Adam Smith, revolutionary

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Spencer A. Leonard
Platypus Review 61
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By exposing the historical necessity that had brought capitalism into being, political economy became the critique of history as a whole.

â€”Â Theodor W. Adorno[1]

Unlike Jean-Jacques Rousseau or even Friedrich Nietzsche, Adam Smith is a thinker few on the contemporary Left will have much time for. This tells us more about the impoverishment of the currently prevailing intellectual environment than about the persistent, if ever more obscure, influence of bourgeois radicalism on the Left. Today, of course, it is fashionable to have “a critique of the enlightenment” or, alternatively, to defend it against an array of enemies, including postmodernism, religious conservatism, and academic obscurantism. Those currents of the contemporary Left that still seek to lay claim to the Enlightenment must fend off Smith, because, like Rousseau, his is an Enlightenment that cannot be upheld simply as an affirmation of â€œreasonâ€ or the demand for â€œhuman rights.â€ Smithâ€™s Enlightenment demands to be advanced. His 1776 treatise,Â An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, is not a product of the Scottish Enlightenment but of the cosmopolitan radical Enlightenment, stretching from the coffeehouses of Rotterdam to the meeting rooms of Calcutta. If that cosmopolitan Enlightenment project remains â€œunfinished,â€ it is because the course of history since the publication of Smithâ€™sÂ magnum opusÂ failed to fulfill and indeed undermined the radical potentials of the eighteenth century.

Cornwallisâ€™ 1781 surrender at Yorktown, where American soldiers sang the British Revolutionary song â€œThe World Turned Upside Downâ€

Cornwallisâ€™ 1781 surrender at Yorktown, where American soldiers
sang the British Revolutionary song â€œWorld Turned Upside Downâ€

Smithâ€™s powerful influence upon French revolutionaries such as the AbbÃ© Sieyes and the Marquis de Condorcet, and through them upon Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Constant, and G.W.F. Hegel, are not as well known as they should be, but that need not detain us from coming to terms with the profound radicalism of his thought. Less well known still is the respect that Smith and his close friend, David Hume, held for Rousseauâ€™s works. Hume, refusing to allow his famous public quarrel with Rousseau to cloud his judgment, contended in a letter to SmithÂ that the Genevanâ€™s writings were â€œefforts of genius.â€[2]Â This was an estimate Hume doubtless knew would find favor with his friend, since as early as 1756 Smith had written an article that is perhaps the earliest discussion in English of Rousseauâ€™sÂ Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, singling that work out as the act whereby the Francophone world re-established its supremacy in philosophy for the first time since Descartes, displacing the preeminence of English political and social thought that had lasted for almost a century with the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and others.[3] Continue reading →

Women’s liberation in non-Western contexts

Posted by Ross Wolfe

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Seeing all this press coverage of Malala Yousafzai and the plight of women’s education in Taliban-controlled regions in Pakistan, and having recently revisited the sad history of the degradation of women’s rights in Afghanistan after the PDPA was defeated and the Red Army was driven out in 1989, I’ve been pondering the question of women’s liberation in “Oriental” (i.e., traditional non-Western) contexts.Â Lately I’m reminded of the revolutionary transformations that took place in Uzbekistan between 1920 and the early 1930s, especially with Zhenotdel‘s mass unveiling ceremonies, programs for women’s education, and anti-illiteracy campaigns in the region. All of these activities were carried out in tandem, as religious prejudices, domestic bondage, and illiteracy were to be combated both directly and indirectlyÂ â€” directly through propaganda work, and then indirectly through the removal of economic conditions that give rise to such social ills.

Education and domestic emancipation are more or less uncontroversial. Abolishing reactionary religious traditions is another matter, however. Despite the fact that Lenin was already insisting in 1922 that militant materialism necessarily implied “militant atheism” [Ð²Ð¾Ð¸Ð½ÑÑ‚Ð²ÑƒÑŽÑ‰Ð¸Ð¹ Ð°Ñ‚ÐµÐ¸Ð·Ð¼, more literally “warlike” atheism], there’s been a great deal of distortion on this score. This has to do with efforts to reinterpret the past to suit the perceived political exigencies of the present. Making the past dance to the tune of the present is a fairly routine procedure amongst certain parts of the Left.

Tashkent before the reforms.

Ð ÐšÐÐ”Ð˜Ð™ Ð¨ÐÐ™Ð¥Ð•Ð¢ Ð’ÑÐµ Ð² Ð¿Ñ€Ð¾ÑˆÐ»Ð¾Ð¼. Ð£Ð·Ð±ÐµÑ‡ÐºÐ° Ð² Ð¿Ð°Ñ€Ð°Ð½Ð´Ð¶Ðµ Ð¸ Ñ Ð´ÐµÑ‚ÑŒÐ¼Ð¸. Ð£Ð·Ð±ÐµÐºÐ¸ÑÑ‚Ð°Ð½, 1928

during the first illiteracy campaigns in Tashkent, still wearing their parandzhi in 1921

Group of women in yashmaks in the street and two uncovered women. Old Tashkent

Dave Crouch, writing for theÂ International Socialist Journal, would like to pin all of the blame for antireligious initiatives like theÂ khudzhumÂ [i.e., the mass unveiling campaigns]Â on “Stalinist bureaucracy.” The fact of the matter is that the women’s division [Zhenotdel] and the Union of Tatar Godless [Soiuz tatarskykh bezbozhnikov] already laid the groundwork for such measures in the early 1920s. Members of either organization cannot be fairly characterized as “Stalinist”; indeed, Stalin had both of these wings within the party disbanded by the end of the decade.

Luckily, Gerry Byrne has already gone through and written a point-by-point refutation of some of Crouch’s more obvious gaffes. A couple points are worth mentioning. In the footnotes, two passing remarks by Crouch are particularly revealing:

It is a pity that Richard Stites, one of the foremost historians of womenâ€™s liberation in Russia, fails to see the khudzhum as part of Stalinâ€™s “sexual Thermidor.” Richard Stites, The Womenâ€™s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860-1930. (Princeton, 1978). Pg. 340.

Crouch only says it’s a pity because Stites’ judgment runs counter to the view he would like to promote. Whether or not theÂ khudzhum was a wise policy, a botched and culturally “insensitive” attempt to liberate women from traditional roles and conventions, it cannot be considered even remotely equivalent to the stricter divorce policies, abortion ban, and recriminalization of homosexuality instituted under Stalin’s regime. Stites is here, as usual, a far better historian than pseudo-Trot revisionists.

Education.

Two women reading book at V.I.Lenin's bust.

Women reading a book on Leninism

Reading some Lenin

Woman studying geometry

Children learning English

The modern woman of the East

Against Asiatic feudalism

A Man and a woman at work under a wall newspaper. Collective farm

A few footnotes later,Â Crouch writes:

In 1922 the 4th Congress of the Communist International corrected its policy adopted at the 2nd congress and endorsed temporary alliances with pan-Islamism against imperialism.

If this were actually the case, the Cliffites’ mechanistic anti-imperialism might appear grounded in longstanding revolutionary tradition. Unfortunately, no such “correction” ever took place. Lenin remained adamant to the end thatÂ Marxists’ position toward anti-imperialist movements abroadÂ should stress “the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries,” as well as “the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc.” Of course, as Lenin’s injunction directly contradicts the ISO’s general line toward political struggles in the Middle East, it’s omitted. E.H. Carr’s book indicates nothing of the sort, either. See pgs. 254-255 of his book onÂ The Bolshevik Revolution.

For this post, I’ve assembled three excerpts. The first is excerpted from an article in Kommunistka [Communist Woman] by Marie Vaillant-Couturier (mother of the famous French Resistance fighter Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, who testified at Nuremberg) on women delegates publicly casting off their veils [chadry] and burqas [parandzhi] at the Second International Women’s Congress in 1922. The second is from Louis Bryant, the wife of John Reid and a famous leftist journalist in her own right, in which she records some of Aleksandra Kollontai’s thoughts on women’s liberation, along with a couple of mild criticisms. Finally, I’ve translated an article Kollontai herself wrote about the conference with communist women and labor organizers of the East in April 1921. Moreover, there are some documentary photographs by the extraordinary Constructivist photographer Max Penson, who captured these revolutionary social shifts upon moving to Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1920 (he was Jewish-Belarusian in origin). Penson stayed in Tashkent for the next twenty years. These photos show Uzbek women going from full-body veils (women caught without them were often threatened by men with blades, burning water, and acid, even having dogs sicced on them) to brandishing rifles within ten years. Continue reading →

The Vesnin brothers’ Likachev Palace of Culture (ZIL) in Moscow, 1930-1936

Posted by Ross Wolfe

The Vesnin brothers’ ZIL Palace of Culture in Moscow, 1931

Conference room inside the Vesnin brothers’ ZIL Palace of Culture in Moscow, 1931.

The Vesnins' ZIL Palace interior with Lenin statue, 1937

The Vesnins' ZIL Palace interior with stairs and Lenin, 1937

The Vesnins' ZIL Palace theater interior, 1934

Edward Clark, photo for LIFE magazine with the Vesnins' Palace of Culture in the background, 1955

Edward Clark, photo for LIFE magazine with the Vesnins' Palace of Culture in the background, 1955a

The Vesnin brothers’ ZIL Palace of Culture in Moscow, 1931

Conference room inside the Vesnin brothers’ ZIL Palace of Culture in Moscow, 1931.

Heidegger’s Nazism

Posted by Ross Wolfe

A review of Victor FarÃas’
Heidegger and Nazism (1987)

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This one’s from the archives. I stumbled across it today while trying to dig up another file. Upon rereading it, I was surprised to see that I still agree with most of the sentiments it conveys. Of course, there are some bits that annoy me that I’d like to change, but I’m going to post it as is. Don’t be too hard on me; it’s from 2006.

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Very little can be written concerning Victor FarÃasâ€™ polemical Heidegger and Nazism which has not already been extensively discussed. Since its release in French translation in 1987, the book has been the subject of furious criticism, defended by an army of staunch advocates while simultaneously decried by a host of equally resolute detractors. For both extremes this work merely provided a pretext for debate. The battle lines had for the most part already been drawn: the response on either side to its publication was generally automatic. More judicious commentators have since been able to appreciate the truly groundbreaking revelations of FarÃasâ€™ study, at the same time recognizing its severe limitations. The question of an authorâ€™s reasons for conducting this sort of investigation must inevitably arise, after all, given the controversial nature of the issues at stake. This was no small undertaking on his part. The painstaking archival process by which FarÃas gathered his data was carried out systematically over the course of several years. This no doubt casts some suspicion on his motives. Moreover, the striking lack of ambiguity in his results (which invariably implicate Heidegger as a loyal Nazi all along), combined with a number of questionable arguments and characterizations he makes, only serves to damage the integrity of his otherwise impressive research. So what might then be salvaged from FarÃasâ€™ contentious analysis? The reader might proceed with cautious reservation, acknowledging the disturbing discoveries it relates while sifting out its more dubious insinuations.

Brief memorandum circulated by Heidegger addressing the students at Freiburg, 1934

Brief memorandum circulated by Heidegger
addressing the students at Freiburg, 1933

We shall begin by examining the general methodology of the text. The technique FarÃas employs throughout in assessing Heideggerâ€™s thought is primarily external. That is to say, the book does not look to excogitate the subtle nuances and abstractions of Heideggerâ€™s philosophy from within. Instead, FarÃas devotes most of his attention to relatively minor documents (memos, speech transcripts, personal correspondences, etc.). Continue reading →

A Soviet homage to the Great French Revolution

Posted by Ross Wolfe

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Happy Bastille Day, everyone. To celebrate, here are some assorted artworks by early Soviet sculptors and painters commemorating the Great French Revolution.

We begin with two pieces from the years immediately following the October Revolution. One of these, of course, is the sculptor Nikolai Andreev’s frighteningÂ Head of Danton (1919). Less well known are the memorials toÂ M. RobespierreÂ (1918 & 1920) by Beatrice Sandomirskaia [Ð‘ÐµÐ°Ñ‚Ñ€Ð¸ÑÐµ Ð¡Ð°Ð½Ð´Ð¾Ð¼Ð¸Ñ€ÑÐºÐ°Ñ] andÂ Sarra Lebedeva.

Unveiling of Nikolai Andreev’s “Head of Danton” (1919) Â«Ð“Ð¾Ð»Ð¾Ð²Ð° Ð”Ð°Ð½Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½Ð°Â», 1919 Ð³. Ð. ÐÐ½Ð´Ñ€ÐµÐµÐ²

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Still more remarkable, though from a slightly later date, is the set of illustrations by the Bolshevik artist Mikhail Sokolov depicting the principal actors and main events of the last great bourgeois revolution. These were intended as part of a volume entitled Figures of the 1789 French RevolutionÂ (1930-1934), and are reproduced below alongside some of the historical representations on which Sokolov’s work was based.

Mikhail Sokolov, “Bailly [Ð‘Ð°Ð¹Ð¸],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “Mirabeau [ÐœÐ¸Ñ€Ð°Ð±Ð¾],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “Lafayette [Ð›Ð°Ñ„Ð°Ð¹ÐµÑ‚Ñ‚],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of the Marquis de Lafayette

Mikhail Sokolov, “Danton [Ð”Ð°Ð½Ñ‚Ð¾Ð½],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “General Lazare Hoche [Ð“Ð¾Ñˆ],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of the revolutionary general Louis-Lazare Hoche

Mikhail Sokolov, “Camille Desmoulins [Ð”ÐµÐ¼ÑƒÐ»ÐµÐ½],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “General Jacques Cathelineau [ÐšÐ°Ñ‚ÐµÐ»Ð¸Ð½Ð¾],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of Jacques Cathelineau

The flight of the king

Mikhail Sokolov, “Jean-Paul Marat [ÐœÐ°Ñ€Ð°Ñ‚],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of Jean-Paul Marat

Mikhail Sokolov, Marat’s murderess “Charlotte Corday [Ð¨Ð°Ñ€Ð»Ð¾Ñ‚Ñ‚ ÐšÐ¾Ñ€Ð´Ðµ],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois [ÐšÐ¾Ð»Ð»Ð¾ Ð´-ÐÑ€Ð±ÑƒÐ°],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “Maximilien Robespierre [Ð Ð¾Ð±ÐµÑÐ¿ÑŒÐµÑ€],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical representation of Robespierre

Mikhail Sokolov, “Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just [Ð¡ÐµÐ½-Ð–ÑŽÑÑ‚],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “Emmanuel Joseph SieyÃ¨s [Ð¡Ð¸Ð¹ÐµÑ],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of Emmanuel Joseph SieyÃ¨s

Mikhail Sokolov, “Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon [Ð¡Ð¸Ð¼Ð¾Ð½],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon

Mikhail Sokolov, “BarthÃ©lemy Catherine Joubert [Ð–ÑƒÐ±ÐµÑ€],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of BarthÃ©lemy Catherine Joubert

Mikhail Sokolov, “Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte [Ð‘ÐµÑ€Ð½Ð°Ð´Ð¾Ñ‚Ñ‚],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Historical depiction of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte

Mikhail Sokolov, “Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte [Ð‘ÐµÑ€Ð½Ð°Ð´Ð¾Ñ‚Ñ‚],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Ð¢Ð¢.-ÐœÑƒÐ¶Ñ‡Ð¸Ð½Ð°.-Ð¤Ñ€.-Ð ÐµÐ².-Ð´Ð¾Ð±Ð°Ð²Ð¸Ñ‚ÑŒ

Mikhail Sokolov, “Man in a cylinder,” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “FranÃ§ois-NoÃ«l (Gracchus) Babeuf [Ð‘Ð°Ð±Ñ‘Ñ„],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Mikhail Sokolov, “Roger Ducos [Ð”ÑŽÐºÐ¾],” from Figures of the 1789 French Revolution (1930-1934)

Continue reading →

Georgii Krutikov, The Flying City (VKhUTEMAS diploma project, 1928)

Posted by Ross Wolfe

The conquest of gravity

In 1928, the young architect Georgii Krutikov, in defending his diploma work at VKhUTEIN, presented a thesis project completely insane for the time, a “City of the Future,” which immediately became a sensation. The concept of a “flying city” was as follows: the architect proposed to leave work, leisure, and tourism on the ground, while living areas would be moved to communes floating in the clouds of the city.

Translated byÂ Natalia Melikova, with slight edits by me.

Julia Vaingurt

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Possibly one of the most interesting and the most telling projects of such artistic investigations of the time was the Flying City of Georgii Krutikov. A student of architecture at Vkhutemas,Â Krutikov presented his project â€œThe City of the Futureâ€ as his graduation thesis in 1928. It is telling that Krutikov called his project a quest. It was a quest for mobile architecture. Krutikovâ€™s project was as much a child of its age as Tatlinâ€™s machines and Khlebnikovâ€™s city-plants. Just like these artists, Krutikov was fascinated by movement and flexibility. Departing from the rigid forms dominating the architecture of the time, his city would incorporate living, plastic structures capable of changing qualitatively and quantitatively in accordance with changes in the environment itself. The goal of Krutikovâ€™s work was to prove the theoretical possibility and preferability of mobile architecture.

In his project, industrial and commercial spaces are located on the ground, while residential quarters are suspended in the air. The architecture itself is not in motion, but it will mobilize its inhabitants, who will be able to reach their homes only via individual flying capsules. Selim Khan-Magomedov, who first brought Krutikovâ€™s project to a wider audience in 1973, studied Krutikovâ€™s thesis and concluded that its author â€œwas fully aware that the project of housing structures suspended in space has significance only (at least, for the near future) as an essentially investigatory (speculative) idea.â€Â At a time when the state was taking a pragmatic and utilitarian approach to its existence with the adoption of the First Five-Year Plan, Krutikov envisioned a project whose value to immediate tasks at hand was very ill-defined.

Despite the awareness Khan-Magomedov mentions of the complexâ€™s utter unfeasibility, at least for the foreseeable future, Krutikov was determined to prove its physical possibility. The scale of the project humbled inept contemporaries and mocked the scarcity of the material means at theirÂ disposal while exposing the riches of the universe and its offerings to humanity. In this theoretically possible and practically impossible project, technology becomes a part of â€œnatureâ€ â€” since the potential for this undertaking is present in it â€” and takes on its sublime quality. Even eighty years later this project lends itself primarily to aesthetic appreciation, its sheer magnitudeÂ arousing feelings of awe and incredulity. The pleasure that Krutikovâ€™s project offers is the pleasure in the sublime, a disinterested pleasure in perceiving something immense that transcends a moment and a place.

Krutikov’s portfolio

From Richard Stites’Â Revolutionary Dreams (1981):

A far more popular craze of the 1920s that fed into science fiction was aviation.Â Russian fascination with aeronautics has been immense in our time â€”Â a kind of fear ofÂ not flying, of remaining earthbound and thus immobile. Flying â€” as in the archetypicalÂ dream â€”Â is a kinetic metaphor for liberation. The literary obsession with it in Europe,Â America, and Russia is well-known. Figures such as Tatlin and Mayakovsky are inconceivableÂ without the airplane image. Vasily Kamensky â€”Â like dâ€™Annunzio â€”Â was an aviatorÂ poet. Alexander Lavinsky in 1923 designed a plan for an â€œairborne city.â€ AndÂ Georgy Krutikov in 1928 envisaged a â€œFlying City Apartment Buildingâ€ moored toÂ dirigibles when at anchor. Taking off into a better world was semantically and psychologicallyÂ linked to taking flight. The revolutionary terrorist Nikolai Kibalchich, waitingÂ for his execution in 1881, designed a flying machine that was based on rocket principles.Â The father of Soviet rocket design, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, hatched most of hisÂ ideas while living in an obscure little Russian town. N. A. Rynin, professor and popularizerÂ of space literature in the 1920s, began his work on the cosmic age during theÂ dark years of the Civil War. Â “I was hungry, â€ he recalled, â€œI was cold, but one goodÂ thing about it â€”Â nobody came to see me .â€œ

From Jean-Louis Cohen’s The Future of Architecture since 1889 (2012):

[C]ertain thesisÂ projects still explored radical hypotheses for public buildings.Â Ivan Leonidov designed a Lenin Institute (1927) with aÂ prophetic structure made of cables and futuristic electronicÂ technology; Georgei Krutikov designed a Flying City (1928).Â After visiting the Vkhutemas in 1928, Le Corbusier describedÂ the school in his journal as an â€œextraordinary demonstration ofÂ the modern credo,â€ adding: â€œHere a new world is being rebuiltâ€Â out of a â€œmystique which gives rise to a pure technique.â€

Below are some more of Krutikov’s drawings. Enjoy!

Georgii Krutikov’sÂ Flying City

Detail of Georgii Krutikov’s Flying City (1928)

Tageskarte 21.05.13/ Kunst/ Architekturfuehrer / russische Raumfahrt

Detail of Georgii Krutikov’s Flying City (1928)

flying-city-tablewae-by-Carsten-Holler-for-Porzellan-Manufaktur-Nymphenburg_yatzer_5

Detail of Georgii Krutikov’s Flying City (1928)

Toward a hermaphroditic humanity

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Hermaphroditism
is a humanism

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Image: El Lissitzky, photographic double-
exposure of a young boy and girl (1929)
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El Lissitzky, poster for the Russian exhibition (1929)

A rooftop racetrack: The Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin, Italy (1923)

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Fiat, the phantom of order (1964)

Reyner Banham
Arts in Society
April 18, 1985

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Last year’s grand international consultation (don’t ever call it a competition) on the future and re-use of the old Fiat car factory at Lingotto in the inner suburbs of Turin, was demonstrably a gilt-edged occasion, since the exhibition of the proposals, mounted in the abandoned building itself, the sumptuous accompanying literature and all the associated manifestations clearly cost a pretty lira or two, and the architects consulted included our own James Stirling and Sir Denys Lasdun, as well as other heavy-duty talents from both sides of the Atlantic.

Like the equally grand consultations to find an architect for the second Getty Museum in Los Angeles, it may prove to be one of the major architectural events â€” or possibly non-events â€” of the past year or so. But why all the bother? Locally, the issue seems to be simply that Fiat is Turin, and Turin is Fiat. The company embodies and symbolizes the industrial power of the city, and the factory commemorates all that labour history and union politics that have marked the long years of the love-hateÂ relationship between Fiat and its workforce. Indeed, one reading of local history wouldÂ insist that the plant was built in its very straightforward concrete-and-glass form inÂ “deliberate and concrete response to the factory occupations, the demand forÂ syndicalist control, the workers’ councils.”

More than that, however, the Lingotto plant is just the biggest thing in town. A singleÂ building four storeys high and half a kilometer long, with a press shop and other ancillaries at either end that bring it up to almost the full kilometer, it outbulks even theÂ most grandiose of Turin’s baroque monuments. Its disappearance would not only reÂmove a big piece of local history, a memorial, a symbol; it would also leave a hugeÂ hole in the skyline along the via Nizza.

It would also remove a building whose unique position in the history of modem architecture cannot be equalled anywhere in the world. Hence the international interestÂ of which Fiat is so acutely aware. Yet it was the work of no great or famous architect,Â and the name of Its designer â€” Giacomo Matte Trucco â€” seems to attach to no otherÂ building that is known at all. Nevertheless, its status has been that of a masterpieceÂ ever since it began to be known in 1920-21. It got into all the forward-striving booksÂ by people like Le Corbusier immediately, and into English language texts by the likesÂ of Lewis Mumford within a decade. For this rapid acceptance there are two reasons, IÂ think: one is that it fulfilled a modernist myth; the other is that it had a terrific gimmick. Continue reading →

The practicalities of Oud

Posted by Ross Wolfe

The Spangen municipal housing
project in Rotterdam, 1920-1923Â

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Image:Â Construction site for Oud’s
Spangen municipal housing (1920)
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J.J.P. Oud, the pioneering Dutch modernist briefly associated with the journal and artistic movementÂ De Stijl, is seldom mentioned alongside the other “great masters” of classical avant-garde architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Yet many of the themes that other modernist architects would only come to laterÂ â€” standardized mass housing, the industrialization of the building process, and the use of modern materials to create modern forms (apotheosized in the flat rooftop, hitherto unachievable)Â â€” Oud grasped already during the years of the First World War. The renowned Soviet architect Moisei Ginzburg later speculated Â that this had something to do with Holland’s neutrality throughout the conflict, writing in his 1926 article “The international front of modern architecture” that

Holland, not having participated in the world war, found it possible during this time to carry out far more of their projects than other countries. In recent years, there have been erected not only many separate buildings, but also a whole range of new settlements. While the European architect dug trenches, the Dutchman [J.J.P.] Oud built 3,000 inexpensive apartments in Rotterdam.

The following are hi-resolution scans of plans, sketches, and photographs from Oud’s Spangen municipal housing project, begun in 1920 and completed in 1923, succeeded by theÂ JaffÃ©Â translation of Oud’s 1918 essay “The monumental townscape,” originally published inÂ De Stijl. Continue reading →