Presidential Palace of Moldova (former Presidium of the MSSR Supreme Soviet)

Yuri Tumanyan came to this project with considerable credentials: his ensemble for Republic Square in Almaty, built between 1971 and 1978, won him the state prize in 1982 and led directly to his appointment as chief architect of the newly established Chișinauproiect Engineering Institute. The Presidential Office Building on Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard, completed in 1987 with Arkady Zaïtsman and Viktor Yavorsky, was built on the site of a German Lutheran church dating to the 1830s, originally to serve as the new building of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR. It was in this building that the Moldovan Declaration of Independence was signed on 27 August 1991. The building became the official presidential residence in 2001, after Moldova adopted direct presidential elections. The building sits on a broad plinth approached by a stairway clad in dark red and black marble, directly across the road from the Parliament building, the former Central Committee of the MSSR Communist Party. A brutalist canopy entrance modelled on an abstract triumphal arch projects at ground level, dwarfed by the tower mass behind it. At the core of that tower, an elongated zinc-covered geometric form rises from the roofline like a flower pistil, serving as the flagpole for the national flag. The white limestone facade alternates stone-clad vertical elements with narrow glazed strips in anodised aluminium profiles. Designed to withstand earthquakes up to magnitude nine, it could not withstand the protests of 2009, during which the glazed surfaces were severely damaged. Repairs funded by a grant from the Turkish Government were completed in 2018.