- Architecture in Russia before, during and after Stalin In London for “The Center Cannot Hold” conference, we had the opportunity to meet Vladimir Paperny, author of Architecture in the Age of Stalin, and to revive in a conversation with him our interest on the Russian avant-garde and the fate of modernist urbanism under and after Stalin. Here you find some of his answers regarding: the […]
- Narkomfin narratives We are honoured to reblog here the essay by Vladimir Paperny originally published in the book O’NFM_6: Narkomfin, edited by Danilo Udovicki-Selb, published by Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen, 2015, given the kind permission of author, editor and publisher. Apart from being flattered by our film Dom Novogo Byta quoted in it as a source, the piece […]
- Suburban Constellations One of the images of the cover of the recently published book Suburban Constellations comes from our Dom Novogo Byta film. The book in fact contains a photographic essay by ogino:knauss about the Khodinskoe field in Moscow, where we shoot the final images of the Muscovite episode of R:CP. Suburban Constellation is a book and a […]
- Jean-Louis Cohen / Modernism and periphery November 2010, working on a spot for Moskonstruct we shortly interviewed via Skype the architecture historian Jean Louis Cohen, one of the major experts of modernism and the curator of the recent exhibition of Le Corbusier at MOMA. Few questions about Narkomfin are published in the incoming Dom Novogo Byta DVD. We plan an extensive interview […]
- From Disurbanisation to Hyperurbanisation “Following the Marxist theory of cancelling the difference between city and countryside, de-urbanization called for the abolition of cities in favor of “field urbanism” an evenly distributed industry intermingled of agriculture and residential areas. First imagined by Soviet Constructivist avant-garde in the 1920s, de-urbanization was the red, communist version of Ebenezer’s Howard Garden City.” (Mihai […]
- Sotsgorod Sotsgorod, Problems of Building Socialist Cities is Nikolai Milyutin‘s most well known theoretical contribution. Milyutin was a convinced supporter of the radical reform of everyday life and the refusal of bourgeois values, which in his mind still gave form to the majority of post-revolutionary architecture. He advocated the collectivisation and industrialisation of human settlement, with an eye on […]
- Disurbanism At the end of the 1920s, the attention of constructivist architects, in particular those of OSA, increasingly shifted toward a radical critique of the city itself, focusing on visions designed to overcome urban concentration, and introducing concepts of diffuse urbanisation, linear and green cities, ultimately theorising the concept of disurbanism. This term was basically the result […]
- On the preservation of Modernist Heritage Since our involvement as invited artists with the Moskonstruct campaign, and later with RKM, where we took care of the communication and graphic design of the EU funded cooperation project, we have found ourselves involved in the issue of preserving the heritage of modernist architecture. Our project and blog have also become a sounding board for campaigns and petitions. This […]
- On the Preservation of Konstantin Melnikov’s Works and Heritage We recently received this petition for the preservation of Melnikov’s works and we are happy to republish it. We are approaching the 40th anniversary of the death of the architect Konstantin Melnikov,and the importance and value of his built works and the projects he drew has not stopped growing over all these years. Melnikov’s visionary […]
- Vladimir Shukhov Vladimir Shukhov is often referred to as Russia’s Edison. He was one of the first to develop stress and deformation calculations, though he is most famous for his creation of double-curving surfaces and the world’s first hyperboloid structures, of which his Shabolovka Radio Tower in central Moscow is a shining example. Shukhov worked in Philadelphia […]