Residential Blocks, Fabijoniškės — Soviet Microdistrict Housing, Vilnius

Residential Blocks, FabijoniškėsSoviet Microdistrict Housing  ·  Vilnius

Key facts

Style

Soviet Microdistrict Housing

Location

Fabijoniškės, Vilnius

Photos

13

Photographed

Residential Blocks, Fabijoniškės

Fabijoniškės is a microdistrict on the northern edge of Vilnius, built in the 1980s to the standard Soviet planning model: prefabricated slab blocks arranged around shared green space, with schools, shops and clinics placed so that daily life could be conducted without leaving the district.

It is better known abroad than it should be, and for the wrong reason — its blocks stood in for Pripyat in a television drama about Chernobyl. That is worth mentioning mainly because it obscures what is actually here: an ordinary, fully occupied neighbourhood where several thousand people live, which happens to be one of the clearest surviving examples of how the late Soviet city was supposed to work.

Photographs and text by Dicky Chan · shot on iPhone, on foot

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Residential Blocks, Fabijoniškės — Gallery

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