20-story building of Ministries and State Committees / Cinema "Iskra"

We continue our walk around Mustaqillik Square. If you look a little deeper into the government quarter, you can spot a massive block with mirrored golden glazing. Today, it is part of the unified complex of the Cabinet of Ministers, but its historical structure was completely different. Between 1964 and 1974, a team of Moscow and Tashkent architects erected a powerful vertical dominant here. This was a grandiose twenty-story tower of Ministries, 67 meters high. It was conceived as a striking architectural contrast to the horizontal building standing in front of it. The main pride of the high-rise was its cladding. The tower's facades were covered by a large-scale sun-protective panjara made of light concrete ribs. These were decorated with blue and turquoise tiles. The architects managed to execute a brilliant ideological maneuver: they took a cellular grid, typical of global international modernism, and imbued it with the rhythm of traditional Eastern patterns. The Party leadership was delighted by this idea of a “national form.” Thanks to this lattice, the large-panel tower acquired surprising slenderness and visual lightness. Right at the foot of this government high-rise, in the gap between its blocks, stood the Iskra cinema, beloved by city residents. It softened the official severity of the square and served as an important cultural magnet for Tashkent residents. Unfortunately, the large-scale reconstruction of the early 2000s radically altered this ensemble. The high-rise building was shortened by six floors, transforming it into a fourteen-story structure. The tower forever lost its unique turquoise panjara. The fate of the Iskra cinema was even sadder: the building was completely demolished. To compensate for the shortage of ministerial offices after the high-rise was shortened, a new eight-story block was built on the site of the demolished cinema. It was literally cut into the main building, forming an enclosed atrium inside. The openness and transparency of Soviet modernism were forever gone. In their place came a heavy closedness. The facades were clad with continuous mirrored glass with a golden tint and articulated with pilasters, transforming the light tower into an impregnable palace of modern Tashkent.