Constructivist architecture combined engineering and technology with political ideology. Constructivist architects tried to suggest the idea of humanity's collectivism through the harmonious arrangement of diverse structural elements.
The most famous work of constructivist architecture was never actually built. In 1920, Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin proposed a futuristic monument to the 3rd International in the city of St. Petersburg (then known as Petergrado). The unbuilt project, called Tatlin's Tower, used spiral forms to symbolize revolution and human interaction. Inside the spirals, three glass-walled building units - a cube, a pyramid, and a cylinder - would rotate at different speeds.
Soaring 400 meters (about 1,300 feet), Tatlin's Tower would have been taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The cost to erect such a building would have been enormous. But, even though Tatlin's Tower wasn't built, the plan helped launch the Constructivist movement. By the late 1920s, Constructivism had spread outside the USSR. Many European architects called themselves constructivists. However, within a few years Constructivism faded from popularity and was eclipsed by the Bauhaus movement in Germany.
Constructivist buildings have many of these features:
- Glass and steel
- Machine-made building parts
- Technological details such as antennae, signs, and projection screens
- Abstract geometric shapes
- A sense of movement
Constructivist Architects:
- Vladimir Tatlin
- Konstantin Melnikov
- Nikolai Milyutin
- Aleksandr Vesnin
- Leonid Vesnin
- Viktor Vesnin
- El Lissitzky
- Vladimir Krinsky
- Iakov Chernikhov
Learn More:
Lost Vanguard: Russian Modernist Architecture 1922-1932 by Richard Pare (2007)
