/Text by *Saffet Kaya Bekiroglu*/ /As part of the former Soviet Union, the urbanism and architecture of *Baku*, the capital of *Azerbaijan *on the Western coast of the Caspian Sea, was heavily influenced by the planning of that era. Since its independence in 1991, *Azerbaijan *has invested heavily in modernising and developing* Baku*’s infrastructure and architecture, departing from its legacy of normative Soviet Modernism./