Turkestan Modern

The architecture of Tashkent is unique in its diversity and historical multi-layering. The style, which today is commonly referred to as "Turkestan modern", emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries during the existence of the Turkestan Governor-General's Office.

Text by Munis Nur

As is known, modernism is a combination of trends of different epochs that came from the West. In Turkestan, Art Nouveau is still refracted through the prism of Russian architects who came to the Turkestan region at that time and played a great role in the formation of the style. A distinctive feature of Turkestan Art Nouveau is brown-yellow bricks, which were made according to special technologies and laid out in figurative masonry. Such a way of laying bricks can be traced in many Muslim architectural monuments, such as the Samanid mausoleum. Therefore, historians believe that this design was a reflection of the continuity of architectural traditions. The architect and engineer Wilhelm Heinzelman is considered to be the founder of this style. After all, it was under his leadership that many objects representing this architectural style were built.

One of Heinzelmann's objects is the building of the former regional branch of the Imperial State Bank. Built in 1895, the project is one of the architect's best creations. The volume is presented in the form of a two-storey rectangle and a polyhedron asymmetrically cut into it. At the same time, the facade of the building is completely symmetrical and the two-row columns at the level of the first floor attract special attention. The Baroque influence is also clearly visible in this building.

From 1889 to 1990 Wilhelm Heinzelmann was building the palace of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, which is located in the very centre of modern Tashkent. Here Art Nouveau manifests itself in the rounded lines of the building's corners, turrets, original windows and graceful carved lattices. The palace was originally conceived not for housing, but as a museum. That is why the interiors of the palace were divided into the western part, where works of Western European art were presented, and the eastern part, where the art of the East was kept. The best folk masters, such as Usto Shirin Muradov, the personal ganchkor (master of ganch carving) of the Emirs of Bukhara, were involved in decorating the interiors of the eastern wing.

The former buildings of the men's and women's gymnasiums, which now house the Law University, also belong to the Turkestan Art Nouveau style. The style of the buildings is taken from Russian classicism. Both gymnasiums are built of burnt brick. The corners of the buildings are rusticated (divided into rectangular blocks). The gymnasiums were built here before the public garden was organised.

The building of the second female gymnasium, which now houses Westminster University in Tashkent, was built in 1912-1913 according to the project of the famous architect Georgiy Mikhailovich Svarichevsky. Due to the seismic peculiarities of the region, it was decided to introduce buttresses (a vertical ledge inside or outside the building), which have both a structural and decorative function.

The Tashkent Cadet Corps, completed in 1905, was a whole complex. It had classrooms, dormitories, a church, a canteen and a director's flat. The cadet corps itself existed only for a year and after the revolution of 1917 it was disbanded. In 1920, the medical faculty of Turkestan University was opened here, and now it houses the Tashkent Medical Academy.

It is interesting that the Turkestan Art Nouveau style spread not only to public buildings. The Polish Church or, more precisely, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the most unique buildings in Tashkent. Despite the fact that the building was built in the neo-Gothic style, elements of Turkestan architecture are still preserved here. It is the first building in Tashkent made of cement-concrete blocks, but its colour is still brown-yellow. Now, in addition to Catholic services, the building hosts organ music concerts, as the church has amazing acoustics.