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IMAGE: Poster advertising the first exhibition
of the Soviet magazine Modern Architecture
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The following are extremely rare color prints from the legendary Soviet avant-garde architectural publication Modern Architecture [Современная архитектура], depicting communes for comrades [товарищеский коммуны] and collective housing units for families [семейные коллективы].

Incidentally, this would be the last issue of the journal before changing its name to Soviet Architecture [Советская архитектура] at the beginning of 1931.

Communal dwelling for comrades [товарищеская коммуна] № 17, Modern Architecture (1930)

While its covers often featured bold color schemes, the illustrations on the pages in between were nearly always black-and-white. This was so even with an issue entirely devoted to color and light in architecture, which included detailed graphs and optical charts measuring and explaining color spectra, but no color pieces.

Only these pictures and a special section devoted to the artwork of the French modernist painter Fernand Léger in a different issue broke with this trend. Part of what makes these images so extraordinary is the infrequence with which such bold colors would appear.

Family collective [семейный коллектив] № 4, from Modern Architecture (1930)

Corbusian elements abound in these dwellling units, at least structurally, from the toothpick stilts (or concrete pilotti) to the paper-thin walls. Occasional curvilinear outcroppings break up their otherwise orthogonal regularity. The color scheme, however, is decidedly harder to trace to Western European precursors. No white walls here: all is chromatic, stark and solid.

So, without any further ado, here they are: hi-resolution scans available for the first time (to my knowledge) on the internet.

Enjoy and share!

Family collective [семейный коллектив] № 7, from Modern Architecture (1930)