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AbandonedArchitecture
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SOCIALIST MODERNISM IN RIGA

Riga’s architectural history spans centuries: many of its traditional Baltic wood buildings are battered but still standing, and its Art Nouveau structures are a standout, competing even with powerhouse cities like Paris in preservation and density. But it is Riga’s socialist modernist buildings that offer a unique lens into the city’s mid-to-late 20th century, with several major projects initiated before the fall of the Soviet Union but finished after, a physical record of Latvia’s postwar urban development under the shadow of occupation.

John Peck
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ArchitectureArt
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UKRAINIAN MODERNISM

Ukraine’s 20th-century architectural legacy is complex, layered, and endlessly fraught. Featuring structures weathered by war, politics, and time in turn, Ukrainian Modernism, new from Fuel Publishing, captures the country’s architectural infrastructure at a particularly fraught and fragile moment. The result is a striking document of buildings that are conceptually complex, surprisingly varied, and, despite everything, resilient in the face of insurmountable forces.

John Peck
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ArchitectureFrance
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PHOTO GALLERY: LES CHOUX DE CRÉTEIL

Les Choux de Créteil (“The Cabbages of Créteil”) is a grouping of fifteen of housing towers in the Paris suburb of Créteil. The buildings, designed by architect Gérard Grandval, were completed in 1974, and remain fully occupied. In recent years, approximately 25% of the project’s overall rooms have been reallocated as student housing.

John Peck
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ArchitectureBooks
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INVENTING GREENLAND

WITH A TOTAL population of 56,000 spread across a landmass twice the size of all other Nordic countries combined, Greenland’s overall density hovers at just over zero. The precursors to Greenland’s modern-day inhabitants were settlers both indigenous and European, dating back millennia and including the Saqqaq, Independence I-II, and Dorset cultures, as well as the Greenlandic Vikings who settled in the far south in 982 (led by Erik the Red). All these prior cultures and settlements, however, disappeared, leaving only archaeological records.

John Peck
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ArchitectureBooks
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JUNKSPACE IN PASTEL: GEORGE BYRNE’S “POST TRUTH”

ORIGINALLY HAILING FROM Sydney, Australia, photographer George Byrne traveled extensively before finally settling in Los Angeles. The city became both his home and his subject (to the point of near-exclusivity, with rare exceptions made for Miami), and over the past decade he has developed a distinctive style and method, in which he digitally edits, alters, and blends photos into seamless, uncanny portmanteaus. The end result is a dreamlike series of bright, colorful locales that do not quite exist in the real world, appearing temporarily abandoned or forgotten, equal parts idyllic and abject.

John Peck
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ArchitectureBooks
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ORTHODOX CHIC

The post-Soviet architecture of Ukraine is a complex and often fraught subject we’ve frequently explored on this site. Kyiv’s Osnovy Publishing is at the forefront of documenting the Soviet architectural legacy, as well as its newfound vernacular architecture, via numerous books that illustrate the patchwork approach to building and city planning in Ukraine since 1990. Its Chic series in particular – which began with 2019’s Balcony Chic, and now continues with Orthodox Chic – offers a deadpan view of the motley, often improvised constructions that define the modern Ukrainian cityscape.

John Peck
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