Navoi

(until 1958, the settlement of Kermine), a city under oblast jurisdiction, Bukhara Oblast, Uzbek SSR; named in honor of the poet Navoi. The city is located in the valley of the Zeravshan River, 8 km from the Navoi railroad station on the Krasnovodsk-Tashkent line and 100 km northeast of the city of Bukhara. Population, 72,000 (1973; 3,000 in 1939; 10,000 in 1959).

Since 1963, Navoi has been the site of a state regional electric power plant. The city’s industries include a chemical combine, food-processing enterprises, and enterprises of the building materials industry, including a large-panel housing-construction combine, a plant producing reinforced-concrete products, and an asphalt concrete plant. An evening general technical department of the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute is located in Navoi.

Navoi is a new city; it was built according to a single general plan in the 1960’s. Navoi’s distinctive architecture is typified by modular and gallery houses. The designers of the general plan, who included the architects A. V. Korotkov, V. N. Ivanov, I. B. Orlov, and N. I. Simonov and the engineer G. P. Smorodin, also supervised the actual construction work. In 1969, the plan was awarded the State Prize of the USSR. The effective use of environmental furnishings and the abundance of landscaped areas, fountains, and pools give the city a distinctive, aesthetically pleasing appearance.