House of Nationalities - Chisinau

Sharp angles, ascending and descending planes, and a pyramidal entrance volume that projects from the main body give the House of Nationalities on Alexei Mateevici Street a sculptural character unusual among Chișinău's institutional buildings. Yuri Tumanyan and Victor Yavorsky completed it in 1982, during the period when Tumanyan was heading the reorganisation of Cosmonautilor Boulevard and running the Chișinauproiect Institute, where he had been chief architect since 1975. The limestone-clad facade is supported by curved reinforced concrete cantilevers carrying the sharply slanting roof, and the interior is finished in marble with white as the dominant tone. The pyramidal entrance volume houses one of the building's auditoriums. The program reflects the Brezhnev-era policy of presenting cultural diversity as a political instrument: the building was designed as a House of Friendship with Foreign Countries, intended to function as a ziggurat of cultures and nations, with conference halls, reception rooms, and spaces for educational activities. On 1 June 1996 the building was officially reopened as the House of Nationalities, a cultural centre for coordinating ethnocultural organisations in the republic and the first of its kind in the former Soviet space. It opened with 21 ethnocultural organisations under its roof, concerned with protecting the cultural heritage of minority groups and with civil, economic, and religious rights. It now operates under the Bureau of Interethnic Relations, an executive body representing the interests of cohabiting ethnic groups in Moldova. The forecourt between the building and Mateevici Street is used as a car park. The rear facade faces Valea Morilor Park, with views of the lake from the top-floor terrace, though the relationship between the building and the park has never been developed beyond two flights of stairs connecting the ground floor to an adjacent square.