Constructivism

Constructivist architecture in the Soviet Union, about 1920-1932, assembles buildings from simple geometric volumes: cubes, cylinders and slabs of reinforced concrete, steel and glass. The structure is left visible and there is no applied ornament. Windows run in continuous bands or wrap around corners, glazed cylindrical stair towers cut through rectangular blocks, and upper volumes project on cantilevers (beams anchored at one end) or stand on pilotis (columns that lift a block off the ground). The building types were new: workers' clubs, communal housing with shared kitchens and nurseries, and office complexes.

In Moscow, Ilya Golosov's Zuev Workers' Club (1927-1929) has a glazed cylindrical stair crossing stacked rectangular volumes, Konstantin Melnikov's Rusakov Workers' Club (1927-1928) has three cantilevered concrete auditorium blocks, and Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis's Narkomfin Building (1928-1930) stands on pilotis. Kharkiv has the 13-story Derzhprom (1925-1928). Soviet Modernism came later, about 1955-1991, after Stalinist classicism, and is defined by bold concrete forms, mosaics and sculptural facades rather than glazed stairs and light-framed volumes.

Constructivist architecture grew out of the Constructivist art movement, which developed from Russian Futurism after the 1917 Revolution. Vladimir Tatlin's unbuilt 1919 proposal for a Comintern headquarters, a tower of glass and steel, is its best-known early project. Moisei Ginzburg published the manifesto Style and Epoch in 1924, and in 1925 he and Alexander Vesnin founded the OSA group (Organisation of Contemporary Architects), which promoted collective housing and the idea of the building as a "social condenser."

Most of the built work dates from 1925 to 1932, in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkiv, Yekaterinburg and Minsk. The 1932 Palace of the Soviets competition drew entries from the leading Constructivists and from foreign architects including Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Boris Iofan's historicist design won, and Stalinist architecture replaced Constructivism as the official style. Ginzburg lost favor and worked in Crimea and Central Asia. Panteleimon Golosov's Pravda building (1935) is counted among the last Constructivist buildings. The Narkomfin Building was restored from 2016 to 2020 and reopened on July 9, 2020.