This building was erected in the Soviet Republic of Chuvash in 1985. The architects received a prestigious state award (well, it was the USSR, there was no other type) for the project.
Cool, huh? Can you guess what it is without googling?
The answer is on the next page but stop a moment to contemplate this image.
Is it a prison?
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oof, looked at page 2. nope.
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Right? It couldn’t possibly get more symbolic than that.
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Also, the police car with the lights on is a nice touch. The overall dreary atmosphere of the image helps the thoughts go toward seeing a prison building there. Perhaps there is a more happy image of the unfortunate building somewhere?
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It does look less morose in daytime but still mega ugly:
https://images.app.goo.gl/mpHjUPP2cWkXkcAy7
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Well, the whole country was one big jail, so why not?
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Art was completely jailed and controlled, so it does make sense.
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It was a worldwide fad for a while, though.
We still refer to the Museo de la Nacion in Lima as the “Fortress of Culture”
It’s also the style of architecture that Ayn Rand glorified in The Fountainhead.
I actually love it with an intense passion but the Opera Theater architects took it in a bizarre direction.
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The latest movie version of The Master and Margarita shows imagined Moscow rather than the real one to emphasize its message. This building would perfectly fit in. 🙂
Look at the imagined Patriarch Ponds – all stone:
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“building was erected in the Soviet Republic”
I’m not that easily fooled…. I knew that, given its provenance, its appearance (prison for thought criminals) wouldn’t be right (since prisons in the USSR would never be that conspicuous as it would conflict with the narrative that they had done away with most crime).
My guess were some kind of school or some kind of museum… so I wasn’t a million miles wrong….
It is impressive and I actually like brutalism as one element of an architecturally diverse cityscape (it beats Stalinist Gothic or metal-window modernism hands down).
And I think it actually looks better in the harsh winter semi-light. Springtime and sunshine just show up the cracks….
I chose this particular photo of it precisely because it exploits the building’s potential to the fullest. Grim, barren, desolate. I love it.
Wouldn’t want to perform in it, so I definitely feel the artists’ pain.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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