As Frank Herfort assembles them on the page, the buildings—a collection of skyscrapers, office towers, and residential high-rises—seem to adhere to the blanket promise of capitalist and enterprising Russia. Yet, these futurist structures often shoot out of rather bleak landscapes, and Herfort’s lens captures this glaring contrast.

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More than just the sheer scale of these buildings, Herfort was intrigued by the frenzied style of the architecture, which heaps on historical and modern motifs with abandon. “This combination of different styles and times in just one building is crazy. For example the Triumph Palace in Moscow1 looks like a building from the ’50s or ‘60s Stalin period, but it is opened in 2001 or so.” This very hybridity may turn off a lot of Russia's intelligentsia, says Herfort, yet it speaks to Russian society at large and how it came to grips with its past. The former may "think that [these buildings] have nothing to do with Russia," but "for most people, it is quite representative to live and work in such skyscrapers.”

He does, however, believe that this kind of architecture is on its way out. “The period of this type of architecture seems finished. It was short and strange and lasted from 1998 till the present day. Now the people in Russia are orientated more on Western and global architects and this special Russian mixture is over. But for me, it shows a very strong and significant time of independence. These buildings stand like heroes in the landscape. Very visible, you cannot ignore them.”2