architecture

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

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Planning and construction

Model of Nikolai Kolli and Le Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow, 1928
Le Corbusier with Nikolai Kolli in front of the construction site for the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (March 1930)
Le Corbusier sitting in front of the construction site for the Tsentrosoiuz Building in Moscow (March 1931)
Le Corbusier surveys the work site for the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (1931)
Le Corbusier surveys the work site with workers for the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (1931)
Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building under construction in Moscow, 1931

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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 →

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

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With an original translation
of Ladovskii’s 1921 program

Untitled.
Image: Photograph of Nikolai Ladovskii
during his professorship at VKhUTEMAS
untitled2.

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.

I. Lamtsov, workshop of Nikolai Ladovskii %22Beam, Revelation of Structure,%22 1922 study И Ламцов, Мастерская Н Ладовского
I. Lamtsov, workshop of Nikolai Ladovskii %22Double Volume, Revelation and expression of mass and weight,%22 Sketches 1922 И Ламцов, Мастерская Н Ладовского
I. Lamtsov, workshop of Nikolai Ladovskii %22Double Volume, Revelation and expression of mass and weight,%22 Sketches 1922 И Ламцов, Мастерская Н Ладовского1
I Lamtsov, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, Grain elevator, revelation and expression of form, 1922
I. Frantsuz, Il’ia Golosov and Konstantin Mel’nikov’s workshop, Crematorium (1922)
Nikolai Krasil’nikov, workshop of Nikolai Ladovskii, apartment building 1921 2
G Vegman, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, grain elevator, revelation and expression of form, 1922
Nikolai Krasil’nikov, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, Water Tower, revelation and expression of form, 1921
Nikolai Krasil’nikov, workshop of Nikolai Ladovskii, apartment building 1921
I Reberg, Crematorium (Diploma Project, 1920
V Ianovskii, Revelation of structure, first year (1924)
Unknown, Ladovskii’s workshop, Alkaline manufacturing tower, revelation of volume and space, 1922
V Vladimirov, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, grain elevator, revelation and expression of form, 1922
G Gol’ts, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, architectural and spatial design of the entrance to Nikitskii boulevard in Moscow, 1920-1921
G Gol’ts, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, architectural and spatial design of the entrance to Nikitskii boulevard in Moscow, 1920-1921
Iurii Spasskii, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, Grain elevator, revelation and expression of form, 1922
Iurii Mushinsky, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop. Wharf with a restaurant under a rock over the sea, revelation of the physico-mechanical properties of formIurii Mushinsky, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop. Wharf with a restaurant under a rock over the sea, revelation of the physico-mechanical properties of form
G Gol’ts, Nikolai Ladovskii’s workshop, architectural and spatial design of the entrance to Nikitskii boulevard in Moscow, 1920-1921
Decorative composition for Ladovskii’s class, 1923
Decorative composition for Ladovskii’s class, 1923
Lidiia Komarova, thesis project for Nikolai Ladovskii’s studio, 1923
Unknown, project for Nikolai Ladovskii’s studio, 1926

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

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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

Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Photo of proposed Narkomtiazhprom, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Vesnin brothers’ Narkomtiazhprom proposal for Moscow, 1933-1934
Vesnin brothers’ Narkomtiazhprom proposal for Moscow, 1933-1934
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom model (1934)
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom model (1934)
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)
Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom (1932)
Sketches and proposals by Ivan Leonidov
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)
Konstantin Mel’nikov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934
Narkomtiazhprom proposal, 1933-1934

Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom [Наркомтяжпром Леонидова], 1934

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Above: Ivan Leonidov

From explanatory notes to the Narkomtiazhprom competition

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Until now the architecture of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral have formed the architectural center of Moscow. It is natural that with the construction of a colossal new building on Red Square, the role of some buildings within the ensemble of this central Moscow complex will change.

I consider that the architecture of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral should be subordinated to the architecture of the Narkomtiazhprom [Commissariat of Heavy Industry], and that this building itself must occupy the central place in the city.

The architecture of Red Square and the Kremlin is a delicate and majestic piece of music. The introduction into this symphony of an instrument so strong in its sound and so huge in scale is permissible only on condition that the new instrument will lead the orchestra, and will excel over all the others in its architectural quality.

The foundations of the competition of the Narkomtiazhprom building must lie not in splendor, or in the florid trumpery of details and forms, but in simplicity, severity, harmonious dynamism, and pithiness of content. Historical motifs must be compositionally subordinated to this leading element, on the principle of aesthetic contrast.

In the project the high towers are the compositional center. Their forms are determined by both functional considerations and architectural ones, in which I include such factors as the need for a clear structure of composition, for a sense of movement, and for powerful spatiality and grandeur. The low parts of the building such as the auditorium, speakers’ tribunes, exhibition areas, and the rear building are related in heigh to the surrounding architecture, and this lower plan is assembled in a composition of lesser contrasts.

Three towers:

The first is rectangular in plan with a lightweight, openwork top, and its main elevation faces Red Square. The top is glazed with suspended terraces constructed of stainless steel.

The circular tower is conceived as a contrasting element to the first. In form and treatment it is picturesque, with balcony-like terraces on its exterior. Here the material is glazed brick, and the surface character of this unusual material is what makes it possible to achieve this integrity of form. The illumination inside the tower is diffused; visibility is resolved by the insertion of vertical windows of clear glass within the general pattern of the cladding. At night the tower will stand out with its light silhouette and barely-perceptible structural frame, and with the dark patches of the balconies.

The third tower has a complex spatial configuration on plan, while being simple and strong in elevation.

Red Square, as the focal space of the entire proletarian collective, must not cut itself off from access by this proletariat, and therefore the low parts of the building must be treated in such a way that they enter into the general idea of ideologically saturated movement in the Square.

This is achieved by placing spectator stands in the foreground.

The Square is divided into two terraces at different levels. This makes it possible to achieve new effects in military parades, such as putting the tanks onto one level and the cavalry on the other.

Even with the existing width of the Square, it is impossible to provide a good view of the Lenin Mausoleum from the GUM side, when it is used as a saluting base for Party leaders] during the parades and mach-pasts. Extension of the Square to a width of 200 meters will create even greater difficulties of visibility. But this terraced treatment of the Square will also provide good views of the Mausoleum.

The main accommodation in this project is distributed as follows:

The main foyer is located in the center of the building and illuminated from above. Entrances are provided from the new boulevard, and from Ilinka and Nikol’skaia Streets.

The polyclinic, kindergarten, creche, mechanized canteen, hotel, and library are located in the lower volume behind the spectator steps. Here too are all other forms of service accommodation.

All accommodation for the working operation of the Commissariat is located in the towers, which are interconnected by aerial walkways. The Workers’ Club faces towards Sverdlov Square, and is connected by a passageway with the main entrance foyer. The total built volume of the complex is 1,064,460 cubic meters.

Arkhitektura SSSR, 1934 № 10, pgs. 14-15

Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)
Sketches and proposals by Ivan Leonidov
Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom tower proposal (1932)
Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom tower proposal (1932)
Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom tower proposal (1932)
Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom (1932)
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom proposal (1934)
Ivan Leonidov’s proposal for a House of Industry (1929)
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom model (1934)
Ivan Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom model (1934)

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On the preservation of Konstantin Melnikov’s works and heritage

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An open appeal from architects
and architectural historians

Untitled.
Image: “SOS” projected onto Konstantin
Mel’nikov’s cylindrical house (1928)
untitled2.

I recently received an e-mail from Ginés Garrido of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and S. Frederick Starr of the Johns Hopkins University requesting that I help spread the word about an initiative they’ve developed to assist in the preservation of Soviet avant-garde architect Konstantin Mel’nikov‘s works and heritage. My decision to do so was not as immediate or as obvious as it might at first seem, however.

Let me explain: As a student of history and a great admirer of Mel’nikov’s architectural corpus (built and unbuilt), I am of course in favor of maintaining and restoring the many iconic examples of his work that remain. But knowing that pitiless, unsentimental attention to the demands of technical turnover and the imperative to overturn obsolescence formed part and parcel of the worldview animating Soviet modernism, it is impossible to deny the irony of the fact that preserving buildings that no longer serve any meaningful function except as a physical reminder of the project that was once underway in Russia. Nothing would seem so preposterous to an avant-garde architect of the time than to cling to the past out of melancholy or nostalgia, let alone museumify it. Continue reading →

Soviet avant-garde architectural negatives (mid-1920s to early-1930s)

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Blueprint abstractions (all blueprints, really, are anticipatory abstractions) of modernist building projects by Soviet architects Ivan Leonidov, Leonid Vesnin, Aleksandr Vesnin, and Nikolai Krasil’nikov.

From Sovremennaia arkhitektura [Modern Architecture], 1930 (no. 5, pgs. 2-3):

In publishing projects for the Palace of Culture to be built on the Simonov Monastery site as discussion material, the editors of SA observe that not one of them provided a generally and entirely satisfactory solution to the problem. The arguments which have developed around these projects in the press, higher education establishments, and in public debates have mainly emphasized the design submitted by I. Leonidov, and as a result have come to assume the character of an undisguised persecution and baiting of the latter.

The editors of SA are perfectly well aware of the shortcomings of certain of I. Leonidov’s projects: ignoring the economic situation today at the same time as indulging in certain elements of aestheticism. All these features are undoubtedly a minus in Leonidov’s work.

Architectural blackprints.

“In place of the conception of architectural form as living organic nature, there enters the feeling for strict geometry.” Kaufmann, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier. Pg. 20.
Иван Леонидов
Ivan Leonidov, House of Industry (1929)
Leonid Vesnin, House of Culture (1930)
Vesnin brothers, House of Culture (1930)
Nikolai Krasil’nikov, “Final Diploma Project, studio of Aleksandr Vesnin)
Иван Леонидов
Ivan Leonidov’s proposal for a House of Industry (1929)
Ivan Leonidov, proposal for Magnitogorsk (1930)
Vesnin brothers, House of Culture (1930)
Иван Леонидов

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But the critics of Leonidov’s work totally fail to see what from our standpoint is a great plus in it, which for all these shortcomings makes it in certain respects better and more valuable than the work of his competitors.

…The editors of SA, whilst recognizing that some of the accusations made against him are correct (abstractness, schematicism, etc.) consider that despite this the works of Leonidov are highly valuable as material of an investigative and experimental character, and they most forcefully protest against the groundless persecution of him.

Signed,
The editors of Modern Architecture.

Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun

Ivan Leonidov’s late series on Campanella’s City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)

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after Tommaso Campanella

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Leonidov’s late work, inspired by Campanella’s famous utopia:

The greater part of the city is built upon a high hill, which rises from an extensive plain, but several of its circles extend for some distance beyond the base of the hill, which is of such a size that the diameter of the city is upward of two miles, so that its circumference becomes about seven. On account of the humped shape of the mountain, however, the diameter of the city is really more than if it were built on a plain.

It is divided into seven rings or huge circles named from the seven planets, and the way from one to the other of these is by four streets and through four gates, that look toward the four points of the compass. Furthermore, it is so built that if the first circle were stormed, it would of necessity entail a double amount of energy to storm the second; still more to storm the third; and in each succeeding case the strength and energy would have to be doubled; so that he who wishes to capture that city must, as it were, storm it seven times. For my own part, however, I think that not even the first wall could be occupied, so thick are the earthworks and so well fortified is it with breastworks, towers, guns, and ditches.

When I had been taken through the northern gate (which is shut with an iron door so wrought that it can be raised and let down, and locked in easily and strongly, its projections running into the grooves of the thick posts by a marvellous device), I saw a level space seventy paces wide between the first and second walls. From hence can be seen large palaces, all joined to the wall of the second circuit in such a manner as to appear all one palace. Arches run on a level with the middle height of the palaces, and are continued round the whole ring. There are galleries for promenading upon these arches, which are supported from beneath by thick and well-shaped columns, enclosing arcades like peristyles, or cloisters of an abbey.

City of the Sun (Civitas Solis, Город солнца)

Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)
Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun (1940s-1950s)

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МСВТ, о.п. Площадь Революции

Children of Iofan: Post-Soviet futuristic nostalgia

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Перспективный вид с юго-запада
Children of Iofan
Проект Московской Системы Воздухоплавательного транспорта описан в сообщении МСВТ, о.п. Завод Зотова
Перспективный вид с востока
МСВТ, о.п. Ясногорская (арх. Липгарт С.В.)
МСВТ, о.п. Площадь Революции
Fragment

Stunning designs by architect S.V. Lipgart.

Enjoy! Continue reading →

Sigfried Giedion’s 1963 introduction to Space, Time, and Architecture

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Confusion and Boredom

In the sixties a certain confusion exists in contemporary architecture, as in painting; a kind of pause, even a kind of exhaustion.  Everyone is aware of it.  Fatigue is normally accompanied by uncertainty, what to do and where to go.  Fatigue is the mother of indecision, opening the door to escapism, to superficialities of all kinds.

A symposium at the Metropolitan Museum of New York in the spring of 1961 discussed the question, “Modern Architecture, Death or Metamorphosis?”  As this topic indicates, contemporary architecture is regarded by some as a fashion and — as an American architect expressed it — many designers who had adopted the fashionable aspects of the “International Style,” now found the fashion had worn thin and were engaged in a romantic orgy.  This fashion, with its historical fragments picked at random, unfortunately infected many gifted architects. By the sixties its results could be seen everywhere: in small-breasted, gothic-styled colleges, in a lacework of glittering details inside and outside, in the toothpick stilts and assembly of isolated buildings of the largest cultural center.

A kind of playboy-architecture became en vogue: an architecture treated as playboys treat life, jumping from one sensation to another and quickly bored with everything. I have no doubt that this fashion born out of an inner uncertainty will soon be obsolete; but its effects can be rather dangerous, because of the worldwide influence of the United States.

Красная Москва (1990)

Красная Москва (1990)

We are still in the formation period of a new tradition, still at its beginning. In Architecture, You and Me I pointed out the difference between the nineteenth- and twentieth-century approach to architecture. There is a word we should refrain from using to describe contemporary architecture — “style.”  The moment we fence architecture within a notion of “style,” we open the door to a formalistic approach.  The contemporary movement is not a “style” in the nineteenth-century meaning of form characterization.  It is an approach to the life that slumbers unconsciously within all of us.

In architecture the word “style” has often been combined with the epithet “international,” though this epithet has never been accepted in Europe.  The term “international style” quickly became harmful, implying something hovering in mid-air, with no roots anywhere: cardboard architecture.  Contemporary architecture worthy of the name sees its main task as the interpretation of a way of life valid for our period.  There can be no question of “Death or Metamorphosis,” there can only be the question of evolving a new tradition, and many signs show that this is in the doing.

Le Corbusier in the USSR (1928-1931)

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Moscow is a factory for making plans, the Promised Land of technicians (without a Klondike).  The country is being equipped!

— Le Corbusier, “The Atmosphere of Moscow” (1930)

This post includes pictures of Le Corbusier traveling in the USSR, attending conferences, building sites, and on one of Eisenstein’s movie sets (for The Old and the New).

Le Corbusier unveiling the model of his proposal for the Palace of the Soviets (1931)
Model of Le Corbusier’s proposal for the Palace of the Soviets (1931)
Le Corbusier inspecting the building site for his Tsentrosoiuz projects (1930)
Le Corbusier with builders working on his Tsentrosoiuz projects (1930)
Urbanistic overview of Le Corbusier’s plans for the Palace of the Soviets (1931)
Le Corbusier with Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Burov (1928)
Le Corbusier sitting with Soviet modernist architect Andrei Burov (1928)
Le Corbusier working with an assistant in modeling his Palace of the Soviets proposal (1930)
Le Corbusier sitting in front of the construction site for the Tsentrosoiuz building (March 1931)
Le Corbusier standing in front of a traditional wooden Russian peasant house (1928)
Model of Le Corbusier’s proposal for the Palace of the Soviets competition (1931)
Le Corbusier standing next to a Russian peasant woman (1928)
Model of Le Corbusier and Nikolai Kolli’s Tsentrosoiuz (completed 1933)
Le Corbusier and Nikolai Kolli, Tsentrosoiuz (completed 1933)
Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Soviets (1931)
Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Soviets (1931)
Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Soviets (1931)
Interior to Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Soviets (1931)

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