Alma-Ata: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture. 1955-1991

Description

Almaty became the capital of Soviet modernism after it ceased to be Alma-Ata, as its former rivals in terms of architecture—Yerevan and Kyiv, Tashkent and Minsk—gradually lost the heritage of the period dating from the 1960s through the 1980s. The losses in Almaty were not so serious. In 1997, the capital moved to Astana, which took on the architectural representation of independent Kazakhstan. Almaty remained a working museum of Soviet modernism, where one can see the first transparent library in the world, the first postmodernist skyscraper in the USSR, and a dam constructed using the most powerful controlled explosion in history. Authors Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolay Malinin present the architecture of the city within the broad context of art, culture, and social and political history. This book is the second in a series launched in 2016 with a guidebook to Moscow's Soviet modernist architecture.

"From the 1960s through the 1980s, Alma-Ata saw the emergence of a unique blend of international modernism, Soviet colonialism, and attempts by architects to enrich the language of modernism with Kazakh national traditions. Thanks to this book I discovered a completely unfamiliar stratum of postwar Soviet architecture."

Vladimir Paperny UCLA