Moscow, St Petersburg, and cities across Russia, are enjoying a creative boom that features design hubs, hotels, cafes and bars
Two decades after the fall of communism, Russia remains a mystery to many foreigners. And from a distance, the country's most visible aspects – showy oligarchs and an overbearing political system – hardly seem alluring.
But scratch the surface and a different story emerges. For the past year, I've been working with a London-based gallery to develop the Calvert Journal, an online guide to creative Russia. The journal is inspired by a generation of creative talent who are starting to remake the country in their own image.
You can feel their influence in Moscow and St Petersburg, where chic bars and restaurants and dynamic cultural centres are springing to life. But the mood is even more striking the further afield you go from those two principal cities. Until recently I'd have given you a blank stare if you'd asked what was happening in Yekaterinburg, an industrial city in the Urals. Now I know it as the site of a critically regarded contemporary art biennale, the centre of a burgeoning dubstep scene and the home of Timofei Radya, a street artist whose grafittied buildings and billboards have won him a reputation as Russia's Banksy.
Within Russia, the provinces have traditionally been regarded as a creative desert. But that view is hard to sustain anymore as initiatives bloom. Often working collectively and on low budgets, artists and designers are taking over disused factories, workers' clubs and aristocratic 19th-century mansions to create galleries, shared work spaces, shops and studios. New festivals of architecture, art and photography are helping the regeneration, providing a platform for local talent and attracting international partnerships.
All of this makes it a great country to visit, and a country that, in cultural terms, looks like it has its best days ahead of it. Here's my pick of the highlights:
Moscow Design Museum
In style-conscious contemporary Moscow, design is no longer a dirty word. The newly opened Moscow Design Museum is bringing aesthetic excellence right to the doorstep of power in its neo-classical home in the Manege, right by the Kremlin. It's helping cognoscenti and ordinary people to rediscover Russia's design heritage. Not only does it showcase lost gems of Soviet design, it also draws heavily on the work of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Technical Aesthetics (VNIITE). This all-but-forgotten Soviet design powerhouse pioneered the sort of radical designs that were only possible away from market pressures of the market: cardboard furniture, taxis for the disabled, and a socialist proto-internet called the Domestic Information Machine. It is also preserving this "of the people, for the people" spirit with a fleet of checkerboard buses that will serve as roving galleries.
• moscowdesignmuseum.ru
Ping Pong Club
In a run-down car park in central Moscow only a door sticker, reading PPCM, gives an indication of the city's ultimate hang out: Ping Pong Club Moscow. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is some sort of youth club: PPCM is right at the heart of Moscow's creative boom, figuratively – its denizens are all start-uppers and style mavens – and literally: it recently moved premises to Red October, the former chocolate factory-turned-creative cluster that is home to liberal TV channel Rain and just round the corner from the Rem Koolhas-approved urbanism institute (and bar) that is the Strelka Institute. The club, founded by PR guru Daria Yastrubitskaya and photographer Alexey Kiselev, has also now been given charge of the table tennis tables at the revamped Gorky Park, giving the Instagram crowd a chance to test their top-spin forehands against Moscow's hardcore ping-pong veterans and any eager visitors.
• facebook.com/pages/Ping-Pong-Club
Stay Hungry
If you're after an off-the-beaten-track dining experience, try Stay Hungry, Russia's first supper club. Each week the Stay Hungry team invite a different chef to prepare a feast for up to 20 guests at its loft-style apartment in the heart of Moscow. Whether it's a Russian banquet with pickled this-and-that washed down by shots of horseradish vodka, or an experiment in molecular gastronomy, you're bound to leave sated and smiling, because unlike other supper clubs, Stay Hungry isn't just about the food. While the composition of the menu is important, its objective is to introduce like-minded folk to each other – crucial in a city as big as Moscow. To ensure it remains "small and special" the team has so far operated a no-PR-and-marketing strategy. Despite this, or perhaps because of their hush-hush approach, every dinner, for which guests pay 1,500 roubles (£32) has been oversubscribed. Entry is via a closed Facebook group.
• facebook.com/pages/Stay-Hungry-Moscow/342710355826682
Moscow/Brooklyn
If your perception of Russia consists of only oligarchs, vodka and bears, a trip to Moscow may be in order. For discerning Muscovites, the only source of inspiration is Brooklyn, or specifically Williamsburg. From the Chop-Chop Brooklyn-style barbershop in the Patriarch's Pond area to Ukeleleshnaya, a ukulele and vinyl shop, those in search of all things hipster are well served. And for American heritage brands head to Fott), or for organic catering there's Williamsburg Studio, and a bow-tie maker (Engineer Garin), a vintage clothing store (Oldich – oldich.ru) or even a boutique devoted entirely to obscure toothpaste and toothbrush brands (Paste and Brushes), are all close by. Yet there's much more to this than meets the eye: it's an indication of the country's growing middle classes and new-found desire – not to mention means – to travel abroad.
Sleepbox Hotel
With a sushi restaurant on practically every corner, Moscow is one of the world's most Japanophile cities. Now the vogue for minimalist precision is transferring to hospitality. Sleepbox is a hotel offering cosy, individual mini-pods right in the city centre, only minutes from the Sheremetyevo airport train. In a city with a chronic lack of mid-range accommodation, £52 a night, including use of an iPad and free Wi-Fi, is something of a steal. Each room comes with an individual bathroom and larger family rooms are available. The neat Russian-built capsules are not for claustrophobes; but if cabin fever does set in, you can always rent a bike from reception and cycle off in search of some sashimi.
• sleepbox-hotel.ru
Drinking in St Petersburg
Until recently, bars in St Petersburg were either swanky or skanky. If you didn't fancy smoky back-alley boozers such as Blue Pushkin, or have the wallet forglitzy good-taste-vacuums such as Blesk (literally, Gloss), a night on the sofa often seemed the best option. Now, there's a new wave of stylish bars that are mixing Shoreditch eclecticism and Scandinavian minimalism in their search for a diverse crowd and a relaxed, kitsch-free atmosphere. Leading the way is cafe-cum-bar-cum-club Dom Byta, a venture from Roman Burtsev, the man behind hip Moscow club Solyanka. Dom Byta, tucked away on a quiet street in Fyodor Dostoevsky's old neighbourhood, stands out for great music, decent food and delicious shooters. Try the Forest Gump – vodka with raspberry, honey and sorrel – you won't regret it. Or at least not the first one.
• dombeat.ru
St Petersburg arts
The city is home to a range of creative hubs such as the Taiga art space, in a 19th-century mansion block overlooking the Neva river a stone's throw from the majestic Hermitage Museum. Occupants include bookshops, design studios, a sewing workshop and hostel. Crucially, it's all done on a non-commercial basis, with the emphasis on letting small start-ups establish themselves, rather than making a profit for investors. Down the road is the slightly more upmarket but no less vibrant Loft Etagi, a cafe, exhibition space, bar and hostel in a former bakery. The hostel's three Scandinavian-inspired design rooms provide the very best in modern design with a price tag that won't break the bank.
• space-taiga.org, loftprojectetagi.ru
Siberian coffee
You probably don't picture a coffee revolution taking place in a Siberian city, but blazing a trail is Christopher Tara-Browne, a former music producer from San Francisco, who moved to Novosibirsk almost 20 years ago. His coffee chain, Traveler's Coffee, started as a small counter in the corner of a Novosibirsk pizzeria but today there are more than 60 coffee shops in 37 cities from St Petersburg in the west, and as far east as to Vladivostok. Whether it's Columbian Elan or Indonesian Sumatra Mandheling, what makes the coffee noteworthy is where the beans end up once they land in Russia: the chain has its own roastery in a former factory in Novosibirsk, one of the few in the country. Says self-confessed "coffee-nut" Tara-Browne: "If you're not roasting, you're not involved in coffee."
Kleister
A trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, once the beating heart of Russian industry, would be incomplete without a visit to Kleister, the country's newest creative hub. Set up by former graphic designer Oleg Lutokhin, the part-bookshop, part-exhibition space shares a building – a former school – with an outpost of the Moscow National Centre for Contemporary Arts. If you're attending a lecture or picking up a book, make sure to keep an eye out for Timofei Radya, the city's most celebrated street artist, whose studio just happens to be next door. Whether he's etching portraits of soldiers into the walls of an abandoned hospital using fire, or making a giant house of cards from riot shields, Radya's situationist-inspired imagery has brought an arresting visual dynamism to the city.
• facebook.com/kleister.shop
Moscow metro
Moscow's multi-lane, traffic-clogged, snow-covered streets can leave a lot to be desired. But who cares when the real action is deep underground in the opulent Moscow metro? Europe's biggest mass transport system is also its most beautiful: the network is a multifarious dream space with its own narratives told across a sequence of thematic stations. The story of the construction of the metro as a monument to the technical and aesthetic prowess of the Soviet people is well-known; more surprising is the high standard of the stations being built today. Once they've had their fill of the Stalinist splendour of Komsomolskaya, or the mesmerising mosaics of Mayakovskaya, architecture buffs should head out of town to investigate the Vostok Vienna Secession ballroom of Aviamotornaya or the ultra-modern lines of recently constructed Pyatnitskoe shosse.
• engl.mosmetro.ru
Zoo Novosibirsk
What do Madagascar and Novosibirsk have in common? Not a lot, except for the fact they are both globally important havens for biodiversity and preservation of endangered species preservation. The central Siberian city was the science capital of the Soviet Union and this has left a lasting legacy in cutting-edge zoology. Novosibirsk's Zoo may not be the most modern in the world, but it has not only one of the best big cat collections in the world but also a one of a kind – an adorable liliger cub Kiara (a tiger/lion hybrid). You can also visit the fox programme at the Institute of Cytology, where they have used careful selection to produce tame (and frankly adorable) foxes that they sell as pets to fund their research.
• zoonovosib.ru, domesticfox.com