Architecture Across the Ages

The Sovereign state of the Caucasus – and Stalin’s home nation – Georgia was a critical part of the USSR. In the late 1970s, it stepped out from its Soviet shadow and into a new architectural age. Khrushchyovka - the grey, low-cost apartment buildings that characterised the Soviet style – were replaced by massive, cosmic-inspired superstructures. Their ambitious and otherworldly designs were an explicit rebuke of Communism and its single, centralised apparatus.

Georgia’s struggle towards self-actualisation is visible in these two starkly oppositional forms of architecture, which still stand shoulder to shoulder. Learn what each tells us about the tussle between communism and individualism during the final days of the Soviet Union.

The cradle of culture for more than two millennia, Uzbekistan lies at the crossroads of ancient trade routes connecting East and West. Home to empires and emirates that once stretched across much of central Asia, Uzbekistan’s beautifully-preserved examples of Islamic architecture and urban planning stretch back more than 700 years.

Travel by high-speed train to the famed silk road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. There, visit mosques and mausoleums covered with intricate turquoise tiles, and learn about these cities' cultural significance in the spread of art, architecture and ideas.

Little of the Soviet legacy survives in Turkmenistan. Since gaining independence after the fall of the USSR, Turkmenistan has articulated a new identity and vision for itself through a series of remarkable architectural projects.

Over the last decade, ‘Distinguished Architect of Turkmenistan’ President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow has embarked on a mammoth project of reconstruction and beautification of the capital city, Ashgabat. Dozens of historical monuments have been destroyed and thousands of buildings demolished. In their place stand enormous white marble stadiums and monuments, a modern citadel unlike anything seen in the West. Tour the ‘White City’, home to the highest concentration of marble buildings in the world, and get to know the insular country with the audacious voice. Read more →

The unbridled ambitions of the Soviet regime had a catastrophic impact on the natural environment. Starting in the 1950s, thousands of prisoners and volunteers were enlisted to build more than 20,000 miles of irrigation canals. They channeled water to the cotton and wheat fields in the dry and arid lands of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, turning them into fertile farming ground. The more produce the USSR grew, the less dependent they would be on other nations.

The water that flowed through those canals once came from the Aral Sea. Now just 10% of its original size, the sea no longer supports much life at all. Tour the defunct port and empty seabed with conservationists who are working to slow its rapid desertification. Read more →

Street art was an important means of spreading the ideological message of Communism. The walls of factories, schools, and bus stations were a cheap and ubiquitous blank canvas through which propagandist ideas pervaded. Mosaics were as important as any media outlet – maybe even more so – because they took political messages to people where they lived, worked and played.

Some of them survive. Many are slowly crumbling, telling Soviet stories of military victories, space achievements, and their heroes of labour. Visit the everyday buildings that spread the promise of a socialist utopia. Read more →

Public transit for the masses was one of the cornerstones of Communist ideology. In the 1930s, automobile production was limited in favour of building new metro systems. The best artists and sculptors were employed to decorate the stations with patterned ceilings, soaring arches and dazzling chandeliers. Many of the stations boasted elaborate mosaics of the Soviet space program or heroes of industry.

Tashkent’s Cosmonauts Station honors the enduring icons of the space race. Join one of the architects who designed the station on a historic tour of the Tashkent metro. Finish at Cosmonauts Station, with its Milky Way glass star ceiling and atmospheric azure walls.
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A million years ago, most of Turkmenistan was covered by water. As the oceans receded, they left behind a vast rocky landscape with high cliffs and ribbed canyons. In the far North-West of Turkmenistan, deep in the Balkan province, lies the Yangykala canyon, a rarely-seen and little-known natural wonder.

With bands of pink, orange and white, and jagged edges protruding from all angles, Yanhykala looks more like a Martian landscape, pockmarked and chaotic. It stands apart, unimpacted by the political influences felt across the rest of the region. Journey to an empty desert where few humans live, and even fewer visit. Spend the night at the canyon’s base before watching the sunrise over a relentless desert.