Modernism in Soviet Architecture of the 1920s-1930s: Experiments and Myth-Making

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Soviet modernist architecture is defined by a lack of realization, and not only in the obvious sense that its logistical challenges were a poor match for the industrial underdevelopment of this period. The (un)realization we propose to consider, rather, has to do with the fact that while Soviet modernism was to pursue the dual objective of revolutionizing architectural form and transforming social reality along utopian lines, most projects in this category, whether “visionary” in the strictest sense or actually carried out, lay bare the gap between an innovative formal blueprint and the traditional social agenda still in force – a gap that proved insurmountable within traditional architectural language and paradigm. Central to this panel will be the disparity between the utopian collective, both its social organization and physicality, and, on the other hand, the spaces created for it. We will discuss Soviet architectural projects of the 1920s-30s (whether actually built or only envisioned) with an eye toward discerning evidence of the collective-utopia myth running up against the realities of architectural routine. Do we find examples of architectural language or paradigm ever embracing utopia? Or is innovation in this context limited, only going so far as the particular exquisiteness of this or that formal achievement? Where, that is, does utopia fall short; and what lessons can we draw from its unfinished projects? And did the struggle to realize utopia result in any partial victories, bits and pieces of a utopia fulfilled?

Sub Unit

• Arts: Art History, Architecture, Dance, Museum, Music, Photography, Theatre

Chair

• Nicoletta Misler, U of Naples (Italy)

Papers

• Workers’ Clubs as a Myth-Making Enterprise - Roann Barris, Radford U

• Houses that Become One with the Street: Ivan Leonidov’s Workers' Clubs - Djamilia Nazyrova, U of Pennsylvania

• Designing Steel City: All-Union Architectural Competition for the City of Magnitogorsk, 1929-30 - Christina Elizabeth Crawford, Emory U

Discussants

• Regina P Khidekel, Russian American Cultural Center / Lazar Khidekel Society

• Ekaterina Kudryavtseva, Stetson U