Stalin's Birthday Cakes

My fascination with architecture (I'm talking about buildings today, not about Software) has grown over and over along the years. My main source of fascination are Gothic Cathedrals (and to a lesser extent Baroque structures) and slim sky scrappers (aka "Business Cathedrals"). I'll also leverage this entry to make public my discomfort with simplistic buildings that for some reason "self proclaimed intellectuals" decided to consider "revolutionary". I'm talking about the main current in functionalism and that sort of Bauhaus crap. For me Aesthetic pleasure should be one of the main aims of architecture, indeed, it's one of its basic functions.

This said, is easy to understand my fascination with Stalinist Style sky scrappers (aka Stalin's Birthday Cakes). This wikipedia article gives an excellent introduction to the broader subject of Socialist Realism. Though I've never been to Russia, "the Soviet sphere of influence" after WW II (aka occupation and puppet states) has meant that I've been able to indulge myself with the views of some extraordinary pieces of this style with no need to leave the European Union.

Along with the 2 most well known buildings, Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science and its little brother (or sister) Latvian Academy of Science in Riga, I've also set my eyes on 3 other beautiful (though obviously not so magnificent) constructions in:

• Prague (the Crowne Plaza Hotel). I knew about this building through some web research, otherwise it's a bit far from city centre and I don't think I would have come across it just by chance.
  
• Tallinn (nice residential building close to city centre). You can read more about Tallinn's "Soviet legacy" here.
  
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• and Vilnius. I just came across this building by chance. It's close to the city centre, by the Neris river, just next to the pedestrian bridge crossing to the business district (by the way, that bridge gives you a pretty nice view of that area). I haven't found any additional information about it.
  

I've created a new Picasa Gallery with some more related pictures.

While I find this "Birthday cakes" style buildings the most noticeable of the genre, the whole Socialist Classicism style seems fascinating to me. My visits to the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin have been sort of spiritual experiences (apart from the imposing architecture it confronts you with the miserable condition of human beings when you think about how the heroes that liberated Europe from fascism turned into the brutal rapists of millions of German women...), and visiting the memorials in Tallinn or Riga, or just strolling along Karl Marx Allee in Berlin or Nowa Huta in Krakow are absolutely recommendable activities.