Framing urban memories

This nostalgia, he adds, has psychological value. By photographing or viewing such buildings, young people experience a form of time travel, an inexpensive escape into a simple childhood.

The architecture also satisfies younger generations' search for alternative aesthetics. With their unusual shapes — imaginative yet slightly awkward — the buildings embody an era's dream of "modernization" and "internationalization", representing what Dou calls a "naive futurism" (once prevalent in the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries).