Utopia and Collapse: Rethinking Metsamor – the Armenian Atomic City

Roters, Katharina; Petrosyan, Sarhat

ISBN 10: 3038600946 / ISBN 13: 9783038600947

Published by Park Books, Switzerland, 2018

About this Item

original laminated hardcover, illustrated, 236 pages, a fine clean copy. We are a real bookshop with real books situated in and shipping from the United Kingdom. Shelf B124.

Seller Inventory # 121069

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Utopia and Collapse: Rethinking Metsamor ? the Armenian Atomic City
• Publisher: Park Books, Switzerland
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3038600946
• ISBN 13: 9783038600947
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architecture

About this title

Synopsis

Built in 1969, Metsamor, Armenia (then the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), was intended as a settlement for employees of a nearby nuclear power plant to be completed between 1976 and 1980. But the power plant would never realize the ambitions of its creators. In 1988, an earthquake caused the facility to be shut down. In 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted a complete construction freeze. The symbol of the dream of a technologically advanced nation, Metsamor remained incomplete and fell into decay undiminished by the recommissioning of the power plant in 1995.

Utopia and Collapse documents the rise and fall of Metsamor. The book brings together an oral history of Metsamor with essays by Sarhat Petrosyan and a team of contributors and art and photographic research by Katharina Roters, including more than one hundred photographs. Among the topics discussed are Armenia’s cultural and and architectural histories; the typology of Soviet atomograds, or atomic cities; and the phenomenon of modern ruins. Although today the power plant’s workers live in a partly built failed utopia, Metsamor stands as examples of the highly idiosyncratic Armenian variety of Soviet Modernism of the 1960s and ’70s, making this a fascinating story for anyone with an interest in Soviet-era buildings and architecture.

 

About the Author

Katharina Roters is an artist based in Budapest and the author of Hungarian Cubes, also published by Park Books. Sarhat Petrosyan is an architect and the founding director of Urbanlab, an independent research institute in Yerevan, Armenia.