The buildings of the Palace of Soviets and the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, actively projected in Moscow in the 1930s, were not implemented, but the projects of that era still have an inexhaustible creative potential and a secret of their brief triumph and long-term oblivion. In 1934, the Palace of Soviets takes on a finished look, it is considered the tallest building in the world, and obviously symbolizes the state style. However, how should this style be called? Was it “the school of Iofan” (according to SO Khan-Magomedov [7 p. 656]) or “American skyscraper eclecticism” (according to the well-known formulation of LM Lissitzky [1, p. 4])? And to what extent is it fair to define Iofan's Palace of Soviets as a Soviet analogue of the ribbed style of American skyscrapers, and therefore an example of a domestic version of Art Deco? 1 However, the question of the style of the Palace of Soviets (hereinafter referred to as DS) can be resolved without using the term "Art Deco", through a direct comparison of the architecture of the Palace of Soviets and US skyscrapers. They were characterized by an appeal to the archaic and medieval heritage, as well as the innovations of the 1910s. This is how the Palace of Soviets was conceived.
The results of the all-Union open round of the competition (1931), as it is customary to note, marked a public turn of power towards historicism. 2 However, the DS was accepted for construction not in the order, but in the ribbed style (Art Deco), this was the answer to both constructivism and neoclassicism. Crowned with a statue of Lenin (80 m) in response to the Statue of Liberty (46 m), the Palace of Soviets has become a symbol of competition between the USSR and the USA. And therefore, Iofan, who worked on the DS as the tallest building in the world, took the style of the already built American high-rises as a basis. And it is with this that the trip of Soviet architects to the USA (1934) is connected. Imported architectural images also require the import of construction technologies.
The Tower of the Palace of Soviets became a symbol of Soviet high-rise ambitions, the most famous example of the ribbed style, replicated in the USSR. However, implemented in the architecture of the theater in Minsk (1934-38), the ribbed style was not an invention of Iofan. At the DS competition, he was presented not only by projects of Hamilton and Iofan (who received the 1st prize), but by proposals from Langbard and Chechulin, then Dushkin and Shchuko, as well as Pelzig and Perret, which emphasized the nature of the ribbed style (Art Deco) as an international architectural fashion …
Iofan's project allowed Moscow to compete with monuments of historical styles and American Art Deco, but the composition of the DS went back to the European architectural achievements of the 1910-20s. This is how the Century Hall in Breslau had a significant impact on the architecture of the DS. And if the design and decor of the dome have not yet been determined on the sketch of the DS in 1933, then since 1934, according to Iofan, the large and small halls were covered with a ribbed vault. And it was the Hall of the Century, built in just a year and a half 1911-13 (architect M. Berg), that proved the practical feasibility of erecting such a grandiose dome.
In 1933, the Palace of the Soviets takes the form of a telescopic ribbed tower. However, by the early 1930s, this theme had already been developed in several projects, so in 1926 the architect Urban proposed this style for the Metropolitan Opera building in New York, using the same theme of the intersection of a tower and a cylinder. [fig. 1, 2] In 1928, Langbard performed a similar project at a theater competition in Kharkov. And it was he who, starting in 1934, was entrusted with the implementation of a style experiment - the construction of a theater in Minsk in the ribbed-telescopic architecture of the DS. However, the exterior of the Palace of Soviets would have been even more spectacular: the cylinders that were inferior in height in Iofan's project were solved by slender, strongly extended pylons (ribs).
The final stages of the 1932 competition were obviously devoted to the choice of the customer of the historical association for the DS. 3 At this stage, the customer was most likely shown an album with DS prototypes, and it can be assumed that these were, among other things, the book by H. Ferris "Metropolis of the Future" (1929) and the film of the same name by Fritz Lang "Metropolis" (1927). In 1933, the concept of the DS changed dramatically (the demonstration had its effect): the ribbed-telescopic tower acquires new elongated proportions (as in Saarinen's design for the League of Nations building, 1928 and Ludwig's proposals at the DS competition 1931-32), and most importantly - unexpected and grandiose symbolic potential. 4 [fig. 3] DS was supposed to personify the victory of the new system over Christianity and the achievements of the Western world, and therefore it was located on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and, according to the project, was higher than the skyscrapers of New York. The basis of the composition of the DS skyscraper was the image of the Tower of Babel (according to the reconstruction of A. Kircher in 1679). [fig. five]
In 1932, the third and fourth rounds of the competition actually pitted two ideas of the DS, as a building with a historical prototype and an abstract, composed, ribbed one. And the choice in May 1933 of the "new" style, that is, Iofan's ribbed-telescopic architecture, seemed to mean the victory of the second concept. [fig. 1] At this moment, that is, after the appearance of the idea of a giant statue of Lenin (50-75 m high) and the transformation of the DS into its pedestal, a period of rethinking the tectonics and symbolism of the DS should have come for the authors. Moreover, the resolution of the Council for the Construction of the Palace of Soviets (May 10, 1933) does not say anything about the second, even more ambitious and difficult task, to make the DS the tallest building in the world. [2, p. 59] However, the choice of style in May 1933 was, as it seems, already associated with a change in the task, and even possibly with the discovery of a key to a solution.
Iofan's ribbed style really made it possible to turn DS into a skyscraper. However, the telescopic ribbed shape of the DS, which did not contain a pronounced historical association until 1934, unexpectedly acquired it in the form of the Tower of Babel after Kircher's reconstruction. By February 1934, Iofan released the final design of the ribbed, stupid tower 415 meters high, combining the two DS concepts. [fig. 20] Who could find Kircher's drawing and propose the idea of transforming the base of the DS into the image of the Tower of Babel remains a mystery. However, only in this form did the building acquire a complete, ideologically verified appearance. The central structure of the theomachist system acquired a visible function, a missing and sought-after symbolic content. Let's repeat the hypothesis, the decision to turn the Palace of Soviets into the tallest building in the world, it seems, was most likely due to the fact that the architecture was found that not only made it possible to solve the facade of a record height, but also embodied a powerful symbol, and he, in in turn, was prompted by a spectacular architectural theme. [fig. five]
The neoarchaic yieldingness and mausoleum of the Palace of Soviets, however, found another, relevant source. The dynamic silhouette of the stepped slab of the Rockefeller Center is guessed in a whole series of works by Iofan of the 1930s - both in the projects of the Palace of Soviets and the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry (hereinafter NKTP), and in the pavilions of the USSR at international exhibitions in 1937 and 1939. (note that the dynamic motif of the stepped slab, repeated in the silhouette of the Rockefeller Center on both facades, was first proposed at the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition in the project of the Luckhard brothers).
The composition of the Palace of Soviets was a response to a wide range of foreign architecture, and went back, in addition to American skyscrapers (and Ferris' graphics), to European projects and buildings, and, first of all, to the technocratic tower from the film Metropolis (which gave the idea of the contrast of the ribbed-telescopic tower and geometrized buttresses, and probably influenced the composition of the theater of the Red Army). [fig. 6] Other compositional analogues of the DS are the telescopic turret of the Rex cinema in Paris (architect O. Bloison, 1931-32) and the spiral tombstone of the Bernocchi family in Milan (1931-36), as well as the Sacre-Coeur cathedral in Brussels (architect A. van Huffel, from 1922), and the Church of Notre Dame de Rensy in Paris (architect O. Perret, 1922). [fig. 7,8,9]
The architectural image of the USSR pavilion in Paris was also exquisitely woven from the sharpest proposals of European masters of the Art Deco era, the Main Pavilion at the exhibition in Brussels (1931-35) and an amazing series of sculptures by Frederic Focht of the 1920s and 1930s. [fig. 10, 11] Both the DS and the Paris pavilion of 1937 surpassed their prototypes in size, expression of forms and glory, and nevertheless, their involvement in the world architectural context of their time was obvious and significant.
The final version of the Palace of Soviets (February 1934) was very different in height and style from the architecture proposed at the stages of the 1931-32 competition, various variations of the avant-garde and historicism. 5 In 1933, the idea of installing a giant statue of Lenin and increasing the height of the building to a record 415 meters was born. And it was the ribbed style (Art Deco) that made it possible to effectively solve the architecture of the DS, and surpass the New York skyscrapers by their own means. Competition in height required competition in style. The ribbed, cannellised facade surface did not have restrictions in size and proportions, and there was no decor required in the classics. All this was convenient when designing in a short time. [fig. 12] It only remained to choose the decorative design of the pylons (ribs), to determine the plastic complexity of the facades of the DS.
The solution of the stylobate part of the Palace of Soviets would resemble the architecture of the library named after Lenin (and this is not surprising, given the involvement of venerable architects V. A. Shchuko and V. G. Gelfreikh as co-authors of Iofan).6 Moreover, bas-relief friezes, anta columns (without bases and capitals) and cannellated pilasters acquired the character of an international fashion in the 1920s and 1930s. They were presented in the architecture of skyscrapers and pavilions of the Parisian exhibitions of 1925 and 1937, and could be called a kind of marker of the interwar era. However, they were drawn to the archaic techniques and innovations of the 1910s, and, in particular, the works of J. Hoffman. Such was the artistic integrity of the Art Deco era, torn apart by the First World War, and the retrospectiveness of its style.
Neoarchaic cannellized shoulder blades and pointed neo-Gothic imposts (ribs) - all of this became an alternative to the classical order in the 1920s and 1930s, and this search began in Europe as early as the 1910s. This is how the buildings in New York and Moscow were designed, such are the buildings of Langman and the works of Iofan, the channeled pylons of the Spartakovskaya metro station, as well as the style of the USSR pavilions at the exhibitions in 1937 and 1939, this should have been the DS. 7
The construction of the DS skyscraper was interrupted by the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, and in the 1930s there were no other ribbed towers in Moscow. However, it is impossible to deny the existence of the ribbed style (and hence Art Deco) in the USSR. Shortly before and immediately after the victory in the DS competition, the style of Hamilton and Iofan was implemented in a whole series of buildings located in the very center of Moscow.8 These are the works of A. Ya. Langman - the building of the service station (since 1934) and the dwelling house of the NKVD workers with fluted blades, the building of the State Archives (architect A. F. Vokhonsky, 1936) and the Metrostroy House (moreover, D. F. buildings in a ribbed style), as well as the Gosplan Garage, 1936 (note that the project of the NKTP by K. S. Melnikov was also covered with flutes and ribs, 1934).9 In a similar architecture, as early as the late 1920s, the buildings of the Library to them. IN AND. Lenin (architects V. A. Shchuko and V. G. Gelfreikh, since 1928) and the Main Post Office with Gothic ribs (architects I. I. Rerberg, 1925-27), as well as the buildings of the Institute of Marx and Engels (architects S. E. Chernyshov, 1925–27) and a residential building of the Central Executive Committee of the Council of People's Commissars (architects D. and B. Iofana, 1927-31). Such were the pointed ribs of the NKVD corps (A. Ya. Langman, 1934) and the ATC of the Frunzensky region (architect K. I. Solomonov, 1934), the flattened blades of the People's Commissariat of the Land Forces (L. V. Rudnev, from 1939), and just such Moscow buildings help reconstruct the likely impression of DS Iofan. 10
Art Deco architectural techniques did not just penetrate the Iron Curtain, but they were deliberately imported (and so was the automotive fashion). That is why the term "Art Deco", as a synonym for the ribbed style of skyscrapers and DS, allows one to generalize and compare the stylistic manifestations of the 1920s and 1930s in the USA, Europe and the USSR. However, it is extremely difficult to outline the stylistic boundaries of the term "Art Deco".
The architecture of the 1930s was ready to sum up the development of world architecture, to accumulate its best achievements, both current and historical. This was typical for the USSR, and even more so for the United States. Neoarchaic in image and, at the same time, futuristic due to their record height, the projects of DS and NKTP Iofan became the embodiment of the dual nature of Art Deco. So in the architecture of the DS, various images of antiquity and newfangled architectural ideas and achievements (including the spiral designs of the Tatlin and Ludwig towers) were combined. 11
However, the skyscrapers of the United States were also created based on a wide range of historical motives and European innovations of the 1910-20s - German Expressionism and the Amsterdam school (for example, the New York Telephone Company tower, architect R. Walker, 1929). The ribbed style was genetically associated, first of all, with Gothic and Romanesque, but its neoarchaic basis is no less obvious. Moreover, in the 1910s-1930s, the neoarchaic mausoleum will become a truly international reception.12
In 1929, the famous Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin.13 Archaic in structure and avant-garde in plasticity, Lenin's Mausoleum became the clearest illustration of the chronological and stylistic duality of the 1920s-1930s and its style - Art Deco, directed both to the past and to the future - this was how DS was to become. Note that the duality of the Mausoleum and the Palace of Soviets, the key creations of the Soviet era, demonstrated not just a tough artistic will (within the framework of the so-called Stalinist Empire style), but the absence of a clearly defined state style and an active search for an architectural standard.
Archaic and medieval motives, as well as current innovations of the 1910s - such was the style duality of high-rise buildings of the 1920s and 30s. And this multiplicity of style sources and prototypes was characteristic both for the style of skyscrapers and for Soviet architecture.14 And it was Art Deco that convinced Soviet architects and customers of the admissibility and success of a seemingly risky, eclectic combination of traditional, classical and transformed, invented techniques. The style of the DS interiors would be reminiscent of overseas samples, for example, the train station in Philadelphia (1934) or the Texas State Hall in Dallas (1936), so Art Deco, one might say, turned out to be the stylistic basis of the so-called. Stalinist Empire style. 15
Art Deco, Modern and Avant-garde - the artistic manifestations of these styles were extremely diverse, and it was in the same years, that is, before the First World War, that their architectural techniques were born. And therefore, Art Deco polymorphism is not surprising, but is similar to an art picture of the 1900-10s. And it is precisely on the example of architecture that (in the United States at the end of the 1920s, and in the USSR at the beginning of the 1930s) has reached its utmost diversity, it would seem that the expediency of using the term "Art Deco" as a chronological rather than a stylistic one is obvious. The term "Art Deco" would seem to mean only the era, but not the style.16
Polymorphism, that is, a variety of forms and motives - this was the specificity of the style of skyscrapers, pavilions of the 1925 exhibition and Soviet architecture - competition projects of DS and NKTP, architecture of Moscow high-rise buildings, metro stations and pavilions of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.
And nevertheless, the kinship of stylistic devices, addressed to the same historical past, makes it possible to single out a group of projects and buildings, and talk about the ribbed style (within the framework of Art Deco) as a powerful international phenomenon. This is how Iofan and Fridman, Chechulin and Dushkin, architectural firms led by Graham, Holabert and Hood worked. 17 [fig. 13-17] The vector of the development of the ribbed style was determined by Saarinen's project at the Chicago Tribune competition (1922).
The ribbed style of skyscrapers and the Palace of Soviets could be analyzed in addition to questions of etymology and semantics of the term "Art Deco". Returning to European architecture the pre-war luxury of Art Nouveau, the chamber pavilions of the 1925 exhibition in Paris did not contain the neo-Gothic ribs characteristic of American skyscrapers combined with neo-Aztec ledges, or the most powerful futuristic, technocratic pathos (as in the film Metropolis). The 1925 exhibition did not show the works of art deco pioneers from the United States - Wright, who worked in early Art Deco from the 1900-10s, and Sullivan, who in the 1890s discovered the combination of ascetic impost and a thinly traced flattened bas-relief. There were no participants in the competition for the Chicago Tribune building at the 1925 exhibition, including the authors of the innovations that had already taken place - Hood (by the Radiator Building, 1924), Corbet and Ferris, Walker and Goodhugh. And it was the Chicago Tribune competition (June-December 1922), breaking the monopoly of historicism, for the first time showed all possible versions of the skyscraper - both retrospective, and solved in Art Deco (fantasy-geometrized).
And nevertheless, the exhibition in Paris in 1925 was that stormy explosion of fantasy decorativeism that captured the minds of the architects and customers of the New World. The 1925 exhibition set a new benchmark for artistic quality and a new standard of beauty, and gave the style of the 1920s and 1930s its name. The use of the style of the Parisian exhibition in the decorative design of American skyscrapers connected both phenomena, and in many studies gave the style definition of the towers of the 1920s and 1930s.
The plastic origins of Art Deco were extremely diverse, but in order for the new style to take place, a compositional, tectonic basis was also needed. Varying ribbing and yielding, Art Deco architects sought to reproduce one image that amazed everyone - Saarinen's design at the Chicago Tribune competition. Moreover, this new aesthetics appeared in Saarinen's works at the turn of the 1900-10s, that is, before and in addition to the requirements of the New York zoning law of 1916. While acknowledging the influence of the graphics of Corbett and Ferris (their Jan 1922 project - towers subject to the zoning law), it should be noted that in fact Corbett began to work in the Art Deco style 10-15 years later than Saarinen.18
The monumental yieldingness of Art Deco was also demonstrated by the Kallio Church in Helsinki (architect L. Sonck, 1908) and the Cathedral in Liverpool (architect G. Scott, 1910). However, working on the project of the station in Helsinki (1910), Saarinen took an even more decisive step from retrospection to innovation, from neo-Romanesque aesthetics to a new style. The Saarinen Towers of the 1910-20s (and then the Art Deco skyscrapers) embodied not the neo-Romanesque code, but the tectonics of the stupa. It was the replacement of medieval (and therefore order) motives with archaic ones, and that is why the stalactite-shaped Art Deco towers were so romantic. The essence of this associative game was the multiplication of powerful images of the historical past - Gothic and archaic (Buddhist) architectural codes.
In 1922 Saarinen sensationally connects neo-Gothic ribbing with neo-Aztec scarps. And that is exactly what the archetype of the Art Deco skyscraper will be. Neoarchaic tectonics, the contrast of an ascetic background and decorative accents, fantastically geometrized decor - these were the architectural ideas of Saarinen in the 1910s, the ribbed style of skyscrapers and DS (note that more than 40 towers in the style of Saarinen, for example, Gulf Building in Husten, 1929). The methods of monumentalization, enlargement of the architectural form and free suprematization of the historical motive appeared in Saarinen's works back in the 1910s, when they were not caused either by unprecedented size or economy (caused in the architecture of skyscrapers by the crisis of 1929 and / or the influence of modernism). It was just a new aesthetic.
The Art Deco style sees the building as a large undivided form, with barely developed accents, and this is what makes it related not to Gothic, but to archaic. This was the 90-meter Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig, 1898-1913 (architect B. Schmitz). [fig. 3.4] Its monumental imagery was dictated by the revealed archaic tectonics, and it is this that will form the style of Saarinen. His projects for the Parliament in Helsinki (1908) and the building of the League of Nations in Geneva (1928), and then the DS Iofan, exactly reproduced the silhouette of the German giant (and for Iofan this monumental, telescopic form of the building was well known, this was precisely the master's pre-graduation project - Solved in the spirit of Bulle, the project of the Memorial, 1916 openly predicted the silhouette of the DS, 1932-33). [10, p. 28] So the buildings of the 1910s, the tower of the station in Helsinki and the Monument in Leipzig will prepare the style manifestations of the Art Deco of the 1920s and 1930s - the projects of the Chicago Tribune and the Palace of Soviets, respectively. This was the international (cosmopolitan) basis of Iofan's style.
The competition for the building of the Palace of Soviets marked the onset of the era of "mastering the classical heritage", but the power and expression of Iofan's project went back to a different, not classical, but remote in time and space archaic Buddhist tradition (the compositional prototype of the DS could be the Wat Arun temple in Bangkok). And although the ancient motifs themselves could not be used in the decor of the towers, it was the neoarchaic ledge motif that harmonized compositionally, effectively resolved the silhouette of the building and gave it the features of Art Deco. Archaic tectonism was able to forge any form and the discovery of its power and gave rise to Art Deco, the iconic difference between the new style and neoclassicism is the silhouette of a Buddhist stupa.19 [fig. 18] In the imagination of the Art Deco masters, the relatively small in height ancient temples turned into skyscrapers, many times exceeding them in size. It was enough for the craftsmen to enlarge the monuments of the past to new unprecedented sizes and populate them, countless cornices became floors, pilasters - bay windows.
Art Deco towers represented an absolute change in the plastic language, a rejection of the total, full-relief decor of historical styles. Neither the Gothic cathedrals, nor the ancient temples of India and Southeast Asia were like that, and at the same time, at the level of silhouette and composition, their connection with Art Deco is obvious. The tectonics of stone temples common to remote regions and cultures coincided and formed a new style unity in the architecture of skyscrapers - Art Deco. And it is the Gothic-Buddhist code that will bring together the graphics of such different masters of the interwar period as G. Pelzig and J. Chernikhov, H. Ferris and B. Iofan.20
The crown of Moscow high-rise buildings around the Palace of Soviets exactly repeated Ferris's designs with rarely standing pyramidal towers. So in the city of the Art Deco era, three temple traditions were combined - the multi-tower Gothic, the pointed temples of India, Cambodia and Thailand, the Aztec and Mayan pyramids buried in the greenery. And it is precisely this eclecticism, this complex harmony of Art Deco that makes the style of American skyscrapers related to the projects of DS and NKTP, to Moscow high-rise buildings of the 1950s.
The Palace of Soviets was supposed to become a monument to the new order and it was decided to make its image "universal". Ancient Buddhist temples and reconstruction of the image of the Kircher Tower of Babel, the construction of Berg and Schmitz in the 1910s, the designs of Ferris and Saarinen in the 1920s - the Palace of the Soviets was the perfect fusion of all these images, it was painted with talent. However, why was the DS not implemented after the war? The construction of the DS raised a lot of doubts and questions, from technical and constructive to functional and financial. But most importantly, the construction of the DS skyscraper (required only as the tallest building in the world) was fraught with a scandalous defeat in this race for a record. In New York, at any time, a ribbed 104-storey skyscraper could be completed, according to the project surpassing the Imperial State Building - this is the Metropolitan Insurance Building, 410 m high.21 [fig. 19, 20]
So, the purpose of this article was to list and compare prototypes, and describe the background, or rather the foundation, without which the style of the Palace of Soviets would not have taken place. And it is precisely the term "Art Deco" that makes it possible to emphasize the involvement of the Palace of Soviets in the rivalry of architectural powers and its closeness to the style of foreign architecture. And just as an example of Art Deco, the project of the Palace of Soviets is embedded in the evolution of world architecture for several decades, it acquires a genealogy, and most importantly completes the formal aesthetic search that began in the 1910s. The design of the Palace of Soviets in the form of a ribbed skyscraper became the clearest proof of the development in the USSR of its own version of Art Deco, and the Palace of Soviets became the pinnacle of this style. And only in such a system of coordinates, not in isolation, but in a wide world context, its advantages and advantages are tangible. The final image of the Palace of Soviets was forged not just during the competition, but as a result of a complex search for historical and current prototypes, a choice between them, their creative development and the enhancement of the expressiveness of the ideas embedded in them. Such was the role and merit of B. M. Iofan.
1 The term "ribbed style" in this article is understood, of course, not as "big style", but as a commonality of certain architectural techniques of a group of projects and buildings. The synonymous terms "streamline" and "expressionism" are not used in this article for the ribbed skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s.
2 The competition for the projects of the Palace of Soviets continued with interruptions during 1931-1933, the first preliminary stage, held in February 1931, specified the competition program. Then, in July-December of the same year, the second, all-Union open round of the competition took place, which brought together 160 projects, including 24 from foreign masters. Its result was the abandonment of avant-garde aesthetics (the decree of February 28, 1932, which played a key role in the development of Soviet architecture in the 1930s, called on architects to pursue searches aimed "at using both new and the best techniques of classical architecture"). In March-July 1932, the third round took place - a competition among 12 brigades. In August 1932 - February 1933, the final fourth round among 5 brigades took place. Gradually, the altitude characteristic of the Palace of Soviets begins to grow, by May 1933 the height was 260 meters, in February 1934 - 415 meters, [see. 6, p. 70, 71; 9, p. 80, 84, 113, 115].
3 Historical prototypes also appeared in the projects of the All-Union competition (1931), these are the spiral shape "a la Babel Tower" (Iofan, Ludwig), the image of the mausoleum of Tsitsilia Metella (Golosov), the five-pointed structure of the Villa Caprarola (Chechulin, Ludwig), the Pharos lighthouse and the oval Colosseum (Zholtovsky, Golts). In the third round of the competition (1932), the craftsmen recall the tower of the St. Petersburg Admiralty (Zholtovsky), the cone-shaped silhouette of the mausoleum of Augustus (Chechulin). In the fourth round - the arcades of the basilica in Vicenza (Schuko and Gelfreich) and the oval of the Colosseum (a team consisting of: Alabyan, Mordvinov, Simbirtsev, Doditsa, Dushkin, Vlasov), and the rhythm of the Doge's palazzo is guessed in all four projects, except for Iofan's version.
4 In 1931, during the preliminary competition, G. M. In the DS project, Ludwig was the first to propose a five-pointed "a la Villa Caprarola" structure (this project gave the idea not only to the founders of the Red Army Theater, but could have influenced Chechulin's version, 1932). However, the five-pointed star did not become the basis of the DS. The next two projects of DS Ludwig (1932) convincingly demonstrated the expressive power of tectonic thinning of the tower (version of the third round) and the beauty of the stupid shape of the building (version of the fourth round). And this is exactly what the neoarchism of the final version of Iofan's DS will be like. Recall that Heinrich Ludwig, one of the most talented architects of the 1920s – 1930s, was repressed in 1938, but survived and in 1953 participated in the competition for the Pantheon in Moscow, proposing another project in the style of DS [8, p. 79, 96, 113, 152].
5 It would seem that in search of the DS composition, its creators returned to the motif of a ribbed telescopic tower crowned with a statue proposed by Iofan back in the first round of 1931, but the scale and symbolic content of the tower changed radically. Iofan's 1931 project see [4, p. 140-143]
6 Note that Iofan's assistants were precisely those masters who not only won the customer's trust in the 1920s, but understood this “new” style; in the third round of the 1932 competition, Shchuko and Gelfreich proposed two ribbed versions of the DS.
7 According to the 1938 project, on the facade of the pavilion of the Spartakovskaya metro station (now Baumanskaya), Iofan intended to cover the sides of the pylons with flutes, that is, in exactly the same way as this node was solved in the post office in Chicago (1932) (it was done slightly differently).
8 Similar examples can be found outside Moscow: these are the DK im. Gorky (A. I. Gegello, 1927), the Textile Institute (L. V. Rudnev, 1929), a residential building on Stachek Square (N. A. Trotsky, 1934) and the building of the plant. Kulakov (1936), the house of Voenmores (E. A. Levinson, 1938), as well as a department store in Kiev (D. F. Fridman, 1938). I. G. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, Langbard created a series of projects in a simplified ribbed style, he erected government buildings in Minsk (1930-1934) and Mogilev (1938), and also designed the House of Soviets in Stalingrad (1932).
9 D. F. Fridman and the staff of the Mossovet workshop No. 5, which he directed in the 1930s, authored a series of projects in the ribbed style, including projects of theaters in Sverdlovsk (1932), Tashkent (1934), the Red Army theater in Moscow (versions 1932, 1933 years) and the House of the Red Army and Navy in Kronstadt (1933), as well as a sketch of the development of the Rostov and Smolenskaya embankments (1934) and the famous versions of the building of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry (1934).
10 Note that the innovations of the 1910s, the experience of German Expressionism and American Art Deco A. Ya. Langman saw it live, studying in Vienna in 1904-1911 and visiting Germany and the USA in 1930-1931.
11 Thus, the DS project combined both classical images (Bulle's monumentalism and the telescopic form of the Mausoleum of Augustus) and avant-garde (the tier tower "Iron House" by B. Taut at an exhibition in Leipzig (1913) and the famous tower of the Third International by V. E. Tatlin, 1919) and spiral shapes from the projects of G. M. Ludwig, Palace of Labor (1923) and DS (1932).
12 "Mausoleum-like" structures were also proposed by European architects, these are the works of A. Sauvage - the Primavera cone-shaped pavilion at the 1925 exhibition in Paris (note that many of the exhibition pavilions acquired pyramidal outlines) and the Samariten ledged department store (1926), as well as the project of buildings near Port Mayo (1931) and Holden's monumental buildings in London - the Transit Building (1927) and the Senate House (1932). In addition, monuments resembling a mausoleum are offered by the participants in the competition for the building of the League of Nations in Geneva (1928) - E. Saarinen and J. Vago, G. Pelzig and O. Perret.
13 And if at first the small scale of the Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin could provoke the DS gigantomania, then the majesty of the future statue could become an underlying motive for refusing to implement DS.
14 So, for example, Art Deco has mastered the whole range of canelures - from miniature American skyscrapers in architecture (or, for example, in the VIEM residential building, architect N. E. Lansere, 1933) to grandiose, equal to the window step, as, for example, in Kharkov Palace of the Worker (architect AI Dmitriev, 1928) or the project of the theater in Yekaterinoslav N. A. Trotsky (1924), as well as A. Loos's proposal at the Chicago Tribune competition (1922) and the New York skyscraper Irving Trust Company Building, arch. R. Walker (1931). However, the very theme of the flute window goes back to an extravagant building dating back to the 18th century, a romantic column-ruin in Desere de Retz near Paris.
15 The project of interiors of the DS 1946, see [17, p. 162].
16 The architecture of high-rise buildings in the USA in the 1920s – 1930s can be roughly divided into five groups - the neoclassical, neo-gothic, avant-garde, neoarchaic, or fantasy-geometrized component could dominate the work or form an equally interesting interstyle alloy. However, all these architectural trends at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s were equally represented in the cities of America.
17 Thus, the compositional similarity can be caught between the project of an administrative building (architect BM Iofan, 1948) and the Palmolive Building in Chicago (architect Holabert and Ruth, 1927–1929), the project of the Central House of Aeroflot (architect D. N. Chechulin, workshop of the Moscow City Council No. 2, 1934) and the Riverside Plaza building in Chicago (architect.firm "Holabert and Ruth", 1925-1929). Iofan's NKTP project (1936) was inspired by two New York buildings by R. Hood, the Rockefeller Center ribbed slab (1932) and the McGraw Hill Building (1931). The competition design for the Friedman NKTP building (1934) was a response to the Chicago works of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, the Civic Opera Building (1929) and Foreman Building (1930).
18 The chronologically sloping tectonics of the skyscraper (January 1922) appears in Corbet and Ferris six months before the competition for the Chicago Tribune (June – December 1922), but it was Saarinen's project that determined the aesthetic basis of America's Art Deco. The project of Corbet, who also participated in the competition, was solved in a purely neo-Gothic spirit (16, p. 39, 85, 220).
19 And for Iofan this appeal to the Buddhist temple tradition was, as it seems, quite conscious, it is enough to look at his sketch of the DS in 1933, see [4, p. 164].
20 Some compositional similarities between Buddhist stupas and medieval temples are noted by N. L. Pavlov, see [5, p. 147, 150], the influence of Buddhist and medieval architecture on the masters of the 1910s – 1930s was noted in the book Expressionist Architecture [15, p. 52-54].
21 It is appropriate here to recall the history of the race for the title of the tallest building in the world in April – May 1930. The construction of the Bank of Manhattan in New York initially assumed a height of 260 m, which made it possible to surpass the long-term record holder - Woolworth Building (1913, 241 m). But upon learning that the declared height of the Chrysler Building under construction is 280 m, the architects of the Bank of Manhattan, in order to retain their high-rise superiority, decided to further increase the height being erected, and thus, in April 1930, the height of their tower was 283 m. However, the creators of the Chrysler Building also went for a trick. A 38 m high stainless steel spire was secretly assembled inside the building and erected to the top in May 1930, resulting in a record 318 m of the Chrysler Building. The risk was that as soon as the statue of V. I. Lenin on the DS tower would rise above the Moscow sky, the top of the Metropolitan Insurance Building would rise even higher.
Literature
1. "Architecture of the USSR", 1934, No. 10.
2. Palace of Soviets of the USSR. All-Union competition. M.: "Vsekohudozhnik", 1933.
3. Zueva P. P. Skyscrapers of New York 1900-1920. / Architecture and construction of RAASN. M.: ACADEMIA. 2006. No. 4.
4. Italian Palace of the Soviets. - M.: MUAR - 2007.
5. Pavlov N. L., Altar. Mortar. Temple. Archaic universe in the architecture of the Indo-Europeans. M. 2003
6. Ryabushin A. V. History of Soviet architecture, 1917-1954 Moscow: Stroyizdat, 1985
7. Khan-Magomedov S. O. The architecture of the Soviet avant-garde. T.1. - M.: Stroyizdat, 1996
8. Khan-Magomedov S. O. Heinrich Ludwig. Creators of the avant-garde. - Moscow: Russian Avant-garde Foundation, 2007.
9. Khmelnitsky D. S. Stalin's Architecture: Psychology and Style. - M.: Progress-Tradition, 2007.
10. Eigel I. Yu. Boris Iofan - Moscow: Stroyizdat, 1978.
11. Christ-Janer A. Eliel Saarinen: Finnish-American Architect and Educator Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984
12. Ferriss H. The Metropolis of Tomorrow. Dover Books on Architecture. - NY.: Dover Publications, 2005.
13. Minkowski H. Vermutungen über den Turm zu Babe L. Freren, Luca Verlag, 1991
14. New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars / Stern R. A. M. Gilmartin G. F. Mellins T. - NY.: Rizzoli, 1994.
15. Pehnt W. Expressionist Architecture. - London: Thames & Hudson, 1973.
16. Solomonson K. The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s. - Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003.
17. Turannei des Schonen. Architectur der Stalin - Zeit. - Wien / Osterreichisches Museum fur angewandte Kunst Prestel-Verlag, 1994.
18. Weber E. Art Deco in North America. Hong Kong: Bison Books, 1987
annotation
In the 1920s and 30s, the ribbed style became a worldwide phenomenon. Embodied in the architecture of skyscrapers in the United States, it became the basis for a whole series of works by Soviet architects in the 1930s. And it was in this style that the final version of the Palace of Soviets of B. M. Iofan (1934). The competition for the building of the Palace of Soviets became a turning point in the development of Soviet architecture; a course was announced for "mastering the classical heritage". However, it was the ribbed style (Art Deco) that made it possible to effectively solve the architecture of the Palace of Soviets (415 m high) and surpass New York skyscrapers thanks to their own techniques. The Palace of Soviets was to be Moscow's answer to New York's skyscrapers, and in particular the Metropolitan Insurance Building, which began in 1932 with a projected height of 410 m. Competition in height required competition in style. However, the expression of Iofan's project was addressed not only to the current, fashionable ideas of the 1910s-1930s, but also to the archaic tradition and the image of the Tower of Babel (after reconstruction by A. Kircher, 1679). Art Deco skyscrapers represented an absolute change in the plastic language, a rejection of the decor of historical styles, and at the same time, at the level of silhouette and tectonics, the connection between the archaic and medieval heritage and Art Deco is obvious. Thus, the design of the Palace of Soviets in the form of a ribbed skyscraper became the clearest proof of the development in the USSR of its own version of Art Deco, and the Palace of Soviets became the pinnacle of this style.
