The UFO restaurant atop the Novy Most bridge in Bratislava was part of a space exploration theme to be found throughout the eastern bloc. Whereas in America it was found in Detroit's car styling of the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the Soviet Union it was to be found in architecture.
Although most communist buildings were built cheaply with little imagination in their design, there were exceptions. A new colour coffee-table book from Taschen - Cosmic Communist Creations Photographed - presents quite a few of the cosmos-themed buildings of the countries that comprised the former Soviet Union which could easily have come from the set of a Star Trek movie. Not all of them could be described as beautiful or even appealing, but they were certainly different. As usual with Taschen books the level of illustration and layout is lavish, and the page dimensions in this case extra large. 288 pages, hardcover.
No comments:
Post a Comment