History
From constructivist art to architecture
Some artists such as Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner had already dedicated themselves to investigating the use of new materials and their textures in the 1910s. In contrast to Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky they were less interested in the possibilities of simple forms than in the possibilities of different materials, with increasingly spatial experiments. Known works from those experiments are Tatlin's wall reliefs and Pevsner's cork reliefs. These artists began with two-dimensional works, which later gave way to three-dimensional sculptures, such as Tatlin's own angular reliefs, Rodchenko's spatial constructions, and later the wire sculptures of the Stenberg brothers and Karlis Johansons. The material increasingly gave way to the constructive exploration of space.
The highlight of this phase was the proposal for the Comintern headquarters in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), a work by the then futurist Vladimir Tatlin that is often known as the Monument to the Third International or Tatlin Tower (1919-1920). Considered the first constructivist architectural project, and perhaps the most famous, it was a 400-meter spiral of iron, steel and glass that would surpass the Eiffel Tower in Paris in height and of which several large models were built. The entire construction had an inclination of 3.6°, the angle of the earth's axis. Although it was never built, the materials it used—glass and steel—and its futuristic spirit and political inclination (the movements of its internal volumes were intended to symbolize the power and dynamism of revolution and dialectic) set the tone for the projects of the 1920s.[5] It would have four glass bodies inside that would rotate: a cube that would rotate once a year; on top of it a pyramid that would do it once a month; then a cylinder, once a day; and to finish off half a sphere that would do it in an hour. Inside would be the headquarters of the Communist International, as well as a telegraph office and several restaurants. It would have a series of giant screens on which the latest world news would be shown. The glass bodies would be used as administrative rooms. After Naum Gabo's criticism «Either build functional houses and bridges or create pure art or both [separately]. Do not confuse one with the other", some constructivists (organized in the "First Working Group of Constructivists" such as Alekséi Gan"), Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova or Tatlin himself turned to industrial design. Tatlin himself was never a member of the constructivists and should not be counted among them, although he belonged to their close circle and was an opinion leader.
Another famous early constructivist project was El Lissitzky's Tribune for Lenin (1920), a speakers' podium that could slide on an inclined arm that was never realized.
During that time before 1920, Rodchenko carried out some architectural studies, some of them at the Zhivskulptarj" (commission for the elaboration of questions of synthesis of sculpture and architecture), various abstract sculptures and some designs for a kiosk. Unlike Malevich's contemporary architectures, he was not so concerned with the geometric order of forms in infinite space, but with the penetration of interior and exterior space. However, Rodchenko, like Tatlin and Malevich, did not come from the field of construction, but from compositional design and from this to the construction of more or less concrete buildings.
The official institutions: the Injuk
In March 1920, the Moscow “Institute of Artistic Culture” (Injuk) was founded, under the authority of Narkomprós (People's Commissariat of Education) and financed through the Department of Fine Arts (IZO). In May, Anatoli Lunacharsky appointed Vasily Kandinsky as its first director. David Shterenberg, who at the time was the director of IZO, stated "We organized the Injuk as a cell for the determination of scientific hypotheses on questions of art." In its first year it attracted about 30 visual artists, architects, musicians and art critics. Two branches were opened in Petrograd (today Saint Petersburg) and Vitebsk, whose respective directors were Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich.[7].
Already at the first conference in May 1920, a separate working group "Objective Analysis Group" was established under the leadership of Aleksandr Rodchenko. Unlike Kandinsky and his followers, who advocated a new way of painting through the interaction of the arts, Rodchenko and his followers wanted the emergence of a new art to which painting should only contribute. Kandinsky left the Injuk in 1921. Already in 1921, the Injuk was divided into two more working groups, the "Working Group of Architects" (later, the rationalists; Nikolai Ladovsky, A. Yefimov, Vladimir Krinski, A. Petrov, Nikolai Dokuchaev), who placed composition in the foreground, and the "First Working Group of the constructivists" (Alekséi Gan"), Karlis Johansons"), Konstantín Medunetzki, Rodchenko, the Stenberg brothers, Varvara Stepanova), who saw design in construction. For Ladovski, this involvement with the Injuk directly followed his work at the Schiwskulptarch. In April of the same year, the "Working Group of Objectivists" was founded, to which Aleksandr Vesnín belonged since May. Aleksandr Vesnín was later one of the main exponents of constructivism.
From the autumn of 1921, the various working groups were effectively dissolved due to the influence of external productivists (partly from the artistic association LEF). Attention shifted more to the plenary sessions. During that phase many sets were created by later constructivists. In 1924, with students from the architectural faculty of the Vkhutemás art faculty (Workshops of Higher Education of Art and Technology), the “Vkhutemás architectural faculty student group” was founded in Injuk. Aleksandr Vesnín was one of the members. The group emerged from a synthesis of the first, second constructivists, objectivists and productivists.
From the "working group of architects", the group of rationalists was formed in the mid-1920s. The “OSA” later emerged from the “group of students at the Vjutemás Faculty of Architecture”.
During the Russian Civil War, the UNOVIS group (Russian: ; acronym for Russian Утвердители нового искусства, Utverdíteli nóvogo iskusstva, 'smiths of new art') was an association of artists in Vitebsk, which existed from 1920 to 1923. It was directed by Kazimir Malevich with El Lissitzky as an important collaborator - with a series of geometric and abstract paintings that he called "proun" - and had a significant influence on the development of Russian art at the beginning of the century, essential for disseminating suprematist ideas with more utilitarian purposes and applying them to graphic design, architecture, theater and ballet. The members themselves often referred to the association as an artistic festival.
The Vjutemás
Immediately after the Russian Civil War, the nascent USSR was too impoverished to undertake major new construction projects. On November 29, 1920, by a decree signed by Vladimir Lenin, the Vkhutemas (in Russian: , acronym for Высшие художественно - **ххнические) was established in Moscow мастерские, 'Higher Education Workshops in Art and Technology'), a state art and technical school whose function was to train artists for the industry and sought a way out of the crisis in artistic education that existed in Russia and the rest of Europe. The workshops sought to "prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for the industry, builders and administrators of technical-professional education",[9][10] and which established that students would have a "mandatory education in political literature and in the fundamentals of the communist worldview in all courses."[11] The school had 100 members[12] on the teaching staff and an enrollment of 2,500 students. Teaching methods were functional and imaginative, reflecting an interest in Gestalt psychology, which led to daring experiments with form, such as Simbirchev's glass-clad suspended restaurant.[13].
In 1921, the Vkhtemás started an architectural branch headed by the architect Nikolai Ladovsky. The same currents of the Injuk emerged in the Vkhutemás, which was divided into three main centers:.
• - the academic workshop under the direction of Aleksei Schusev;.
• - the gathered workshops of the left or Obmás (in Russian: acronym for Объединённые левые мастерские, Obiediniónyie lévyie masterskíe, 'Gathered workshops of the left'[14] The workshops were established by Nikolai Ladovski, Vladimir Krinski and Nikolai Dokucháev in the course of 1921-1922 They focused on the development of spatial perception, downplaying the importance of classical teachings, ignoring transmitting the classical orders to their students to prevent them from producing copies and variations of classical art, alleging that the old systems were discredited following the manifesto of Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos, at the same time that They proposed to generate art based on the then new elements. Access to the Obmás workshops depended directly on the coordination and spatial capacity of the students. Once they were admitted, they developed their thinking and imagination, without being limited by any specific architectural style. In addition, another distinctive characteristic of the Obmás was the incorporation of working models to the detriment of two-dimensional graphic work. Part of this training program were Georgi Krútikov, Iván Volodko, Yevgeny Yocheles and Guevorg Kochar (ru).
• - and since November 1922, the department of "Experimental Architecture" or "Symbolic Romanticism" under the direction of Konstantin Melnikov, who had been a professor at Vkhutemas since 1920, and Ilya Golosov. The joint workshop was known as the New Academy or Workshop Number 2 and was dissolved in the mid-1920s. These studios were known for their individualistic approach.[16].
ASNOVA and rationalism
In 1923, Nikolai Ladovsky founded the so-called ASNOVA (in Russian: , acronym for Ассоциация новых архитекторов, 'Association of New Architects'). Among the architects affiliated with ASNOVA were El Lissitzky (1890-1941), Konstantín Mélnikov (1890-1974), Vladimir Krinski") (1890-1971) and the young Berthold Lubetkin (1901-1990).[20].
Many projects undertaken between 1923 and 1935, such as the horizontal skyscrapers Wolkenbügel—'cloud or sky hangers or hooks', a series of eight three-story, 180 m long L-shaped flat slabs rising 50 m above the street supported by three pylons (10×16×50 m), placed on three different street corners—by El Lissitzky and by Mart Stam and the temporary pavilions by Konstantín Mélnikov showed the originality and ambition of this new group. Melnikov would design the Soviet pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts, which popularized the new style, with its rooms designed by Rodchenko and its irregular mechanical form.[5] Another glimpse of a constructivist environment is visible in the popular science fiction film Aelita (1924), which had interiors and exteriors modeled in angular and geometric shapes by Aleksandra Ekster. The Mosselprom department store of 1924 was also an early modernist building for the new consumerism of the New Economic Policy, as was the Vesnín brothers' Mostorg store, built three years later. Also popular were the modern offices for the mass press, such as the headquarters of Izvestia, by Grigori and Mikhail Barkhin.[21][22].
• - Rationalist architecture.
• - Costumes for Aelita, work by Aleksandra Ekster (1924).
• - Mosselprom Building") (1923-1924), by David Kogan").
• - Izvestia headquarters building in Moscow (1925-1927), by Grigori and Mikhail Barkhin.
• - Mostorg Warehouses (1927-1928), by the Vesnín brothers.
The constructivists of Vjutemás and the OSA
This architectural conception is essentially representative of the entire group of constructivists.
Even Ivan Leonidov") should be mentioned, but cannot be an example of the group. His designs are of such independence and outstanding architectural quality that they can be seen as the highest performance of modern architecture. Particularly worthy of mention is his Lenin Institute, designed in 1927 as a diploma thesis with Aleksandr Vesnín in Vkhutemás. The skillful structure of the building and the compositional arrangement of the elements can compete with the designs of Le Corbusier.
The engineer Vladimir Shukhov, especially his work from the 1920s, is often assigned to constructivism. However, as an engineer, he cannot easily be assigned an artistic-architectural current.
Konstantin Melnikov, one of the most important modern architects of the Soviet Union, was never a member of the OSA and was only a brief member of the ASNOVA. Therefore, his work cannot be directly assigned to either of the two currents, but rather to rationalism.
The OSA group
The Vesnín brothers' 1923-1924 glass office project for Leningrádskaya Pravda introduced a colder, more technological constructivist style. The building was never built, but it clearly shows their understanding of the organization of life processes. The building is clearly structured functionally, it has two glass elevators, two very large message panels (although the technical implementation was not specified), which are arranged at an angle so that pedestrians can read them. The technical equipment was enormous for the time. The building has a large speaker on the roof, a clock (with numbers, no pointers), as well as the aforementioned boards and elevators, and a radio antenna on the roof. This strong technical orientation was common and typical of constructivism, as was the lack of viability of such technical equipment in early Soviet Russia.
Moiséi Guínzburg also wrote an important theoretical work on constructivism Style and era (1924) and was editor of the OSA magazine Sovreménnaya arjitektura (SA or Contemporary Architecture) until 1928, his successor was Román Jíguer (ru). He understood constructivism (or, in his opinion, good architecture) primarily as a method of creative design and saw the organization of life processes as the main task of the architect. Architecture would logically arise from the self-image of an era: he drew a comparison with ancient Egyptian art, whose profile was not an expression of a lack of perspective, but rather a common (formal) language that would derive from the fundamental factors of the era, including technical possibility. That was the essential difference of rationalism and the strongest contrast between the two currents. Guínzburg demanded "that the architect understand the laws of statics and mechanics to achieve his objectives empirically, whether intuitively or strictly scientifically." Doing so represents that fundamental constructive sensitivity that, without fail, must be basic for the architect and that established a defined method in his work. […] This organizational method also conditions those rhythmic aspects by which architecture is distinguished.”[23] Rhythmic composition was an expression of architectural organization and architecture was the organization of the human environment.
In 1925, the three brothers Vesnín and Guínzburg founded the OSA group (acronym for, lit. 'Union of Contemporary Architects'), also linked to the Vjutemás, an association that sought functional architecture that satisfied the real needs of the population, with the aim of combining artistic and political avant-garde and creating a productive and utilitarian art.[24] Its first president was Aleksandr Vesnín.[25] The main means of dissemination of the group was the magazine Sovreménnaya Arjitektura ("Contemporary Architecture"), edited by the brothers Vesnín and Guínzburg between 1926 and 1930.[26] This group had much in common with the functionalism "Functionalism (architecture)") of Weimar Germany, such as the housing projects of Ernst May.[5] The This group's main priority was accommodation, especially collective housing in specially designed to replace the collectivized housing of the century that was the norm. The expression social condenser was coined to describe its objectives, which are derived from the ideas of Lenin, who wrote in 1919 that "the real emancipation of women and real communism begin with the mass struggle against those small household tasks and the real reform of the masses in a vast socialist house."
The everyday and the utopian
The new forms of the constructivists began to symbolize the project of a new daily life of the Soviet Union, then in the mixed economy of the New Economic Policy. and Design in the First Machine Age*—along with the Dessau Bauhaus, the largest-scale modern work of the 1920s.[31] Other notable works included the aluminum parabola and glass staircase in the Moscow Planetarium from 1929 by Mikhail Barsch and Mikhail Siniavsky.
The popularity of the new aesthetic led traditionalist architects to adopt constructivism, as in Ivan Zholtovski's 1926 MOGES power plant or Alexei Schusev's Narkomzem offices, both in Moscow.[32] Similarly, engineer Vladimir Shukhov designed the now known as Shukhov Tower, often seen as an avant-garde work and which, according to Walter Benjamin in his Moscow Diary, "unrivaled by any similar structure in the West." Shukhov also collaborated with Melnikov on the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage and the Novo-Ryazanskaya Street Garage. Many of these buildings are shown in Sergei Eisenstein's film The General Line, which also featured a model of a specially constructed Constructivist collective farm designed by Andrei Burov.
A central goal of constructivists was to instill the avant-garde in everyday life. From 1927 they worked on projects for Workers' Clubs, communal leisure facilities generally built in factory districts. The clubs of Kauchuk, Svoboda and Rusakov, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, the Likachev Workers' Club, designed by the Vesnin brothers, and the Zuev Workers' Club, designed by Ilya Golosov, stand out.
• - Garage on Novo-Ryazanskaya Street") (Konstantín Melnikov, 1926).
• - Svoboda Factory Club"), Moscow (Konstantín Melnikov, 1927).
• - Kauchuk Factory Club") (Konstantín Mélnikov, 1927).
At the same time as this foray into the everyday, extravagant projects were designed such as Ivan Leonidov's Lenin Institute"), a high-tech work that has been compared to the works of Buckminster Fuller. It consisted of a skyscraper-sized library, a planetarium and a dome, all linked by a monorail; or the self-explanatory Flying City by Georgy Krutikov"), an ASNOVA project that It was conceived as a serious proposal for airborne housing. The Melnikov House and his Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage are good examples of the tensions between individualism and utilitarianism in constructivism.
There were also projects for suprematist skyscrapers called 'planits' or 'architektons' by Kasimir Malévich, Lázar Jidékel—Cosmic Habitats (1921-1922), Architectons (1922-1927), Workers Club (1926), Communal Dwelling (Коммунальное Жилище) (1927)—and A. Nikolski and L. Jidékel, Moscow Cooperative Institute (1929). The fantastic element also found expression in the work of Yakov Chernijov, who produced several books of experimental designs, most famously Architectural Fantasies (1933), which earned him the epithet "the Soviet Piranesi."
Sotsgorod and urban planning
Despite the ambition of many of the constructivist proposals for the reconstruction of cities, there were very few examples of coherent constructivist urbanism. Although the Nárvskaya Zastava district of Leningrad did become a focus of constructivism. Beginning in 1925, architects such as A. Gegello and Aleksandr Nikolski of the OSA group designed communal housing for the area, as well as public buildings such as Noi Trotsky's Kirov Town Hall (1932-1934), an experimental school by G.A. Símonov, and a series of community laundries and kitchens, designed for the area by local members of ASNOVA.[34]
Many of the constructivists hoped to see their ambitions realized during the "Cultural Revolution" that accompanied the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932). At the time, constructivists were divided between urbanites and desurbanites, who favored developments such as the garden city or a linear city model. The linear city was promoted by the director of the Commissariat of Finance Nikolai Milyutin in his book Sozgorod, also known as Sotsgorod (1930). This was taken to a more extreme level by OSA theorist Mikhail Okhitovich. His deurbanism proposed a system of single-family buildings connected by linear transportation networks, spread over a huge area that would cross the boundaries between urban and agricultural, resembling a socialist equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City. The desurbanites and urbanites proposed projects for new cities that, as in Magnitogorsk, were often rejected in favor of more pragmatic German architects fleeing Nazism, such as the 'May Brigade' (Ernst May, Mart Stam and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky) or the 'Bauhaus Brigade' led by Hannes Meyer and Bruno Taut.
Le Corbusier's city planning received brief support when the architect wrote a "response to Moscow" that later became the Ville Radieuse plan, and designed the Tsentrosoyuz government building, in collaboration with the constructivist Nikolai Kolli). The duplex apartments and collective facilities of the OSA group were a great influence on him that will be reflected in his later work. Another famous modernist, Erich Mendelsohn, designed the Red Flag textile factory in Leningrad and popularized constructivism with his book Russland, Europe, Amerika. One Five-Year Plan project with significant constructivist contributions was the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station (DneproGES), designed by Victor Vesninet") and others. El Lissitzky also popularized the style abroad with his 1930 book The Reconstruction of Architecture in Russia.
The end of constructivism
The 1932 competition for the Palace of Soviets, a grandiose project to rival the Empire State Building, featured submissions from all the leading Constructivists, as well as Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, and Le Corbusier. However, the moment coincided with widespread criticism of the modern movement, which had always been difficult to sustain in a still largely agrarian country. It was also criticized that the style simply copied the forms of technology using rather routine construction methods.[35] Borís Iofán's winning work marked the beginning of the eclectic historicism of Stalinist architecture, a style that has similarities with postmodernism that later reacted against the cosmopolitanism of modern architecture, the supposed ugliness and inhumanity with a selection and mixture of historical styles, sometimes achieved with new technologies. Housing projects like the Narkomfin were designed by attempts to reform everyday life in the 1920s, such as the collectivization of facilities, equality of the sexes, and collective raising of children, all of which fell out of favor when Stalinism revived family values. Old World styles were also revived, with the Moscow Metro popularizing in particular the idea of "workers' palaces."
By the late 1920s, Constructivism was the country's dominant architecture and, surprisingly, many buildings from that period still survive. Initially, the reaction was toward an art decoesque classicism that was initially inflated with constructivist devices, as in Borís Iofán's Casa del Malecón" of 1929-1932. For a few years, some buildings were designed in a composite style sometimes called post-constructivism").
After that brief synthesis, the neoclassical reaction was totally dominant until 1955. Rationalist buildings were still common in industrial architecture, but they disappeared in urban projects. Some last isolated constructivist buildings were launched in 1933-1935, such as Panteleimon Golosov's Pravda building (completed in 1935),[36] the Moscow Textile Institute (completed in 1938) or Ladovsky's rationalist lobbies for the Moscow metro. The brothers Vesnín and Iván Leonídov participated in a competition for the project Narkomtiazhprom on Red Square in 1934, clearly with a modernist proposal, another unbuilt Stalinist building. Traces of constructivism can also be found in some works of socialist realism, for example, in the futurist elevations of the ultra-Stalinist Iofan Soviet Union Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, which had Suprematist interiors by Nikolai Suetin.
Towards the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, more and more avant-garde architects turned towards classicism (as post-constructivism), many even before its official decision in 1932. The reasons for this are controversial in architectural historiography. The main point of controversy remains whether the avant-garde died of its own development or of political repression. At least some architects and artists were affected by the latter. In 1930, Ivan Leonidov was expelled from Vkhutemas for sabotage. Mikhail Okhitovich") was shot in 1937 for criticizing Stalin; Alexei Gan") was shot on September 8, 1942 under Article 58 "Article 58 (Penal Code of the Russian SFSR)") of the Criminal Code, also for criticizing Stalin.