《Model City Pyongyang》简介：

The story of Pyongyang is unique even in the annals

of model cities and modernist utopias. Entirely rebuilt

after the Korean War, North Korea’s capital city was

planned and fully implemented to embody a single

ideological vision. This extraordinary, richly illustrated

book takes readers on a photographic journey through

the architecture of North Korea’s “model” utopia.

Built as an ideological guide for its citizens, Pyongyang displays a unique architectural cohesion and

narrative. From the city’s large-scale monumental axes

to its symbolic sports halls and experimental housing, Model City offers comprehensive visual access to

Pyongyang’s restricted buildings. The architecture of

Pyongyang exists within a culture that favors construction and renewal over historical preservation, and in

recent years many buildings have been redeveloped to

remove interior features or render facades unrecognizable. Often kitschy,

colorful, and dramatic, Pyongyang’s architecture makes it difficult to

distinguish between reality and theater. As befits a culture that has carefully crafted its own narrative, the backdrop of each photograph in Model

City has been replaced with a color gradient, evoking the pastel skies of

North Korea’s propaganda posters.

Model City features two hundred color illustrations of buildings rarely

seen by non-North Koreans, diagrams and architectural drawings that

reveal the planning behind the city’s elaborate symbolism, and texts by

experts on Korean architecture—including an excerpt from On Architecture

by Kim Jong-il, father of the current leader Kim Jong-un.