Soviet Architecture Research Articles

Reflection of changes in post-war architecture and town planning of Kharkiv in periodical specialist publications

The article provides a historiographical overview of publications about the architecture and construction of Kharkov in professional architectural journals of Ukraine during the period of post-war reconstruction (1947-1955) and during the transition period of “changes in the artistic direction of Soviet architecture.” The article contains a description of the views and positions of Kharkov architects on current architectural and urban planning issues. This period of development of Kharkiv architecture and urban planning is fundamentally conceptually and stylistically heterogeneous. Accordingly, around the middle of the 1950s, the nature of the content and tone of the publications changed significantly. This is due to ideological and political transformations in the country as a whole, and in particular radical changes in the "ideological and creative direction" of Soviet architecture. The topics of the publications of Kharkiv architects considered in this article cover a wide range from the main provisions of the General Plans of the city to a critical examination of the features of specific buildings, as well as the problems of professional training of architects. The authors of the researched publications are architects-designers, construction engineers, officials, including the main architects of the city at that time, teachers of architectural universities. The beginning of the researched period is the post-war reconstruction of Kharkiv, the publications of the first post-war decade reflect the current architectural and urban planning practice, the prospects for the implementation of various aspects of the first master plan for the development of the city. Literary sources of the mid-1950s fully reflect the turn in the direction of the development of architecture on the example of Kharkov. Professional magazines pay more attention not to architectural activity, but to construction problems. The change in the name of the magazine indirectly indicates the beginning of a change in attitude towards the profession of an architect. The final part of this article will be published later; it covers publications during the transition to industrial construction of the 1960s - early 1970s.

Wandering "paper" dominants: positions and functions of high-rise accents in the urban development projects of Pushchino, 1950–1980s

The subject of this study are the architectural and urban planning projects of the scientific town of Pushchino of the USSR Academy of Sciences, developed in the second half of the 20th century. It focuses on high-rise accents planned in the master plans from the 1950s to the 1980s, which, though never realized, played a crucial organizing role in the city's developmental compositions over the years. These "paper" projects significantly influenced the actual architectural ensemble of the city. Specific changes in the creative concepts are correlated with personnel shifts within the team that developed the projects for Pushchino. The dynamics and direction of architectural searches are considered within the broad context of the history of Soviet architecture and are compared with global processes and the positions of architectural theorists and philosophers. The research employs a formal and comparative analysis method, structured historically to segment the creative process into periods that reflect both the subject of the research and the broader historical and architectural context of the era. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the comprehensive analysis of numerous urban planning and architectural projects, gathered through extensive research in state and personal archives. This allowed for the first time to consider the work of architects on the planning projects of Pushchino as a dynamic process, revealing changes that occurred at each of its stages. Through the analysis of the development of “paper” dominants, wandering from project to project, changes in the global urban planning concepts of the city were traced. Consequently, the article provides insights into the development of urban planning in Pushchino, viewed through the lens of high-rise accents. It also paves the way for further research into other aspects of the process, contributing to a more comprehensive and profound understanding of urban architectural development.

Italo-Soviet Architectural Exchanges and Postmodernism under Late Socialism

A global movement, architectural postmodernism cannot be reduced simply to the cultural logic of late capitalism, nor should its analysis be restricted, as in recent revisionist histories, to the geo- graphical confines of the Eastern Bloc. By revealing that the ideas, design strategies and images that make up postmodern architecture did not belong squarely to either side of the Cold War geopolitical divide, this paper argues that a full understanding of the movement requires an inquiry going beyond the scope of a single ideological context. The emergence of architectural postmodernism is to be located in the interstitial space between the 'capitalist West' and the 'socialist East'. Yet familiar narratives of knowledge transfer from the former to the latter are reductive and fail to capture historical reality in all its complexity and ambiguity. For instance, Aldo Rossi's work was known and may have been consciously replicated by Soviet architects. Less acknowledged is the fact that, in the Italian context, the rise of architectural postmodernism went hand in hand with the consolidation of a 'tradition of study of Soviet architecture'. Rossi was just one among many Italian architects —  such as Paolo Portoghesi, Carlo Aymonino or Vittorio Gregotti —  who, undertaking a critique of modernism, drew crucial inspiration from Soviet architecture, particularly Socialist Realist theory and practice.

Architectural and artistic solutions of the OTC during the gentrification of soviet cinemas

In the professional environment of architects, there is concern about the formation of a trend of reconstruction and renovation of buildings and structures in large and major cities in order to develop urban infrastructure. The underestimation of the contribution of Soviet architecture to the cultural heritage of post-Soviet countries and countries of the socialist camp is noted. At the same time, the "new architecture" forms the urban environment under the stereotypes of homologation, which does not correspond to the socio-cultural demand of the glocalization of "digital nomads" seeking to live in eco-digital cities. The obsolescence of the "new architecture" is observed already at the project stage or in five years. In Moscow, the reconstruction program includes 39 Soviet cinemas in the peripheral zone of the city. Public and shopping complexes with underground levels are being built on the site of these cinemas. The article classifies the types of projects of Soviet cinemas and shopping centers, and also forms diagrams for their qualitative comparison. This eventually made it possible to evaluate the architectural and artistic contribution to the Moscow development of both Soviet cinemas and new shopping complexes, the continuity between them and differences in design principles.

Gosprom Ensemble in Kharkiv and the Concept of Modern Style

The ideologists of Constructivism and “production art” of the 1920s put forward the slogan “not style, but method!”. However, the Constructivists-“productionists” movement carried a stylistic charge of great power. The intentions of the Constructivists-“productionists”, their manifestos and slogans are polemically pointed evidence of their awareness of their own place in the Soviet culture of the 1920s. Creative practice continued the development of a certain artistic tradition. It is necessary to reconstruct the development of the problem of style in the concept of “productionists” as a natural and historically determined stage of the movement. The manifestation of the rejection of the idea of style in artistic creativity in the concept of “production art” paradoxically corresponds to its specific conditions in setting the task of creating and identifying the mechanism for the development of modern style. They are analyzed in the article.The “anti-stylistic” orientation of “production art” was paradoxically opposed to the orientation towards a “Constructivist style”. In the late 1920s, it covered a wide range of architects and artists who did not belong to the Constructivist movement and who opposed them. In this regard, the fate of several outstanding monuments of the Modern Movement in the architecture of Kharkiv is indicative — the House of State Industry (Gosprom), the House of Projects and the House of Cooperation. They were the largest and most integral ensemble in their architectural and compositional solution, which embodied the ideas of the Modern Movement in Soviet architecture. The reconstruction of the ensemble after the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) showed the contradictions that were embedded in the Constructivist concept of the modern style. The duality of understanding the art form in it was revealed. On the one hand, it acted as an independent stylistic entity. On the other hand, it could also be considered as a framework, a “draft” of some further work with the form. The concept of modern style defended by the “productionists” was problematized by the practice of “Constructivist stylizations”.

Style trends in Soviet architecture of the 1930s

In 1932, the competition for the Palace of the Soviets formally proclaimed a focus on “mastering the classical heritage”. From that moment on, Soviet architects turned with passion to Italian Renaissance motifs and the tradition of domestic pre-revolutionary architecture. However, in 1934, the Palace of Soviets was accepted for construction in an innovative, ribbed style and Art Deco forms. In those years, that kind of architecture was developing abroad as well. New York and Chicago became centres of rapid growth in the number of skyscrapers in Art Deco style; the new centre of Washington was worked out in Neoclassical style. All this allows us to record the phenomenon of style parallelism in the Soviet and foreign architecture of the 1930s.

Practitioners. east

From the current turbulent and fast-paced century, the 19th and even a part of the 20th centuries look unhurried, steady and full of common sense. The classical order system of proportions and the methods of town-planning tested over the centuries served as a reliable basis for creative searches for new architecture. In the block “Practitioners” we publish rare biographical and analytical materials on the architects of the Russian Far East and Siberia little-known to the general architectural public. It was here where the unity of theory and practice was preserved until the middle of the new twentieth century. Buildings and archival materials of that era show how harmonious and balanced can be the mood of architecture, in which practice is based on a solid foundation of theory. The cultural heritage of the past – from the ancient city plans of the Middle East to the Soviet architecture of the country’s post-war reconstruction period – is a huge and growing asset useful for architecture in its new stage of accelerating development.

Cezanne and the Emergence of a Modernist Aesthetic in Soviet Architecture

Abstract This article argues that the work of Paul Cezanne may have been a factor in encouraging young archi-tects in Russia to abandon the approaches and styles of the past and develop a new type of architecture in the years immediately following the Revolution of October 1917. The focus is on the early work of the architect Vladimir Krinskii, who in the 1920s worked with Nikolai Ladovskii in formulating the Rationalist approach to architecture. He later stressed how important the art of Cezanne and the avant-garde art had been for him and other young architects in developing a modernist aesthetic. This article examines Krinskii’s statements about Cezanne and relates them to the experimental sketches that the architect produced in 1919.

Outstanding soviet architect Ivan Nikolaevich Dubov: unknown pages of life and work (1904–1975)

The article is devoted to the outstanding architect of the Soviet era in Ivanovo and Yaroslavl, many of whose buildings in these cities are now monuments of architecture, but there is still no information about the life and list of works of I.N. Dubov. For the first time in a comprehensive chronological sequence of examines and evaluates the life and work of the architect, reveals the specificity of his work, analyzes the creative handwriting, reveals the origins of professional success. The work cites all the known and identified to date works of the architect-artist, introducing new scientific information on Soviet architecture.

АРХИТЕКТУРНЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ЖИЛОЙ ЗАСТРОЙКИ ПЕРВОГО ПОСЛЕВОЕННОГО ДЕСЯТИЛЕТИЯ В Г. БЕЛГОРОДЕ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ КВАРТАЛА, ОГРАНИЧЕННОГО ПРОСПЕКТОМ Б. ХМЕЛЬНИЦКОГО И УЛИЦАМИ ШЕВЧЕНКО, ПАРКОВОЙ)

The quarters of low-rise residential buildings of the first post-war decade in Belgorod form the basis of the architectural heritage of the “Stalin era”. This study is aimed at analyzing the architectural features of residential development in the first post-war decade in the city of Belgorod on the example of a block bounded by B. Khmelnitsky Avenue, Shevchenko and Parkovaya Streets. The study is based on an integrated approach, the work uses the methods of retrospective, urban planning, and compositional analysis. The features of the time period indicated in the work for the history of Soviet architecture and Belgorod as an urban entity are shown. The current state of the quarter and its location in the urban structure of Belgorod are considered. The role and place of the quarter in the transformation and further development of the planning structure of the city in the post-war period are determined. The composition of the space-planning construction of the quarter and the front of its development is analyzed. The features of the interaction of block development with its surroundings and terrain are determined. The article touches upon the development of standard projects of residential buildings and the technology of erecting buildings for mass development in the post-war period. The main series of standard projects and the design organizations involved in their development are indicated. The main typical projects of residential buildings used in the development of the quarter were identified. The structural, planning, compositional, architectural features of residential buildings of the quarter are analyzed.

Vinicio Paladini and the First Studies of the Soviet Avant-Garde Architecture in the Early 20th Century in Italy

The architecture of the Soviet Avant-garde represents an important part in the history of the world’s architecture. It has become and continues to be a subject of interest for numerous researchers all over the world since the second half of the 20th century. However, was it well-known before, and who was the first to spread that knowledge? This article aims to study the critical legacy of Italian artist and architect Vinicio Paladini and his role as the first disseminator of the ideas of Soviet Avant-garde architecture in Italy in the 1920s with his article “Lo spirito moderno e la nuova architettura nell’U.R.S.S.” This article provides an in-depth analysis of chosen projects and architects as well as attribution of illustrative material alongside the archival research. It establishes the origins of Paladini’s interest in the art and architecture of the USSR, surfaces his perception of the characteristics of Soviet architecture, and highlights the importance of his role in promoting Russian modernism in Italy.

"Russification" of the Soviet architecture in 1930-1940s: ideology, theory, practice

The article is dedicated to attempts to construct "national in form, socialist in content" architecture in the Stalinist USSR. In course of a campaign to appropriate the classical heritage, these attempts did not acquire the character of a clear and well-structured policy. However, being themselves a reflection of ideological trend towards Russian nationalism in the pre-war and war years, they influenced the ideas about the historical role of Russian architecture as well as the worldview of architects and the appearance of specific buildings.

Socio-political determinants of the evolution of post-war Soviet architecture

Socio-political determinants of the evolution of post-war Soviet architecture

Disturbing Values: Historic Thematic Framework as a Tool to Deal with the Soviet Architectural Legacy

The value of cultural heritage is a constantly evolving and debated issue in heritage theory. While primarily the focus was on tangible qualities, intangible values gained more importance in the twenty-first century. However, in some cases, it can be complicated to evaluate the intangible values of specific artefacts with politically disturbing associations, such as Soviet architecture in a post-Soviet context. Based on a Lithuanian case study, the paper contributes to the debate on the value of Soviet architecture, focusing not on individual buildings but on broader themes. By using framework analysis as a conceptual background, the article analyzes the legacy of the Soviet past not as physical objects but as cultural references. Interpreting “cultural references” as containers of social and cultural meanings that are much broader than just the embodiment of the ideological system, the paper suggests that dissonance should not lead to the uncompromising delisting and probably the destruction of the built heritage of troublesome past. Although the article focuses on the evaluation of Soviet architecture in a post-Soviet context, the conceptual approach can contribute to the broader debate on postcolonial heritage globally.

PUBLISHED RESEARCH SOURCES ON UKRAINIAN AVANT-GARDE

Ukrainian architecture is scarcely represented in Western libraries. And there are few Western investigations that specialize in the Ukrainian Modern Movement. For a long time, Selim Omarovich Khan-Magomedov’s book ‘Pioneers of Soviet architecture’, first published in the German Democratic Republic in 1983 as ‘Pioniere der Sowjetischen Architektur. Der Weg zur neuen sowjetischen Architektur in den zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre’, has been the best known source on this subject accessible for Western scholars. In 1987, this book was translated and published in English by Thames and Hudson/Rizzoli. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Khan-Magomedov reworked his manuscript and published an enhanced Russian version in two volumes1.In this short overview of published materials on Ukrainian Avant-garde, I want to focus on almost unknown publications from the 1920s-1930s and recent research published in the last three decades.

Soviet Heritage(scape) in Sillamäe: Documenting the Potential in an Emerging Tourism Destination

In 2014, the National Heritage Board of Estonia began the procedure for declaring the town centre of the former Soviet secret uranium town of Sillamäe in Northeast Estonia a heritage conservation area. The process is expected to be finalised in 2023, making it the first area where Soviet architecture would be under protection in Estonia. By approaching the town theoretically and methodologically as a heritagescape where components of tangible landscape are used to create a distinct place of the past, looking at how the town’s official development policy relates to the existing representations of the past in the town’s memory institutions, and interviewing local stakeholders, this article provides a broader and more nuanced understanding of Sillamäe and its tourism potential. Sillamäe as heritagescape offers tourists the chance to experience a curated version of the Soviet era and contemplate on the legacy of nuclear industry, while remaining in the safety of a resort town in the periphery of the European Union.

ARCHITECTURAL AND PLANNING ORGANIZATION OF THE FORMATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE IN IVANO-FRANKIVSK IN THE PERIOD 1944-1989

Starting from the XIII century. clear differences in the development of cities in the region are emerging, which are caused by different levels of socio-economic development, political situation (the region is part of different states), etc. In this connection, the settlements of the region are experiencing various morphological transformations. These changes often had a diverse character in individual regions. Examining the process of forming a new architectural image of the centers of Western Ukrainian cities during 1944–1989, attention is drawn to the fact that this twenty-year period is characterized by the predominance of technocratic principles and postulates, the artificial separation of architecture from its general cultural foundations. Focusing on quantitative and technological indicators levels the spatial essence of architecture and takes it out of the general cultural context. Adherence to the prescriptive direction of the preference of the "new" over the "old" also had negative consequences for the formation of the image of the centers of small historical towns. The second generation of general plans of these cities, worked out in the 1960s, provided primarily for the functional zoning of the territory.
 The image of the city of Ivano-Frankivsk was formed over a long time, through gradual additions and changes in the historical and spatial structure. This article examines the period from 1944-1989 in the architecture of the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. The basic stages of the development of Soviet architecture are revealed and an assessment of architectural and spatial changes and housing construction in the city is made.
 During this period, the development of the architectural and planning structure of the city meets the contemporary requirements of urban planning and focuses on new industrial enterprises and warehouses. Arrangement of residential areas and micro-districts with the creation of the necessary complex of institutions for cultural and household services of the population and green spaces.
 The development of the central part of the city consists in the fact that the historically formed street network was generally preserved, and the neighborhood development was supplemented with numerous houses - "seals" of medium storeys. Their architectural image is significantly enriched with elements of regional folk architecture, which is positively perceived by both the professional environment and city residents.

The Language of Mass Architectural Postmodernity

Setting itself off against the architecture of the capitalist West, allegedly tangled in styles, Soviet architecture claimed its origins in the social realm. If one is to trace the intrinsic nature of changes in the architecture of the 1980s in the USSR, it is to be done not through the borrowed concept of postmodernism, but through the analysis of the developments in the design of its most social manifestation—mass housing. So far, Soviet architecture has primarily been whittled down to the evolution of styles. A more advanced reading focuses on the shift from Socialist Realism to the complex design of the human habitat following Khrushchev’s reforms in construction. However, even this transformation took place within the framework of building systematization, represented by the all-Union system of naming for standard architecture, or the Nomenclature. The system, implemented since 1947, assigned indexes to type designs of all building types; within it, every type design was allocated its specific position. The Nomenclature could thus describe the whole human habitat. In the mid-1980s, the naming system made further steps to meet the growing diversification of type designs by assigning new indexes which were longer and codified more parameters, undermining vested geographical and temporal hierarchies. The diversity was treated as a quantitative problem, which the Nomenclature successfully solved. It proved flexible enough to consistently ascribe an index to any—not necessarily type—design. Although mass housing disappeared from the architectural discourse during perestroika, standardized architecture enjoyed the most fruitful and systematic time in its history. So all-encompassing and everlasting, the Nomenclature nevertheless collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union. The centralization of design proved its most fundamental precondition, which in the post-Soviet world was impossible to retain.

Reclaiming Identity: The Postmodern Turn in the Vilnius Architecture of the 1980s

How can we interpret the architects' desire to look postmodern in the last decade of soviet architecture (1980-1990)? Can it be explained according to René Girard’s theory of 'mimetic desire'? How much was it an imitation of Western forms, and how much was it connected to the vernacular turn, resulting in irreverent 'overuse' of historical references? Emphasis on the genius loci, vernacular elements, and search for historical/cultural identity indicates that themes usually associated with the postmodern architecture surfaced in the Eastern Bloc long before the demise of the socialist political system. The paper is focused on the 1980s architectural competitions in Vilnius, Lithuania, where younger generations of architects presented postmodern designs that widely employed historical references

Proto-constructivism in Novosibirsk architecture in 1917-1927

Purpose: The analysis of the architecture of the first post-revolutionary decade, processes and origins of the new style constructivism. The paper highlights the architecture of this period. Design/methodology/approach: Interesting factual material on proto-constructivism and its main problems. Comparison of different viewpoints on the processes in Novosibirsk architecture and the analysis based on the data collected. Research findings: This style is preceded by rather an interesting stage of creative research, which needs a special study. At that time, a significant number of public and administrative buildings were built in Novosibirsk, which was associated with its transformation to the administrative center of the Siberian Krai. It was an important period in the history of the Soviet architecture, when a search for a new creative method, architectural principles was carried out in the capital and regions, although researchers paid less attention to it than to constructivism. Architecture of post-revolutionary decade is characterized by a multi-vector nature and a pronounced desire for rationalism and functionalism, while still retaining the styles of the previous era associated with the struggle of various directions; new stylistic search for the post-revolutionary period. Practical implications: The obtained results contribute to the study of origins of the Soviet avantgarde architecture and can be used in further research and training manuals in the field. Originality/value: The analysis of the different viewpoints on the reasons for the Soviet avant-garde architecture development; comparison with the facts; identification of differences between the viewpoints, which is important for further study of this topic.