Constructivism

Constructivism. Anti-aesthetic, anti-art, supposedly pro-technology (in that it favoured the apparently logical use of man-made industrial materials and processes such as welding), Left-wing movement originating in the USSR from c.1920, later promoted in the West, notably at the Bauhaus. Although its scope varied, and was never very clearly defined, many Constructivists insisted that architecture was simply the means of expressing a structure made using industrial processes and machine-made parts, with no hint of craftsmanship, and tended to stress utilitarian aspects, especially the function of elements of the building. The best-known Russian Constructivist projects were V. Tatlin's huge monument to the Third International (1920), a distorted frustum in the form of a diminishing spiral; Melnikov's Rusakov Club, Moscow (1927–8), with cantilevered concrete lecture-halls expressed on the main elevation (and yet some commentators would deny that Melnikov was a Constructivist at all, seeing him more as a ‘Productivist’ (anti-aesthetic technician) concerned with timber structures, as in his pavilions for the Moscow Exhibition of 1923 and the Paris Exposition of 1924–5); and A. Vesnin's project for the Leningradskaya Pravda (Leningrad's Truth) building in Moscow (1923), with advertising signs, clocks, loud-speakers, lifts, and a searchlight all incorporated and expressed as integral elements of the design. One of the key figures was El Lissitzky, who was the link between Russian Constructivism and Western Europeans such as Duiker, Gropius, Meyer, and Stam. The last worked on Brinkman and van der Vlugt's Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam, held by some to be the best example of Constructivism in the West, mostly because of its expression of functional and industrial elements. The movement gave rise to many sub-theories and factions, some more extreme than others, and Constructivist themes have re-emerged in recent years in the work of Richard Rogers, notably the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1972–7), and Lloyd's Building in London. Russian Constructivism's anti-environmentalist aspects, jagged overlapping diagonal forms, expression of mechanical elements (such as services, lifts, etc.), have proved to be potent precedents for High Tech architecture, and, more recently, for the followers of Deconstructivism, notably Hadid, Koolhaas, and Libeskind.

Bibliography

Ingberman (1994);
Jencks (2002);
Johnson & and Wigley (1988);
Khan-Magomedov (1975, 1986, 1987);
Kopp (1970);
Lampugnani (ed.) (1988);
Lissitzky (1970, 1981);
Ly-Küppers (1980);
Lodder (1983);
Margolin (1997);
Richter (1958);
Salingaros et al. (2004);
O. Shvidkovsky (1970)