Playful build-it-yourself Eastern Bloc architecture: introducing Blokoshka

Poznań-based creative design studio Zupagrafika has created a modernist architecture matryoshka inspired by the post-war landscape of eastern European cities. The four build-it-yourself creations are printed on recycled cardboard and fit inside each other when assembled. “Blokoshka is a playful tour inside the ‘sleeping districts’ of Moscow, Plattenbau constructions of East Berlin, Warsaw estates built over the ruins of old ghetto, and the panelak blocks in Prague,” say the creators. The designs are inspired by the prefabricated technologies employed throughout the 1950s and 1980s to provide easily assembled and affordable housing for the masses.

Zupagrafika was founded in 2012 by David Navarro and the studio has created a number of paper cut-outs inspired by modernist architecture including series on brutalist buildings in London, Katowice and Warsaw.