Here are a few more issues of Строительство Москвы:
Строительство Москвы – (1929) – № 5
Строительство Москвы – (1929) – № 6
Строительство Москвы – (1930) – № 6
architectural theory
Строительство Москвы/Building Moscow Explained, Plus Some More Issues
Diagram for the Proposed Reconstruction of Moscow
Строительство Москвы, pronounced “Stroitel’stvo Moskvy,” was a Soviet journal published from 1924-1941. In the first couple years of its existence, its focus was primarily on the construction industry and its activities in Moscow, talking about city renovation following the end of the devastating Civil War. Its articles during this period were of a mostly journalistic nature, reporting recent developments and discussing new building proposals. One section toward the end was usually reserved for a “Chronicle of Foreign Technology,” in which new technological achievements in the West were detailed.
Around 1927, however, the focus of the journal shifted to more theoretical matters, absorbing some of the avant-garde influences of magazines like SA, which was reflected by some of the more programmatic articles it featured. The nature of modern architecture was discussed, in a way that was slightly more inclusive than the strictly Constructivist SA, under the editorship of Ginzburg and the Vesnins (and later Khiger). Nikolai Ladovskii published several articles in Building Moscow, as well as his protégés Krutikov and Krasil’nikov. Some of the more traditional, academic architects were also able to publish during this period.
Between 1929 and 1931, the subject of greater city planning was introduced to the journal, with a great deal of attention devoted to the plans to reconstruct Moscow, overseen by Stalin’s henchman Kaganovich. The competition for the design of the Palace of the Soviets, planned for construction right outside the Kremlin, was also a major subject dealt with by Building Moscow. After 1932 or so, with the results of the competition in, the journal slowly began to drift into a neoclassicist direction, where it would remain until it ceased publication in the leadup to war with Germany in 1941.
Anyway, here are another few issues of the journal, of a more avant-garde and theoretical flavor, talking about urbanism and design:
Строительство Москвы – (1928) – № 5
Строительство Москвы – (1928) – № 6
Digitizing Microfiche: Строительство Москвы и другие Советские журналы об архитектуре (Building Moscow and other Soviet Journals about Architecture)
Aleksandr Sil'chenkov's Proposal for the "House of Industry" Project, 1929
Another long overdue update. My two-month absence can be explained by a series of personal matters to which I’ve had to attend, as well as by an exceedingly laborious part of my research in which I’ve been involved. This post will share some of the fruits of that labor, however, providing a sneak-peak into some of the subjects I’ve been working on. I flatter myself to think that I am also hereby contributing to the further democratization of knowledge, freeing long-forgotten documents from their obscurity in old libraries and distant archives. But the truth is that I have been the beneficiary of so much of the work undertaken by people with similar motives, scanning valuable documents and thereby disseminating their information, that I feel this is the least I could do.
Cutting to the matter at hand, the files attached to this post are just some of the old avant-garde journals which I’ve been carefully converting to a readable PDF format, in full-text versions that include illustrations as well as raw text. The difference between these files and the ones I digitized from Современная архитектура late last year is that I actually never encountered the physical documents that I was working with. These rare documents were only accessible to me in microfiche and microfilm format, preserved as part of Columbia University’s and the New York Public Library’s effort to catalogue early Soviet periodicals. Some of these microform documents were in good condition, with minimal dust and other imperfections. Others, unfortunately, were not.
To briefly describe the process by which I digitized these journals (for those who might be interested or are perhaps considering similar work), I shall here sketch out the major steps it involved. First, I had to create a makeshift light-table separate from the actual microform scanners at the library, which tend to produce extremely shoddy and unreadable facsimiles. I then proceeded to photograph each individual frame of microfilm or microfiche with a digital camera. I personally do not own a camera with a very high-resolution optical lens (this requires something like a 40-100x zoom), so I instead removed one of the detachable high-zoom lenses from one of the scanners and then shot my own pictures at my camera’s maximum zoom through this second lens. Anyone who has better equipment than I did can easily bypass this step.
It took a while to get used to taking good shots of each individual frame, but once I had gathered all of them I loaded them onto my computer and began running them through image-processing software. The number of programs I ended up using, which probably could be simplified by anyone who knows how to work with images better than I, included Aperture, Photoshop, and the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). If anyone is interested in the actual adjustments I made to each file to render them more readable, they can inquire in the comments section. I shall spare my readers these boring details. Anyway, clarifying the text portions of these journals I found often distorted the images that appeared alongside them, and so I decided to process each page with images twice, once for the images and once for the text. I then mapped on some cleaned-up versions of the pictures onto the cleaned-up texts and ran the resulting images through the ABBYY FineReader text-recognition program.
The final product of this whole confounded process can be found below. Enjoy! More will be coming soon. I’ve catalogued the entire run of Строительство Москвы from 1926-1932, Советская архитектура from 1931-1934, and a number of assorted articles relating to architecture from the journals Советское искусство, Плановое хозяйство, and Революция и культура. They shall be forthcoming. Here are some of the ones I’ve finished so far:
Строительство Москвы – (1928) – № 9
Строительство Москвы – (1931) – № 8
Строительство Москвы – (1930) – № 1
Строительство Москвы – (1929) – № 1
Строительство Москвы – (1928) – № 4
Строительство Москвы – (1928) – № 2
Строительство Москвы – (1928) – № 3
Николай Докучаев – «Архитектура и планировка городов» – Советское искусство – (1926) – № 6
The Major Works of Iakov Chernikhov
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.
Izvestiia ASNOVA/Известия АСНОВА (1926)
The first and only issue of ASNOVA’s journal, with its layout designed by El Lissitzky and Nikolai Ladovskii
Izvestiia ASNOVA [Известия АСНОВА] PDF Download
Today I made my way from the NYPL Schwarzman building over to Columbia University’s Avery Architecture and Fine Arts Library. I half wondered if I’d bump into Louis Proyect along the way. After some sifting through the WorldCAT I discovered that some of the original source documents I’d been looking for were in Columbia’s collection.
Most astoundingly, I happened across a copy of the architectural avant-garde group ASNOVA’s sole publication, Izvestiia ASNOVA (Известия АСНОВА), from 1926. Unlike their rivals, the architectural Constructivists in OSA, the Rationalists of ASNOVA were never able to maintain a steady periodical of their own. Still, it’s a beautifully designed text; none other than El Lissitzky worked on its layout. It has some interesting theoretical pieces by Nikolai Ladovskii on architectural pedagogy and the insights of Münsterburgian psychotechnics into the effects of various formal combinations on the mind. Also, it includes the article in which El Lissitzky unveils his famous Wolkenbügel proposal, describing some of the specifics of the project.
Though it’s only eight pages long, this piece is incredibly rare to find in its full-text form. A few quotes and passages from the journal are often cited in passing, but no one to date seems to have taken the time to digitize it. So anyway, I copied some images of it and ran it through some text-recognition software and then uploaded it for everyone. Just click on the above link to download it.
Modernist architecture archive
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IMAGE: Lev Rudnev’s City of the future (1925),
before his turn to Stalinist neoclassicism
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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.
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.
Karel Teige’s “Contemporary International Architecture” (1928)
The most modern and consistent solutions achieved by contemporary architects are still confined within the bourgeois way of living. All contemporary buildings, even the most modern ‘separate mansions’ (villas, palaces) as well as housing estates for the exploited poorer classes use the most modern building materials and techniques promoting a rational daily family life and improving hygienic standards. All this activity is still based nevertheless on the bourgeois concept of a family, in particular on the concept: one family, one home, one kitchen. Also the individual whims of the owners are excessively respected. Luxury, diverse equipment, unnecessary artistic furniture, splendor and abundance for the rich and only certain facilities available for the poor…
Men who try to create a new architecture, a free architecture for a free people, anticipate the creation of a new social order in which private ownership, family, and nationality will be unknown. Anticipation is now, however, the tactic of a revolutionary. It is now necessary to prepare the community, to accustom it to new ideas, to revolutionize architecture, architectural production and include the hypotheses of a new organization of a new world. This statement applies especially to architecture since architecture is the creation of organization.
The revolutionary liberation of architecture will produce the concept of housing for people not burdened by family or nationality, where a companionship and a collective way of life will exist replacing sumptuous drawing-rooms and private gardens by social district clubs and public parks. Housing will no longer be ‘home, sweet home’ or ‘my castle’…The balance of present achievements in the field of housing is not yet clear and the standards for modern living not yet formulated. The Weissenhof estate does not provide any final solutions; its achievements are at present subordinate to the ideas of a bourgeois society [201] within whose boundaries all aims cannot be achieved. In the Weissenhof estate for example, in spite of all technical progress, separate kitchens are provided in each flat and only one bedroom for both husband and wife. In the present economic conditions of a divided class society, it is impossible to hope for a final solution to the housing problem for equality and a new way of life of a new free people. In housing, economic and financial class interests still predominate. Nevertheless the experience gained in the construction of contemporary buildings may be used to attempt a theoretical investigation and a determination of hypothetical standards for socialist housing. In order to outline a hypothesis for socialist housing it is first necessary to analyze the means actually available and to examine the needs of modern man in relation to housing. The examination of a building involves the following questions: might the dwelling be smaller? should it consist of only one room which simultaneously serves as a boudoir, study, living-room? Is it actually admissible to reduce the dwelling to only on room which is adapted to complex ends? Do we require the separation into particular premises for particular needs? If so, then what premises and what purposes? Another problem: what degree of comfort can be provided by a socialist community for the disposal of an individual and what comforts shall be reserved for the collective?
The hypothesis of socialist housing must profess that freedom consists of leaving the home. Socialist architecture must reject the concept of rented family houses which must disappear together with ownership (rented accommodation) and family. Our idea is based on present achievements and on the critical assessment of present forms; it outlines modern housing for socialist citizens as an open-plan construction. Recent socialist inventions are dwellings without imprisoning walls, providing a living space which is deprived of furniture rather than encumbered by it, which is full of light and bright colors with free access of light. Even the sun is a desirable commodity. Diogenes, who lived in a tub and renounced everything that he considered superfluous, said to Alexander the Great, ‘Move away from the sunlight.’ Well then, out with the unnecessary paraphernalia of our daily life but let us have the sun…
The housing complex in socialist towns should be composed of single cells designed to fit the people (husbands or wives), but never in accordance with the concept of a family. Its ‘standards’ depend upon a very extensive change of living habits which must be brought about by social revolution. The new society will no doubt be compelled to reform its customs which already begin to oppress the modern man.
The contemporary concepts of reformed life shown to the public at the Werkbund exhibition by Le Corbusier, Mart Stam, Mies van der Rohe, J.J.P. Oud (especially the equipment, not the design of houses), and Walter Gropius must not be considered as the final achievement but merely as a transitory stage. The most far-reaching solution of the housing problem is still on paper and cannot yet be realized. Le Corbusier’s plan of ‘immeubles villas’ represent a collective cooperative complex composed of single units — villas or cottages. It seems that from now on the future development will follow a different road: a cooperative complex elimination of kitchens, hotel-like organization of living providing restaurants, canteen, flats for single persons and a collective comfort: cafeterias, restaurants, festival hall, dancing, baths, playgrounds, reading room, and library for the disposal of the collective. Modern architects who build up a socialist community are not satisfied with orders and limitations imposed by the means available at present. Using explicit methods they prepare theories and hypothetical solutions for the architecture of the future. An ideal design for housing is not yet attained; it is said that utopia and ideal are the same thing and both can never be reached. (We would like to say that they can be reached but the way is very hard). The setting up of an ideal standard for new housing and new architecture must encourage us towards the utopian goal. At present not the utopia but a hypothetical architecture, is important. Changes in architecture cannot be effected without changes in the organization of production and society, in other words without a social [202] revolution. The theories and hypotheses of the new architecture are the ‘battle for tomorrow.’ According to Saldow the endeavors in the study of housing are still the ‘dreams of a happy future,’ but these dreams are supported by a number of historical probabilities. Here the renaissance of architecture begins.
A Modernist Architectural and Aesthetic Theory Database
Over the next couple weeks, I’m planning to post a flurry of full-text books and articles from the annals of modernist architectural and aesthetic theory. After they’re all up, I’m going to catalog it so that it’s easily searchable. They’re all going to be translated primary source documents that (at least to my knowledge) aren’t already up on the web. With the Russian texts, I’m going to post the Russian along with my own translations, which will be forthcoming. A lot of this material has never been translated. All non-Russian sources are translated by someone else or were originally written in English.
Adolf Behne’s The Modern Functional Building (1926)
The Original Cover to Behne’s Book, Featuring El Lissitzky’s “Cloudprop”
Foreword
Man’s primordial reason for building is to protect himself against the cold, against animals, against enemies. He is driven by necessity: he would not build were it not for definite, compelling, urgent purposes. His early buildings are purely functional in character; they are in their nature essentially tools.
But when we study the earliest stages of human culture, we find that the instinctive joys of play cannot be separated from practical matters. Primitive man is not strictly utilitarian. He demonstrates his instinct for play even in his tools, which he makes smooth and beautiful beyond the demands of strict necessity, painting them or decorating them with ornaments.
The tool called “house” is no exception to this.
From the very beginning the house has been as much a toy as a tool. It is difficult to say how long a balance was maintained between the two poles.
In the course of history we only rarely find such a balance.
The play instinct led to interest in form. Without that instinct it would be impossible to understand why the tool called “house” must look good and be a certain shape. Thus our play instinct established certain laws of form, although they are subject to change from time to time.
The laws of form did change periodically. But if laws of form were unquestionably the secondary element in the origin of all building, they became the stronger, stricter, more rigid principle in the history of human building — stronger, stricter, and more rigid than mere fulfillment of utilitarian function. Formal considerations outweighed considerations of purpose.
Thus a return to purpose is always revolutionary in its effect. Forms that have become tyrannical are discarded in order to create — from the recollection of the original function, from as neutral a condition as possible — a rejuvenated, living, breathing form.
Theo van Doesburg’s “Architecture and Revolution — Revolutionary Architecture? Utopian Designs by Tatlin, Lissitzky, and Others” (1928)
Theo van Doesburg’s surprisingly critical, if somewhat superficial, article on Soviet avant-garde architecture from Het Bouwbedrijf, September 1928 (vol. 5, no. 20):
‘I have the courage to be barbaric. I cannot follow the works of the expressionists, futurists, and cubists, nor all the other “isms” in which artistic genius awakens. I do not understand anything about it, it leaves me cold.’
— Lenin
‘I can not keep abreast; we are too obsolescent.’
— Kerenskii
1. Introduction. The double function which every innovation, be it in the sciences, culture, the arts or architecture, has to fulfill, consists on the one hand of building up piece by piece a new image of the world, while on the other hand an old world image is being broken down piece by piece. The former is usually the result of the latter. People do not realize at all how far-reaching the effect of a new concept actually is. Just reading the writings of the adversaries of new forms of architecture or art makes one realize to what enormous extent jealousy and vexation have grown in the past twenty years. Do read, for fun, for instance the pamphlet by the pompiériste Camille Mauclair, La folie picturale, to come to a slow realization how terrifying the effect of genius is on yonder side of the new art creation, presently already accepted once and for all. I do not want to discuss art here any further than is necessary to explain our contemporary architecture, and I do not know whether this kind of pamphlet has also been aired against the international innovation in architecture. They certainly were not lethal, and although on this side nobody takes the trouble to refute them (for nothing refutes them better and more strongly than The Work), they are not only a national disgrace, but also the mark of an imbalance in the development of spiritual and social progress. This imbalance is characteristic for Russia. The new endeavors in the fields of art and architecture (the latter date only from 1923) were certainly not less under attack in Russia than in other countries, and under the Soviet regime there must have been quite a confrontation. Or do you imagine, you Soviets, in your blind veneration of everything originating there, that the Russian revolution a priori guaranteed free development of the modern creative genius? Do you imagine that, with one blow, the working class broke the bonds which had linked it very closely and very deeply with the bourgeois culture? Do you imagine that the leaders of this class, the Lenins, the Trotskiis, the Lunacharskiis, the Radeks, do have just an inkling of an idea of what was growing and flourishing, beyond class and time, beyond nation and community, in the mind of genius, already severed from the bourgeois long ago? If this were not so, why then did all the ‘revolutionary,’ creative people leave their beloved Russia? In order to import the new from Russia into foreign countries? No…In order to learn what is new there, and to import it…into Russia. Would they make us believe that Russia has completely autonomously (for instance like ‘little’ Holland) produced a new architecture from the highly praised ‘proletarian culture,’ an architecture in keeping with the demands and needs of the working class? Out of the question.
The fact that a few Polish-Russian artists, chased by the Soviet regime, fled across the borders, each of them carrying an enormous portfolio, filled [186-187] with utopian, fantastic plans for a kind of dirigible-architecture, wanting to push these even as the new communist architecture, does not mean that in Russia itself even one modern, waterproof barrack has been built. For indeed, when around 1920 all who had creative minds set forth from Russia, armed with abstraction and with the red quadrangle pinned on their sleeves (as the regalia of our formless time), not even a single chair had been built in Russia. They had only words and promises, good as well as vague nebulous notions, sky high fantasies and intentions for eternity, but in reality nothing had been built as yet. There was neither a basis, nor money available for that.
This situation was extraordinarily fortuitous for snobbism, and, as a reaction to the fact that central Europe (in which I include Holland here) was farther ahead, and, what is more important, more positive and realistic than yonder, and could give evidence of this with facts, people tried to simply antedate their works and thus transfer their creative activity to an earlier period. Russia, which, according to the Russians, wanted to be an example to the whole of Europe with respect to social reform, could not fail to be the first and a signpost. Moscow, actually the only cultural center in the immeasurably vast Russia, was already before the war in direct contact (via Poland) with European art life. The turn in the field of aesthetics and architecture took place under direct influence of innovations which had occurred much earlier in the cultural centers of Milan, Paris, Berlin, etc., Holland included.