The Lost Psychedelic PAPER ARCHITECTS of the Soviet Union

“The forest of columns is turning into a real forest and from the chaos of thoughts a single unclouded idea emerges.”The exhibition “Centrifugal Tendencies: Tallinn – Moscow – Novosibirsk,” currently up at Tchoban Foundation in Berlin, highlights works produced by young architects in the 1980s Soviet Union. Paper Architecture, as it came to be known, was a proponent of designing lavish buildings meant for a fantastical world that only existed on paper. Riding the wave of non-conformist attitudes that swept the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Paper Architecture provided an ideological haven away from the communist aesthetic and stagnant planned economy enforced by the Soviet government. In this ulterior universe, a train dashes across a bridge comprised of ornate but disjointed columns into the “future,” a building builds itself from the ground up, a city is neatly reconfigured under the order of chessboard squares, and a nondescript structure reveals a dystopic labyrinth hidden beneath.