Zupagrafika is an independent publishing house and graphic design studio founded by David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka. Operating in Poznań since 2012, the team creates, illustrates and publishes books and interactive publications made of paper, featuring the most interesting examples of brutalism and modernism of the former Eastern Bloc. In its latest publication, Zupagrafika takes us on a journey to Siberia.
book cover
© Zupagrafika
"Concrete Siberia" is Zupagrafik's next story, after "Eastern Blocks," dedicated to the post-war settlements of the former Eastern Bloc. It is a photographic cross-section through the Soviet architecture of one of the most mysterious, unexplored and vast corners of the world. The album shows modernist settlements erected on the outskirts of the metropolises of the far north, industrial monocities, cosmic blocks of Soviet circuses, concrete edifices of theaters, and ubiquitous blocks of large slab buildings erected on the permafrost of Siberia.
The book is divided into six chapters, illustrated with photographs by Russian photographer Alexander Veryovkin, depicting the harsh beauty and grandeur of the post-war modernist architecture of Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk, Irkutsk and Yakutsk, and the daily lives of their residents. The book includes a prologue by architecture critic Konstantin Budarin, maps and short essays describing the histories of the residential districts of each city.
The book "Concrete Siberia," pictured: Yakutsk
© Zupagrafika
Since the Khrushchev era, Soviet housing construction has been based on prefabrication and typification. For Siberia, this meant a new wave of colonization. - excerpt from the prologue.
After last year's publication of the book "Eastern Blocks," the publisher decided to look at the architecture of Siberia. Martyna and David prepared a detailed list of locations in six cities in the remote corner of Russia and asked Alexander Veryovkin to photograph them in a certain way - among other things, so that there would be no sun in the pictures, because, in their opinion, all contrast and shadows adversely affect the geometric masses of postwar modernist and brutalist buildings. Achieving such an effect often meant working early in the morning or late in the evening and many attempts to capture the buildings in the right light. Another challenge for the photographer was the harsh weather conditions. The coldest city Veryovkin visited while preparing his documentation was Yakutsk, where temperatures reached -30degrees Celsius.
You can find the book on Zupagrafik's website.
