A winter walk through Bishkek's modernist buildings

The days between Christmas and New Year are quiet on the network, so I did what I always say I'll do and never do: walked around Bishkek for a whole afternoon looking at buildings instead of screens.

Bishkek is a great city for anyone who likes late Soviet modernism. A lot of the public buildings from the sixties to the eighties are still standing: heavy concrete, deep sun shades, wide stairs, and big mosaic panels on the end walls of apartment blocks showing cosmonauts, harvests, horses and mountains. Some are well kept, some are crumbling, and quite a few have new shopfronts bolted on at street level. In the snow, with the mountains behind them, they look fantastic.

The courtyards are the real story

What I keep coming back to, though, is the space between the blocks. The microdistricts were planned around shared courtyards: a playground, some benches, a few trees, washing lines, a corner where someone is always fixing a car. Every window looks onto the same patch of ground. Nobody owns it, everybody uses it, and it is never completely empty.

I think about this a lot when I design spaces online. The best parts of this network work the same way. They are small enough that you recognise faces, there is a reason to drop by every day, and there is always somebody around to say hello to. The big, impressive lobby pages matter much less than the courtyards.

If you're ever visiting

• Walk, don't drive. Most of the interesting buildings are within a couple of kilometres of the centre.
• Look up at the end walls of apartment blocks for the mosaics.
• Go in the late afternoon, when the low winter sun catches the concrete.

Any architecture lovers here? I'd love to see the buildings that shaped your idea of a good shared space, wherever you are.