Socialist-era heritage knowledge exists but remains fragmented across dozens of platforms, languages, and regional initiatives: synthesis and discovery are both gaps. Treating art and architecture as inseparable is a requirement for heritage identification and preservation. Regional projects and topic-specific initiatives on a global scale built the foundation; Concrete Wastelands sits within that community, not above it.
The isolation of the obsession
The archive behind the archive: the projects, books, and communities that made Concrete Wastelands possible.
The sole dot of honest concrete on the map rises from the Syrian coast like a brutalist Atlantis.
Resist erasure. Capture the legacy of a vanished era. This briefing series tells the story behind Concrete Wastelands: where it came from, what it's trying to do, and who else is fighting to preserve what's left.
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My guide thought I'd been arrested. I had spent an hour inside an abandoned marine research institute on the Mediterannean coast. When I emerged and returned to the car in the nearby town, my government-mandated guide stared at me and said "It's a fucking building." He had assumed the police had taken me - and was probably worried about the paperwork he’d need to deal with under Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.
SOS Brutalism had mapped brutalist buildings globally and, in doing so, sent me to places I would never have found. Visiting under Al-Assad’s regime, the sole dot of raw concrete on their map of Syria was an abandoned marine research institute in Lattakia. Fortunately, another brutalist gem - the Sheraton - presented itself in Damascus, as did examples of stain glas, mosaics, and other monumental art.
As I gained my newfound sight, I increasingly embarked on trips to Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia from 2022 to discover and photograph. I researched each destination in advance to locate artworks worth photographing. Online resources, blogs (Wanderlush) or city guides (Kathmandu and Beyond), provided accessible information for my trips. Yet I would discover, sometimes mere days after returning home or even after leaving, that a place I had just visited contained remarkable objects I had walked past without knowing. As my research improved, these gaps narrowed, but they never closed entirely.
The knowledge existed, to an extent. However, it was scattered across dozens of Instagram accounts, websites, My Maps (such as Georgia), and languages. A handful of dedicated initiatives documented individual cities or countries, or specific art or architecture styles: Socialist Modernism had already spent years monitoring, protecting, and advocating for socialist-era architecture across the former Eastern bloc. Yet, nobody had put it together in one place. Nor did they include the rich background information on the policies, decisions, or trends that shaped the art.
An idea was born to help make the lives easier of those sharing my passion. It also helped alleviate my guilt of needing to do something productive when travelling.
Guilt, it turns out, is a reasonable project management tool. It made this project possible.
As I created my first Google MyMaps for a trip to Tajikistan, friends gifted me Alma-Ata: Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955–1991 (Алматы – Архитектура Советского Модернизма 1955-1991) and Frédéric Chaubin (Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed). Both proved catalysts - pulling me toward architecture, and then toward the realisation that architecture and monumental art were inseparable in the Soviet period. Any archive that treated them separately would miss the point.
I set out to update that Tajikistan map with my own discoveries following my trip, the map stood still until I reinitiated the concept of Concrete Wastelands two years later.
Spomeniki Database offered something interesting yet different: a comprehensive visual and historical account of Yugoslavia's anti-fascist monuments, rigorous and navigable in a way that set a standard for what an archive could be.
Nini Palavandishvili's Mosaics of the Soviet Period in Georgia was my first book on monumental art specifically, which started a collection of over 30 books. Christopher Herwig's Soviet Bus Stops is, in large part, responsible for my passion for this subject. It’s a reminder that the most unexpected objects in the most overlooked places can carry genuine artistic weight. Their work, as well as the authorsof books such as Mosaics of South Russia and Art for Architecture in Georgia, Moscow, and Ukraine, immensely assisted my travels and research over the years. They’ve provided countless reading and viewing pleasures. Anyone who visits rarely leaves without pulling one off the shelf.
As I considered taking the project forward, I found others already doing similar work. The Atlas Sovieticus, launched in 2023, takes a worldwide approach to mapping Soviet-era art with a particular focus on mosaics and monumental-decorative works. I started by contributing locations and photos, having since joined the team. The WhatsApp group alone, with two dozen enthusiasts exchanging finds and sharing art nobody else has documented, is worth more than most databases.
Real depth lives in the regional and local initiatives. Monumental Almaty has been documenting Kazakhstan's socialist heritage since at least 2016. Mosaics of Moldova shaped my understanding of Moldovan art. Soviet Bus Stops in Georgia, Georgian Mosaics, Armenia's АР_АР_АТ and ArmArch, Monumental.by in Belarus, Tashkent Modernism, Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, Mosaics of Tashkent, Soviet Mosaics in Ukraine, Bachyla, Soviet Mosaic Fund, to name notable examples, each represents years of work by people who cared enough. I sincerely recommend exploring their work. They made mine possible.
Concrete Wastelands sits within this community, certainly not above it. This archive is indebted to the hundreds of people behind these publications, websites, and initiatives - passionate individuals who brought a subject to a global audience that eventually included me.
My arrest (detention, rather) for photographing concrete structures would come later on a trip to Camenca (Kamenka), the northern capital of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic, better known as Transnistria, a de facto unrecognised state of Moldova. Neither of the town’s two hotels answered at 2am; the local medical centre turned me away. I slept (badly) in my car in subzero temperatures, an auspicious first night for my return to Pridnestrovia.
By morning, police had spotted me inadvertently photographing the government's administrative building, its dual Pridnestrovian and Russian flags presumably making it a sensitive target. A short street questioning followed. I thought I'd gotten away with it, until a plainclothes officer detained me half an hour later, whisked me away to the station in a beat up Mercedes - and took my passport, always a comfort in an unrecognised country without consular services.
I doubt the officer fully understood my obsession. But once the spotty 4G finally loaded my Instagram and TikTok on his phone, he seemed to relax. After asking me once more if I was a terrorist, and reassuring me I was only being held due to the "unstable political situation", I was released to continue my architectural pilgrimage.
Between the cold sleep and the cold detention, I found one of the finest bus stops in the country straddling the Ukrainian border. I brought Christopher Herwig back to see it the following month, this time with a hotel booked.
Some archives are built from libraries. This one was built from more than the occasional fucking building.