Chisinau: Architectural Guide

Chisinau, today the capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova, has undergone tumultuous changes under the successive political regimes that marked the twentieth century. 

Once part of the territory seized by the Russian Empire, it was integrated into the Romanian Kingdom during the interwar period, before being annexed by the USSR, like all of Bessarabia, and radically transformed into a socialist city.

This guide focuses on the latter period. The distinct urbanistic and architectural tendencies after the Second World War are reflected in the five segments of the book: the Stalinist Empire, Soviet Modernism, Postmodernism, Soviet Brutalism, and the Industrial City. Each reflects the essential Soviet mandate to build not only a new city, but also a new society. In addition to photographic documentation and critical analysis of socialist architecture, the guide also includes essays on Chisinau’s development between 1945 and 1989, devoted among other things to the city’s cinemas and life in ‘microraions’.

Stefan Rusu (born 1964) is a freelance curator and urban researcher currently based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Through his projects, he contextualised in a critical manner the political transformation processes and the changes occurring in post-socialist societies after 1989 that influenced the way people and communities relate to the use of public space. His recent initiative, Insular Modernities, investigates how the socialist architecture designed and built in Eastern Europe is maintained and perceived today at the peripheries of the former empire and explores modernist architectural heritage in various formats (exhibitions, publications, documentaries, social media platforms, etc.).