OSA

The Major Works of Iakov Chernikhov

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Many thanks to Arch-Grafika.ru/ for making available the following major works of the famed Russian avant-garde architect Iakov Chernikhov, which I have converted into PDF form and rendered searchable:

1. Яков Чернихов — 101 архитектурная фантазия (1927) [101 Architectural Fantasies]

2. Яков Чернихов — Основы Современной Архитектуры (1930) [The Fundamentals of Modern Architecture]

3. Яков Чернихов — Конструкция машинных и архитектурных форм (1933) [The Construction of Machine and Architectural Forms, of which I have recently posted an excellent full-text translation by the late Catherine Cooke]

An additional thank you to Arch-Grafika for crediting my work in uploading Izvestiia ASNOVA.

«Соцгород» Милютина (1930)

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Original Cover to Соцгород

Some glorious fuck over at Arch-Grafika.ru/ scanned and uploaded a copy of the Russian original of Miliutin’s Sotsgorod.  I just ran it through a text-recognition program.

Download the PDF here:

Соцгород PDF Download

OSA’s Modern Architecture (Современная архитектура)

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Современная архитектура

Tomorrow I am going to finally get a chance to take a look at the physical copies of Sovremennaia arkhitektura’s full run, from 1926-1930.  I have looked through virtually the entire journal before on microfilm, but this will be the first time I actually handle the documents themselves.  Anyway, I’m bringing my camera.  Expect PDFs.

Lev Rudnev’s “City of the Future” (1925), before his turn to Stalinist neo-Classicism

Modernist architecture archive

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.Untitled
IMAGE: Lev Rudnev’s City of the future (1925),
before his turn to Stalinist neoclassicism
.Untitled

An update on the Modernist Architecture Archive/Database I discussed a couple posts ago.  I’ve begun work on it, and have uploaded almost half of the documents I intend to include.  Only a few of the Russian ones are up yet, but I’m hoping to post them over the next couple days.  There are many more on the way.

Anyway, anyone interested in taking a look at this archive (arranged as a continuous text) can access it here.

However, this might not be the most convenient way to browse through it all.  For a more manageable overall view of each of the individual articles (detailing the author, title, and year of publication), click here.

Александр Сергеевич Никольский, «Современная Обременная Художественная Промышленность» (1929)

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Современная художественная промышленность в большей степени, чем другие виды художественного труда, продолжает находиться в идеологическом плену «академической» культуры XIX века. […]

[…] Взамен тяжелой, мало пригодной для современных условий музейной обстановки в изживших себя исторических стилях потребитель настойчиво требует бытовую вещь, построенную на совершенно других принципах. Эти последние должны соответствовать изменившимся жизненным условиям и совершенно иной, непохожей на дореволюционную, планировке современного экономического жилища.

[…]

[…] Поставленный вопрос заключается в том, в какой мере современная художественная промышленность способна отбросить традиции академизма и продолжающегося потрафления обывательским вкусам. Современной идеологией художественного труда в производстве общественно полезных вещей, и в первую очередь в мебельной, бойной и текстильной промышленности, должен стать адекватным нашему времени дух рационализма и конструктивизма. […]

Le Corbusier’s “The Atmosphere of Moscow,” along with His Letter to Ginzburg on Deurbanization

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Barsch and Ginzburg, Proposal for the Green City (1930)

From Le Corbusier’s Precisions on the Present

State of Architecture and City Planning (1930)

*****

I am not trying to learn Russian, that would be a wager.  But I hear people saying krasni and krassivo.  I question.  Krasni means red, krassivo means beautiful.  Before [the Revolution], they say, the terms meant the same: red and beautiful.  Red was beautiful.

If I base myself on my own perceptions, I affirm: red is what is a living being, life, intensity, activeness; there is no doubt.

So naturally I feel I have the right to admit that life is beautiful, or that the beautiful is life.

That little linguistic mathematics is not so ridiculous when one is preoccupied with architecture and planning.

*****

The USSR has decided to carry on a general program of equipment for the country: the five-year plan.  It is being carried out.  It was even decided to concentrate the greater part of the product of present work on carrying out this program: that is why there is no longer any butter on the spinach here,nor any more caviar in Moscow; the savings are used to make foreign exchange.

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