Lomography

All-Russian Exhibition Centre (ВДНХ/VDNKh)
written by grad on July 18th, 2008 , 2 comments (2 votes)

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All-Russian Exhibition Centre is a permanent general-purpose trade show in Moscow, Russia.

The exhibition was established February 17, 1935 as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. Existing site (then known as Ostankino Park, a country territory recently incorporated into city limits), was approved in August, 1935. Master plan by Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky was approved in April, 1936, and the first show season was announced to begin in July, 1937. It opened August 1, 1939, and worked in 8AM – 11PM mode until October 25 (40,000 daily attendance). 1940 and 1941 seasons followed; after the German invasion, July 1, 1941 the exhibition was closed – until the end of World War II.

By 1989 the exhibition had 82 pavilions with the exhibition area of 700,000 square metres. Each pavilion (including the 1939 “regions”) had been dedicated to a particular industry or a field: the Engineering Pavilion (1954), the Space Pavilion (1966), the Atomic Energy Pavilion (1954), the People’s Education Pavilion (1954), the Radioelectronics Pavilion (1958), the Soviet Culture Pavilion (1964).

During the Soviet times, each year VDNKh hosted more than 300 national and international exhibitions and many conferences, seminars and meetings of scientists and industry professionals. These events attracted about 11 million visitors annually, including 600,000 guests from outside the Soviet Union. The “Radioelectronics” exhibition hall for some years housed the working (and unique) prototypes of the most advanced ES EVM computers to date, which were time-shared by many research organizations right on the premises.

It occupies 2,375,000 square metres of which 266,000 square metres are used for indoor exhibits. The territory of VVC is greater than that of the Principality of Monaco and has approximately 400 buildings.