Reproducing Tashkent: Transition in Urbanism, Architecture, and Culture from the Socialist City to the Post-Socialist City

Keywords: Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Urban, Central Asia, Eurasia, Soviet, socialist, post-Soviet, post-socialist
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 68

Abstract

This study reconceptualizes the process of transition in order to understand changes in urbanism, architecture, and culture in Tashkent, Uzbekistan from the Soviet to the post-Soviet period. The prevailing thought on Soviet architecture in Uzbekistan, and Central Asia broadly, is that architecture was dominated by Soviet policies and ideas about style, and local cultural elements were colonized by Soviet architects and used only decoratively. This research illustrates the architectural shifts from colonization of local style, to the emergence of a hybrid Uzbek-Soviet style as Uzbeks exerted more influence on architectural design, to the search for an architecture to represent an independent Uzbekistan in the global context.
This research applies the concept of production of space to architecture by looking at the reproduction of architecture, understood as the continuities and ruptures between the practices of space production, including material, representational, and quotidian. Reproduction of space is studied by focusing on the changing, historically-specific relationships between “Uzbek” and “Soviet” practices of space production using architectural case studies.
This research uses architecture as a tool for doing urban research by using it as a mediator between the urban and everyday life. It can be difficult to see change in everyday life because the subtlety of it can make it nearly imperceptible while changes in the urban are often very drastic, which can minimize smaller changes. Architecture can be used to better observe changes across scales and their interactions.