In August of this year the White Tower, one of Yekaterinburg?s signature Constructivist-era buildings, opened its doors to the public for the first time. Polina Ivanova, Director of the Podelniki Architecture Group gave Strelka Magazine insight into how the practice got its hands on the tower, and launched it as the city's latest cultural venue.

© Fedor Telkov. Courtesy of Strelka Magazine

In August of this year the White Tower, one of Yekaterinburg?s signature Constructivist-era buildings, opened its doors to the public for the first time. Polina Ivanova, Director of the Podelniki Architecture Group gave Strelka Magazine insight into how the practice got its hands on the tower, and launched it as the city's latest cultural venue.
The White Tower is located in Uralmash, Yekaterinburg?s (now absorbed) satellite town built adjacent to a major factory. Constructed in the 1930s under the auspices of a project developed by Moisei Reischer, the tower was the cherry atop the cake of the ultra-modern?at the time, that is?Constructivist town and a symbol of a new, Soviet era. In the late 1960s, however, the tower was stripped of its primary function and abandoned. The building stood empty until 2010 when a group of newly graduated Ural State University of Architecture and Art graduates took it upon themselves to reanimate the tower for the benefit of the city. Following several years of intense work, this August the building opened to the ...