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C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
CONTEMPORARY
ARCHITECTURE
III/I
C O N T E M P O R A R Y A R C H I T E C T U R E 2 0 1 1

C o n t e x t A git p ro p p o ster b y M aya ko vsk y

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Russia, 1919

Artistic and Architectural

Philosophy

Art as a practice for social

purpose

Grew out of geometric,

dynamic and kinetic styles
of both Cubism and
Futuristic Architecture

Overlaid with Communist

ideals

Technology and
Engineering

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Futurism- Italian avant-

garde of 20th century

F U T U R I S M
•First theorized by Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti
•celebrated advanced
technology & modern urbanity
•Members – wished to destroy
older forms of culture and
demonstrate the beauty of
modern life – the beauty of
the machine, speed,
violence and change

The Milliner, Gino Severini

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Futurism

Abstract F U T U R I S M
Speed +
Sound,
Giacomo Balla

•most of its adherents were artists, working in traditional

medium – paintings, sculpture
•Interested in popular media and new technologies to
communicate their ideas
•Emphasized and glorified themes associated with
contemporary concepts of the future, including speed,
technology, youth and violence and objects such as the
car, the airplanes and the industrial city
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The
City
Rises,

F U T U R I S M
Umberto
Boccioni

•Practiced in every medium of arts : painting, sculpture,

ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design,
theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture,
and even gastronomy
•arts, under the influence of : Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra,
Gino Severini, Mario Chiattone
•architecture – Giacomo Balla, Antonio Sant’Elia – even
Adalberto Libera, Angiolo Mazzoni
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F U T U R I S M

Funeral of Anarchist Galli

Carlo Carra

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Unique forms of
continuity in
space

F U T U R I S M
Umberto Boccioni

A bronze Futurist
Sculpture, expression of
movement & fludity

A human like figure,

seemingly flying or
gliding through the air

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•Challenges of the new ‘machinist society’ – expressing

movement and mechanical speed, the essential
determinants of modernity

F U T U R I S M
•The futurists extended their vision to the study of the
latest conquest of modern science with an undivided
enthusiasm for all of what they perceived to be radical
facts of the contemporary civilization.

•They rejected emphatically the old canons of static

perspectival representation and invoked instead the
redemptive forces of the universal dynamism brought
about by the machine, itself central to the new forms of
visualization.

•Visionary representation of cities – speedy automotive

vehicles – redefinition of modern movements’ functional
themes in terms of extreme flexibility and mobility
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•Best known futurist architecture project – Sant’Elia’ &

Mario Chiatones’ urban experiment – exhibited in
Milan, 1914
•City fabric – Elaborate system of monumental arteries

F U T U R I S M
and huge ‘streamlines’ skyscrapers
•Sant’Elia’s per WWI citta nuova – informed
significantly of Marinetti

•Solving problems of motorized transportation and its

diversification according to speed and purpose –
including strict segregation of pedestrian circulation –
influence on Le Corbusier’s 1922 speculative
Contemporary city for three million inhabitants
•Post revolutionary Soviet Constrctivism played a
major role in the development of futurism in Italy

C O N T E M P O R A R Y A R C H I T E C T U R E 2 0 1 1

Antonio
Sant’Elia

La Citta F U T U R I S M
Nouva,
the new
city

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Antonio Sant’Elia
La Citta Nouva, the new city

F U T U R I S M
The city – a backdrop onto which the dynamism of
Futurist life is projected – had replaced the landscape
as the setting for the exciting modern life.

They wanted to see the bare bones, the structure

behind things as part of the aesthetic quality. Sant'Elia
aimed to create a city as an efficient, fast-paced
machine. He manipulates light and shape to emphasize
the sculptural quality of his projects.

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Baroque curves & encrustations had been stripped

away to reveal the essential lines of forms F U T U R I S M
unprecedented from their simplicity.

In the new city, every aspect of life was to be

rationalized and centralized into one great
powerhouse of energy. The city was not meant to
last, and each subsequent generation was expected to
build their own city rather than inheriting the
architecture of the past.

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C o n t e x t An advertising construction

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Pure art versus Industrial
production (productivists –
Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara
Stepanova, Vladimir Tatlin)

Naum Gabo and

A n t o i n e P e v s n e r – The
Realist Manifesto – against
cubism and futurism; favor
spiritual abstractions of
Wassily Kandinsky

Constructivist architecture –
more functional and less
theoretical concerns – LEF
magazine – Proletkult?

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C o n t e x t Pravda, Newspaper in

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Leningrad
VKhuTEMAS - Higher Artistic and
Technical Worshop

VKhuTEIN – Higher Artistic and

Technical Institute

I N K h u K – Institute of Artistic Culture

Factional Disputes in RUSSIAN

M O D E R N I S M – Rationalist/ formalists
vs. Constructivists

The work of an architect must not be

separated from the utilitarian demands
of technology

Theorist M o i s e i G i n z b u r g

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Naum Gabo, Realist

Constructive Head No. 2, Constructive Head Linear Construction

1916 (galvanized iron, painted No. 1, 1915 (plywood) No. 2, 1970-1
yellow ochre)
the exploration of space, without having to depict mass

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Alexander Rodchenko

“We had visions of a new world,

industry, technology and science. We
simultaneously invented and changed
the world around us. We authored new
notions of beauty and redefined art
itself.” Lengiz, 1924

Steps, 1930

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Alexander Rodchenko

Pure Red Color, Pure Yellow Color, Pure Blue Color, 1921

"I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three

canvases: red, blue and yellow. I affirmed: it's all over. Basic Colors.
Every plane is a plane and there is to be no representation."

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Alexander Rodchenko

• believed that art could bring new

vitality and perspective to everyday
life – and vice versa
• created works that were visually
striking regardless of what they were
trying to sell

Dance. An Objectless Composition, 1915

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C o n t e x t

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
A S N O V A – main
rationalist Group
Nikolai Ladovsky (1881-1941)
Vladimir Krinsky (1890-1971)
Nikolai Dokuchaev (1899-1941)

First constructivist exhibition

T a t l i n ’ s T o w e r
Automobile and
industry – new roads,
more parking garages, new
factories and government
buildings

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C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Suprematism, Kazimir Malevich
• focused on basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines, and
rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors,
• refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic
feeling" rather than on visual depiction of objects

Black Square Black Circle

Black Cross
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Suprematism, Kazimir Malevich

“Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative
art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are,
in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such,
quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.” Kazimir
Malevich

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• Under Constructivism, the traditional

easel painter is transformed into the
artist-as-engineer in charge of
organizing life in all of its aspects
• Suprematism, in sharp contrast to
Constructivism, embodies a profoundly
anti-materialist, anti-utilitarian
philosophy. White On White, 1918
• absolute non-objectivity
Art no longer cares to serve the state and
religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the
history of manners, it wants to have nothing
further to do with the object, as such, and
believes that it can exist, in and for itself,
without "things" (that is, the "time-tested
well-spring of life").

White Cross
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C h a r a c t e r i s t i c s

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
- Derived from cubism and futurism with architectonic
emphasis on the technology of the time

- In design; there was a complete departure from precedent in

different aspects like; external appearance, planning and
social programs.

- Marked by abstract creation based on logic, pure

geometry and new tool/ mediums.

- Introduction of new materials; metals, wires, concrete, glass

and plastic.

- The art was to be practical, applied and utilitarian – a

part of the modern production process

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“MONUMENT TO THE THIRD

INTERNATIONAL”, 1919-20
• planned to be located in the
capital city of St.
Petersburg.
• 400 m high
• contrast of the scale
between the tower and the
city.(Eiffel tower- 300m
high)
• expression of the new
revolutionary culture of the
new Russia.

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“MONUMENT TO THE THIRD

INTERNATIONAL”, 1919-20
• very wild double spiral curved
shape of a tower.
• four glazed geometrical volumes
suspended within a spiraling open
structure of steel.
• main concept – dynamism i.e.
movement or change brought with
time.
• shows some attention towards
economy of materials- fabricated
principally out of girders &
guywires, a technique that would
have produced a structure of
impressive size & integrity with a
minimum of materials.
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“MONUMENT TO THE THIRD

INTERNATIONAL”, 1919-20
• a cube at the bottom, housing the
legislative power i.e. congress hall
would turn about its axis once a year.
• a pyramid above the cube, housing
the executive powers i.e.
administration would turn about its
axis once a month.
• a cylinder above the pyramid housing
the information center, mass media
press & public facilities would turn
about its axis once a day.
• capped at the top with a small
hemisphere.

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Monument to the Third International

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
I showed them a photograph of Eiffel Tower and said “ that
which you think is new has been done already. Either build
functional houses and bridges or create pure arts not
both. Don’t confuse one with the other. Such art is not pure
constructive art, but merely an imitation of machine.
- Naum Gabo (Pevsner)

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El Lissitzky
• developed a suprematist style of his own, a
series of abstract, geometric paintings which he
called Proun - "the station where one changes
from painting to architecture.“
• exploration of the visual language of
suprematism with spatial elements, utilizing
shifting axes and multiple perspectives; both
uncommon ideas in suprematism
• he paintings were artistic in their own right, their
use as a staging ground for his early
architectonic ideas was significant
• the basic elements of architecture – volume,
mass, color, space and rhythm – were subjected Proun Vrashchenia, 1919
to a fresh formulation in relation to the new
suprematist ideals

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Wolkenbugel,

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Mart Stam
Moscow, 1922
• Theoretical plans deeply inspired by
Supermatist artist Kasimir Malevich
• stood on great elevated piers above
intersections of radial and ring-roads in
Moscow
• piers with their open-faced lift-shafts,
support the horizontally cantilevered
building.
• Beneath them are metro stations andSought to bring together the utopian
bus-stops and the everyday into workable
• supposed to be made of steel and solution based on new communal
glass, all the parts being standardized living arrangements
so that no scaffolding is needed for its
erection

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Narkomfin Building, Moisei Ginzburg

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M

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Narkomfin Building, Moisei Ginzburg

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
the real emancipation of
women and real
communism begins with
the mass struggle against
these petty household
chores and the true
reforming of the mass into
a vast socialist household
View from west
- V I Lenin

View from garden

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Narkomfin Building, Moisei Ginzburg

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
treating workers'
housing in the same way
as they would bourgeois
apartments...the
Constructivists however
approach the same
problem with maximum
consideration for those
shifts and changes in
our everyday life...our
goal is the collaboration
with the proletariat in
creating a new way of
life.
-Ginzburg’s critique on the idea
of building in a new society
being the same as in the old

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Zuev Worker’s Club, Ilya Golosov

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Social outlet for
workers

White cube – 3 storey

glazed cylinder

Juxtaposition of Circle
& square – visual
harmony of static and
dynamic forms

A large foyer,
Clubrooms, auditorium;
connected by staircase
set in the corner
cylinder

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Rusokov Club, Konstantin Melnikov

-Fan shaped plan C O N S T R U C T I V I S M

-3 cantilevered concrete
seating areas rise over
the base
-Each volumes – separate
auditorium
-Combined – 1000 people
-Rear – conventional
offices
-Concrete + brick + glass

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Town Hall, Leningrad, Noi Trotsky

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
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Melnikov House, Moscow, K. Melnikov

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Architect’s house 1927
– Plaster over brick bearing
wall
– cold temperate
– suburban residential
– eclectic modern
– interlocking cylindrical
plan, glazing in unusual
arrangement
No, function cannot provide
all the answers.

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Melnikov House, Moscow, K. Melnikov

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
– two intersecting cylinders
decorated with a pattern of
hexagonal windows

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The Print-shop of “Ogonyok” Magazine

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
El Lissitzky

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Shukhov Tower

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Moscow, 1922

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Shukhov Tower

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Moscow, 1922

• Avant Garde
• 160 m high free standing
steel diagrid structure

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I n t o u r i s t G a r a g e , Konstantin Melnikov, 1933

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
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Moscow Planetarium, 1929, Barsch/Sinyavsky

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M

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Svoboda Factory Club, Melnikov

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
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Narkomtiazhprom (People's Commissariat of Heavy

C O N S T R U C T I V I S M
Industry) , Vesnin Brothers (Leonid, Viktor, Alexander) and Ivan
Leonidov

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CONCLUSION
• relatively little was built but a great deal was designed.

• lasted merely two decades (1914 – 1932) yet was a

period of sweeping change.

• political change was a key to start constructivism but

finally the political ideology became the cause of its
demise.

• Stalin, a political figure with a strong influence froze the

movement.

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CONCLUSION
• didn’t get its rightful place in the history, as it was way too ahead of
time
• constructivism, with its age, became so advance that the society
could not accept or understand their vision and so the constructivists
suffered the end with denial and rejection
• the constructivist architects who strongly believed in their new vision
of change chose to be silent as an architect than to build other than
their beliefs
• A number of Constructivists would teach or lecture at
the Bauhaus schools in Germany, and some of the VKhUTEMAS
teaching methods were adopted and developed there

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