In the spring of 2021, together with the Berlin-based publisher The Velvet Cell, V-A-C Press presented Tolyatti: Exploring Post-Soviet Spaces, a photobook by geographer and urbanist Guido Sechi and photographer Michele Cera. The authors trace the architectural heritage of Tolyatti through photographs of houses of culture, mosaics and monuments, and residential and administrative buildings. The pages which accompany the photographs tell the story of the city’s planning, of the perception of socialist architecture, of the emergence of the concept of the “microdistrict”, and, lastly, of how one factory can determine the fate of a large city.
In this podcast, produced in collaboration with SRB Podcast, Guido Sechi, one of the authors of Tolyatti, recounts the genesis of the book, and considers the idiosyncratic optics utilised in the exploration of post-Soviet spaces.