Both born in 1955 in Moscow, where they still live and work, Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin were among the ‘paper architects,’ so called because in their reluctance to go by the aesthetic principles of official Soviet architecture, they were forced to materialize their ideas in the only way possible: on paper. Evoking the fantasies drawn by Piranesi or Boullée and envisioning the city as a utopian and oneiric landscape, the imaginary proposals that arose from the collaboration between the two artists in the period between 1978 and 1993 amount to a form of criticism against austere Soviet utilitarianism, and constitute an attempt to bring back a more emotional and humane architecture.

With a third edition published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2015, coinciding with the exhibition Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin at the Tate Modern in London, the book Brodsky & Utkin presents the works borne of the collaboration between the two Soviet architects.[+]