stephanieNY

Apparently there is this crazy network of secret tunnels under the city of Moscow. Construction workers just uncovered one near the Kremlin and now federal agents are trying to keep it all secret. This article along with other counts claim that "subterranean Moscow is honeycombed with secret facilities" that were meant for Communist Party officials in the event of a nuclear war, and are still maintained "just in case".

One of the lines runs all the way out to the suburbs and is equipped to "sustain the lives of thousands of people for up to 30 years". (!!!!) And there may or may not still be "food depots, generators, sleeping quarters, cinemas and even swimming pools" down there!!

One of my classmates came across this guy that photographs this city's underground tunnels. (Some must be less secretive than others.) He uses HDR processing (ala Adam's experiments last year) on the images so they're really detailed. These are my favorites, but check out the others here.

You might be here for a while. I uploaded my pictures from Russia and there are a lot of them. Enjoy!

Going to Moscow last week was like bumping into a bunch of celebrities on the street and snapping their pictures...except that the celebrities were buildings. From the beginning of the semester, we have been looking at the Constructivist architecture in Moscow from the early Soviet Union. "Looking at" it in reading and photographs, but then last week in person. Here are some of my paparazzi shots along with antecedent researched shots:

Konstantin Melnikov was Russia's leading avant-garde architect of the early 20th century, and this is his house in Moscow. We got a special tour of the inside from his granddaughter, who now lives in the house. Amazing.

Moisei Ginzburg's Narkomfin building is/was the model for socialist communal living. It preceded Le Corbusier's duplex apartment plan for Unite d'Habitation for which he gets so much credit. We were promised a special tour of this as well, but it never happened. Shoot.

Shukhov's Radio Tower was the first ever hyperboloid structure and was built in 1920 to broadcast the Soviet message over Moscow. Each structural member is straight and connects the circular rings at an angle, creating the slight curves in profile, and thus being a hyperoloid. Genius.

This was the first communal housing block in Moscow. Often two families and as many as eight people shared one room in this place. Now, rooms and apartments have been combined.

Workers Clubs were big during communist times as places of culture, entertainment, and community. You would go to work at the factory together, commune at a workers club for meetings and shows, and then go home to sleep in your shared quarters. This one was designed by Melnikov, the man with the round house with the hexagon windows. Those are three theaters jutting out of the front as you can imagine.

Full photo albums of the trip are to come, as soon as I can determine whether some pictures that I lost days three and four can be recovered. Fingers crossed.

Ya know when you've been in Russia for nine days? and you're on a three-hour bus ride back to Moscow from traveling the countryside all day? and you've been struggling to communicate with people over a huge language barrier all week? and you turn on your ipod and listen to Ira Glass interview a guy from Lowell, MA with a crazy Boston accent? and for ten minutes you feel a little at home in a strange place? Yeah, that's what happened to me today.

A few initial observations about Russia/Russians:

1. This may be really obvious...but they all look reeeeallly Russian. I've been saying the following in my head a lot as I'm walking down the street looking at people..."Why don't you try looking more Russian, oh wait, you can't."
2. Nearly nobody is overweight.
3. The streets are really quiet because everyone talks with inside voices even though they are outside (I realized mid-laughing fit in Red Square yesterday that I was probably making a scene).
4. Nobody is very thrilled to speak English (some even not willing when I suspect that they can).
5. Next to the price of items on the menus is the weight of the food in grams. I suspect this (along with #2 and #3 have something to do with the city's communist past...rationing, fair shares, and not standing out.)

Yesterday, we caught the last day of the architecture exhibit at the Manezh Exhibition Center.

They have translated the term for this sandwich to "toast" and not "panini". Have you seen flatter white bread?

Ashley and me as centered as we could get around St. Basils in Red Square.

I'm into the cylindrical downspouts. A series of photographs I suspect are to come.

After a vodka spree on our first night, Ashley and I laid low last night, got some eats at the grocery store, and watched a movie on my computer in our room.

Russian words learned so far:
thank you = spaceeba
hi = priviet
check = schyot
please = pazhalsta
(Those are the frenetic spellings of course...in the sarilik alphabet it would be in all-caps and there'd be backwards 3's and N's involved)

...is October 16th, the day I go to Russia. Kah-RAY-zee!

As part of my Moscow research, I've been looking at public spaces in communist Russia...spaces that were designed to facilitate the social, communal "new way of life" in the Soviet Union. One of the typologies that I looked at today is the Pioneer Palace. Pioneers were like little communist boy and girl scouts; and the "palaces" were like camps or campuses. Children of the Communist Party members spent their summer and winter vacations at these facilities where they learned discipline, self-reliance, and community. Press accounts at the time described the children returning home after camp "tanned, fit, and yearning for the collective." !!!! So anyway, I found this goldmine of photographs from LIFE magazine of children at a Pioneer Palace in 1959. Aaaand, I spoke with our teacher today and she told me about her experience at one of the camps in Moscow. She was a little pioneer until the collapse of the Soviet Union when she was twelve. !!!!

These are some constructivist, socialist buildings in Moscow from the 1930s that I'm researching right now.
Love them.

Zuev Workers Club

Narkomfin Communal House

I'm applying for my very first visa! So that I can go to RUSSIA!