About the Book

Through five chapters containing more than 150 photographs, 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 dreamt of becoming cosmonauts, and enjoyed the many space-themed playscapes which had proliferated since the onset of the Cold War era. While some are still in use, others are slowly disappearing to make way for modern equipment, or, more recently, being destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, becoming only a faint memory of a Soviet childhood.

Includes a foreword by the Ukrainian urban planner Mykola Gorokhov and informative maps of the playgrounds featured in every chapter. Pictures were taken by Zupagrafika, with contributions by local photographers.

MEET THE PUBLISHER

Name: Soviet Playgrounds
Brand: Zupagrafika
SKU: 20628
Availability: InStock

Zupagrafika

Zupagrafika is an independent publisher, author and graphic design studio established in Poznań, Poland, in 2012. The founders are designer and photographer David Navarro, and writer Martyna Sobecka. Zupagrafika celebrates modernist architecture, design and photography in a unique and playful way.

Over the last decade, David and Martyna have created, illustrated and published award-winning books and model kits exploring the post-war modernist and brutalist architecture of the former Eastern Bloc and beyond. Their publications have featured contributions by such architects and writers as: Norman Foster, John Grindrod, Barnabas Calder, Christopher Beanland, Konstantin Budarin, Anna Cymer or Florian Heilmeyer.

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