House of Soviets (Kaliningrad)

[4] The vision for the redevelopment was heavily influenced by works of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, specifically the development of the Brazilian city of Brasília.

[4] Two architectural competitions were held for the redevelopment of the area, in 1964 and 1974, which included design firms from Moscow and Leningrad and from the then Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

[4] The design chosen was by Yulian Lvovich Shvartsbreim, a winner of the USSR State Prize and well respected in Soviet Russia,[4] and his studio TsNIIEP.

[6][7] In 2005, for Kaliningrad's 60th and Königsberg's 750th anniversary, also marked by a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the exterior was painted light blue and windows were installed, though the interior remained unfinished and unusable.

[8] A proposal was made to recreate the castle in a modified form as a tourist attraction,[8] as part of the Heart of the City project, which originally envisaged rebuilding the House of Soviets as a hotel and conference center.