Family Journal: June 4, 2023

I love playing tennis at the Olympic Tennis School. We have a Sunday morning group that often plays doubles tennis. It is a group of expatriates and in the photo above, there are players from Turkey, Ireland, Pakistan, UK, Australia, and Russia. Last Sunday was the last day of one of my friends, Steve Orr. He is moving on to a new post with the US State Department. We have regularly played over the past two years. We used to play with the US Ambassador and continued after he left. I’ve always enjoyed the competition and camaraderie. Nadia is starting to play again! Her back issues seem to be in the past and it is nice to see her on the courts again. She is such a good athlete!

Ocean and I visited a photograph exhibition in the Ilkhom Theatre entitled “Architecture of Historical Optimism” a project by artist Alexander Fedorov. Fedorov made 19 posters featuring buildings designed by Soviet architects from the 1960s to the 1980s. I am a big fan of Soviet modernism and the bold shapes and designs of building from the Soviet Union era. Many of iconic buildings were constructed after the 1966 earthquake that destroyed most of the city. The Soviet government at the time called for citizens from around the vast Soviet empire to come to Tashkent to rebuild the city into a Socialist Model of Modernism the “Shining Star of the East”. With Tashkent developing rapidly, some of the buildings have already been torn down as most do not have protection. I understand the sentiment of forgetting the domination of Russia over Uzbekistan, but for future generations, long removed from that time, the Soviet architecture is a part of the history of the city and something will be lost if some of them are not preserved. Hopefully, this exhibition will spur officials on to protect and promote that era of architecture for future generations of Tashkenters.

I am fascinated by the buildings featured in the exhibition and did some research into them.

Experimental Home “Pearls” Architect Ophelia Aydinova’s 1985, 16-floor apartment block was built for veterans of World War II, honored workers, and neighbors who lost their homes in the building of the project. In between the 120 2-bedroom and 4-bedroom apartments, the architect put in common areas for children to play and residents to gather. I love the promotion of “third spaces” (not home, not work) to encourage people to connect and a club on the rooftop that used to have a swimming pool. The building today is in a state of decay with very few of the apartments occupied.
Turkistan Palace of Arts This building stood partially completed for many years due to funding problems. Eventually, the first President of Uzbekistan, Karimov, got it completed in 1993, shortly after independence. Today it is a theater managed by the Ministry of Culture. It has a cool, Soviet-looking rocket launch site outdoor amphitheater.