Яков Чернихов, «Архитектурные фантазии: 101 композиция» (1925-33) — Along with fully searchable, downloadable PDFs of the original Russian texts

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Forty-five sketches by the brilliant former Suprematist painter and visionary architect Iakov Chernikhov, all composed between 1925-1933 and published together in his book Architectural Fantasies: 101 Compositions.

For any of my readers who know Russian, please feel free to download the full-text, searchable PDFs of these brilliant texts:

Ruins of the future

Riffing on some lines from the inimitable Owen Hatherley:

Erase the traces.

Narkomfin building, designed by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis (1929)

Destroy, in order to create.

Hallway inside Narkomfin building, photo by Liza Dedova (February 2011)

Build a new world on the ruins of the old.

Hallway of Narkomfin, photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)

This, it is often thought, is the Modernist imperative, but what of it if the new society never emerged?

Narkomzem building, designed by Aleksei Shchusev, Dmitrii Bulgakov, Iosif Frantsuz, Grigorii Yakovlev; photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)

We have been cheated out of the future, yet the future’s ruins lie about us, hidden or ostentatiously rotting.

NCSR, Commissariat of Communications, designed by Ivan Fomin (1928-1931); photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)

So what would it mean, then, to look for the future’s remnants?

Tsentrosoiuz building, designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Nikolai Kolli (1928-1933), photo by Max Semakov (April 2009)

To uncover clues about those who wanted, as Walter Benjamin put it, to “live without traces”?

Souvenir of the Crystal Palace (built 1851, destroyed by fire 1936)

Can we, should we, try and excavate utopia?

Nikolai Krasil’nikov’s terrifying planar urbanism (1928)

Nikolai Krasil’nikov
Sovremennaia arkhitektura
Vol. 3, № 6: 1928, 170-176
.
.

Problems of modern architecture
.
……Final diploma project for Aleksandr
……Vesnin’s studio at VKhUTEIN

.

In order to really know an object, it is necessary to comprehend, to study all sides of it, all its internal and external connectivities.

— Lenin

It is necessary to pursue and elaborate the implications of this proposition in every specialized field.

Central tower to Nikolai Krasil'nikov's "New City" (1928)

Nikolai Krasil’nikov’s “New City” (1928)

My initial premises:

  1. The environment in which an organic body exists has an influence upon its form.
  2. The forms of the various parts of the organic body are determined by their functions. Thus in a tree the forms of the root, the trunk, and the leaves are determined by the purposes they serve.
  3. To put it mathematically, the form of every body is a complex function of many variables (and the concept of form embraces the internal structure of the body matter).
  4. A scientific theory of the design of form can be developed through the dialectical method of thinking, with the application of mathematical methods of analysis; analysis, that is, which uses the infinitesimal quantities of analytical geometry along with both differential and integral calculus, and the theory of probability and mathematical statistics.
  5. A theory of the design of architectural form must be based on the physical, mechanical, chemical, and biological laws of nature.
  6. Socialist construction is unthinkable without the solution of economic aspects of the problem such as would yield the maximum economic effect in the very broadest sense.  So the constructional economics of a building for human work or habitation must be measured in terms of:
  • the material resources expended in erecting and running it;
  • wear (amortization) and repair of the building;
  • the time expended by people on all forms of movement in and around it;
  • impairment of the health of individuals, which depends on the extent to which the sanitary-technical norms and laws on safety at work and leisure are observed; and
  • the working conditions which would promote an improvement in the productivity of labor in general and mental work in particular, or in the conditions for leisure.

7. Under present Soviet circumstances [destvitel’nosti], the
……achievement of maximum constructional economics in
……architecture is also a vital necessity for the successful
……realization of socialism.

Continue reading

Photos of and by Ernst May and other German architects in the USSR during the 1930s

[gigya src=”http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649″ width=”300″ flashvars=”offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=/photos/rosswolfe/sets/72157630490340006/show/&page_show_back_url=/photos/rosswolfe/sets/72157630490340006/&set_id=72157630490340006&jump_to=” allowFullScreen=”true” ]

Ernst May and other German architects in the USSR, 1930s.

Taking a break, Soviet Union 1931Ernst May with his stereo camera in the Soviet Union, April 1931German architects in the USSR, journal New Frankfurt
Ilse May in the Armenian Soviet Republic, 1932The May BrigadeWorking in a meeting room of a local soviet; front left Walter Schwagenscheidt, behind from left Carl Lehmann, Wilhelm Hauss, Ms. Struve, and Ernst May, circa 1931
Wilhelm Kratz and Wilhelm Hauss with driver, Siberia 1931 (photo by Ernst May)Wilhelm Hauss, Jekaterina Nikolaevna, Frolov, and Ernst May, Magnitogorsk circa 1931)Walter Schwagenscheidt in the Soviet Union, circa 1932
Sledge tour, Tyrgan, Ernst May to the right circa 1931Nachalovki (improvised housing) near Magnitogorsk, with Walter Schwagenscheidt, 1931 (photo by Ernst May)March in Red Square commemorating Dzerzhinskii, 1931 (photo Ernst May)
IMG_1501Ilse and Thomas May in their dacha circa 1931, photographed by their father Ernst MayFigure on the Iberian Gate on Red Square, 1931 (photo by the German architect Ernst May)
Festival in Red Square, 1931 (photo Ernst May)Ernst May in his train compartment, Soviet Union (1932)Constructivist propaganda figure, 1931 (photo by Ernst May)

A number of extremely rare photos of and by Ernst May as well as other German socialist architects working in the USSR during the 1930s.

You can read a full-text English translation of Ernst May’s “City Building in the USSR” (1931) by clicking this link.

The Graveyard of Utopia: Soviet Urbanism and the Fate of the International Avant-Garde

Ivan Kudriashev’s “Luminescence” (1926)

Table of Contents

I. Introduction: Soviet Urbanism and the Fate of the International Avant-Garde

II. A Structural Overview of the Proceeding Work: The Sociohistoric Phenomenon of the International Avant-Garde and Soviet Urbanism as Its Decisive Moment

III. The Dialectic of Modernism and Traditionalism: The Development of the International Avant-Garde in Architecture

A. The Spatiotemporal Dialectic of Capitalism

B. Traditionalist Architecture

C. Modernist Architecture — Negative Bases

1. Traditionalist Architecture: “Style,” Ornamentation, and Eclecticism

2. The Academic Establishment

3. The “Anarchy of Production” under Capitalism

D. Modernist Architecture — Positive Bases

1. The Spatiotemporal Dimensions of Abstract Art (or, the Volumetrics of Modern Architecture) 

2. Industrialism (or, the Ergonomics of Modern Architecture) 

3. The Housing Shortage, the Urban Proletariat, and the Liberation of Woman (or, the Sociohistoric Mission of Modern Architecture)

IV. The Soviet Moment: The Turn toward Urbanism, the Crisis in the West, and the Crossroads of the Architectural Avant-Garde in Russia

A. The Artistic and Intellectual Origins of the Soviet Architectural Avant-Garde

B. The Further Development of the Soviet Architectural Avant-Garde into the 1930s

C. Totality, Total Architecture, and the Turn toward Urbanism

1. Totality

2. Total Architecture

3. The Turn toward Urbanism

D. The Crossroads of the Architectural Avant-Garde in Russia

V. Conclusion: The Sepulchral Cities of Modernity

VI. Notes

Ivan Leonidov, proposal for a section of Magnitogorsk (1930)

Introduction

Comrades!

The twin fires of war and revolution have devastated both our souls and our cities. The palaces of yesterday’s grandeur stand as burnt-out skeletons. The ruined cities await new builders[…]

To you who accept the legacy of Russia, to you who will (I believe!) tomorrow become masters of the whole world, I address the question: with what fantastic structures will you cover the fires of yesterday?

— Vladimir Maiakovskii, “An Open Letter to the Workers”[1]

Utopia transforms itself into actuality. The fairy tale becomes a reality. The contours of socialism will become overgrown with iron flesh, filled with electric blood, and begin to dwell full of life. The speed of socialist building outstrips the most audacious daring. In this lies the distinctive character and essence of the epoch.

— I. Chernia, “The Cities of Socialism”[2]

Between 1928 and 1937, the world witnessed the convergence of some of the premier representatives of European architectural modernism in Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities throughout the Soviet Union. Never before had there been such a concentration of visionary architectural talent in one place, devoting its energy to a single cause. Both at home and abroad, the most brilliant avant-garde minds of a generation gathered in Russia to put forth their proposals for the construction of a radically new society. Never before had the stakes seemed so high. For it was out of the blueprints for this new society that a potentially international architecture and urbanism could finally be born, the likes of which might then alter the face of the entire globe. And from this new built environment, it was believed, would emerge the outlines of the New Man, as both the outcome of the new social order and the archetype of an emancipated humanity. With such apparently broad and sweeping implications, it is therefore little wonder that its prospective realization might have then attracted the leading lights of modernist architecture, both within the Soviet Union and without. By that same account, it is hardly surprising that the architectural aspect of engineering a postcapitalist society would prove such a captivating subject of discussion to such extra-architectural discourses as politics, sociology, and economics.

Le Corbusier in Paris unveiling his model for his Palais des Soviets (1931)

Le Corbusier sitting in front of the construction site for the Tsentrosoiuz Building in Moscow (March 1931)

The bulk of the major individual foreign architects and urbanists who contributed to the Soviet cause came from Germany. Such luminaries as Walter Gropius,[3] Ludwig Hilberseimer, and Peter Behrens each contributed to Soviet design competitions. Former Expressionists — now turned modernists — like Bruno Taut, his brother Max, Arthur Korn, Hans Poelzig, and Erich Mendelsohn all joined the greater project of socialist construction in the USSR.[4] Major architects also arrived from other parts throughout Western Europe, eager to participate in the Soviet experiment. Foremost among them, hailing from Switzerland, was the French-Swiss archmodernist Le Corbusier, whose writings on architecture and urbanism had already become influential in Russia since at least the mid-1920s. From France additionally appeared figures like André Lurçat and Auguste Perret,[5] lending their talents to the Soviet cause. The preeminent Belgian modernist Victor Bourgeois actively supported its architectural enterprise as well.

Foreign architects at work on Magnitogorsk, including Mart Stam and Johan Niegeman (circa 1931-1932)

Ernst May’s “May Brigade” (1930)

Ernst May lecturing in the Soviet Union on his proposal for Magnitogorsk (1930)

Ernst May dressed in heavy winter gear in the Soviet Union, late 1930

Besides the major individual figures attached to this effort, there existed several noteworthy aggregations of international architects and urbanists, under the heading of “brigades.” The German socialist Ernst May, mastermind of the highly-successful Neue Frankfurt settlement, traveled to Russia along with a number of his lesser-known countrymen, including Eugen Kaufmann, Wilhelm Derlam, Ferdinand Kramer,[6] Walter Kratz, and Walter Schwagenscheidt. The Austrians Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (designer of the famous “Frankfurt Kitchen”), her husband Wilhelm Schütte, and Anton Brenner also accompanied May in his journeys.[7] Together with the Hungarian Bauhaus student Alfréd Forbát,[8] the German-Swiss builder Hans Schmidt, and theBauhaus and De Stijl veteran Mart Stam, originally from Holland, these architects comprised the famous “May’s Brigade” of city planning. Many other German architects and city-planners, still less well-known, belonged to May’s group as well: Hans Burkart, Max Frühauf, Wilhelm Hauss, Werner Hebebrand, Karl Lehmann, Hans Leistikow, Albert Löcher, Ulrich Wolf, Erich Mauthner, Hans Schmidt, and Walter Schulz, to list a few.[9]

André Lurçat in Moscow, 1934

Members of Hannes Meyer’s “Red Brigade” in the Soviet Union (1931)

Hannes Meyer, another Swiss German, also departed for Moscow, after being suddenly dismissed from his position as director of the Bauhaus on grounds of his leftist political sympathies.[10] He took with him seven of his best students from Dessau, who were themselves of quite varied backgrounds: Tibor Weiner and Béla Scheffler, both Hungarian nationals; Arieh Sharon, of Polish-Jewish extraction; Antonín Urban, a Czech architect; and finally Konrad Püschel, Philip Tolziner, René Mensch, and Klaus Meumann, all German citizens.[11] These members together comprised the so-called “Red Brigade.” A number of other German architects associated with Kurt Meyer’s (unrelated to Hannes) urban and suburban group were also shown in attendance at the international building conference in Moscow in 1932: Magnus Egerstedt, Josef Neufeld, Walter Vermeulen, E. Kletschoff, Julius Neumann, Johan Niegemann, Hans-Georg Grasshoff, Peer Bücking, and Steffen Ahrends.[12]

Albert Kahn’s Cheliabinsk tractor factory (1934)

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. and Mrs. Iofan at a banquet, Moscow (1937)

Czech modernists Vítězslav Nezval and Karel Teige in Moscow (1926)

The newly formed constellation of Eastern Europe that emerged out of the postwar dissolution of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires was also represented in force by some of its leading modernists. From Czechoslovakia, the great Constructivist poet and architectural critic Karel Teige[13] lent his incisive observations to the Soviet Union’s various attempts at regional and municipal planning. Two of Teige’s close compatriots in the Czech avant-garde, the functionalist architects Jiří Kroha[14] and Jaromír Krejcar,[15] were already active in the Soviet Union at that time. Besides Wiener, Scheffler, and Forbát, who were associated with May’s and Meyer’s groups in Moscow, the Hungarian modernists Laszlo Péri, Imre Perényi,[16] and Stefan Sebök[17] each worked independently for the Soviet state. Finally, the Polish avant-gardists Edgar Norwerth[18] and Leonard Tomaszewski[19] also collaborated with various organs of the government of the USSR during the execution of its second five-year plan.

The radical architect and Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer (1930)

Bruno Taut, Grete Schutte-Lihotsky, and others in the Soviet Union (1933)

A number of American architects contributed to the Soviet effort as well.  Albert Kahn, the celebrated builder of Detroit — along with his brother, Moritz Kahn — helped design over five hundred factories in the Soviet Union as part of its push toward industrialization.[20]  Thomas Lamb, the well-established constructor of many of America’s first cinemas, and Percival Goodman, an urban theorist who would later build many famous American synagogues, also offered their abilities to the Soviet state.[21] The pioneering American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, though he would not officially visit Russia until 1937, nevertheless spoke openly about the greatness of the Soviet project during the early 1930s. By the early 1930s, Wright was disillusioned with the capitalist socioeconomic system: “The capitalistic system is a gambling game. It is hard to cure gamblers of gambling and everybody high and low in this country prefers the gambler’s chance at a great fortune to the slower growth of a more personal fortune.” By contrast, he exclaimed the virtues of the Soviet project: “I view the USSR as a heroic endeavor to establish more genuine human values in a social state than any existing before. Its heroism and devotion move me deeply and with great hope.”[22]

VKhUTEMAS students, 1927

First OSA Conference, 1928

Despite the great influx of foreign modernists seen during this period, however, the influence of the new architectural avant-garde was hardly alien to the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it had begun to establish itself there as early as 1921 — if one discounts the renowned monument proposed by Tatlin for the Third International in 1918.[23] That year witnessed the appointment of the architects Nikolai Ladovskii, Nikolai Dokuchaev, and the sculptor Boris Efimov to the faculty of VKhUTEMAS, the well-known Moscow technical school often compared to the Bauhaus in Germany.[24] Along with Vladimir Krinskii, Konstantin Mel’nikov, and the international modernist El Lissitzky, Ladovskii and Dokuchaev went on to constitute the avant-garde group ASNOVA (the Association of New Architects) in 1923, though it would only publish the declaration of its existence in 1926. Ladovskii’s brightest pupil and laboratory assistant Georgii Krutikov would join the group upon graduating the academy in 1928. Opposed to ASNOVA, the equally-stalwart modernist OSA (Society of Modern Architects) formed the Constructivist school of architectural thought in 1925, led by such outstanding designers as Leonid, Aleksandr, and Viktor Vesnin and their chief theorist Moisei Ginzburg. Il’ia Golosov officially became a member in 1926, followed by two of their exemplary students, Ivan Leonidov and Nikolai Krasil’nikov, in 1927 and 1928 respectively. Though divergent in terms of their fundamental principles, both OSA and ASNOVA were united in their opposition to atavistic architecture and their mutual commitment to modernity.

Wall Street crash, 1929

Schmitt’s “Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy” incarnate: Burning of the German parliament, the Reichstag (1933)

The overwhelming gravity that the debates over Soviet urbanism held for the avant-garde, their seemingly high stakes, is difficult to emphasize enough. Just as the USSR was first embarking upon its five-year plans, the nations of the West were facing the threefold crisis of global capitalism, of parliamentary democracy,[25] and of the European sciences[26] in general. At no prior point had the future of the worldwide socioeconomic system of capital seemed so uncertain — never had its basis been so shaken. On nearly every front — economic, political, and epistemological — it faced defeat. Italy, Germany, and finally Spain fell beneath the rising tide of Fascism. Everywhere it seemed that Europe was entering into the darkness of Spenglerian decline.

Comrade Lenin clearing the Earth of the rabble (1920)

Workers of the World, Unite!

But by that same score, in a positive sense there had never been a planning project as ambitious as the Soviet centralized economy. It represented a moment of unprecedented opportunity for international modernists to build on the highest possible scale, the chance to realize their visions at the level of totality.[27] For with the huge projected budgets set aside for new construction toward the end of the 1920s, the modernists saw an opening to implement their theories not just locally, but on a regional, national, and — should the flames of revolution fan to Europe — a potentially international scale. This mere fact alone should hint at the reason so many members of the architectural avant-garde, who so long dreamed of achieving an “international style”[28] without boundaries, would be attracted to the Soviet cause. That the number of international representatives of the avant-garde swelled to such an unparalleled degree should come as no surprise, either, given the prospect of imminently realizing their most utopian dreams. In the midst of the collapse of the old order, as heralded by world war, pestilence (Spanish influenza), revolution, and a nearly universal depression, it appeared as if the modernists were being granted their deepest wish — of erecting a new society upon the ashes of that which had preceded it. “Our world, like a charnel-house, lays strewn with the detritus of dead epochs,” Le Corbusier had thundered in 1925.[29] In the wake of global instability, crash, and catastrophe, the Soviet five-year plan seemed to offer to him and his fellow avant-gardists the chance to wipe the slate clean.

VKhUTEMAS poster celebrating the Five-Year Plan

Poster for the First Five-Year Plan (1928), with vaguely antisemitic overtones

It is therefore little wonder that the tenor of the debates over Soviet urbanism should have been cast in such stark terms. The fate of the entire avant-garde, if not society itself, hung in the balance. Whichever principles won out might ultimately determine the entire course of future building for the USSR, and perhaps the world (pending the outcome of the seemingly terminal crisis in the West). Modernist architects, who had up to that point been mainly concerned with the design of individual structures, and only here and there touched on the greater problem of urbanism, now scrambled to articulate their theoretical stances on the issue of “socialist settlement.” As a number of rival positions emerged, they came into heated conflict with one another. Whole books were written and articles published in popular Soviet journals defending one theory and attacking all that opposed it. And so the disputes did not merely take on the character of modernism combating its old traditionalist rival, but that of a radically fractured unity of the modernist movement itself. The fresh lines of division being carved within the architectural avant-garde did not owe so much to national peculiarities as it did to the radicality of the question now being posed before it: that of the fundamental restructuring of human habitation. For the issues at hand were not simply the reorganization of already-existing cities, but also the construction of entirely new settlements from the ground up. The intransigent tone that the debates subsequently assumed is thus more a testament to the urgency and sincerity of the modernist theories of the city being put forth than it is to some sort of arbitrary disagreement over matters of trivial importance.

Le Corbusier, Sergei Eisenstein, and Andrei Burov (1928)

Members of the forcibly unionized Union of Soviet Architects (1932)

This point is especially important to stress, moreover, in light of some interpretations that have recently dismissed these crucial differences in the avant-garde’s architectural visions of utopia as a quantité négligible. Not long ago, the argument was advanced that these theoretical disputes amounted to little more than quibbling pettiness on the part of the members of the avant-garde. According to this version of events, the modernists merely dressed up their personal animosities, jealousies, and professional rivalries in high-sounding rhetoric and thereby ruined any chance for productive collaboration with one another. Moreover, it asserts that it was this very disunity that led to the modernists’ eventual defeat at the hands of the Stalinists. Weakened by the years of petty bickering, this argument maintains, the two main groups representing the architectural avant-garde (OSA and ASNOVA) were easily undercut by the fledgling, proto-Stalinist organization VOPRA, working in cahoots with the party leadership. Had the members of the avant-garde been willing to set aside their differences, this outlook would have it, they might have prevailed against the combined strength of their opponents.[30]

Plan for the Functional City (1932), for a conference that was to have been held in Moscow

Of course, this account almost completely overlooks the international dimension of the debates, choosing instead to narrowly focus on the faculty politics taking place within the walls of the VKhUTEMAS school of design. While this was doubtless an important stage of the debate, it can scarcely be considered the decisive grounds on which the war over Soviet architecture was waged. It is symptomatic that such an interpretation would leap suddenly from the middle part of the 1920s to the final defeat of the architectural avant-garde in the 1937, ignoring practically everything that transpired in between. As a result, it is able to treat the problem as a merely internal affair, concerning only Soviet architects. This then allows the importance of the tensions within the VKhUTEMAS leadership throughout the early- to mid-1920s to be grossly overstated.[31] Even if the field of inquiry is thus limited, however, the polemics can by no means be reduced to mere cynicism. Such bitterness and resentment could just as easily be an outcome of (rather than a ground for) heated argumentation.

Zinoviev in a motorcade (1929)

Lunacharskii at a congress of Working Artists (1923)

But this notion — that the real differences within the modernists’ debates over Soviet architecture and urbanism were largely exaggerated — is swiftly dispelled once one takes note of the extra-architectural interest surrounding their potential results. For architects were hardly the only ones worried about the form that new Soviet settlements would take. The ideological influence of architecture on society was not lost on non-architects within the Soviet hierarchy. Many thinkers, scattered across a wide range of vocations, were therefore drawn into the discourse on socialist city planning. Quite a few economists participated in the discussion. Besides Leonid Sabsovich, a writer for the state journal Planned Economy and a major figure in the debates, economists like Stanislav Strumilin (one of Planned Economy’s editors) and Leonid Puzis weighed in on the material aspects of the various schemas of town planning. Professional sociologist Mikhail Okhitovich joined OSA in 1928, and went on to become one of its major spokesmen. The celebrated journalist and author Vladimir Giliarovskii reported on some considerations of nervo-psychological health in the socialist city.[32] Even more telling of the perceived centrality of the problem of Soviet urbanism to the five-year plan is the number of high-ranking party members and government officials who wrote on the matter. The Commissar of Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharskii, Lenin’s widow Nadezhda Krupskaia, the old guard Bolshevik Grigorii Zinov’ev, and the doctor and Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko all devoted lengthy articles to the consideration of different proposed solutions to the issue of urban planning. So clearly, the detailed differences between the various Soviet urban projects concerned more than solely the architects.

Painting of Stalin atop the Kremlin in Moscow (1935)

Lazar’ Kaganovich, far right, Stalin’s Commissar of Railways and overseer of the rebuilding project for Moscow, including the Moscow metro system (1932)

Another historiographical point that must be made is that what appears to have been “Stalinist” from the outset could not have been recognized as such at the time. The emergent features of what came to be known as Stalinism — its bureaucratic deformities, thuggery, and cultural philistinism — had not yet fully crystallized by the early 1930s. While it is true that these qualities may have been prefigured to some extent by the failure of the German and Hungarian revolutions after the war, the USSR’s consequent isolation, and the cascading effects of the political involutions that followed — none of this could be seen as yet. The betrayed commitment to international revolution, the disastrous (if inevitable) program of “Socialism in One Country,” did not bear their fruits until much later. The residual hope remaining from the original promise of the revolution echoed into the next two decades, before the brutal realities of Stalin’s regime eventually set in. In 1930, there was no “Stalinist” architecture to speak of. Even the eclectic designs of the academicians did not fully anticipate what was to come. The contours of what would later be called “Stalinist” architecture — that grotesque hybrid-creation of monumentalist gigantism and neoclassical arches, façades, and colonnades — only became clear after a long and painful process of struggle and disillusionment. Toward the beginning of the decade, a number of possibilities seemed yet to be decided upon, and so the utopian dream of revolution continued to live on.[33]

Viktor Kalmykov, project “Saturn,” proposal for a levitating city (1930), studio of Nikolai Ladovskii

Soviet utopia: Proposal for Krasnoiarsk, the “red city” (1931)

Whatever latent realm of possibility may have still seemed to exist at the moment the Soviet Union initiated its planning program, however, its actual results admit of no such uncertainties. The defeat of modernist architecture was resounding and unambiguous. And while it would survive and even flourish in the West following the Second World War, the avant-garde left something of its substance behind in Russia. Its external form remained — with its revolutionary use of concrete, glass, and other materials, its austere lines and structural severity — but it had been deprived of its inner core, and now stood devoid of content. For architectural modernism had hitherto expressed an inseparable duality, and deduced its role as both a reflection of contemporary society and an effort to transform it. These two aspects, its attempt to create a universal formal language that corresponded to modern realities and its sociohistorical mission to fundamentally reshape those very realities, were inextricably bound up with one another. When the architectural avant-garde ultimately failed to realize itself by achieving this mission, it became cynical; its moment of opportunity missed, it chose instead to abandon the task of helping remake society. Cast out of the Soviet Union, the modernists let go of their visions of utopia and made their peace with the prevailing order in the West. They pursued traditional avenues like public contracts and individual commissions to accomplish each of their proposals. No longer did they dream of building a new society, but focused on limited projects of reform rather than calling for an all-out revolution. Emptied of its foundational content, however, modernism gradually gave way to post-modernism as architecture became even further untethered from its basis. Reduced to a set of organizational forms, modernist design grew increasingly susceptible to criticisms of its apparently “dull” and “lifeless” qualities. Modernism’s capitulation to the realities of bourgeois society doomed it to obsolescence. The modern itself had become passé.

Georgii Krutikov’s “flying city” (1929)

Georgii Krutikov's proposal for a "city of the future" (1929)

Georgii Krutikov’s proposed “city of the future” (1929)

Shuttlepod for Georgii Krutikov's "flying city" (1929)

Shuttlepod for the “flying city”

Framed in this way, this paper will assert that the outcome of the debates over Soviet urbanism in the 1930s sealed the fate of the international avant-garde. All of its prior commitments to general social change were reneged. Modernism’s longstanding duty to solve the problem of “the minimum dwelling,”[34] which for Marxists was closely tied into Engels’ work on The Housing Question,[35] was relinquished after only the first few CIAM conventions (1929-1931). Its resolution to put an end to wasteful (even criminal[36]) ornamentation and make all building more functional was scaled back to a mere stylistic choice, rather than a general social practice. Likewise, modernism’s call for a uniform, standardized, and industrialized architecture of the home was replaced by a tendency to custom-design each individual dwelling — usually the wealthier ones — as its spare, geometric style became chic among the upper classes. The mass-production of housing, serialized with interchangeable parts, was instead taken up by companies building in a more traditional style, hoping to turn a cheap profit housing students or the poor. Those bleak modernist housing complexes that were created all too often became places to merely stuff away the impoverished classes, cramped and out of sight. (That such places would become areas of high concentration for drug use and petty crime is only fitting). Finally, the quest for a universal architectural language was abandoned. This language was adopted exclusively by those particular architects who identified themselves with the modernist movement, and even then it was pursued on only a piecemeal basis.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s monument to Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemburg (1926)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (1958)

The Soviet Union alone had presented the modernists with the conditions necessary to realize their original vision. Only it possessed the centralized state-planning organs that could implement building on such a vast scale.[37] Only it promised to overcome the clash of personal interests entailed by the “sacred cow” of private property.[38] And only it had the sheer expanse of land necessary to approximate the spatial infinity required by the modernists’ international imagination.[39] The defeat of architectural modernism in Russia left the country a virtual graveyard of the utopian visions of unbuilt worlds that had once been built upon it. It is only after one grasps the magnitude of the avant-garde’s sense of loss in this theater of world history that all the subsequent developments of modernist architecture in the twentieth century become intelligible. For here it becomes clear how an architect like Mies van der Rohe, who early in his career designed the Monument to the communist heroes Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemburg in 1926, would curry favor with the Nazis in the 1930s,[40] and then later become the man responsible for one of the swankiest monuments to high-Fordist capitalism, the Seagram’s Building of 1958. And here one can see how Le Corbusier, embittered by the Soviet experience, would briefly flirt with Vichy fascism during the war before going on to co-design the United Nations Building in New York. Continue reading

The Soviet Moment: The Turn toward Urbanism, the Crisis in the West, and the Crossroads of the Architectural Avant-Garde in Russia

Ivan Leonidov, proposal for a section of Magnitogorsk (1930)

Introduction to Part Two of The Graveyard of Utopia: Soviet Urbanism and the Fate of the International Avant-Garde

The Soviet architectural avant-garde was never as unified as its counterparts in the West.  Almost from the moment of its emergence in the early 1920s, its members were divided along theoretical and methodological lines.  The two main currents of modernist thought on architecture in the Soviet Union could not come to terms over which positive basis of the new architecture held primacy over the others.  One side upheld the formal properties of abstract art as the prime determinant of avant-garde architectural practice; the other side stressed the functional properties of the machine as its foundation.  A similar tension was always latent in modernist architecture internationally, but in no other nation did there result a full-on split like the one experienced by the Soviet avant-garde.  The two competing tendencies were organized into the groups OSA and ASNOVA, as mentioned previously,[1] though subsequent schisms would also occur.  These groups respectively identified themselves as Constructivists (disparagingly dubbed “functionalists” by their opponents) on the one hand and Rationalists (disparagingly dubbed “formalists” by their opponents) on the other.  Though no equivalent rift ever formed within the other national avant-gardes, the Soviet example serves to highlight some of the internal contradictions that existed in modernist ideology as a whole.

German Building in the USSR (1929)

Ernst May’s proposal for the city of Magnitogorsk (1931)

Though the modernist architects in the USSR were fully conversant with avant-garde developments in the West, this was the fractured and fragmented theoretical landscape on which their European and American colleagues would have to stake out their positions.  With the global crisis of capitalism in 1929 and the crisis of parliamentary democracy in the West — along with the ominous rise of ultranationalist (fascist) sentiments in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain — many architects outside the Soviet Union looked to the young socialist state as a beacon of hope in an increasingly dark world.  As fortune would have it, the Soviet government was launching its revolutionary program of centralized planning and deliberate industrialization just as the international avant-garde was starting to expound its theories of urban planning post-1925.  The Soviet Union seemed to offer an unprecedented opportunity to the modernists.  It presented a vast canvas onto which the architects could project their most utopian ambitions.

The New Russia, a German periodical (1928)

Mart Stam’s blueprints for Makeevka (1932)

Here, the inherently totalizing aspect of modernist architectural thought was first made manifest.  As the members of the avant-garde began to extrapolate their theories of urbanism from first principles, they came to a deadlock over which particular vision to follow.  While many of the foreign architects were invited to the Soviet Union in order to negotiate some of these impasses, they often found it difficult to make such compromises themselves.  New fissures surfaced as longstanding alliances between certain architects broke down.  Meanwhile, Russia’s technological deficit and relative paucity of advanced building materials led to insurmountable obstacles, preventing the practical realization of the modernists’ plans.  Even more troubling was a cultural shift that was taking place within the Soviet Union, as some of the more radical and novel forms introduced by the modernists in literature and the arts were condemned as “bourgeois” and illegible to the working masses.  The logic of this shift may have owed to a dynamic intrinsic to Russian culture, as Paperny has suggested,[2] but if so, I would like to advance the hypothesis that this occurred mainly as a consequence of the failure of social revolutions to spread in the West following World War I.  If socialism had been established on a more international basis, it is perhaps possible that the peculiarities of Russian culture might not have imposed their logic so unilaterally.  This is, of course, a counterfactual speculation, and it is admittedly a dangerous business to insinuate what alternate historical sequence might have resulted had things only played out differently.  Nevertheless, it is not a point of too much controversy to assert that the USSR’s political isolation had something to do with the grim turn of events that took place for the modernist enterprise in that country.  Also, it should not be thought impossible that some of the cultural binaries that Paperny locates within Russian history (horizontal/vertical,[3] uniform/hierarchical[4]) might not have reflected — or even been reinforced by — broader social binaries emerging out of the dialectical development of global capitalism (such as the spatiotemporal dialectic we have hitherto identified).

OSA’s proposal for Magnitogorsk, by Moisei Ginzburg, Mikhail Okhitovich, and Mikhail Barshch (1930)

Ivan Leonidov – Magnitogorsk Proposal (1930)

Either way, it is crucial to review some of the proposed solutions to the question of planning in the Soviet Union advanced by the international avant-garde, insofar as they sought to address the social problems that so preoccupied them — the housing shortage, the liberation of woman, urban alienation, the antithesis of town and country, and man’s greater estrangement from nature.  Even if these plans were never realized, even if their blatant utopianism foreclosed any possibility they might have possessed from the start, the fact that they were ever imagined at all is itself significant.  For no such visions of an ideal world had ever been dreamt up on such an extraordinary scale: from Plato to More and Campanella, from Renaissance sketches of the città ideale to the fantasies of Boullée and Ledoux, to Owen’s New Harmony, Fourier’s phalanstère, and beyond — never had these propositions amounted to anything more than idle thought experiments or modest programs for single cities existing in isolation from the rest of society.  “[The utopians] still dream of an experimental realization of their social utopias, the establishment of individual phalansteries, the foundation of home colonies, the building of a little Icaria — pocket editions of the new Jerusalem,” wrote Marx and Engels, in their famous Manifesto.[5]  Such utopias were doomed to fail, they argued, as they simply fled from bourgeois society rather than try to overcome it.  By the 1920s and 1930s, however, the Bolsheviks had seemingly uprooted capitalism in Russia, and the rest of the world still appeared ripe for revolution (especially with the onset of the Depression).  For with the maturation of capitalism over the latter half of the nineteenth century, utopia had now been reimagined on a global scale, reflecting at once the real commercial and economic interdependence of nations as well as socialist theories of world revolution.  H.G. Wells expressed this succinctly in his famous Modern Utopia (1905):

No less than a planet will serve the purpose of a modern Utopia.  Time was when a mountain valley or an island seemed to promise sufficient isolation for a polity to maintain itself intact from outward force; the Republic of Plato stood armed ready for defensive war, and the New Atlantis and the Utopia of More in theory, like China and Japan through many centuries of effectual practice, held themselves isolated from intruders.  Such late instances as Butler’s satirical “Erewhon,” and Mr. Stead’s queendom of inverted sexual conditions in Central Africa, found the Tibetan method of slaughtering the inquiring visitor a simple, sufficient rule.  But the whole trend of modern thought is against the permanence of any such enclosures…A state powerful enough to keep isolated under modern conditions would be powerful enough to rule the world, would be, indeed, if not actively ruling, yet passively acquiescent in all other human organizations, and so responsible for them altogether.  World-state, therefore, it must be.[6]

Nikolai Ladovskii’s dynamo-“parabolic” vision of “New Moscow”

Andrei Burov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Le Corbusier (1928)

A Modern Utopia, which in many ways marked the culmination of the series of utopian novels that started in the last decades of the nineteenth century, envisioned the world that was already beginning to emerge around Wells.  This world stood in stark contrast to the ones portrayed in previous utopias, especially in that it was all-encompassing.  It did not admit of localization; nothing could rightfully stand outside of it.  Thereby mirroring the abstract, globalizing spatiality of capitalism, the planetary scale of modern utopianism was combined with the social mission of modernist architecture in its ambition to reshape all of society.  Though Stalin already formulated the notion of sotsializm v’odnoi strane (“Socialism in One Country”) by 1924,[7] the architectural avant-garde within Russia and without retained its commitment to internationalism.  As Paperny has rightly observed, “‘Workers of the world unite!’ — this Marxist slogan, written in Culture One [Paperny’s term for avant-garde culture] on the covers of nearly all architectural publications (and totally absent from that venue in Culture Two [Paperny’s term for Stalinist culture]), indicates that the idea of the international unity of a single class clearly dominated in Culture One over the concepts of either national or state unity.”[8]  The last traces of this celebrated slogan from the end of the Manifesto only disappeared in 1934 from the covers of the popular architectural journals Building Moscow and Architecture of the USSR (successor to the 1931-1934 union journal Soviet Architecture, itself the successor to the iconic 1926-1930 Constructivist periodical Modern Architecture).

Plan for “New Moscow” (April 1929)

Moisei Ginzburg and Mikhail Barshch, Disurbanist scheme for a linear city (1930)

The ultimate collapse of the avant-garde project in the Soviet Union, symbolically marked first by the outcome of the 1932 design competition for the Palace of the Soviets and capped off by the expulsion of all foreign architects in 1937, signaled the demise of one important dimension of modernist architecture.  The social mission that had provided the avant-garde with such positive momentum in its early years was now abandoned.  Its fascination with the forms of industrial engineering and abstract composition remained, but its sense of duty to redress social grievances (or to even fundamentally transform society) vanished.  Curtis makes the following remark regarding this point: “The modern movement was a revolution in social purpose as well as architectural forms.  It tried to reconcile industrialism, society, and nature, projecting prototypes for mass housing and ideal plans for entire cities.”[9]  Following the Soviet fiasco and the general hiatus of new construction up through the end of the Second World War, this feeling of social purpose had evaporated.  Already by 1960, Banham could take stock of the way that modern architecture had come to be perceived as part of the armature of Fordist administrative capitalism.  “[I]f the [modern] style has finished up as the architecture of anonymous corporate domination,” reminded Banham, “it is worth remembering that this was not how it started out.”[10]  It is the thesis of the present study that the modernists’ experience in the USSR, the Soviet moment, marked the pivotal turning point in this development.


[1] See page 6 of the present paper.

[2] The principal focus of Paperny’s brilliant Culture Two is on the structural opposition of two patterns operative within Russian culture, which can be identified with the “avant-garde” 1920s and the “Stalinist” 1930s-1950s: “The concept of Culture One is constructed here primarily based on materials from the 1920s, whereas Culture Two is based on materials from the 1930s to 1950s.”

However, Paperny identifies these two cultural patterns as broader tendencies within Russian history as a whole, extending back at least as far as the ascension of the Muscovite principality in the sixteenth century: “The juxtaposition of Cultures One and Two is a convenient way to describe the events that transpired in the same space but at different times.  This work voices that a certain portion of the events in Russian history (including events having to do with changes in spatial conceptions) can be described in terms of an alternation of the ascendancy of Culture One and Culture Two.  Therefore, because I wish to trace a unifying principle throughout history, my attention is primarily focused on the territory of the Muscovite State under Ivan III, and especially Moscow.”  Paperny, Vladimir.  Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two.  Translated by John Hill and Roann Barris in collaboration with Vladimir Paperny.  (Cambridge University Press.  New York, NY: 2002).  Pg. xxiii.  Originally published in 1985.

[3] Ibid., pgs. 44-69.

[4] Ibid., pgs. 70-103.

[5] Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party.  Pg. 28.

[6] Wells, H.G.  A Modern Utopia.  (University of Nebraska Press.  New York, NY: 1967).  Pgs. 11-12.

[7] “[T]he theory that the victory of socialism in one country is impossible, has proved to be an artificial and untenable theory.  The seven years’ history of the proletarian revolution in Russia speaks not for but against this theory.”  Stalin, Iosif.  “The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists? [Preface to a book On the Road to October].”  Translator uncredited.  Collected Works, Volume 6: 1924.  (Foreign Languages Publishing House.  Moscow, Soviet Union: 1954).  Pg. 414.

[8] Paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two.  Pg. 44.

[9] Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900.  Pg. 15.

[10] Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age.  Pg. 9.

Karel Teige’s The Minimum Dwelling (1932), Printer’s Copy PDF Download

Karel Teige

Karel Teige, the Czech communist, avant-garde artist, and architectural critic, was known for many insightful works.  The Minimum Dwelling, finished in 1932, attempted to take stock of the International Congress of Modern Architects’ (CIAM’s) plan to create comfortable, livable standardized dwellings for the working masses of Europe and the world.  It was meant as an answer to the housing crisis that had pervaded Europe for decades, about which the late Engels had composed his popular polemic, The Housing Question.  Yet at the same time it was an attempt to elaborate an international program for architecture, based in the Constructivist/Functionalist style developed by Moisei Ginzburg and others, with explicitly socialist implications in its proposed implementation.  Yet he was writing as the reality in the Soviet Union was turning deeply reactionary on the artistic, architectural, and cultural fronts, and so his work can be seen as capturing the last flickering of hope of revolutionary modernism.  Teige unwittingly invokes Stalin and Kaganovich in support of his radical proposals, yet little did he know that it was precisely these figures who closed the books on the architectural avant-garde in the USSR for decades.  After Czechoslovakia became integrated into the Eastern Bloc after the Second World War, Teige remained optimistic.  Yet soon thereafter he was publicly accused of being a Trotskyist, and he died in 1952, after suffering several nervous breakdowns.

The perfect printer’s copy of the PDF, complete with searchable text and illustrations, can be downloaded here:

Karel Teige – The Minimum Dwelling (1932)

Moisei Ginzburg, “New Methods of Architectural Thought”/Моисей Гинзбург, «Новые методы архитектурного мышления» (1926)

[From Modern Architecture, 1926 (no. 1, pgs. 1-4)]

[Pg. 1]

One decade separates us from the architectural “affluence” of the pre-Revolutionary era, when in Petersburg, Moscow, and other great centers the best Russian architects lightheartedly cultivated every possible “style.”

Is a decade so much?

It is a small fissure in time.  But the Revolution, in sweeping away the stagnant prejudices and outlived canons, has turned the fissure into an abyss.  On the far side of that abyss remain the last witherings of the already decrepit system of European thinking, of that unprincipled eclecticism which always has a thousand aesthetic recipes at the ready, all of them approved by our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.  Such thinking was ready to ladle out truth from wherever suited — provided it was from a source in the past.

On this side of the abyss is opening up a new path which still has to be paved, and great new expanses of space which still have to be developed and populated.  The outlook and worldview of the contemporary architect is being forged in the circumstances of today and new methods of architectural thinking are being created.

Instead of the old system in architectural designing, where the plan, construction, and external treatment of the building were in a state of constant antagonism, and where the architect had to use his powers to the full as peacemaker in irreconcilable conflicts of interest, the new architectural work is characterized above all by its single indivisible aim and aspiration.  It is a process in which the task is hammered out logically and which represents a consciously creative [sozidatel’ny] process from beginning to end.

In place of the abstracted and extremely individualistic inspiration of the old-style architect, the contemporary architect is firmly convinced that the architectural task, like any other, can only be solved through a precise elucidation of the factors involved [the “unknowns”] and by pursuing the correct method of solution.

The architect sees around him the fearless creativity of inventors in various fields of contemporary technology, as with gigantic steps it conquers the earth, the ocean depths, and the air, winning new bridgeheads by the hour.  It is not difficult to see that these astonishing successes of human genius are explained, in general, by the fact that the right method was pursued in tackling the task.  The inventor knows full well that however energetic the upsurge of his creative enthusiasm may be, it wil be useless without a sober consideration of all the minutiae in the circumstances surrounding his activity.  He is fully armed with contemporary knowledge.  He takes account of all the conditions of today.  He conquers the future.

Certainly it would be naïve to replace the complex art of architecture by an imitation of even the [Pg. 2] most sparkling forms of contemporary technology.  This period of naïve “machine symbolism” is already outdated.  In this field it is only the inventor’s creative method that the contemporary architect must master.  Any mould or model from the past must be categorically repudiated, however beautiful it may be, for the pursuits of the architect are in their essence precisely such invention, just like all other invention.  His is a work of invention which has set itself the aim of organizing and constructing a concrete practical task not just in response to the dictates of today but as something that will serve the needs of tomorrow.

Original model of the Vesnin brothers’ proposal for the Leningrad Pravda building

Thus first and foremost we face the question of clearly exposing all the unknowns of the problem.  First among these are the unknowns of a general charcter, dictated by our epoch as a whole.  Here we are identifying those particular features of the problem which derive from the emergence of a new social consumer of architecture — the class of workers, who are organizing not only their own contemporary way of life but also the complex forms of new economic life of the State.  It is not a question of adapting to the individual tastes of this new consumer.  Unfortunately, in posing the problem it is often reduced to precisely this, and people hastily try to attribute to worker tastes and preferences which are essentially echoes of old pre-revolutionary attitudes.

Least of all is it a matter of tastes here at all.  What we are concerned with is elucidating the characteristics of the new consumer, as a powerful collective which is building a socialist state.

It is a question, above all, of the principle of plannedness.  This must not just be a feature of the way leading state organs operate, but must become part of the work of every architect.  It is how the solving of individual problems becomes part of the larger productive network of the country as a whole.

The character of a contemporary architect’s work is radically altered by the fact that he recognizes his activity to be the establishing of architectural standards for the organization of new dwellings and towns, rather than the fulfillment of individual commissions.  He sees it as his task to be continually advancing and improving those standards, in connection with the larger characteristics of production and with the advancing technological levels both here and internationally.  In the conditions through which we are living as we develop socialism, each new solution by the architect, be it a dwelling block, a workers’ club, or a factory, is conceived by us as the invention of a more advanced model or type, which answers the demands of its brief and is suitable for multiple production in whatever quantities the needs of the state require.  From the very start, this situation diverts the architect’s energy away from the pursuit of a solution answering individual tastes, and redirects it towards further improvement of the standard type which he has devised, and a fuller, more sophisticated standardization of its details.  But in order that these type-solutions may undergo a genuinely radical renewal, they must derive from the new principles of a rational urbanism which will satisfy tomorrow’s needs as well as today’s. It is thus obvious that the conditions of our State will authoritatively throw us from the single architectural unit, through a complicated manufacturing process, to the whole complex, the village, the township, and the city.

Sketch of the Vesnins’ Leningrad Pravda Building (1924)

Unfortunately, the specialists at the head of those state organs in charge of our building are the ones least concerned about this important issue, who are least of all inclined to keenly look ahead. They [Pg. 3] are quite satisfied, for example, that construction in the largest center of the USSR — Moscow — is limited to four-or six-storey buildings.

It is needless to say that for smaller cities or housing estates these are nothing better than garden cities [goroda-sada], with their small mansions, courtyards, and flower-gardens, and yet no one seems to have this on his mind. But meanwhile this Howardian [Ebenezer Howard — RW] ideal has lagged behind modernity for no less than ten years (and also behind our Soviet modernity for an even more substantial period of time)?

In order for a modern architect to deal with such anachronisms, the greater is his need to fight on two fronts: [1] the elaboration of new, rational principles for the planning of architecture for the aggregate population [naselennykh mest] and [2] the creation of standards that would serve as a prerequisite for the foundation of a new, more prudent image of the city.

The social conditions of our modern world are such that questions of individual aesthetic developments in architecture arise only secondarily.  Today’s conditions focus our attention first and foremost onto the problem of rational new types in architecture, and by including the architect within the overall production chain of the country, they abolish the isolation which previously existed between various forms of architectural and engineering activity.  Certainly the complex development of our life is such that more than at any other time, it compels the architect to specialize in a specific field, but at the same time the firm conviction that has arisen amongst all contemporary architects that their different specialties — housing, community buildings, factories — are merely subsections of a homogeneous territory [ubezhdenie v odno-znachnosti ikh tvorchekoi deiate’nosti].  So some are busy creating a new type of housing, others with the development of new public facilities, and still others with the building of a new factory or plant.  And precisely because construction possessing a factory/industrial or engineering character was never firmly linked to the stagnant traditional art of the past, [the engineers] found that the principles underlying their mode of creation were much more responsive to the needs the time, and better suited to the serving of a new life.  As a result, not only has the boundary between engineering structures and public architecture been wiped out of our thinking, but those very engineering structures themselves have come to be seen as front-line pioneers in the shaping of a genuinely contemporary architecture.

Sober calculation of all these circumstances, which have been created and intensified by our present social conditions, is not just the first condition for a correct solution of our architectural tasks.  It is also the source of all those purely architectural possibilities which lie concealed within the changes which have taken place in our mode of life.

But alongside these, there is a series of other “unknowns” facing the architect, which derive quite separately from the particularities of each factor of the given piece of work, from the particular features of the task in hand, from its functional requirements and from the productive and locational conditions obtaining in that situation.

The solving of these ‘unknowns’ leads to an entirely new method of architectural thinking: to the method of functional design.

Free from the handed-down models of the past, from prejudices and biases, the new architect analyzes all sides of his task, all its special features.  He dismembers it into its component elements, groups them according to functions and organizes his solution on the basis of these factors.  The result is a spatial solution which can be likened to any other kind of rationally conceived [razumnyi] organism, which is divided into individual organs that have been developed in response to the functional roles which each fulfills.

As a result of this we are seeing in the works of contemporary architects the emergence of entirely new types of plan.  These are generally asymmetrical, since it is extremely rare for functional parts of a building to be absolutely identical.  They are predominantly open and free in their configurations, because this not only better bathes each part of the building in fresh air and sunlight, but makes its functional elements more clearly readable and makes it easier to perceive the dynamic life that is unfolding within the building’s spaces.

That same method of functional creativity leads not only to clear calculation of the ‘unknowns’ of the task, but to an equally clear calculation of the elements of its solution.

The architect then arranges [ustanavlivaet] the main path to the secondary in his work, from the core to the outer shell.  Only functional architectural thinking establishes [ustanavlivaet] the spatial organization firmly as the starting point of the work, indicating the place at which the bulk of the impact should be directed.  Thus, the determination [ustanovlenie] of the specific conditions of the job — the number of individual spatial variables, their dimensions and mutual connection — emerges as the primary function. From this first point alone does the modern architect proceed; it is this that compels him to unfold his plan from the inside out, rather than vice versa, as was done during the period of eclecticism.   This directs his entire future path.

The second moment for the architect becomes the framing from within of the spatial problem or from a particular material and one or another methods of construction.  It is clear that this is an inevitable function of the baseline spatial resolution.

The next stage in the work of the new architect is the ratio of the spatial volume of the outside, a grouping of architectural masses.  Their rhythm and proportions follow naturally from the first half of the architect’s activity — they stand as a function of the constructive material of the exterior and its hidden spaces.

[Pg. 4]

And finally, there is the interpretation of some wall surfaces and the design of individual — elements, holes, poles, etc. — all the functions of some of these, or any other extraneous data.

Thus the very method of functional creativity leads us to a unified organic creative process where one task leads from another with all the logic of a natural development, instead of the old-style chopping up into separate independent tasks which are usually in conflict with each other.  There is no one element, no one part of the architect’s thinking which would be arbitrary.  Everything would find its explanation and functional justification in its suitability for a purpose.  The whole unifies everything, establishes equilibrium between everything, creates images of the highest expressiveness, legibility, and clarity, where nothing can be arbitrarily changed.

In place of the ready-made models of the past which have been chewed over endlessly, the new method radically re-equips the architect.  It gives him a healthy direction to his thiking, inevitably leading him from the main factors to the secondary ones.  It forces him to throw out what is unnecessary and to seek artistic expressiveness in that which is most important and necessary.

There is absolutely no danger in the asceticism of the new architecture which emerges from this method.  It is the asceticism of youth and health.  It is the robust asceticism of the builders and organizers of a new life.

[Из Современной архитектуры 1926 (No. 1, pgs. 1-4)]

Одно десятилетие отделяет нас от архитектурного «благополучия» довоенного времени, когда в Ленинграде, Москве и других крупных центрах лучшие русские зодчие беззаботно насаждали всевозможные «стили».

Много ли десятилетие?

Маленькая трещинка времени. Но революция, уничтожив косные предрассудки и отжившие каноны, превратила трещинку в пропасть. По ту сторону пропасти остался последний этап увядания одряхлевшей системы европейского мышления, беспринципный эклектизм, имеющий наготове тысячу художественных рецептов, апробованных нашими дедами и прадедами, готовый черпать истину откуда угодно, — но только в прошлом.

По эту сторону открывается новый путь, который еще надо прокладывать, новые просторы, которые нужно еще заселить. В обстановке сегодняшнего дня куется миросозерцание современного зодчего, создаются новые методы архитектурного мышления.

Вместо старой системы архитектурного творчества, где план, конструкция и внешнее оформление задания постоянно находились во взаимной вражде и где архитектор был по мере сил своих примирителем всех этих неразрешимых конфликтов, — новое архитектурное творчество, прежде всего, характеризуется своим единым нераздельным целевым устремлением, в котором органически выковывается задача и к которому сводится созидательный процесс от начала до конца.

Вместо отвлеченного и крайне индивидуалистического вдохновения старого архитектора — современный зодчий твердо убежден в том, что архитектурная задача решается, как и всякая иная, лишь в результате точного выясненияне известных и отыскания правильного метода решения.

Зодчий видит вокруг себя смелое творчество изобретателя в разных областях современной техники, гигантскими шагами побеждающей землю, недра и воздух, с каждым часом отвоевывающей все новые и новые позиции. Не трудно понять, что этот изумительным успех человеческого гения объясняется, главным образом, правильным методом творчества. Изобретатель твердо знает, что как бы ни был ярок подъем его творческого энтузиазма — он будет бесцелен без трезвого учета мельчайших обстоятельств, окружающих его деятельность.  Он во всеоружии современного знания, он учитывает все условия сегодняшнего дня, он смотрит вперед завоевывает будущее.

Конечно, наивно было бы подменить сложное искусство архитектуры подражанием тем или иным, хотя бы [Pg. 2] самым блестящим формам современной техники. Этот период наивного «машинного символизма» уже изжит. Лишь творческий метод изобретателя должен быть завоеван современным архитектором. Должно быть категорически отвергнуто наличие каких-либо штампов прошлого, как бы прекрасно оно ни было, ибо искания зодчего по существу своему такое же изобретение, как и всякое другое, изобретение, ставящее себе целью организовать и сконструировать конкретную практическую задачу, не только диктуемую сегодняшним днем, но и пригодную для завтрашнего.

Итак, прежде всего, ясное раскрытие всех неизвестных. И, в первую очередь, неизвестных общего характера, диктуемых нашей эпохой в целом, раскрытие особенностей, связанных с появлением нового социального потребителя архитектуры — класса трудящихся, организующего не только свой современный быт, но и сложные формы новой хозяйственной жизни государства. Тут, конечно, речь идет не о подлаживании к индивидуальным вкусам нового потребителя. К сожалению, часто именно к этому сводят постановку вопроса, при чем еще стараются поспешно приписать рабочему вкусы и вкусики, являющиеся по существу отголоском старых дореволюционных взглядов.

Но тут дело меньше всего заключается во вкусах. Речь идет о выяснении особенностей нового потребителя, как мощного коллектива, строящего социалистическое государство.

Речь идет, прежде всего, о принципе плановости, который должен войти в работу не только тех или иных руководящих государственных органов, но и в работу каждого зодчего, о включении отдельных замыслов в общую производственную сеть всей страны.

Коренным образом меняет характер работы современного архитектора то, что он сознает свою деятельность не как выполнение отдельных заказов, а как установку стандартов архитектуры, организующих новые жилища и города, как непрерывное совершенствование этих стандартов, в связи с общими производственными особенностями, с уровнем нашей и международной строительной техники. В условиях переживаемого нами строительства социализма, каждое новое решение архитектора — жилой дом, клуб, фабрика — мыслится нам, как изобретение совершенного типа, отвечающего своей задаче и пригодного к размножению в любом количестве, сообразно с потребностями государства. Это обстоятельство заранее отводит энергию архитектора от поисков индивидуально-вкусового решения — к совершенствованию своего стандарта, к уточнению и максимальной типизации всех его деталей. Но для того, чтобы эти стандарты были действительно радикально обновлены, для того, чтобы они стали подлинно новыми архитектурными произведениями, конечно, они должны быть задуманы не на индивидуальном участке, не произвольной прихотью, не в тесных рамках скученного и случайно планированного города, а обратно, исходить из общего целого, из новых принципов рационального урбанизма, пригодного и для завтрашнего дня. Таким образом, очевидно, что условия нашей государственности властно отбрасывают нас от архитектурной единицы через сложный производственный процесс к целому комплексу, селению, поселку, городу.

К сожалению, специалисты, стоящие во главе государственных органов, ведающих нашим строительством, меньше всего озабочены этим важным вопросом, меньше всего расположены пытливо смотреть вперед. Они [Pg. 3] вполне удовлетворены тем, что ограничили, например, застройку крупнейшего центра СССР — Москвы — четырех-или шестиэтажными домами.

Нечего говорить о том, что для меньших городов или рабочих поселков ничего лучше города-сада, со своими маленькими особнячками, двориками и цветничками, и в мыслях не имеется. А между тем этот Говардовский идеал не отстал ли от современности не меньше чем на десяток лет, а от нашей советской современности и на более значительный срок?

Тем острее необходимость современного зодчего бороться с подобными анахронизмами, бороться с двух стороп: разработкой новых рациональных принципов планировки архитектуры населенных мест и созданием стандартов, которые послужили бы предпосылкой к созданию нового разумного облика города.

Социальные условия современности таковы, что они ставят лишь во вторую очередь вопросы индивидуально художественного развития архитектуры, они обращают наше внимание прежде всего на проблему новых рациональных типов архитектуры и, включая архитектора в общую производственную цепь страны, уничтожают обособленность, которая существовала раньше между различными видами архитектурной и инженерной деятельности. Конечно, сложное развитие нашей жизни таково, что более чем когда-либо заставляет зодчего специализироваться в той или иной области, но в то же время у всех современных зодчих выросло твердое убеждение в однозначности их творческой деятельности: одни заняты созданием типа нового жилья, другие нового общественного сооружения, а третьи — новой фабрики или завода. И именно потому, что сооружения фабрично-заводского и инженерного характера никогда не были крепко связаны с косными традициями художественного прошлого, они оказались, по принципам, лежащим в их созидании, на много более отвечающими потребностям момента, более пригодными к обслуживанию новой жизни. Таким образом, не только стерлась в нашем представлении грань между гражданским или инженерным сооружением, но даже это последнее оказалось передовым застрельщиком в формации подлинно современной архитектуры.

Трезвый учет всех этих? обстоятельств, выдвинутых и обостренных новыми социальными условиями, не только первое условие правильного решения архитектурной задачи, но и источник тех чисто архитектурных возможностей, которые таятся в изменившихся условиях нашей жизни.

Но на ряду с ними, перед архитектором стоят и другие «неизвестные», вытекающие из особенностей каждого момента работы в отдельности, из особенностей самого задания, его функций, условий и места производства.

Решение этих «неизвестных» приводит к совершенно новому методу архитектурного мышления — к методу функционального творчества.

Свободный от всяких штампов прошлого, от предрассудков и предубеждений, новый зодчий анализирует все стороны задания, его особенности, он расчленяет его на составные элементы, группирует по их функциям и организует свое решение по этим предпосылкам. Получается пространственное решение, уподобленное всякому разумному организму, расчлененное на отдельные органы, получающие то или иное развитие, в зависимости от функций, ими выполняемых.

В силу этого, мы видим в работах современных архитекторов появление совершенно нового плана, большей частью асимметричного, — так как редко функции частей эданин бывают абсолютно одинаковыми — предпочтительно открытого и свободного в своей конфигурации, потому что тогда не только лучше омываются все части сооружения воздухом и светом, но и четче читается его функциональная члененность, легче угадывается развертывающаяся в них динамическая жизнь.

Тот же метод функционального творчества приводит не только к ясному учету «неизвестных» задачи, но к такому же учету элементов ее решения.

Зодчий устанавливает тогда в своем творчестве путь от главного к второстепенному, от костяка к оболочке. Только функциональное архитектурное мышление жестко устанавливает пространственную организацию, как исходную точку работы, указывает то место, куда должен быть направлен основной удар. Таким образом, выясняется как первая функция конкретных условий задания — установление количества отдельных пространственных величин, их размеров и взаимной связи. Из этого, прежде всего, исходит современный архитектор, это заставляет его развертывать свой замысел изнутри наружу, а не обратно, как это делалось в периоды эклектизма, это направляет весь его дальнейший путь.

Вторым моментом становится конструирование изнутри развертывающейся пространственной задачи из того или иного материала и теми или иными конструктивными методами. Ясно, что оно является неизбежной функцией основного пространственного решения.

Дальнейший этап работы нового архитектора: — соотношение пространственных объемов извне, группировка архитектурных масс, их ритм и пропорции вытекают естественно из первой половины его деятельности, — становятся функцией сконструированной материальной оболочки и скрытого за ней пространства.

[Pg. 4]

И, наконец, трактовка той или иной стенной поверхности, оформление отдельных элементов, отверстий, опор и т. д., все это функции тех или иных перечисленных, или каких-либо других привходящих данных.

Таким образом, самый метод функционального творчества вместо старого дробления на отдельные независимые и обычно враждебные друг другу задачи — приводит к единому органическому творческому процессу, где одна из задач вытекает из другой со всей логикой естественного развития. Нет ни одного элемента, ни одной части замысла архитектора, который был бы стихиен. Все находит себе объяснение и функциональное оправдание в своей целесообразности. Целое все объединяет, все уравновешивает, создает образцы высочайшей выразительности, четкости, ясности, где ничто не может быть изменено.

Вместо готовых, бесчисленное множество раз пережеванных образцов прошлого, новый метод коренным образом перевооружает зодчего. Он дает здоровое направление его мыслям, неизбежно устремляя их от главного к второстепенному, заставляет его отбрасывать ненужное и искать художественную выразительность в самом важном и необходимом.

Нет никакой опасности в вытекающем из этого метода аскетизме новой архитектуры, который отпугивает близоруких. Это — аскетизм молодости и здоровья, бодрый аскетизм строителей и организаторов новой жизни.

Moisei Ginzburg’s “The international front of modern architecture”

Translated from the Russian 

Untitled.
Image: Photograph of Moisei Ginzburg,
editor of Modern Architecture (1927)

untitled2.

[From Modern Architecture (1926) â„– 2]

[Pg. 41]

If one takes a cursory glance at everything that is now taking place in the architectural life of all countries, the first impression will be this: the world is split into two halves. In one of them, eclecticism still reigns — having lost any point of departure, having exhausted itself through and through — perfectly symbolizing the deteriorating culture of old Europe. In the other [half] young, healthy shoots push themselves through — landmarks, the beginnings of a new life start to emerge, from which it is not difficult to extend the single, unified thread of an international front of modern architecture. Despite all the differences and peculiarities of different countries and peoples, this front really exists. The results of the revolutionary pursuits of the modern architectural avant-gardes of all nations intersect with one another closely in their main lines of development. They are forging a new international language of architecture, intelligible and familiar, despite the boundary posts and barriers.

But it is worth examining this picture a little closer, as it now becomes evident that within the overall stream [of modern architecture] merge various currents.  The path of the creative pursuit in different countries and among different peoples is not quite the same. For along with the general similarity there also exist differences — differences not only in the formal expression of this language, but also in the basic principles that inform it. Continue reading

Soviet Constructivist Architecture – Blueprints and Realizations

The following pictures are examples of architecture built in the Soviet Constructivist style, a style founded by the Vesnin brothers (Aleksandr, Leonid, and Viktor) along with Moisei Ginzburg between 1923-1925.  Officially, the Society of Modern Architects (OSA) was the main organ for all Constructivist architecture.  However, I have also included pieces which clearly exemplify the Constructivist style, even if the architects involved were not technically members of OSA.  Both blueprints and photographs of the eventual realizations of their plans are shown here:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Continue reading