a bus station, Kiev, Ukraine –

The Wedding Palace, Tbilisi, Georgia. To me this building gets a bit softer the more you see of it, I have posted three angles of it below, and by the third it starts to make sense to me as a place to celebrate Weddings  :

Roads Ministry, also Tbilisi Georgia. It is often called the “Lego Building” by Westerners apparently –

The unfinished House of the Soviets, or “Monster Building” Kalinigrad, Russia. So imposing, I love that it looks like a giant defunct robot –

The Central Research and Design Institute for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, St Petersburg, Russia. Kind of looks like a cross between a crown and a rocketship to me –

Polytechnic University, Minsk, Belarus –

The Soviet Embassy, Havana, Cuba (what a photograph!). I love the desolate dolphin statue in the forefront, kinda eerie –

and my absolute personal favourite, the Armenian President’s Holiday Home on the Lake Sevan, I think this photo is beyond amazing, I love the icy mountains in the distance, a complete contrast to the front of the picture and the huge mass of water. If anybody out there has this photo larger and in HD please let me know! –

I have shamelessly pilfered the above images from all corners of the internet, so shout me if you want any of them taken down. And a big woah, well done to Frederic Chaubin, your images have seriously taken my breath away and infiltrated/inspired my tiny little mind. Incredible!

And let us not forget, I don’t think Chaubin photographed them (but feel free to correct me), one of the most awe-inspiring Soviet pieces of architecture, the enormous Mother Russia statue, found in Volgograd Russia, and the similar Mother Motherland statue found in Kiev Ukraine. The sheer scale of these is beyond mind-bending at twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, and they are so rarely mentioned, or even seen as landmarks in the Western world –

Mother Motherland statue, Kiev :

Mother Russia statue, Volgograd –