The Palace as Type. Finding Regionalism in Soviet Modernism

Abstract

In a building campaign which spanned across all Soviet Republics, public “palace” buildings were the cornerstone of the architectural image which defined a political regime. At the time of their construction, the palaces were categorized primarily by program—wedding palaces, sports palaces, cinema palaces, youth palaces and cultural palaces. This paper will compare key sites of Soviet modernism (1955-1991) in three countries surrounding the Black Sea: Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. Using these countries as case studies, this paper will discuss two important aspects of regionalism found in these works—first, the relationship between a universal program type and the local specificity signalled by the building’s original design through the use of specific construction materials, ornamentation, and cultural references; second, the transformation the building underwent after 1991 adopting or rejecting new regional affiliations related to its geographical and political location.