North Korean interiors that look like Wes Anderson film sets

The retro kitsch décor and pastel dreams aesthetics? You’d be forgiven for thinking these images are straight out of a Wes Anderson film.

Actually, it’s North Korea. London-based architecture critic and photographer Oliver Wainwright charts the candy-coloured history and fantastical architecture of Pyongyang in a forthcoming book, Inside North Korea, taking us on an architectural tour of the world’s most secretive country. Designed as an imposing stage set by Kim Il-sung from 1953, we see North Korea as a place of grand axial boulevards linking gargantuan monuments, lined with stately piles of distinctly Korean flavour, to be “national in form and socialist in content.”

Take a sneak peek in our gallery below.

Inside North Korea, £40, is published by TASCHEN, available in July 2018. For further information head to taschen.com.

Originally built in 1946, the Moranbong Theatre is where Kim Il Sung first proclaimed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the adoption of a separate constitution in 1948, and where the first session of the Supreme People’s Assembly was held. It was almost totally destroyed in the Korean War and rebuilt from photographs in 1954. Many of the original fittings were removed in a 2005 renovation in the name of modernisation Copyright: © Oliver Wainwright
Copyright: © Oliver Wainwright
The Changgwang Health and Recreation Complex was the city’s flagship health centre when it opened in 1980. Covering an area of almost 40,000 square metres, it contains a sauna, bathhouse, swimming pools and hair salons – where customers can choose from a range of officially sanctioned haircuts. In a futuristic touch, the diving boards are reached by a mechanical elevator in a shaft faced with smoked glass. Copyright: © Oliver Wainwright
Changgwang Health and Recreation Complex Copyright: © Oliver Wainwright
Copyright: © Oliver Wainwright
COVER Inside North Korea Oliver Wainwright, Julius Wiedemann Hardcover with ribbon bookmarks, 21 x 27.5 cm, 240 pages US$ 60 | £ 40 | € 40