modernism

Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom [Наркомтяжпром Леонидова], 1934

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Above: Ivan Leonidov

From explanatory notes to the Narkomtiazhprom competition

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

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

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

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

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

Three towers:

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

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

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

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

This is achieved by placing spectator stands in the foreground.

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

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

The main accommodation in this project is distributed as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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A rooftop racetrack: The Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin, Italy (1923)

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1925. Veduta panoramica dello stabilimento Lingotto dalla collina torinese1926. Stabilimento Fiat Lingotto. Rampa elicoidale

Fiat, the phantom of order (1964)

Reyner Banham
Arts in Society
April 18, 1985

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Last year’s grand international consultation (don’t ever call it a competition) on the future and re-use of the old Fiat car factory at Lingotto in the inner suburbs of Turin, was demonstrably a gilt-edged occasion, since the exhibition of the proposals, mounted in the abandoned building itself, the sumptuous accompanying literature and all the associated manifestations clearly cost a pretty lira or two, and the architects consulted included our own James Stirling and Sir Denys Lasdun, as well as other heavy-duty talents from both sides of the Atlantic.

Like the equally grand consultations to find an architect for the second Getty Museum in Los Angeles, it may prove to be one of the major architectural events — or possibly non-events — of the past year or so. But why all the bother? Locally, the issue seems to be simply that Fiat is Turin, and Turin is Fiat. The company embodies and symbolizes the industrial power of the city, and the factory commemorates all that labour history and union politics that have marked the long years of the love-hate relationship between Fiat and its workforce. Indeed, one reading of local history would insist that the plant was built in its very straightforward concrete-and-glass form in “deliberate and concrete response to the factory occupations, the demand for syndicalist control, the workers’ councils.”

More than that, however, the Lingotto plant is just the biggest thing in town. A single building four storeys high and half a kilometer long, with a press shop and other ancillaries at either end that bring it up to almost the full kilometer, it outbulks even the most grandiose of Turin’s baroque monuments. Its disappearance would not only re­move a big piece of local history, a memorial, a symbol; it would also leave a huge hole in the skyline along the via Nizza.

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It would also remove a building whose unique position in the history of modem architecture cannot be equalled anywhere in the world. Hence the international interest of which Fiat is so acutely aware. Yet it was the work of no great or famous architect, and the name of Its designer — Giacomo Matte Trucco — seems to attach to no other building that is known at all. Nevertheless, its status has been that of a masterpiece ever since it began to be known in 1920-21. It got into all the forward-striving books by people like Le Corbusier immediately, and into English language texts by the likes of Lewis Mumford within a decade. For this rapid acceptance there are two reasons, I think: one is that it fulfilled a modernist myth; the other is that it had a terrific gimmick. Continue reading →

On the preservation of Konstantin Melnikov’s works and heritage

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An open appeal from architects
and architectural historians

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

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

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

Moscow modernism

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Color photographs from 1931

Untitled.
Image: A modernist staircase in a
workers’ club in Moscow (1931)
untitled2

You know, this whole thing would have been much more of a fair fight and an interesting debate if any of these hysterics had actually bothered to read any Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, etc. — figures in whose footsteps they claim to follow — rather than just regurgitate third-rate digest versions of these authors out of the Cliffite canon. If you’re really going to insist on being a “Leninist” today, it might help to have at least a passing familiarity with these authors’ writings, rather than desperately distort their work so as to confirm whatever it is you are doing already. Obviously, the famous revolutionaries from the history of Marxism mentioned above would find all the various grouplets of the Left today unrecognizable, bearing no relation whatsoever to the emancipatory project they either inaugurated or contributed toward. Yes, even the cryogenically-preserved consciousness of Trotsky himself (i.e., the Sparts).

My reaction to the latest hullabaloo — Muscovite worker taking a swig from a bottle while on break (1931)

My reaction to the latest hullabaloo — Muscovite worker taking a swig from a bottle while on break (1931)

That’s not the point, thankfully. While it may seem antiquarian in the Nietzschean sense, the reason for my “obsession with and curatorial affection for communism’s arcana and paraphernalia” is not some vain belief that this past, which they belong to, can be recreated or revived, but because they belong to a period when the Left actually mattered and played a significant role in world events. By comparison, the actually-existing Left of today — whether former advocates of a Living Marxism or self-declared members of “the (still-living) Left” — appears a rather shriveled, paltry thing. Sure, one could point out that there are X or Y number of doctrinally Marxist or avowedly leftist groups “still kicking,” slowly hemorrhaging its membership or amalgamating itself into the amorphous blob of “Left unity.” But what kind of “life” is that? If eking out some miserable, politically-irrelevant existence “carrying on the good fight” is what they call “living,” then I’m more than happy to admit to myself that I’m “dead.”

As things stand, I’m losing interest in satirizing or polemicizing against these intellectual pygmies. It’s just not worth the time or effort. Vintage Soviet alphabet-porn and ceramic Suprematist plateware are far more educational and spiritually uplifting (quite possibly even more revolutionary) than any of this nonsense.

Konstantin Mel'nikov, Rusakov workers' club (1931)

Mel’nikov, Rusakov club (1931) — Where my erstwhile opponents should go: Школа Коммунизма

So now for something completely different:

Here are a few select examples of Moscow modernism taken from the fantastic album “Life in Moscow, 1931: Color photos.” Highly recommended for anyone who reads this blog. Thanks also to The Constructivist Project, whose Facebook page I encourage you all to “like,” for bringing them to my attention. Enjoy! Continue reading →

Ivan Leonidov, Sketches for City of the Sun

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

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after Tommaso Campanella

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

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

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

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

City of the Sun (Civitas Solis, Город солнца)

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

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

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Confusion and Boredom

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

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

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

Красная Москва (1990)

Красная Москва (1990)

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

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

The architectural modernist Konstantin Mel’nikov’s prismatic Variations on the project of Lenin’s sarcophagus (1924), unrealized

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The architectural modernist Konstantin Mel’nikov’s prismatic Variations on the project of Lenin’s sarcophagus (1924), proposed but never realized. Continue reading →

Models of Soviet avant-garde architecture

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Some gorgeous models I found of Soviet avant-garde architecture (both realized and unrealized structures) designed by Australian students.

Model reconstruction of one of Ivan Leonidov’s “blackprints” (1929).
Model of Ivan Leonidov’s internationally-renowned proposal for the Lenin Institute (1927).
Angled view of the model of Ivan Leonidov’s internationally-renowned proposal for the Lenin Institute (1927).
Model of El Lissitzky’s fantastic “cloudprop” proposal (1925).
An amazing visual recreation of one of Yakov Chernikov’s brilliant abstractions from 101 Architectural Fantasies (1925-1933).
Model of Alexey Shchusev’s third and final (stone) version of the Lenin Mausoleum (1930) in Moscow, still standing to this day. From Shchusev’s brief stint with primitivist/pyramidal modernism.
Scaled model of Konstantin Melnikov’s legendary 1925 Soviet pavilion building at the Paris World Fair.
Model of Konstantin Melnikov’s famous house. Personally, I’ve never been as big a fan of Melnikov’s work as others (say S. Frederick Starr) seem to have been.
Model of a section from Konstantin Melnikov’s legendary 1925 Soviet pavilion building at the Paris World Fair.
American Union model of proposed monument to Christopher Columbus (1929).

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

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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: