The traditions of paper architecture derive from French and Italian designs of the eighteenth century and avant-garde projects produced in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. The latter were denounced at the time for their detachment from reality, practice, and ideology, which made them unsuitable for promoting the building of socialism In the early 1980s, a group of students at Moscow Architectural Institute found a way around the censor and began sending entries to Japanese ideas competitions. They immediately started winning. Yuri Avvakumov was one of the key figures in the paper architecture movement of the time and amassed a large collection of works by his friends and colleagues. As well as an introductory essay by Avvakumov, the book includes a selection of press cuttings, many of which are translated to English for the first time. Paper Architecture. An Anthology was first published in Russian in 2019. It won The Art Newspaper Russia Book of the Year award.

Introduction by: Jean-Louis Cohen, Michael Govan