Nicolas Grospierre
Modern Forms

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2012

“Artek” was considered the most prestigious holiday camp for children in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. During its heyday, 27,000 children would vacation here every year. After 1991, its reputation declined and much of its infrastucture – including a sports stadium, swimming pools and a parade plaza overlooking the sea – fell into disrepair.

Photographed in 2005

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2010

This sleek structure stand in the midst of the Munich Olympic Village, often described as “a city within a city”. It was there that the infamous “Munich Massacre” took place, during which 11 Israeli Olympic sportsmen lost their lives after being kidnapped.

Photographed in 2018

This mushroom-shaped gas station was one of four such structures built across the city of Ljubljana and commissioned by the “Petrol” oil company. While this particular design – authored by prominent Slovenian architect Edvard Ravnikar – is probably the most ambitious of four, with three umbrellas spanning over sixty metres, all four structures make use of cantilevered roofs, the gravity-defying canopy being the product of modern technology and the metaphor for future living.

Photographed in 2019

A late example of modernist design, with its cantilevered latticed roof adorned with multi-coloured glass, this canopy was unfortunately poorly built and is threatened of demolition.

Photographed in 2018

A prominent landmark of this kibbutz, the Tel-Hatzor Archaeological Museum houses artefacts discovered in the late 1950s on the site of Hazor, a Canaanite city mentioned in the biblical book of Joshua, and one of the most important urban centres in the Fertile Crescent during the ninth century bc. Unfortunately, the museum now faces serious financial problems caused by a declining interest in archaeology, the ravages of earthquakes and inadequate maintenance.

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2014

Situated next to the historic Niavaran Palace, the librarty houses the private collection of former Queen of Iran Farah Pahlavi. The collection contains over 23,000 volmues and over 350 art works.

Photographed in 2015

The Presidential Libraries are research centres and museums created to house the documents and artifacts of a given presidency. Most Presidential Libraries also have a life-size replica of the Oval Office. Such is the case for the Johnson library, whose Oval Office replica, although originally not planned by Gordon Bunshaft, but upon the persistence of LBJ, was eventually placed on the top floor of the building.

Photographed in 2013

The ‘Rugelis’ Holiday Complex is one of the hotels of Vanagupé, the satellite city of the resort town of Palanga.

Photographed in 2014

This late modernist structure houses the highest court in the Australian judicial system. Its monumentality and sturdiness, associated with the extensive use of glass on the façade, i is supposed to reflect the firmness of democracy as well as the transparency of its day-to-day functioning.

Photographed in 2018

The Andean Community is a free trade area aiming at creating a customs union comprising the South American countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Photographed in 2018

The Interfaith Medical Center resulted from the merge, in 1982, of Saint John’s Episcopal Hospital and the Jewish Hospital and Medical Center.

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2013

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2015

The building, considered unsatisfactory by members of the Church’s congregation, was destroyed in 2014.

Photographed in 2012

The music pavillon is part of the House of Composers’ Creative Work complex.

Photographed in 2006

The Okta Centrum used to be the administrative and recreational building of the Rapla Kolkhoz. The octagonal shape is a motif used throughout the design, from the overall floor plan to the shape of columns, lamps and dustbins.

Photographed in 2014

In stark contrast to Soviet State-planned economy, Yugoslavia practiced a somewhat oxymoronic “market socialism”, which ultimately proved very successful and resulted, in the built environment, in a proliferation of shopping centres across the country. The ‘Izbor’ department store is a prime example of that trend. Its cluster of angular tent-shaped pavilion halls became one of Bar’s distinctive features.

Photographed in 2018

Set in an open air swimming pool in Bedford Stuyvesand, this concrete structure originally had metal slides attached. With their removal, the structure lost its function.

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2010

This luxury estate was built for the First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party Edward Gierek. Through the years, numerous eminent figures of Polish politics were hosted there as the apartment remained property of the State. The original structure was demolished and a new hotel was built on the same foundations.

Photographed in 2006

Photographed in 2016

This wooden structure is part of a larger holiday complex, the ‘Golden Dunes” hotel, and was one of the rare places where holiday-goers could bowl in the former Soviet Lithuania. It is currently disused.

Photographed in 2014

The airport complex exemplifies modernist architecture, distinguished by its crisp geometric structure and an eye-catching, butterfly-shaped roof that appears to float above the building.

During its heyday, the airport attracted not only passengers traveling to and from Belgrade but also numerous visitors who came to watch the planes. This was no coincidence—the design actively encouraged public engagement, incorporating a central atrium with a tropical garden, a restaurant, and a terrace open to all.

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2014

With an emphasis on the use of natural materials, the House of Composer’s Union was Influenced by Finnish architecture. The structure comprises several club rooms and a concert hall.

Photographed in 2010

Photographed in 2006

The ‘Lino’ swimming pool, as well as the ‘Rugelis’ holiday complex are two of the many structures built in Vanagupé, the satellite city of the resort town of Palanga. Imagined as early as the 1960s and built from scratch, Vanagupé was planned as a city for as many as 16,000 holiday-goers. Implemented over two decades, and built along a green axis whose center is occupied by the pool, Vangupé remains one of the last example of recreational Soviet urbanism on such a scale. The swimming pool has been disused since 2010.

Photographed in 2014

The 720 unit complex was part of an attempt to create large scale iconic architecture in the territories conquered during the Six Day War.

Photographed in 2014

Designed in the 1960s, but only inhabited since 1972, this social housing estate, commissioned by the Caisse des Dépots et de Gestion, suffers from many structureal problems linked to the fact that it was built on a flood zone.

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2007

Commissioned by Queen Farah Pahlavi and designed by her cousin, this museum stores the largest collection of Western modern art outside of Europe and North America.

Photographed in 2015

Once an exclusive sanatorium, built for the civil servants of the Ministry of Meat and Dairy products, this building has been disused since 1993.

Photographed in 2014

This building has since been refurbished and is currently used as a guest house

Photographed in 2006

The original “Chorhoz” Sanatorium was a realist-socialist edifice built in the early 1950’s. Plans to modernize it and add another, modernist wing to it, were undertaken, but were put to a halt by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the concrete structure remains unfinished. The sanatorium has been disused ever since.

Photographed in 2006

This hotel also became a shelter for Abkhaz refugees and was destroyed in 2007.

Photographed in 2006

Started around 1968, the building’s construction halted in the 1980s when the real estate developer ran out of funds. Nevetherless, those owners who had paid for their apartments settled in, in spite of the building’s incompletedness, and carry on living in it. A recent engineering study revealed that, in the event of an earthquake, the building would probably collapse, because of the thinness of its columns and the length of time the raw concrete was exposed to moisture.

Photographed in 2018

This former luxury hotel on the Black Sea had been inhabited for a decade by Abkhaz refugees before being destroyed in 2006, to be replaced by a Radisson Blu chain hotel.

Photographed in 2006

ex Biserna Obala hotel

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2015

Enghelab street (corner of Nejatollahi street)

Photographed in 2015

The Nightingale Olympic is Bangkok’s oldest department store, founded in 1930, although the current building was raised later. It belongs to this day to the same owners, a family of merchants who have kept the interior untouched since the 1960s. Eloquently evoking its raison d’être as a consumers’ paradise, its slogan reads : “Hub of Sporting Goods, King of Musical Instruments, Queen of Cosmetics”.

Photographed in 2015

Agadir was uttelry ravaged in 1960 by the most destructive earthquake in Moroccan history, killing 15000 persons and leaving 35000 people homeless. The city was rebuilt from scratch, according to modernist principles. The Town Hall is one of the most prominent achievement of that period: a simple box adorned on its side with complex concrete geometric motifs, somehow reminiscent of the intricate designs of traditional muslim architecture.

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2018

Based on a square, and conforming to the recommendations enshrined in the Second Vatican Council (1962–5), the design of this church brings the faithful closer to the priest celebrating Mass.

Photographed in 2016

Inspired by Le Corbusier’s modular designs, this building is part of the University of Geneva. Following a competition organized in 1995 to animate the building, time counters are installed on the cells of the facade.

Photographed in 2017

Photographed in 2011

Photographed in 2006

A distinctive Canberra mid-century landmark, this buidling was bought recently by developers and is at risk if being demolished

Photographed in 2017

This hotel was part of a larger touristic complex originally founded in the 1920s by the Czech Spa Entreprise. Heavily developed during the Yugoslav period, the complex comprised, at its height, as many as six hotels, a camping site, and even Marshall Tito had a villa nearby. It was badly damaged during the Yugoslav war and has remained disused since then.

Photographed in 2018

The sanatorium was designed in accordance to Le Corbusier’s ‘Five Points of Modern Architecture’ and is considered to be the most important building in this the spa town.

Photographed in 2006

This controversial building was designed as a huge bridge sitting on top of a 17th-century baroque palace. Its construction spanned a decade.

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2010

The mural on the facade was designed by the famous and controversial artist Zurab Tsereteli, renowned for making monumental sculptures, and who has been President of the Russian Academy of Arts since 1997.

Photographed in 2006

The mosaic represents the 1850 siege of Aleppo, where Tarnów-born general Joseph Bem played an important role, and eventually died, after converting to Islam.

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2014

The building is currently being used as a warehouse for agricultural machinery.

Photographed in 2014

This building has been empty since the early 2000’s.

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2014

Evoking filing cabinets alined next to each other, from one side, and drawers half-way opened, from the other, this building is considered to be one of Dedeček’s greatest achievement. It used to sit, all by itself, on the top of a hill, but its vicinity is now flooded by massive real-estate investments.

Photographed in 2016

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2010

The 18-storey construction is based on the concept of „Space City”, whose main principle is to cover less ground and give the space below the building back to nature. Its structure is also a reference to the iconic “Volkenbugel” (“Iron-Cloud”), an unbuilt project for horizontal sky-scrapers imagined by El-Lissitzky in the early 1920s. The building was acquired by the Bank of Georgia in 2007.

Photographed in 2006

Photographed in 2018

In 2010, the Central Military Clinical Sanatorium in Alupka was recognised to be “one of the top 10 most dangerous sanatoria in Crimea” by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health due to the extremely poor condition of its buildings.

Photographed in 2012

The “Klimatopavilon” is the part of the sanatorium where one is supposed to rest in cabins located directly above the sea, in order to restore one’s health, thanks to the curative properties of marine air. It is based on a design by Anatoly Polyansky.

Photographed in 2005

Photographed in 2012

Originally designed as a YMCA facility, this rowing club was built thanks to an American financial backer as part of the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw after WW2.

Photographed in 2005

Opened in 1973, the Boyana Residence commemorated the 30th anniversary of the 1944 coup d’état and „The Victory of Socialist Revolution in Bulgaria”. It was a lavish and luxurious complex used by the highest dignitaries of the state until the fall of communism in Bulgaria and was turned into the National Historical Museum in 2000.

Photographed in 2013

Photographed in 2014

This garage, located on the Texas side of Texarkana, was used by the employees of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association branch located on the other side of State Line Avenue (i.e. in Arkansas).

Photographed in 2013

Children’s Palaces were in socialist countries, public recreation centres wehre children engage in extra-curricular activities. The Hanoi Children’s Palace, considered today a modernist masterpiece, was built at the end of the Vietnam war – and thus at a time of economic hardship – and was the expression of the government’s engagement in the future of the nation.

Photographed in 2019

Superquadras were conceived as autonomous housing districts in Braslia with their own school, playgrounds and commercial areas. Typically, it is a six-storey building placed on pilotis, but the design of particular superquadras varies.

Photographed in 2008

Inspired by Le Corbusier’s Housing Unit, it bore until 1994 on its roof the slogan “Our Thoughts, Hearts and Deeds we dedicate to you, Socialist Homeland”.

Photographed in 2006

The campus of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun – whose rectorate is an integral part of – is considered one of the most important achievements of late modernism in Poland. Minimalistic and rational, its architecture and urban design followed the functional division of buildings according to their purpose : science and education, social and cultural life, and administrative.

Photographed in 2017

With its golden façade, and adorned with protruding diamond-shaped ornaments, this building used to belong to one of Switzerland’s oldest private banks. The light installation on its roof, showcasing the word “dimanche” (“Sunday, in French), a humorous injunction to rest, is the work of artist Christian-Robert Tissot.

Photographed in 2017

The „Lipsk” type building was, along with „Berlin”, a popular system of prefabricated elements imported to Poland from East Germany in the 1970s. The buildings, featuring aluminium frames filled with tempered stained glass in vibrant colours, have been demolished due to dangerous asbestos content. This particular building was destroyed in 2013.

Photographed in 2005

The Eames House was built from pre-fabricated materials ordered from catalogues. Also known as Case Study House #8, it was part of a programme spearheaded by ‘Arts & Architecture’ publisher John Entenza where architects were encouraged to employ materials and techniques derived from the experiences of the Second World War.

Photographed in 2012

A glass-encased cafeteria, which serves nowadays as a gym, divides the interior of the building in two halves, with a basketball field in one part, and a swimming pool in the other.

Photographed in 2010

VDNKh were permanent exhibition complexes built in every soviet capital to illustrate the innovations and experiences of socialist science, technology, culture, and progressive methods. The Kiev VDNKh opened in 1959 and Pavilion nr. 9 (whose design was originally used in the Czechoslovakian agricultural exhibition) was built in 1964.

Photographed in 2011

Giles Gilbert Scott, who had been working on the reconstruction of the Guildhall after WWII, was commissioned to build an extension in the 1950s. It was ultimately finished by his son, Richard Gilbert Scott, after his father passed away in 1960. The West Wing’s eccentic design, considered an example of what Ernő Goldfinger dismissed as “pop modern”, beautifully contrasts with the austerity of the medieval gothic Guildhall, set in front of it accross the courtyard.

Photographed in 2017

The Watsungwej printing school, founded in 1932 and originally located in another, smaller building across the street, is the oldest technical school of that type in Thailand.

Photographed in 2015

The New Gallery, located behind the baroque Wilanów Palace, houses the Poster Museum and was created by transforming a former riding hall built in 1845-55 and designed by Franciszek Maria Lanci.

Photographed in 2011

The „Rannapere” home was designed for the members of the Kirov Model Fishing Farm. The upper floor was addded after 2000 and remains unfinished.

Photographed in 2014

This structure was destroyed in 2008.

Photographed in 2004

The Arena is an almost 1:1 copy of the Palazzetto dello Sport in Rome, designed by Annibale Vitellozzi and Pier Luigi Nervi (1958).

Photographed in 2005

During, the Lebanese Civil War, the Tripoli International Fairgrounds were used as a post for the occupying Syrian army. In 2004, the Tripoli Chamber of Commerce announced its plan to convert it into a Disneyland-type theme park. Subsequently, in 2006, the fairgrounds were added to the World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

Photographed in 2010

Set on Brasilia’s monumental axis, the National Museum of the Republic is part of the Cultural Complex of the Republic, which comprises the Brasilian National Library, also designed by Oscar Niemayer.

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2002

This radiotelescope is part of the larger astrophysical complex in Katsiveli. This particular structure was probably never finished and has been abandoned since the early 1950’s.

Photographed in 2012

This was one of the first major structures to employ the principle of ‘tensegrity’ – a term coined by Buckminster Fuller that combines tension + integrity – to create stability between stretched and pressed elements.

Photographed in 2014

The avant-garde architect Florian Yuryev conceived a new form of art, a synthesis of music, light and colour, for which he designed a special eggshaped hall. Construction was fraught with difficulty, and completed only thanks to the protection of the KGB. However, instead of a colour-light theatre, it became the cinema of the Institute of Scientific Information. Today it is largely disused.

Photographed in 2012

The “Urania” sports hall in Olsztyn is a copy the “Okrąglak” sports hall in Opole. The first secretary of the Communist Party in Olsztyn had previously held the same function in Opole, and re-used the design of the “Okrąglak” (“Round One”) in Olsztyn.

Photographed in 2005

Built to mark the 100th anniversary of Prussia’s 1813 War of Liberation against Napoleon Bonaparte, the Centennial was a ground-breaking structure. A landmark of reinforced concrete architecture, it was the largest building of that kind upon completion, and became a key reference for this type of architecture in the 20th century. I always found it a beautiful coincidence that the architect’s name – Berg – would so wonderfully resonate with a building that looks like a mountain.

Photographed in 2017

Groundbreaking began in 1926 and the building was only completed in 1958. The Conference Chamber was originally supposed to be about 66% larger than it is today according to the vision of Frederick M. Smith. Construction was virtually halted during the Great Depressionwhen the church struggled under a massive debt.

Photographed in 2013

This Sports Palace, which was built by the residents of the Frunze kolkhoz, was drawn from a standard architectural design of the Mezentsev TsNIIEP design institute.

Photographed in 2012

This bus station was built according to standarisedd plans from the Leningrad branch of the Giproavtotrans design institute. Modifications by local architects include a new façade and clock tower.

Photographed in 2011

This elegant yet anonimously signed glass and steel structure was built to house the collections the State Library whose building had been ravaged during WW2. It retained this function only a dozen years, and was subsequently used as an annex to the Museum of Natural History. Strangely enough, this graceful but typical International style pavilion has repeatedly been chosen in recent years by architecture students to imagine some potential use for it, as if its lack of author destined to change its function.

Photographed in 2016

The Academy of Sciences complex is one of the most extravagant and baroque piece of Soviet modernism. Adorned with exuberant bronze sculptures, pink granite cladding and cooper tinted windows, its twin towers are crowned with an intricate gilded structure seemingly taken straight out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Not surprisingly, the locals have nicknamed the complex “The Brain”.

Photographed in 2018

The Tbilisi VDNKh (The Exhibitions of the Achievements of the National Economy of the USSR) opened in 1961. Pavilion nr. 7, constructed a decade later, is adorned with „Creativity”, a sculpture by Levan Mamaladze, the chief architect of the whole complex

Photographed in 2006

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2015

The building’s design is based on a set of interconnected squares. The low and compact mass of the building was given lightness by shearing the facade, and placing the structure on pilotis. The Silesian Institute of Science was closed down in 1992 and the building has been disused ever since.

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2013

This store was built according to a standard project the TsentroSoyuzProiekt design institute, and modified by local architects.

Photographed in 2012

This nuclear power plant, sharing a similar design to Chernobyl, started working in 1984. The construction of the third reactor was halted because of the Chernobyl catastrophe, and the plant was finally shut down in 2009 due to European Union ecology and security restrictions.

Photographed in 2004

The House of Culture was, in every village or town of the USSR, the place dedicated to cultural activities. They could contain a cinema hall, a concert hall, dance studios, lecture halls, etc. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Houses of Culture closed down for financial reasons. This building, which had been disused since 2012, reopened its doors in 2020, after renovations works which unfortunately defaced the original façade.

Photographed in 2012

It is interesting to see how the the simplified shape and ornementation of this neo-romanesque building ultimately resulted in a proto-minimalistic structure, modest yet imposing in its expression. The building changed many times ownership (but also function) over the years: from a bank, it became at some point a health center before being turned back into a bank again.

Photographed in 2008

This building was often described as „The White Ice Cube” due to its shape and semitransparent marble elevations. In 1998, engineers determined that the building was sinking and the Georgia Archives were relocated to a new home in 2003. The building was destroyed in 2017 through a controlled implosion.

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2012

Originally built as a local forestry department, this building is now protected on a list of cultural monuments of state importance.

Photographed in 2014

The disused movie theatre is part of a sports and recreational complex originally built for the Council of Ministers of the Estonian SSR.

Photographed in 2014

The Vilnius Palace of Weddings was the first buildng in Lithuania built exclusively for the purpose of marriage ceremonies.

Photographed in 2010

This house of culture, designed by one of the few women architect working in Israel after WW2, was considered ground-breaking at the time of completion, with its multi-functional partitioned plan, opening on the surrounding landscape. It has been disused since the early 2010’s.

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2012

The dove-shaped cenotaph was built following the death of Tancredo Neves, Brasil’s first elected civilian president since the military coup twenty years earlier. It is dedicated to this national hero, but unlike other pantheons it is not a mausoleum and does not contain any tomb.

Photographed in 2008

The Sutjeska Monument, also known as the ‘Valley of Heroes’ monument, perpatuates the memory of the Sutjeska battle, one of the grimest episodes of WWII in Yugoslavia. It is also one of the most famous ‘spomeniks’ – often abstract monuments erected in the memory of the fallen partisans of WWII and scattered all over Yugoslavia. The Sutjeska monument is not only a sculptural masterpiece, it is also a tour de force of spatial design, the concrete shapes masterly towering the valley below.

Photographed in 2017

In the Soviet Union, as religion was banned from official ideology, Houses of Ritual Services were built to serve as secular mourning edifices. The Vilnius House of Ritual Services, whose construction lasted 12 years, consists of two buildings which house 12 grieving rooms.

Photographed in 2010

Photographed in 2007

Once a high-end holiday resort, the hotel was deserted with the break-up of Yugoslavia. It remains notoriously remembered in the region for the being the place where war crimes were perpetrated.

Photographed in 2017

The Saulkrasti house of culture has been disused since the early 2000s. In the 1980s it housed a quite popular discotheque called “Parole”, frequented even by the golden youth from Riga.

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2019

Photographed in 2017

The Memorial House is part of a larger complex, commemorating the battle of Sutjeska in 1943, one of the bloodiest episodes of World War II in Yugoslavia. The complex also contained a museum, which was looted after 1991, but the concrete, bunker-like Memorial House still stands. Although the entire complex was put on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2012, the interiors of the Memorial House, adorned with naive frescoes by Krsto Hegedušić and lengthy quotations from Josep Broz Tito, deteriorate with each passing year.

Photographed in 2017

Two types of buildings are central in the organisation of every kibbutz: the dining hall and the house of culture. For the last decade, however, the privatisation of kibbutzim has led to the shutting down of many houses of culture, such as the one in Kibbutz Haogen which has been disused since the early 2010’s. It is adorned with a monumental mosaic by Shraga Weil.

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2007

Photographed in 2017

Photographed in 2007

Photographed in 2010

Photographed in 2008

Located on Route 66, Amboy became a ghost town in the 1970s following the opening of the Interstate I-72. Roy’s café started as a gas station in 1939, and in the late 1940’s expanded into a café and motel. Buster Burris, founder Roy Crowl’s son-in-law, erected the motel single-handedly on the basis of modern blueprints bought from an LA architectural firm.

Photographed in 2012

This building is considered one of the best examples of Googie architecture in Chicago, and continues to this day to fulfill its original function.

Photographed in 2012

The design of the hyperbolic paraboloid roof is based on a square, where two diagonal vertices are raised up, while the two others are held down, supporting the roof only on these two points. It is supposed to imitate the way the tense fabric of tents reacts when twisted.

Photographed in 2012

With yet another paraboloid shape for this station of the Warsaw suburban train line, the roof of this building goes parallel to the stairs, down to the train platforms.

Photographed in 2004

Photographed in 2013

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2010

The visitors’ centre was desgined by Emil Fetzer, who held the position of chief architect of the Mormon Church between 1965 and 1986.

Photographed in 2013

Young Pioneers were, in the Soviet Union, an institution akin to the Scout Movement, but State sponsored and ideologically oriented. The Palace of Pioneers in Moscow was one of the first public buildings departing from the socialist-realist aesthetics – a change made possible with Khrushchev’s destalinization. The palace of Pioneers was the centerpiece of the Young Pioneer’s complex, housing an observatory, a theatre, a full stadium and parading grounds.

Photographed in 2018

Located on the Arkansas side of Texarkana, the building has been vacant since 2011

Photographed in 2012

While the design of bus stops in Soviet Lithuania often displayed bold and organic forms this bus station in Kupiskis was, on the contrary, sleek and minimalistic. It was destroyed in the mid 2010’s to be replaced by an anonymous contemporary structure.

Photographed in 2004

This complex, which also comprises a youth hostel, has been disused since the mid 1990’s. Very carefully designed, the windows of the museum (whose trapezoidal shape reflects that of the building), were adorned with a bean shaped cut-out form made out of steel, which represents the Dead Sea itself, at the time when it was one large basin, and not two small pools.

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2003

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2006

Children’s Town, located in Kaliningrad Zoo, has been mostly disused since the mid-2000s. The bas-reliefs, mosaics and stained-glass windows were made by artists from the Soviet Kaliningrad Arts and Crafts Studio.

Photographed in 2011

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2004

Photographed in 2005

Change, movement and speed are all illustrations of the idea of progress which lay at the core of the modernist ethos. It is therefore not surprising that petrol stations – an essential infrastructure of the car civilisation – should adopt curved and aerodynamic shapes, such this petrol station in Marrakech, designed by Morrocco’s most prominent architect, Jean-François Zevaco.

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2010

This hotel, which was disused for several years since the early 2000s and until recently, has is currently working under the name “Hotel Monfort”. It was, orginally, a recreational facility of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Javorina.

An engeneering masterpiece at the time, and the first concrete shell construction of its kind in Latvia, the „Sēnīte” [“mushroom”] restaurant has been abandoned since the early 2000’s.

Photographed in 2014

Home to the Australian Academy of Science, the Shine Dome is one of Australia’s iconic modernist landmarks. Its minimalistic yet futuristic design – a graceful dome resting on sixteen slender, curved columns – and bespoke furniture were imagined to reflect the inquiring and innovative nature of science. It is one of those rare buildings in which architectural form and content are perfectly symbiotic, and this is mirrored beautifully in its enlightening name. For me, the Shine Dome is a particularly moving testimony of the twentieth century’s unparalleled faith in science and progress, in which many would argue that we have blindly believed for too long.

Photographed in 2017

This local landmark illustrates the progressive and forward-thinking philosophy of the City of Altona, and its rapid development from its inception in 1957 to the construction of the new municipal complex in 1963. The distinctive domed form was inspired by contemporary buildings of the time such as Romberg and Boyd’s Academy of Science building in Canberra. It is now one of a small group of segment-domed public buildings in the country

Photographed in 2017

Photographed in 2010

The bathing pool is one of the attractions of the Kaliningrad zoo “children’s town” which still remains in operation.

Photographed in 2011

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2006

The construction of this church, affectionately nicknamed “U-Boot”, lasted for nearly a decade.

Photographed in 2010

Photographed in 2006

Photographed in 2013

The original building, considered of “no architectural, cultural nor aesthetic value”, was destroyed in 2009 and replaced by a contemporary structure.

Photographed in 2003

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2005

The world’s largest concrete structure upon completion the Hoover Dam was not only a formidable engineering feat (including the diversion of the Colorado river through the mountains), but was also imagined as one of the economic stimuli to drive the US out of the Great Depression. Strikingly, the initial design was criticized for being plain and unremarkable for such a grand project, and architect Gordon Kaufman was brought in to redesign the exterior. Kaufman streamlined it, and gave the whole an elegant Art Deco style.

Photographed in 2013

A small circular building at the very heart of the university campus, this temple looks from the outside like the cooling tower of a miniature nuclear plant. The centre’s function is remarkable in that it was conceived and designed as a genuinely oecumenical shrine and consecrated by various religious congregations: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish.

Photographed in 2017

Housing one of the richest paleontological collections in the world, this museum is as striking as it is exuberant and minimalistic at the same time. From the outside, the building reminds a simplified Teutonic fortress, but once inside, the visitor shall discover only four exhibition halls, which are, in turn, huge and meticulously adorned with the most astonishing bas-relief, sgrafitto and metal works depicting various extinct dinosaurs and pre-historic animals.

Photographed in 2018

The Municipal Building, by and large under the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs – the curved and tapering drum reminding the Guggenheim Museum in New York – is currently used as the Brighton Public Library.

Photographed in 2017

This small structure sits on a terraced roof of the administrative building of the Chamber of Deputies, Brasil’s lower house of the National Congress.

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2013

The shape of this temple is reminiscent of the spiral shell of the nautilus, culminating with a 91 metre stainless steel spire.

Photographed in 2013

Less known and documented than the Spomeniks – monumental abstract sculptures in honour of fallen partisans of WW2, and scattered all over the former Yugoslavia – the Spomen Doms are their architectural equivalent. They were designed as places of rememberance, but also as cultural centres. They are perhaps more moving than the Spomeniks, because of their derelict state (as they stopped being maintained after 1991), which is the case of the Bogetići Memorial House.

Photographed in 2018

The theatre has not been used since the early 2000s

Photographed in 2014

Originally designed by Welton Beckett, and developed by the Schulmerich company, this 13 storey redwood and steel carillon, known as ‘Carillon Americana’, was part of the Coca-Cola Pavilion „The World of Refreshment”, at the New York 1964 World’s Fair. It was subsequentely donated to the Stone Mountain Park, Atlanta, where Coca-Cola has its headquarters. It is played through an organ located in a small pavilion a couple hundred metres away.

Photographed in 2013

This building, whose construction lasted for 13 years, is an important symbol of the Soviet space industry.

Photographed in 2007

From the outside, this arresting circular building suggests a Brutalist interpretation of the biblical Crown of Thorns. Inside are studios and laboratories dedicated to the
restoration of priceless works of art, as well as an impressive library that brings to mind the limitless, cyclical space of Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel.

Photographed in 2015

The Racławice Panorama (1893) is a panoramic painting by Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak depicting the battle of Racławice in 1794, when Polish forces, led by Tadeusz Kościuszko, defeated the Russian army. The painting, which was exhibited in Lviv until 1944, was returned to Poland after the end of World War II, but for nearly thirty-five years the geopolitical situation delayed the planning and construction of a dedicated building in which to show it.

Photographed in 2017

A mid-century Kansas City icon, this building was disused since 2003, until it was finally destroyed in 2015, provoking a wave of nostalgia among zoo goers. As the local newspaper Kansas City Star put it when demolition started “The space-age Great Ape House that blasted the Kansas City Zoo into the future in the 1960s is falling to Earth.”

Photographed in 2013

In a dramatic setting on rocky slopes leading down to the Black Sea, this sanatorium is another example of a holiday resort built specially for creative minds; in this case, scientists. Katsiveli was largely a scientific village, and contained various institutes with complex equipment, such as a 22-metre radio telescope, an oceanographic platform or an experimental storm pool. The institutes gradually withdrew after 1989, and the sanatorium deteriorated. The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 changed this state of affairs, however: the sanatorium was taken over by the Russian federal security service (FSB), and extensive renovation work is now under way.

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2020

The construction of this church lasted for more than a decade. Its roof is inspired by the crown of the Holy Mary.

Photographed in 2010

The 1980’s in Poland saw a boom in the construction of churches, due to the liberalisation of construction regulations, and to the increased catholic fervor after the election of John Paul II. It is estimated that between 1975 and 1989, 2000 churches were built in Poland.

Photographed in 2010

The sculpture Hyperbolic Paraboloid was commissioned by the University of Illinois as part of a student project supported by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Photographed in 2011

While the design project for this church began in 1958, its construction only started in 1977 and was finished 16 years later. Its design owes its shape to the architect’s fascination with mathematical constructions and his desire to make the roof out of one huge bended plane.

Photographed in 2012

The gate’s form comes from combining the geometries of two arches: the Iranian ancient arch (inspired by the Tagh-e-Kasra arch) and the Arabic sternum arch. The height of the portal is about 12m and is symmetrical on both sides.

Photographed in 2015

Photographed in 2018

The parabola is the main design motif of this small country church. In addition to being present on the facade, the roof and the side nave, every one of the 12 stations of the Cross is also paraboloid in shape.

Photographed in 2013

According to an urban legend, the design of this aviary was copied from Zurich zoo. However, while no such structure exists in Zurich, the Washington DC zoo aviary has a very similar design to that of Sofia. Since all the documentation of the Sofia zoo has been discarded, the legend prevails.

Photographed in 2013

Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States, the arch was designed by Saarinen in 1947, but was completed only in 1965, after Saarinen’s death. With a height of 192 m., it is the tallest arch in the world. Its summit is reachable via two flights of stairs, or by trams located in each of the arch’s legs.

Photographed in 2013

The Angarskyi Pass bus stop marks the highest point (752 m. above sea level) of the longest trolleybus route in the world (81 km), linking Simferopol to Sevastopol, where the road crosses the Crimean Mountains and descends onto Alushta.

Photographed in 2012

Nowadays an iconic Los Angeles landmark, the Theme Building is is fact all that remains of a much grander plan for LAX. The first 1959 design had all the terminals connected to a huge glass dome, which would have served as a central hub. While the plan was scaled down, the Theme Building was raised as a reminder and to mark the spot of the original dome.

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2004

VDNKh were permanent exhibition complexes built in every soviet capital to illustrate the innovations and experiences of socialist science, technology, culture, and progressive methods. The Tbilisi VDNKh opened in 1960 and Levan Mamaladze supervised the construction of nearly all of the pavilions over a period of 24 years.

Photographed in 2006

After being shut down at the begining of 2000, the hospital remained disused until it was converted into an aquapark in 2006. This section of the building is no longer visible.

Photographed in 2004

Photographed in 2014

CATA is Latvia’s largest and oldest bus company, founded in 1954, and State-owned until 1998. The company was big enough to have its own house of culture, consisting of a restaurant, a concert hall, a dancing hall, and many other smaller multifunctional rooms.

Photographed in 2014

Photographed in 2015

The church was designed as part of the 1000 Years housing estate, named to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of Poland. Its construction lasted more than 15 years.

Photographed in 2014

As religion was banned from the official Soviet ideology, the Palaces of Weddings were, in the Soviet Union, the venues where civil marriages were celebrated. A wildly eccentric building, the Tbilisi Palace of Weddings’s suggestive shapes evokes at the same time the grandeur of a cathedral, and the human reproductive organs.

Photographed in 2006

Located in the spa town of Druskininkai, the balneological hospital was a place where patients were treated and cured thanks to the healing properties of the thermal waters. A gem of soviet brutalism and a feat of concrete engineering, the water tower was demolished in 2006, when the hospital was adapted into a water park.

Photographed in 2004

Photographed in 2012

This building is home to a subsidiary of the Bar public library. In spite of its relatively modest size, it is called the ‘National Library and and Reading Room named after Ivo Vučković’, a communist revolutionary from the region.

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2012

Photographed in 2019

The modern movement in architecture was very prolific in Thailand. One building type in particular developed in original, compelling and intriguing ways: the bank branch. A symbol of the modern way of life, the buildings often displayed futuristically ornmemental designs (which incidentally had little to do with the bank’s function). The Bang Rak Branch is a particulary striking example of this architectural sub-genre.

Photographed in 2015

Counting thirteen residential buildings containing 1800 housing units, the Blok 5 Estate was designed by Mileta Bujović according to the urban plan of Vukota Tupo Vukotić, but was implemented according to the principles of self-management, in which citizens have their input in the decision-making process. As a result, Blok 5 is set in a sea of greenery and has plenty of space for communal functions – shops, schools, kindergartens, health service.

Photographed in 2018

Photographed in 2018

There is a kind of spatial incongruity that the ventilation system of the tunnel running under the Strahov Stadium – a horizontal structure – took the form of such a dynamic vertical shape. On the other hand, it is perhaps this formal contradiction that makes the tower so appealing.

Photographed in 2018

While the building’s size is, when compared to other skyscrapers, relatively modest, its monumentality is emphasized by a massive pyramidal base from which vertical elements seem to rise. This bold design is reminiscent of the paper architecture of Futurist Antonio Sant’Elia.

Photographed in 2018

An iconic project, typical of the organicist movement in Spain, the White Towers housing estate brought its designer, Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza, recognition at home and abroad. Sáenz de Oiza was one of its first inhabitants and lived there until the end of his life. With the outer wall serving as structural elements, Oiza described the tower as “a tree that starts from the ground”.

Photographed in 2017

These residential towers on the “1000-Years” housing estate were inspired by Marina City in Chicago, designed by Bertrand Goldberg.

Photographed in 2006

Whereas the star-shaped floor plan of these towers may look elaborate, it was in fact created in such a way so that the small flats in these residential towers receive sunlight from two sides.

Photographed in 2005

The building is affectionately refered to as Manhattan, or sometimes “Sedesowce” because of the oval-shaped windown niches. ‘Sedes’ is polish for toilet.

Photographed in 2006

Photographed in 2008

Photographed in 2003

One of the most original Front-de-Seine towers, its housing units are hung in clusters on a central bearing structure whose orientation is supposed to optimize their view of the Seine. Florent-Claude Labrouste, Michel Houellebecq’s Serotonine’s main character, asserts that the Totem Tower has “several times been classified among the ugliest buildings in Paris. “

Photographed in 2016

The second highest Polish building at the time of construction, the „Silesian Skyscraper” was a symbol of modernity in Silesia, an industrial region in Poland.

Photographed in 2005

Photographed in 2011

Photographed in 2014

Ustroń-Zawodzie is a health resort town designed to host Silesian miners. It contains 17 pyramid shaped hotels, and many other structures, all designed by Buszko and Franta.

Photographed in 2005

In spite of the fact that this Art Deco Gothic inspired office building was raised in the midst of the Great Depression, its construction lasted only one year. This record speed was achieved, among other things, by the implementation of a construction progress schedule used to track and manage the erection of the building, a premiere in Australia at the time.

Photographed in 2017

Photographed in 2008

At the time of its construction, this building was the tallest in Missouri and one of the first in St. Louis to use setbacks in the design.

Photographed in 2013

Saint Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island ends with a monumental axis, alined on a stupendous canal that flows into the Baltic Sea. The easternmost tip of the axis is framed with a set of twin massive housing estates in the shape of triumphal arcs. The expanse between the arcs was unfortunately built up by developers with contemporary condos, ruining the grand vision of Soviet architects and their panorama of the Morskaya embankment seen from the sea.

Photographed in 2007

This building presents the paradox of being apparently extremely monumental, while being in fact relatively modest in size. While the façade on the street is adorned with loudspeaker looking motifs, it was designed to have all the bedrooms open on the inner courtyard, and all the kitchens on the street, reducing the inconvenience of the traffic noise coming from it, and making it thus effectively soundproof.

Photographed in 2019

The construction of the Lisbon Palace of Justice lasted for eight years. The original project included four buildings, forming a square, but only two were raised. Ironically, or for practical reasons, the Palace of Justice was built immediately in front of one of Lisbon’s largest prisons.

Photographed in 2018

Nicknamed “House on Chicken Legs”, this tower is part of a larger housing estate, which comprises 4 other such towers. The complex was designed in the mid 1980’s, but the last tower was only completed in 1993.

Photographed in 2007

Construction of „The Buried Robot” began in 1967 on the site of the old Königsberg Castle, bombed by the Soviets. It was never completed due to structural problems caused by building on the top of ruins. However in 2005, to mark Kaliningrad’s 60th and Königsberg’s 750th anniversary, and a visit by President Putin, the exterior was painted light blue and windows were installed, a strategy evoking the logic of Potemkin villages.

Photographed in 2011

Photographed in 2008

With its massive yet minimalist curtainwall façade inspired along the lines of all-glass high-rises such as the U.N. Building in New York, this skyscraper was Australia’s tallest structure upon completion, and its first International Style building

Photographed in 2017

The contest for Dom Odborov (Trade Union House) was announced as early as in 1955, but it took almost ten years of planning and another fifteen of construction before the building was finally finished, after going through a number of alterations.

Photographed in 2015

Originally planned as the seat of the Association of Design Studios, the political change after the Prague Spring of 1968 had the building serve a different entity, the Project Institute for the Construction of Prague. The floating structure refers to Karel Prager’s concept of “vertical city”, the studios being built on bridge structures above the entrance to the buildings.

Photographed in 2018

Quasi-officially nicknamed “the Tulip”, because of its shape and cooper-tinted windows, this cantilevered building owns its up-held structure to the fact that it was built on a tiny and sloped plot of land, with no need – or even possibility – to make an expansive entrance.

Photographed in 2017

While the architect is officially unknown, the design had been attributed to a group of architects from Czechoslovakia, possibly due to the similarity of the form with the Slovak radio building. The building was designed in the 1970s and construction began in 1980. It was finally completed in 1991 and then destroyed in 2011.

Photographed in 2010

The original hotel building was raised in the early 1950s. Introducing modern ways of living in Montenegro, it was famed to be the only place in Nikšić where one could dance to jazz music and enjoy abstract wall mosaics. The futuristic cantilevered multi-story structured was added 30 years later a was yet another testimony for the hotel to remain at the avant-garde of architectural practice.

Photographed in 2018

It seems quite fitted that the structure housing the Government office in Geelong would take the shape of an inverted pyramid. If the traditional pyramid may reminiscent of a Leviathan-type state, with the leader alone at the very top, then the inverted pyramid may be the image of a democratic regime, as if the Government structure (at the bottom) supported the growing numbers of citizens (on top).

Photographed in 2017

Considered as one of the modern landmarks of Bratislava, this inversed pyramid’s contruction started as early as 1967, to be finished more than 15 years later. Built at a time of political relaxation, the architects were therefore allowed to experiment with advanced construction technologies.

Photographed in 2015

The length of time it took to plan and construct the Aviation Museum – twenty years – was common for ambitious architectural projects behind the Iron Curtain, but the result was certainly worth the wait. Housed in a stunning cantilevered geodesic torus-shaped structure, the museum holds more than 200 aircrafts. Among them, and most significantly, is the wreckage of the USA’s F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft that was shot down during NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in March 1999.

Photographed in 2017

Photographed in 2015

A free standing paraboloid structure, this engineering solution refers to the work of Felix Candela and Eduardo Catalano from the 1950’s. Although the form was considered at the time somewhat arbitrary, the architects justified the mushroom shaped roof as a way to shelter passengers from the rain while queuing to buy train tickets.

Photographed in 2004

This structure houses a Schulmerich organ, which is used to play the 732-bell carillon located on a neighboouring island in the park. The carillon was donated by the Coca-Cola company after being exhibited at the 1964 World’s fair in NY and has been played by Mrs. Mabel Sharp for over 30 years.

Photographed in 2013

Commissioned in 1962, the Tripoli International Fairgrounds was supposed to serve as a showcase for Lebanon and present a modern vision for the country’s development. However, the construction of the fairgrounds was interrupted by the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 and was never completed.

Photographed in 2010

Set in an open-air swimming pool in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bedford Stuyvesand, this concrete umbrella is the only rounded element of a structure designed solely with straight angles.

Photographed in 2008

Although there were standard designs for bus stops in the USSR, these were often modified and adapted by the local artists and craftsmen that built them. These roadside structures are often very different from one Republic to the other. Their authors remain unknown most of the time, although there are two famous bus stop creators: the notorious Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli and Belarusian architect Armen Sadarov, who designed over 100 of these structures.

Photographed in 2012