Helena Kernan | PAPER ARCHITECTS AND PUBLIC SPACE: ALIENATION, YEARNING AND DEATH IN 1980S RUSSIA

PO·MO·STROIKA – POSTMODERN THEORIES, PRACTICES AND HISTORIES | TRANSMODERN INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE CONFERENCE COLLEGIUM HUNGARICUM BERLIN | - Section 4. | MEDIUMS, SPACES, OBJECTS |Paper Architects and Public Space: Alienation, Yearning and Death in 1980s Russia Helena Kernan An investigation into the Paper Architecture movement that emerged in the USSR in the 1980s, which deliberately produced unrealisable designs for the urban space. The presentation examines how the project was both cynical and utopian, taking into account the postmodernisms embedded in its theoretical foundations. It explores the Paper Architects’ longing to transform the public space, their sense of powerlessness, and their attempt to implant the personal and the individual into the public sphere, with a particular focus on the ‘Sepulchral Skyscraper’ designed by Iurii Avvakumov and Mikhail Belov. Using literature on the Russian and Soviet approach to death, the lecture questions what