Architectural historians Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolay Malinin and photographer Yury Palmin review sixty buildings-from a circus and a market to palaces of culture and residential estates-that represent various substyles of the era that began with the Khrushchev reform and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing on documentation and interviews with Alma-Ata architects, historians, former and current inhabitants, Bronovitskaya and Malinin discuss each building within wider cultural, social, and political contexts. Along with Yury Palmin's photographs, produced for the publication and which explore the aesthetics of the buildings and their deterioration, the publication contains ample archival material including drawings, perspectives, and old photographs. A guide to the golden age of Kazakhstan's former capital, Alma-Ata paints a portrait of an international and sophisticated city with a unique character that attracted talented architects and artists from across the Soviet Union. Today, Alma-Ata could perhaps be called the capital of Soviet modernism. While its former architectural rivals Yerevan, Kiev, Tashkent, and Minsk lost much of their heritage of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in the decades that followed, Alma-Ata avoided such losses as in 1997 it lost its status of the capital to Astana, which also took on the mission of representing the country architecturally. Alma-Ata has remained a living museum of Soviet modernism where still today you will find a glass library, the first Soviet postmodernist skyscraper, and a dam built by the biggest directed explosion in history. The book was published with the support of Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture.
Anna Bronovitskaya is an architectural historian and curator. She graduated in Art History from Moscow State University, before receiving her Candidate of Sciences in Art History degree in 2004. From 1992 to 2016 she lectured at Moscow Architectural Institute. Since 2016, Bronovitskaya has taught at MARCH Architectural School in Moscow. Between 2004 and 2014, she was editor of the architectural magazines Project Russia and Project International. Since 2015, she has given a series of lectures on twentieth-century architecture at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Her articles on Soviet architecture have been published in the Russian and international press. She lives and works in Moscow.
Nikolay Malinin is an architectural historian and curator. He graduated in Journalism from Moscow State University in 1992. He is curator of the Archiwood Prize and Chief Editor of the website Drugaya Moskva (The Other Moscow). Exhibition projects include: Das Andere Moskau (New Town Hall, Berlin, 2003), The New Wooden (Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow, 2009), Will Price. Parallels (Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow, 2011), Contemporary Temporary (part of the exhibition Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, 2012), and Knigostroy (Central House of Artists, Moscow, 2012). Author of the books: Moscow Architecture. 1989-2009 (2009), The New Wooden (2010), Metropol: The Moscow Legend (2015), Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991 (with Anna Bronovitskaya and Yuri Palmin, Garage, 2016, second edition 2019), Contemporary Wooden (2017), Alma-Ata: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991 (with Anna Bronovitskaya and Yuri Palmin, Garage, 2018), The Contemporary Russian Wooden House (Garage, 2020).
Yuri Palmin is an artist and architectural photographer. He graduated in Applied Linguistics from Moscow State University in 1986 and began working as a professional photographer in 1989. Palmin collaborates with contemporary architects and specialist media in Russia and abroad, illustrates books on contemporary and historic Russian architecture, and participates in creative projects with other artists, including Alyona Kirtsova, Alexander Brodsky, Vladislav Efimov, and Sergey Leontiev. He teaches at MARCH Architectural School and is co-founder of the Institute of Modernism. Palmin's works are in the collections of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, and private collections. He lives and works in Moscow.
В книгу историков архитектуры Анны Броновицкой и Николая Малинина и фотографа Юрия Пальмина вошло более 60 объектов - от цирка и рынка до дворцов культуры и жилья - в самых разных архитектурных стилях, созданных между хрущевской реформой и распадом СССР. Анна Броновицкая и Николай Малинин рассматривают каждое здание в широком контексте культурной, социальной и политической истории. В своем исследовании авторы опирались как на документы, так и на интервью с алма-атинскими архитекторами, историками, сегодняшними и бывшими жителями города. Фотосъемка Юрия Пальмина, выявляющая эстетику построек или фиксирующая их искажения, дополнена богатым архивным материалом - чертежами, проектными перспективами, историческими фотографиями. Архитектурный путеводитель можно рассматривать и как книгу об истории "золотого века" старой столицы Казахстана, интернационального и просвещенного города со своим неповторимым лицом, притягивавшего талантливых архитекторов и художников из разных концов Советского Союза. Сегодня Алма-Ату можно назвать "столицей советского модернизма". Если былые соперники по части архитектуры - Ереван и Киев, Ташкент и Минск - растеряли наследие 1960-1980-х, в Алма-Ате оно не понесло столь тяжких утрат: в 1997 году столичные функции были передоверены Астане, которая и занялась архитектурной репрезентацией независимого Казахстана. Алма-Ата же остается действующим музеем советского модернизма, где можно увидеть и первую в мире прозрачную библиотеку, и первый в СССР постмодернистский небоскреб, и плотину, построенную самым мощным в истории направленным взрывом. Книга издана при поддержке Центра современной культуры "Целинный".
V knigu istorikov arkhitektury Anny Bronovitskoj i Nikolaja Malinina i fotografa Jurija Palmina voshlo bolee 60 obektov - ot tsirka i rynka do dvortsov kultury i zhilja - v samykh raznykh arkhitekturnykh stiljakh, sozdannykh mezhdu khruschevskoj reformoj i raspadom SSSR. Anna Bronovitskaja i Nikolaj Malinin rassmatrivajut kazhdoe zdanie v shirokom kontekste kulturnoj, sotsialnoj i politicheskoj istorii. V svoem issledovanii avtory opiralis kak na dokumenty, tak i na intervju s alma-atinskimi arkhitektorami, istorikami, segodnjashnimi i byvshimi zhiteljami goroda. Fotosemka Jurija Palmina, vyjavljajuschaja estetiku postroek ili fiksirujuschaja ikh iskazhenija, dopolnena bogatym arkhivnym materialom - chertezhami, proektnymi perspektivami, istoricheskimi fotografijami. Arkhitekturnyj putevoditel mozhno rassmatrivat i kak knigu ob istorii "zolotogo veka" staroj stolitsy Kazakhstana, internatsionalnogo i prosveschennogo goroda so svoim nepovtorimym litsom, pritjagivavshego talantlivykh arkhitektorov i khudozhnikov iz raznykh kontsov Sovetskogo Sojuza. Segodnja Alma-Atu mozhno nazvat "stolitsej sovetskogo modernizma". Esli bylye soperniki po chasti arkhitektury - Erevan i Kiev, Tashkent i Minsk - rasterjali nasledie 1960-1980-kh, v Alma-Ate ono ne poneslo stol tjazhkikh utrat: v 1997 godu stolichnye funktsii byli peredovereny Astane, kotoraja i zanjalas arkhitekturnoj reprezentatsiej nezavisimogo Kazakhstana. Alma-Ata zhe ostaetsja dejstvujuschim muzeem sovetskogo modernizma, gde mozhno uvidet i pervuju v mire prozrachnuju biblioteku, i pervyj v SSSR postmodernistskij neboskreb, i plotinu, postroennuju samym moschnym v istorii napravlennym vzryvom. Kniga izdana pri podderzhke Tsentra sovremennoj kultury "Tselinnyj".
