1. Detection
"Self-isolation", depriving us of our usual contacts, at the same time gives us a chance to establish new ones, the thought of which would not have occurred to us in "normal times". So, unplanned leisure time and Facebook brought me together with a French architect and professor at the Paris Ecole de Beauzard Laurent Beaudouin (Laurent Beaudouin). Examining his page, among the slides to his lectures, I came across an image that I had never seen before: two facades, signed “II Leonidov. Institute of Statistics, 1929–1930 ". The professor addressed me to the Pompidou Center, on whose website I found them:
short (end) facade, inventory number AM1997-2-233, 0.191 X 0.293 m (see the card in the online database of the Association of National Museums of France), then - sheet 1.
And a long (longitudinal) facade, inventory number AM 1997-2-234, 0.2 X 0.296 m. (See the card in the same database), then - sheet 2.
Both sheets are “gouache on black cardboard. Acquired in 1997 from the Alex Lachman Gallery. Dated by the Center Pompidou 1929-1930. The links will allow the reader to familiarize themselves with the original sheets, which are risky to publish due to the copyright of the copyright holder who delayed the issuance of the requested permission.
Having been engaged in the work of Ivan Leonidov for a long time, I did not think that something in him might be new to me. I rushed to check. None of the monographs dedicated to Leonidov, including the “complete collection of Leonidov's works” by Andrei Gozak and Andrei Leonidov [1], which claims to be complete, and the last large monograph by Selim Omarovich Khan Magomedov about Leonidov [2], is nothing but a mention in the list works of the architect. The dating of the project in Russian editions is 1929.
There are many Leonidov's publications in the CA magazine for 1929–1930, but this project is missing. Considering the persecution of Leonidov, which began in the second half of 1930, this most likely means that the project of the Institute of Statistics was not published at all. A Facebook poll I conducted showed that this project was unknown to other avant-garde architects.
Apart from these sheets, there is nothing in Pompidou. It remains to be hoped that other materials of this, probably scattered, project will still be found.
I didn't immediately grasp the real size of these black boxes - they fit easily into an A4 folder. The images are even smaller: 10 by 15 and 20 centimeters, respectively. Comparing them with the originals of the two "black squares" published by Andrei Gozak of the project "Palace of Culture of the Proletarian District" [3] shows the similarity of the size of the images (approximately 25 by 25 cm for the "palace" and 20 by 30 cm for the "institute"), as well as the external type of cardboard with smoothed abrasions at the corners. The style is also recognizably Leonidov's. This comparison helps to realize that Leonidov's projects, so monumental in the illustrations, are miniatures in the original.
All this together inclines in favor of the authenticity of the Parisian project. And although the possibility of a qualitative hoax cannot be completely ruled out, in my further reasoning I will proceed from its authenticity.
2. The author's intention: an attempt at reconstruction
The risk of openly publishing Leonid's originals made it necessary to produce new images, in a different style, in order to avoid possible accusations of copying. There are noticeable differences between the two facades of Leonidov, explained by their miniature size and sketchy nature: the tower is depicted differently, the size of the small dome, and the proportions of the stylobate are different. A number of elements on one sheet have been omitted on the other. This makes it necessary to bring two images together, sets the task of reconstruction and interpretation of the author's intention. The nature of the image of the tower was taken by me from the longitudinal facade, the small domed volume, its dimensions and high-rise location to the tower - from the end one. The stylobate solution combines the features of both facades, which are noticeably different in this moment. Judging by the trees covering the central part of the stylobate on the end facade and located not in front of it, but in the depths of the volume, there should be a courdoner with two wings on the sides. A wave-like canopy visible on the longitudinal facade was used as a canopy over the entrance in the back of the courtyard. On both facades, for the first time, Leonidov has a motive of a stepped descending wall. In the reconstruction, these walls are shown in the grid of cladding joints that are present in all known cases of the architect's use of this motif. The nature of the depiction of greenery, as far as possible, follows the manner of Leonidov. The scale of the originals is very close to 1: 1000. Based on this, the total height of the structure is 102 meters, the lower diameter of the tower is 28 meters, and the dimensions of the stylobate are 100 x 214 meters.
3. The project of the Institute of Statistics in the context of the work of Ivan Leonidov before 1932 and the architecture of the Soviet avant-garde
The project belongs to the time of the apogee of the constructivist period in the work of the architect (1927–1931). It was executed simultaneously with the project of the House of Industry and before the projects for Magnitogorsk and the recreation center of the Proletarsky district. And it is no less interesting than any of the famous projects of Leonidov, which made his reputation as an "icon" of avant-garde modernism.
The composition of the institute is made up of two parabolic (or hyperbolic, if we mean a two-lane hyperboloid) volumes, placed on a developed stylobate, here used by Leonidov for the first time. The smaller volume is familiar to us from the project of a club of a new social type, which shows the same dome with a glazing tape in the lower part. Already Khan Magomedov suggested Leonidov's priority in using a parabolic dome. This priority could be challenged only by Mikhail Barshch and Mikhail Sinyavsky in their Planetarium, but initially the dome of the Planetarium was thought to be hemispherical, and its final parabolic shape appeared after 1928, which dates back to Leonidov's project [4]. The parabolic dome in the typical Leonidov interpretation was also reproduced by Ignatius Milinis in the competition project of the Hammer and Sickle club in 1929 [5]. And also, possibly, by Le Corbusier himself in the competition project of the Parisian Palais Tokyo in 1935.
The second volume, a cigar-shaped parabolic tower, is unprecedented in the architect's previous work. However, it is worth comparing it to the tower of the House of Industry project dating from the same year. The common feature is the gap in the upper third of the height. Like the very variety of forms of glass towers, this technique will gain popularity in the architecture of world modernism only after half a century.
Thinking about the possible meaning that Ivan Leonidov put into the parabolic shape of the tower, we can make two assumptions:
1. It was in 1929 that an airship appeared in Leonidov's projects, for example, in the competitive design of the Columbus monument for Santo Domingo. In the future, it will become a favorite element of Leonid's staff, and the desire to liken the shape of the tower to an airship looks quite plausible.
2. The parabola could also be a consequence of Leonidov's characteristic aestheticization of mathematical curves. It is known about it from his remark in one of the "creative discussions" of 1934: "If this curve is a graphic representation of the process of movement … then this is no longer an arbitrary line, but an admirable graph that carries beauty" [6]. And today's graphs of the options for the development of the epidemic well illustrate the relationship of the parabolic curve with statistics.
Perhaps both considerations were weighty for Leonidov. Here we see the emergence of a multi-layered imagery characteristic of later projects, primarily the People's Commissariat for Tyazhprom.
The constructive solution to the project of the Institute of Statistics is unprecedented in Leonidov's work and is also decades ahead of its time, although in 1929 it was hardly feasible. Unlike the rest of his towers, designed in the frame, Leonidov here offers a load-bearing core with cantilevered floor slabs. Thanks to this solution, the architect passes from the Corbusian "house on pillars" to the mushroom-shaped structure, resting on the "leg" of the structural and communication trunk, which is bare from below.
The newly discovered project of Leonidov makes us take a fresh look at the contemporary practice of his fellow avant-garde artists. The tower's parabola is one year ahead of the famous "Ladovsky's parabola", which was still considered the first precedent for the application of this form in avant-garde architecture. The parabolic shape of the main volume in the project of the Palace of the Soviets of Moses Ginzburg - Gustav Gassenpflug of 1932 gets a possible explanation. In this project, the parabolic shape was used by Ginzburg for the first and last time. The project of the Institute of Statistics makes us think about the early manifestation of Leonidov's influence here, which in three or four years will acquire a clear and stable character (for example, in the competition project of the Izvestia Combine in 1936).
4. The project of the Institute of Statistics in the context of the work of Ivan Leonidov after 1932
Leonidov's work falls into two distinctly different parts - before and after 1932. And the apparent suddenness of the transition from one period to another, a small number of signs, and even more so projects that anticipate this transition, are significantly mitigated by the newly identified project of the Institute of Statistics. The late Leonidov was characterized by the play of concave and convex forms, to which both his architectural creativity and furniture design were subordinated. The formal language of this period and its neoclassical and archaic-Egyptian roots were presented by me in a recent article [7]. pairing of towers. However, the hyperbolic tower of the 1934 NKTP project was still without a pair, except for the strange rocket-like structure in the project of the "Collective farm club with a hall for 800 seats" in 1935.
The parabolic tower of the Institute of Statistics fills this gap, being the direct predecessor of the hyperbolic tower of the NKTP project in 1934. In the tower of the institute, we see in embryo all the features of the famous rostral tower of the People's Commissariat for Tyazhprom: translucency, a lift brought out to the outside, even a cantilever tribune outlined on the facade, the predecessor of the “mushroom-chandelier” »NKTP. Another element of the project of the Institute of Statistics, anticipating the projects of late clubs, the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry and the South Coast of Crimea, is a rectangular stylobate, the stepped edges of which make you recall archaic ziggurats. Thus, the Institute of Statistics turns out to be a kind of "missing link" that substantially supplements our understanding of Leonidov's creative evolution.
[1] A. Gozak & A. Leonidov. Ivan Leonidov. - London, 1988. Pp. 32, 215. [2] S. O. Khan-Magomedov. "Ivan Leonidov" from the series "Idols of the avant-garde". - Moscow, 2010. Page 362. [3] S. O. Khan-Magomedov. "Ivan Leonidov" from the series "Idols of the avant-garde". - Moscow, 2010. Page 139. [4] Ibid. [5] "Architect Ignatius Milinis". Publication of the Museum of Architecture. Moscow, 2019. Pp. 56. [6] Architecture of the USSR, 1934, No. 4. P. 33. [7] P. K. Zavadovsky. “Ivan Leonidov and the“Narkomtyazhprom style”", Project Baikal, 2019, No. 62. P. 112-119.
