The other Trotsky

Noi Abramovich (1895-1940)

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Image: Noi Abramovich Trotskii, Leningrad 1929

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Not Lev Davidovich [Лев Давидович]. The architect, Noi Abramovich [Ной Абрамович], rather. No relation, obviously. It’s Bronshtein, remember?

Here are some examples of his work.

Designs

«О советской архитектуре»

* Из стенограммы отчета в Деловом клубе 16 февраля 1935 г. (Фонд ГМИЛ, архив Н. А. Троцкого).

Годы предреволюционной архитектуры в последний десяток лет, примерно начиная с 1908—1909 годов, проходят под знаком увлечения итальянским Ренессансом, увлечения классическими образцами. Это был новый расцвет в России — неоклассицизма. Он дал в России интересные образчики и целую плеяду очень интересных архитекторов.

С наступлением революции это увлечение классикой не могло продолжаться, оно должно было, естественно, приостановиться, революция толкнула на новые пути в поисках более революционного искусства. Этот неоклассицизм или пользование образцами классики казался течением реакционным. Хотелось чего-то нового, революционного. В это время на Западе возникают во всех областях искусства новые революционные течения: в литературе — футуризм, в Италии — Маринетти, в живописи — кубизм, супрематизм, в скульптуре — кубизм и в архитектуре возникает новое течение на основе кубизма и супрематизма — конструктивизм. Эти новые искания в области искусства и в области живописи, и литературы, и архитектуры казались тогда революционными. Казалось, что новые искания в области искусства соответствуют тем революционным настроениям, тем революционным чаяниям и пафосу, который был в те годы, и казалось, что это искусство может отразить пафос революционного движения и поэтому периоду увлечения классикой пришел конец.

[…] И архитектура должна была найти свои новые пути. Архитектура — искусство более консервативное, и в архитектуре это шло более длительно и начиная с 1923 и кончая примерно 1930 годом (в течение 7-летия) архитектура находится под влиянием конструктивизма. Кроме конструктивизма зародился целый ряд других побочных течений…

Примерно в 1930—1931 годах начинает чувствоваться увядание, начинает чувствоваться некоторая беспомощность и падение кривой увлечения этими стилями, начала ощущаться потребность более сильного, более эмоционального и выразительного. Дело в том, что эти «измы», затрагивая те или иные части архитектуры, в целом не охватывали задач архитектуры и поэтому не создавали большого стиля искусства. Первым пробным камнем нашей советской архитектуры этого 7-летия явился конкурс на Дворец Советов. Это чрезвычайно интересный момент. На этом конкурсе выявилась вся беспомощность и все бессилие нашей архитектуры дать то, что нужно нашему государству, нашему Союзу, Ñ‚. е. передать тот пафос строительства, создать ту сильную монументальную архитектуру, которая нужна Союзу. […] Начиная с 1931 года и до сегодняшнего дня мы находимся в лихорадочном состоянии. […]

Realizations

Photo by Sammy Medina

Corbu conference

Here are some photos I took from the international Le Corbusier symposium that took place on Saturday at the Center for Architecture, organized primarily by the architectural historian (and curator of the new MoMA exhibition on Corbu’s lifework) Jean-Louis Cohen. Also presenting at the conference were Kenneth Frampton, Mary McLeod, Stanislaus von Moos, and Peter Eisenman, to name a few. I’ll be posting a review of the event in a couple days. Enjoy!

Images from the conference

Soviet auto-building in the 1930s

With a 1928 poem by
Vladimir Maiakovskii

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Image: Poster on the side of a building in Leningrad
that reads “Automobiles are Workers” (1929)

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Image Gallery (captions coming)

“Letter to Comrade Kostrov”

Comrade Kostrov,
…………..I’m sure you won’t mind —
I know,
……..generosity’s one of your merits —
if part of the lines
…………..for Paris assigned
I’ll squander
…………..on petty lyrics.
Imagine:
…….a beauty
…………..enters a hall
framed
…….in necklace and furs,
and I
…….says to her
…………..with no preface at all
these very selfsame words:
I’ve
…….just come
…………..from Russia, comrade.
In my country
…………..I’m a figure. Continue reading

Le Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (1928-1936) over the years

Planning and construction

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In his 1928 proposal for the Soviet Central Union building, Le Corbusier invoked his much-vaunted principle of pilotis. As a postscript to his 1930  Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning:

Pilotis

Since we no longer have to lay foundations in the ground for the carrying walls; since on the contrary all we need is posts covering only .5% of the surface built upon and furthermore, since it is our duty to make the house more healthful by raising its bottom-most floor above the ground, we will take advantage of this situation by adopting the principle of “pilotis” or stilts.

What is the point of using pilotis? To make houses more healthful and at the same time allow the use of insulating materials which are often fragile or liable to decay and so should be placed far from the ground and possible shocks.

But most of all: behold, they are available to work a thorough transformation in the system of traffic on the ground. This is as true of the skyscraper as of the office building, of the minimum houses as of the streets. One will no longer be “in front of” a house or “in back of” it, but “underneath” it.

We have to reckon with cars, which we will strive to channel into a sort of river with regular banks; we need to park these cars without, at the same time, blocking up the river bed. When we leave our cars we must not paralyze traffic all along the river and when we come out of our buildings, we must not obstruct the areas reserved for movement. Continue reading

Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus costume parties (1924-1926)

With “Life at the Bauhaus”
by Farkas Molnár (1925)

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Image: Bauhaus costumes by Oskar Schlemmer (1925)

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Translated from the Hungarian by John Bátki.
From Between Two Worlds: A Sourcebook of
Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930
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(The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA: 2002).

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It is the first institution in Europe dedicated to realizing the achievements of the new arts for the purposes of human existence. Its inception was the first step toward a recognition that has become widespread by now: that “atelier art” has divorced itself from life and is dead, and that every person possessing creative powers must seek his or her vocation in the fulfillment of the practical needs of everyday life. Today’s scientific and technological advances will not become assimilated into general culture as long as humankind still lives under medieval conditions. The machine is still a foreign object in the houses of today; the documents of technological culture are still relegated to books atop fancy carved desks, radio music by the fireplace. The age demands a style, a common denominator for its visible phenomena. However, “style” is an unsuitable word, we do not like to use it, for it usually refers to the external pseudo-unity of things, a system of decorative forms.

Each and every object that we have to build anew will be different, according to its material, function, and structure, instead of resembling each other in form. The common denominator will be provided by the object’s functionality and beauty demanded by its practicality; it will be the kinship of objects equivalent in their quality.

Golden Sphere Costume

The architect Walter Gropius, founder and director of the Bauhaus, was among the pioneers in the fight against entrenched historical forms. His prewar creations (such as the Faguswerk in Alfeld) had already demonstrated that he was able to realize his goals with absolute technical mastery. He conducted the task of organizing the Bauhaus with the greatest consistency and perseverance in spite of the difficult circumstances and lack of understanding on the part of the authorities. The Bauhaus as organized is the prototype of a new kind of educational institution that does not merely “educate for life” but actually places its students into practical real-life situations. It is articulated into three subdivisions: 1) the school itself where theoretical and practical professional instruction is given in workshops, 2) the production workshops (stone, wood, metal, and glass processing shops, as well as textile, ceramics, murals, printing and theatrical workshops) where work is done on commission and ongoing experimental work is conducted, and 3) the architecture and design department, for the design and construction of all sorts of building projects.

At the time of its founding Gropius declared that in our days there are no architects and no artists capable of executing the loftier tasks of our age in practical form. Therefore the new artists would have to develop here, learning in the course of a constant immersion in materials the ability to think realistically, to make cool-headed calculations, and to draw daring conclusions. We live at a time of the greatest possibilities, a time of the greatest need. Unaccomplishable projects can only hinder us. The artist’s pride obstructs development and progress, which is promoted by the forward thrust of mechanical aptitude. Continue reading

The brothers Golosov

Built and unbuilt works

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Image: Il’ia Golosov, competition entry
for the Leningrad Pravda office (1924)

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Note: Translation forthcoming of the lecture notes below! “New paths in architecture,” by Il’ia Golosov.

«Новые пути в архитектуре»

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Лекция, прочитанная И. А. Голосовым в 1922 г. в Московском архитектурном обществе. Приведены лишь отдельные выдержки из этой лекции, касающиеся построения архитектурной формы. ЦГАЛИ СССР, ф. 1979, оп. 1, д. 69. Полный текст ее опубликован в сб. Из истории советской прхитектуры (1917—1925 гг.). Документы и материалы, М., Изд-во Академии наук СССР, 1963, стр. 26—31.

(…] Почему все еще громадное большинство пережевывает жвачку повторения и комбинаций древних форм, имевших смысл в сооружениях древних, но совершенно не подходящих к новым сооружениям, и нам кажется несомненным, что новое вино надо влипать в новые мехи и что современная архитектура должна найти себя на пути правильного отражения идеи сооружения — его души.

Конечно, высказываемая мысль приложима не только к архитектурным сооружениям, но к любым созданиям человека. Возьмем, например, паровоз. В современном мощном красавце-паровозе, олицетворенном воплощении силы и как бы готового к прыжку стального зверя, от первоначальной его формы, похожей вполне на грубые игрушки, нет и следа. И, несомненно, художник имел бы право голоса наряду с техником в усовершенствовании и конструировании паровоза так, чтобы его внешняя форма, без ущерба для целей техники, олицетворяла и ярче выражала его идею, его душу.

И во всяком случае, украшение вещей не в духе их идей, не в духе их назначения является вандализмом.

Сооружения исключительно технического характера, например подъемные краны, доки и пр., нельзя себе представить в дружном сожительстве с чисто украсительными формами. В сооружениях Этого типа нет места бесполезной детали, здесь все сливается с основной идеей вещи и, я думаю, не может быть спора о том, что встречающиеся иногда в подобных сооружениях формы исключительно украсительного характера или вовсе не замечаются, или производят впечатление явной их ненужности и неуместности. Трудно себе представить, чтобы формы паровоза можно было усовершенствовать введением орнаментировки его частей, так же трудно представить автомобиль или аэроплан в стиле какой-либо эпохи. Отсюда ясно, что техника вырабатывает свои, индивидуальные, только ей присущие формы. Само собой разумеется, что здесь не может быть и речи о применении классических форм, ибо здесь живет форма исключительно как таковая, в художественном своем выражении логически совпадающая с целью самого явления, то есть самой вещи.

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Hannes Meyer and the Red Bauhaus-Brigade in the Soviet Union (1930-1937)

A photo gallery & translation

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Image: Poster for an expo of the
Bauhaus Dessau in Moscow (1931)

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An extract of an interview from Pravda, 1930:

Hannes Meyer: After many years of working within the capitalist system I am convinced that working under such conditions is quite senseless.  In view of our Marxist and revolutionary conception of the world we, revolutionary architects, are at the mercy of the insoluble contradictions of a world built on animal individualism and the exploitation of man by man.  I have said, and I say again, to all architects, all engineers, all builders:

Our way is and must be that of the revolutionary proletariat, that of the communist party, the way of those who are building and achieving socialism.

I am leaving for the USSR to work among people who are forging a true revolutionary culture, who are achieving socialism, and who are living in that form of society for which we have been fighting here under the conditions of capitalism.

I beg our Russian comrades to regard us, my group and myself, not as heartless specialists, claiming all kinds of special privileges, but as fellow workers with comradely views ready to make a gift to socialism and the revolution of all our knowledge, all our strength, and all the experience that we have acquired in the art of building.

[From Pravda, Berlin dispatch dated October 10th, 1930]

And here are some exceedingly rare photographs of the second Bauhaus director, Hannes Meyer, along with his team of architects, in the Soviet Union.

Image gallery

Nikolai Ladovskii’s studio at VKhUTEMAS (1920-1930)

With an original translation
of Ladovskii’s 1921 program

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Image: Photograph of Nikolai Ladovskii
during his professorship at VKhUTEMAS

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Special thanks are due to Monoskop for pointing out to me a number of new images, as well as to TotalArch for providing Selim Khan-Magomedov’s selected Russian text online to translate for this post.

Nikolai Ladovskii and students at VKhUTEMAS, 1922

Nikolai Ladovskii and students at VKhUTEMAS, 1922

“On the program of the working group of architects” (1921)

The task of our working group is to work in the direction of elucidating a theory of architecture. Our productivity will depend on the very rapid articulation of our program, on clarifying the investigative methods to be used and identifying the materials we have at our disposal to supplement the work. The work plan can be broken down into roughly three basic points:

I) aggregation of appropriate theoretical studies and existing theories of architecture of all theoreticians,
II) excavation of relevant material from theoretical studies and investigations extracted from other branches of art, which bear on architecture, and
III) exposition of our own theoretical perspectives to architecture.

The result of these efforts must be the compilation of an illustrated dictionary that establishes precisely the terminology and definitions of architecture as an art, its individual attributes, properties etc, the interrelation of architecture with the other arts. The three elements of the work plan relate, in the case of the first, to the past, to “what has been done”; in that of the second, to the present, and “what we are doing,” and in that of the third, to “what must be done” in the future in the field of theoretical justifications of architecture. A commission, which might be necessary to set up for the program’s elaboration, must build upon the foundations we have suggested.

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Buried treasure: The splendor of the Moscow Metro system

Owen Hatherley
The Calvert Journal
January 29, 2013

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Reposted
from The Calvert Journal, a daily briefing on the culture and creativity of modern Russia.

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Post-Communist underground stations in Moscow, like the recently completed Pyatnitskoye shosse, are still, very visibly, Moscow Metro stations. Regardless of the need or otherwise for nuclear shelters, they’re still buried deep in the ground; ubiquitous still is the expensive, laborious, but highly legible and architecturally breathtaking practice of providing high-ceilinged vaults with the trains leaving from either side. There have been attempts at “normal” metro lines, like the sober stations built under Khrushchev, or the “Light Metro” finished in 2003, but they didn’t catch on. Largely, the model developed in the mid-1930s continues, and not just in Moscow — extensions in Kiev or St Petersburg, or altogether new systems in Kazan or Almaty, carry on this peculiar tradition. Metro stations are still being treated as palaces of the people, over two decades after the “people’s” states collapsed. This could be a question of maintaining quality control, but then quality is not conspicuous in the Russian built environment. So why does this endure?

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The original, 1930s Moscow Metro was the place where even the most skeptical fellow travellers threw away their doubts and surrendered. Bertolt Brecht wrote an awe-filled poem on the subject, “The Moscow Workers Take Possession of the Great Metro on April 27, 1935,” dropping his habitual irony and dialectic to describe the Metro workers perusing the system they’d built on the day of its opening. At the end, the poet gasps, his guard down, “This is the grand picture that once upon a time/ rocked the writers who foresaw it” — that is, that here, at least, a dream of “Communism” had been palpably built. It was not an uncommon reaction, then or now, nostalgia notwithstanding. The first stations, those Brecht was talking about, were not particularly over-ornamented, especially by the standards of what came later, but their extreme opulence and spaciousness was still overwhelming. Stations like Sokolniki or Kropotkinskaya didn’t bludgeon with classical reminisces and mosaics. Yet three things about the underground designs created by architects Alexei Dushkin, Ivan Fomin, Dmitry Chechulin et al were unprecedented in any previous public transport network, whether Charles Holden’s London, Alfred Grenander’s Berlin or Hector Guimard’s Paris. First, the huge size of the halls, their high ceilings and widely-spaced columns; second, the quality of the materials, with various coloured marbles shipped in from all over the USSR; and third, the lighting, emerging from individually-designed, surreal chandeliers, often murkily atmospheric, designed to create mood rather than light.

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Narkomtiazhporn: The pornographic proto-Stalinism of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry

Narkomtiazhprom + archiporn
Narkomtiazhprom + archiporn =
Narkomtiazhporn.

The competition for the design of the National Commissariat of Heavy Industry building [Наркомтяжпром] would be the last under Stalin to feature a number of submissions using modernist forms and techniques. Heavy industry is always sexy: scorched, hardened bodies covered in sweat, filth, and grime. Sparks spew all about, illuminating in flashes the piping and steel grating that surrounds. There’s no orgasm quite like the panting, hyperventilating surge toward climax one experiences while suffering from black lung. No sex like pneumoconiosic sex.

Already here, though, one can discern the contours of an emerging Stalinist sublime. This can be seen in the absurd scale onto which neoclassical forms have been projected. The contest for the Palace of the Soviets had been completed, to nearly universal disappointment within the modernist camp. There can be little doubt that the winning design from that whole affair weighed heavily on the minds of the modernists.

Like so many other architectural projects from the time, Narkomtiazhprom would never be built. Some have questioned whether it was really ever meant to be built at all, or if it was rather a ruse intended to unmask newly-unionized architects who were still harboring some loyalty to modernism.

Narkomtiazhporn