Tashgiprogor

Look at this seemingly ordinary administrative building. It has no columns or mosaics, it doesn't boast about itself. But if walls could talk, this building would tell you the story of all modern Tashkent. This is Tashgiprogor - the city's main design institute. It was a true "brain trust." It was here, on drawing boards, that the image of the metropolis you see today was born. A key stage in the institute's history is linked to the aftermath of the 1966 earthquake. This very building on Navoi Street became the operational headquarters for the capital's restoration. Specialists from Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Georgia, and the Baltic states were seconded here. Work was carried out in emergency mode. Here, Tashkent architects, together with colleagues from other republics, developed projects according to which the city was virtually rebuilt and significantly expanded. The institute grew from a small workshop called "Tashgorproekt" in the 1930s into a large design organization. It was within the walls of this institute, in its 3rd workshop, that the concept of Chilanzar - Tashkent's first district of mass residential development - was developed. The principle of micro-districting was first applied here, later used in the construction of Yunusabad, Karakamyš, and Sergeli. The institute's specialists (among them architects G. Korobovtsev and A. Kosinsky) were involved not only in planning but also in adapting standard Soviet designs to the local climate. Ventilation systems and the famous Tashkent sun protection - concrete "pandjara" grilles - were developed here. Most modernist-era buildings that have become symbols of Tashkent were designed by Tashgiprogor employees. These include: The Tashkent Circus and the Main Post Office building (author Genrikh Aleksandrovich). The Panoramic Cinema (now the Palace of Cinema). The high-rise Chorsu Hotel (formerly "Moskva") and the Zarafshan Restaurant (author Vladimir Spivak). In 1969, the institute's structure underwent significant changes. The organization was divided into two departments: Tashgiprogor focused on building design and development. Tashgenplan took on strategic urban development planning. This process was accompanied by a personnel crisis: the institute's director, Oleg Rushkovsky, resigned, opposing the division of the unified team. Nevertheless, the city's chief architects, including Mithat Bulatov, who led the capital's architecture for over 20 years, passed through the school of this institute. Thus, the building before you is the place where the image of modern Tashkent was technically and creatively formed: from the plan of engineering networks to architectural landmarks.

A design institute is usually described through the buildings it has designed. But Tashgiprogor in the early sixties had a feature documented on record: it was an institute of very young people. In 1962, the journal 'Architecture of the USSR' listed examples of 'youth' design teams across the entire country, and Tashkent made it to this list first: workshop No. 3 of Tashgiprogor, wrote the secretary of the board of the Union of Architects of the USSR, headed by the workshop leader, was almost entirely youth. In the same issue, there is also a detailed account from Uzbekistan - written by architects S. Moiseyeva and V. Berezin. According to their count, about two hundred young architects were working at that time on construction sites, in workshops, and institutes of the republic, and most of them had graduated from the institute three to four years prior. In the spring of that year, a review of youth creativity was held in Tashkent, and the best works were sent to the all-union tour. Next comes the list for which this article is worth reading in its entirety: young architects of Tashgiprogor L. Adamov, I. Demchinskaya, N. Aksyuk, A. Fishbein, L. Vinokurova, T. Malinovskaya, B. Melnikov, Yu. Khaldeev, M. Budagova, A. Khurshudov, N. Zaidov, R. Memetov, S. Shuvaeva, and others developed projects for new residential areas of Tashkent. That is, the areas by which the city grew in the sixties were devised by people who had graduated from the institute three or four years earlier. Their practice was appropriate. A year earlier, the journal noted the project of the public and trade center of the southwestern residential area, executed by the 'youth brigade of architects of Tashgiprogor.' And in 1962, the same names appear in the signature under a photograph of the B-7 microdistrict construction site: architectural supervision is carried out by L. Adamov, G. Alexandrovich, O. Gaasenkopf, N. Demchinskaya, O. Rushkovsky, A. Fishbein. The microdistrict itself was designed for 8,660 people and was supposed to be completed by the beginning of 1963 - four-story large-panel apartment buildings from the Tashkent House-Building Combine. At the same time, the young people were not left on their own. The journal also names those who worked with them constantly: A. Babakhanov, M. Bulatov, A. Zotov, L. Karash, T. Kalinovskaya, I. Merport, I. Rachinskaya. The name of Merport is worth noting especially here: this is the very architect whose airport terminal project seven years earlier was criticized in the newspaper as an example of excesses. By the beginning of the sixties, he is a mentor to the generation that will build in a completely different way. A figure that puts everything into perspective: out of 225 members of the Union of Architects of Uzbekistan, 53 people, almost a quarter, were youth at that time, and almost all accepted into the Union after May 1961 were from the younger generation. How this ended can be seen in the 1968 issue. The layout and development project for the center of Tashkent is the work of Tashgiprogor jointly with TsNIIP of Urban Planning, a territory of about six hundred hectares, the project was preceded by a competition, and it was discussed at a special plenum of the board of the Union of Architects of the USSR. The head of the author collective is L. Adamov, the very same one who six years earlier was listed among the youth and headed the creative workshop. Nearby in the list are Yu. Khaldeev and O. Rushkovsky, also from that generation. Six years is the timeframe during which yesterday's graduates got to work on the center of the republic's capital. This partly explains why Tashkent of the sixties and seventies looks the way it does: it was designed by people who had no habit of the previous, pre-war manner, but had the opportunity to build immediately and in large quantities.