Moscow

Architecture at Vkhutemas The VKhUTEMAS, or Higher State Artistic-Technical Workshop, was an important centre of experimentation and technical innovation in art education in Moscow during the 1920s. Its importance in developing experimental design and pedagogical innovations rivals that of the Bauhaus in Weimar, although the VKhUTEMAS is far less well known. Inspired by the work of artists such […] jo pixel No responses 2012-02-26
Design for Childrens Games jo pixel No responses 2012-02-26
Threatened El Lissitsky’s printing plant We have been visiting our friends at the Zhurgaz house, to see how is going their struggle to preserve their home and the close El Lissitzky’s typography. The planned new high rise building has been built up, although in recent times the construction has been stopped. The destitution of mayor Luzkhov left in disgrace his […] jo pixel No responses 2011-12-20
Moscow in winter The city looks more natural, or maybe less un-natural in the winter light. Perhaps our gaze is more domesticated, more used to the everyday dimension of this megalopolis, but details at human scale show on the surface of our perception. jo pixel No responses 2011-12-20
Artists vs. Residents Artists have always inhabited the Narkomfin, and are among those who struggle for saving its architectural heritage. Nevertheless their role in the Narkomfin story is also ambiguous, as possible agents of gentrification and displacement. MIAN is allowing some artists to use the spaces of the building as studio, but the residents react against the artists, […] jo pixel No responses 2011-07-23
Moisei Ginzburg Moisei Ginzburg was one of the most active members of the constructivist movement, and a leading figure in many groups and institutions, from OSA which he founded together with Aleksander Vesnin to the Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences. The author of numerous theoretical texts, such as ‘Old and New’ and ‘Contemporary aesthetics’, he is often […] jo pixel No responses 2011-06-28
Narkomfin by Rodchenko After being expelled from the October group in 1932, Rodchenko was commissioned to take pictures of Moscow. Out of this series Varvara Stepanova, his wife and colleague, compiled a narrative sequence of eight-nine gelatin silver prints adding to it some photographs from the October period. The photos of street parades, housing projects, technical buildings, new […] jo pixel No responses 2011-06-11
Burning Moscow – El Lissitzky printing plant An interview with Elena Olshanskaya (chairman of Zhurgaz condominium management) jo pixel No responses 2011-02-08
El Lissitzky’s Autograph On the Map of Moscow We receive and publish from Elena Olshanskaya translated by Michael Subotin “We live in cities born before us. They no longer suffice for the tempo and needs of our day. We cannot raze them overnight and rebuild them “correctly”. It is impossible to change their structure and type all at once. Moscow, with its plan, […] jo pixel No responses 2011-01-28
Visions for the future city 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 […] jo pixel No responses 2010-12-01