Chapter TWO: Memories Talking about Architecture

Talking about Architecture

The Soviets enforced a building typology that was heavily monotonous, especially through the use of concrete, it was constantly repeated throughout Eastern Europe, and it all represented the unified front of the Soviet Union, it seemed to take away any ‘unique’ factors of the architecture itself. Architecture has an “effect on society at large” (Gosseye 2019), the microrayons were a form of society itself, from the time period it was built it is very hard to find the “invisible” voices “who can (also) speak of architecture and tell their own stories of what it is like to construct, experience, and live within buildings.” (Stead 2019) where we only heard the architects instead, who did not continue to experience the building after it was built.

As a remnant after 30 years after the fall of communism, it is much easier to analyse these living conditions through the eyes of the residents. Their perceptions range from the initial experience of their childhood memories, the childlike fondness of their home to a later adult realisation of how it was part of the regime. From the series of interviews I conducted, it revealed the individual experience is much more powerful than the architecture that surrounds them, they gave insight to how these memories and experiences revealed the true uniqueness in the building, which were the people. The interviewees reflected on their childhood and growing up in these soviet housing blocks, but since their childhood had moved out for many other non-related reasons, the overall answers I received were slightly unexpected on my behalf, from the research

knowledge it hinted that the life inside these buildings reflected the outside: to be cold and sad. However, in many answers, there was always a fun and eventful memory that arose, that changed the tone of the answers overall, the stories themselves were beautiful recollections.

The interviews reveal a more intimate relationship to the apartments, that could be assumed to be unexpected, however, it shows a natural relationship people have to buildings and especially homes. They do not recall the structural components nor the materiality, it is rather the atmospheres that were created through the people. More importantly these interviews are a better judgement of the housing blocks’ success and lifespan, since the fall of communism. Through the act of speaking about buildings, the building can speak too and to some extent, it can be argued that the building is personified too. Referring to implemented uniformity through monotonous buildings, we can finally uncover where the unique and individual elements can be found; in the residents who occupies those spaces. British- Swiss philosopher, Alain de Botton, explains how domestic spaces speak to us “a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores” (de Botton 2006). That analogy can be applied to the residents of Soviet blocks during the regime, as well as after, as the space is within the uniformed microrayons, it still offers an escape from that world.