Yuri Avvakumov is a founding member and theorist-in-chief of a group of Russian conceptual artists called the 'Paper Architects'. This group graduated from the Moscow Architecture Institute in the early 1980s and, frustrated by the conservatism of their profession in Russia and the shortage of funds for new building, they turned instead to entering competitions sponsored by western and Japanese architectural journals, where their fantastic and unrealiseable schemes won them international acclaim. The term 'Paper Architecture' was a derogatory one applied to the unrealistic dreams of the revolutionary avant-garde of the early twentieth century, whose utopian ambitions Avvakumov parodies in Red Tower.