CONSTRUCTIVISM

Influenced by cubism and futurism, constructivism had its roots in the abstract geometric constructions of Vladimir Tatlin. In 1920 the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo joined Tatlin in the publication of the Realist Manifesto, from which the name constructivism was derived. Like the Futurists, they admired the machine and technology, functionalism, and modern industrial materials. Within architecture the constructivists stressed that form should be determined in the process of construction by the utilitarian aim of the building and the natural characteristics of the building materials. They grouped around the "Union of Contemporary Architects" (OSA) led by the Vesnin brothers (Alexander, Viktor, and Leonid) and Moisei Ginzburg and its journal Sovremennaya arkhitektura (Contemporary Architecture ). They argued that the construction of a new environment was not simply a matter of art or technology but entailed rebuilding culture from the bottom up. History had entered into a new creative cycle, and in that period of youth, utilitarian and constructive aspects of style were of paramount importance, and aesthetic simplicity and organizational logic must determine the new style.

This in no way signaled the demise of aesthetic emotion, rather its transformation under the influence of modern economics, technology, and the machine. Ginzburg developed what became known as the Functional Method, whereby the functional requirements of a structure, such as the "diagram of movement," within the building and the siting of individual living units within a structure, were given priority in spatial composition. To achieve the desired goal, adherents used the pavilion method, which divided a complex into blocks according to their intended use and linked these units by walkways or bridges to satisfy the entire ensemble's ultimate social function as a work of art. Ginzburg put his theory to best use in a housing complex designed and built between 1928 and 1930 for Narkomfin (the People's Commissariat of Finance) on Novinsky Boulevard, now House 25, Tchaikovsky Street.

See also: cultural revolution; futurism.

bibliography

Hudson, Hugh D., Jr. (1994). Blueprints and Blood: The Stalinization of Soviet Architecture, 1917-1937. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lodder, Christina. (1983). Russian Constructivism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hugh D. Hudson Jr.