Photographer Captures Socialist Architecture Of North Korea In Pastel Aesthetic

Monument to Party Founding, Axis 1

Cristiano Bianchi

In ‘Model City Pyongyang’, published by Thames & Hudson, Cristiano Bianchi and Kristina Drapic offer the reader an immersion in the heart of the capital of North Korea, to discover its “socialist architecture” and its “grand visions”. Through its buildings, the two Italian architects based in Beijing reveal a city with a strange atmosphere and beauty, between its concrete, its pastel tones, its axes and its symmetry.

On a series of degraded pink skies, the book envisages Pyongyang as a “model city”, built to support a new societal model. The architects immortalized the original character of the city – which had been completely rebuilt after the Korean War – before a “massive renovation program” started in 2012 changed its atmosphere.

More: Model City Pyongyang h/t: fubiz

Electronics Industry Hall

Cristiano Bianchi

Badminton Hall

Cristiano Bianchi

Sungri Street “social condensers”

Cristiano Bianchi

Central Youth Hall

Cristiano Bianchi

Pyongyang Ice Ring, Chollima Street

Cristiano Bianchi

Changgwang Health Complex

Cristiano Bianchi

May Day Stadium, Rungra Island

Cristiano Bianchi

Mangyongdae Children’s Palace

Cristiano Bianchi

Mirae Scientists Street

Cristiano Bianchi