Playful Landscapes of the Former USSR
A photographic survey of Soviet-era playgrounds found in some of the former USSR countries, such as Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Through five chapters containing more than 150 photographs, taken by Zupagrafika and local photographers, the book documents the mass-produced, yet diverse play equipment installed in the communal spaces of socialist-era housing estates, such as rocket slides and earth-shaped climbers, spaceships and animal-themed ladders, cosmic roundabouts and bizarre objects that would probably raise safety concerns nowadays.
From Riga to Dushanbe and all the way from Kyiv to Vladivostok, children collectively dreamt of becoming cosmonauts, and enjoyed the many space-themed playscapes which had proliferated since the onset of the Cold War. While some are still in use, others are slowly disappearing to make way for modern equipment, becoming only a faint memory of a Soviet childhood.
Includes a foreword by the Ukrainian urban planner Mykola Gorokhov
Zupagrafika
Hardback
208 Pages