New East Digital Archive

Bring socialist modernism home with these miniature, build-your-own tower blocks

Bring socialist modernism home with these miniature, build-your-own tower blocks

24 October 2019

Attention architecture fans: you can now create your own prefab socialist masterpiece in a bid to bring a little more socialist modernism — panel by panel — into your humble (or bougie) abode.

Written, designed, and published by the independent Polish creative studio Zupagrafika — headed by David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka — the first part of the book Panelki: Construct Your Socialist Prefab Panel Block offers an introduction to the history of mass housing in the former eastern bloc. It travels back to the beginnings of these panel constructions in the 1950s, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared that every family should have an apartment of their own. Illustrated with both Soviet-era propaganda posters and photographs of the blocks themselves, the book delves into the ideological and architectural developments behind the buildings, which still houses millions of New East urbanites.

A second section then lets your creativity run free with 164 cardboard panels to help you build your own three-dimensional block. Reaching 27cm high, the miniature post-war housing unit is brought to life with daintily embroidered curtains hanging behind windows, and typical post-1990s satellite dishes sprawling across the walls.

To get your hands on your own copy, click here.

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