The first part of Peter Zavadovsky's research was published on Archi.ru on November 4, 2020.
II.2. Competitive design of the USSR pavilion for the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris (1936)
The project was carried out by Moisei Ginzburg with the participation of S. A. Lisagora, M. M. Vorobyov and A. A. Solomko [1]. Until recently, the extravagant forms of this pavilion were difficult to explain; Perhaps the context of Ivan Leonidov's later work will make it possible to understand and interpret this unusual architecture. The missing link that gave credibility to the assumptions about the connection between the architecture of the pavilion and the possible influence of Leonidov were two sketches published in 2013 [2], which reflect the early stages of work and have little in common with the final design (Fig. 8, right). However, the hyperbolic tower placed in the center of their composition, round in one case and faceted in the other, is an obvious homage to the Leonidov project of the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry (1934) and confirms the assumption about the influence of Leonidov's formal language on the authors of the project (Fig. 8, left).
Taking into account the project of the Izvestia plant, which, as we have shown, repeatedly and systematically interprets the formal motives of Ivan Leonidov, it is possible to carry out a rather detailed analysis of the forms of the Paris pavilion, the results of which were summarized by us in Table 1 (Fig. 9). Its top line contains formal analogues of the architectural themes of the pavilion shown in the bottom line.
AND. The very shape of the pavilion (Fig. 9, 2-A) is a variant of the multifaceted structure, repeatedly proposed by Leonidov in the projects of clubs (for the first time - in the project of the club of the newspaper Pravda, 1933) and structures of other functions (in the project of the Southern Coast of Crimea, 1935-1937). Polyhedrons in the Ginzburg group first appear in the project of the Krasny Kamen district in Nizhny Tagil (1935), and as a separate building in the project of the Izvestia plant club building (1936), which follows both Leonidov's typology and his formal language. (fig. 9, 1-A). Expansion upward and completion in the form of Egyptian fillet cornices gives the pavilion the appearance of a huge Egyptian capital, which also places the pavilion in the context of Leonidov's Egyptian hobbies, although he himself would hardly have approved such a complex, mannered structure.
IN. The complex-creped solution of the corners of the pavilion (Fig. 9, 2-B) develops the motif of the cantilevered pedestals for the monumental sculptural groups in the Izvestia project (Fig. 9, 1-B). The analogs of these pedestals in the pavilion are also the bases for monumental sculptures, in this case, bas-reliefs, and have the same stepped narrowing downward. Such heavily rendered - in the Izvestia project - console platforms have the only precedent for Leonidov's tribunes - "chagi", which first appeared in the project of the People's Commissariat for Tyazhprom and later used by him in the interiors and stairs of the sanatorium in Kislovodsk.
FROM. The composition organized around the hyperbolic tower seen in the preliminary sketches of the Paris pavilion (Fig. 9, 2-C) has a direct analogue in the structures from the panorama of the South Coast of Crimea by Ivan Leonidov (Fig. 9, 1-C), which suggests that the parallel projects of Izvestia, the South Coast and the sanatorium in Kislovodsk represent a single repertoire of formal motives that first appeared in Leonidov's work.
II.3. The project of "residential building of a higher type" (1937). Moses Ginzburg and Fyodor Mikhailovsky
The project was first published in the "Architecture of the USSR" issue dedicated to standard housing projects [3]. The size and character of the apartments - two-level with a double-height living room and deep loggias on two floors - presupposes tenants belonging to the upper levels of the Soviet management hierarchy. In Ginzburg's later monographs, only plans were published, since the project of the facade placed in the magazine, in addition to the aforementioned “oddity” of its architecture, compromising the “leader of constructivism” in terms of image quality, did not allow reproduction. Nevertheless, it is quite detailed, and makes it possible to reproduce it, adequately reflecting the author's intention. The gallery house with two-storey apartments with living rooms and double-height loggias clearly indicates the prototype of the project: the immeubles-villas of Le Corbusier, who developed several variants of them during 1922-1926 (Fig. 10).
Moses Ginzburg did not abandon his Corbusian predilections even during the period of the "development of the heritage", and if his famous Narkomfin house (1928) revived Le Corbusier's interest in mass "minimal housing", then Corbusier's early experiments with bourgeois "villa houses" seemed to Ginzburg a suitable prototype for "Increased type" of housing for the Soviet authorities. The importance of this project for all of Ginzburg's work lies in the fact that it completes a decade of his residential experiments, begun by the work of the Stroykom typification section in 1927 and marked by the predominant influence of Le Corbusier.
Having dealt with the typology of the building, early Korbuzian in its origins, we will proceed to consider the style of external architecture, which we know about from the only known author's perspective of the courtyard facade - with the rhythm of glazed faceted bay windows corresponding to the two-story living rooms of the apartments, with loggias of double height between them.
We see here all the same, familiar to us from the previous objects, architectural elements, summarized in table No. 2 (Fig. 11).
AND. The deaf parapets of the French balconies are shaped like flattened hyperboloids (Fig. 11, 2-A). The zigzag border running along the top of the parapet addresses us to one of the types of hyperbolic vases of the 1st building of the sanatorium im. Ordzhonikidze in Kislovodsk (Fig. 11, 1-A).
IN. Faceted and stepped bottom cantilever flowerpots, placed along the top of the building (Fig. 11, 2-B), are already familiar to us from the pedestals under the sculptures of the Izvestia plant tower and the Paris pavilion. The most likely source of such a solution is Leonid's console half-disks-tribunes in the Narkomtyazhprom project (1934), the balcony of his famous staircase in Kislovodsk (1936) or the pedestal shown here for a lamp in the hall of the same sanatorium in Kislovodsk (Fig. 11, 1-B).
FROM. The columns of loggias crowning the bay windows represent the familiar Egyptian type that Leonidov developed from the Narkomtyazhprom project (1934) and was repeatedly used in the Ordzhonikidze sanatorium in Kislovodsk (Fig. 11, C 1-2).
D. Balustrades of balconies represent a variety of enclosures for the internal stairs of the same sanatorium, made up of elongated hyperboloids (Fig. 11, D 1-2).
Finally, it is necessary to mention the elements of the building's architecture that are beyond the scope of Leonidov's vocabulary. It:
E. The pergola crowning the building is a favorite technique of Ginzburg, dating back to the objects of the 1920s, present in the club of the Izvestia plant and later implemented by him many times, from the medical building of the sanatorium in Kislovodsk to the last post-war objects of the architect.
F. Decorative tiles with a diagonal ornamental motif, which decorate the rear walls of the loggias, is a technique common in the architecture of the late 1930s, apparently dating back to the cladding of the Venetian Palace of the Doges and was not used by Ginzburg anymore.
II.4. Panorama project "Defense of Sevastopol" (1943). Moses Ginzburg
Among the design practice of Ginzburg during the war years, mainly devoted to the utilitarian goals of military and post-war reconstruction, the project of the building of the panorama "Defense of Sevastopol" stands out for its scale and representative character. Let's consider the main compositional motives of the central building of the ensemble.
AND. The main volume of the building is a stepped volume tapering upward with walls composed of openwork concrete blocks - a solution found in Western Art Deco (Auguste Perret), popular in Soviet projects of the late 1930s and implemented in at least one case: the Smolenskaya metro pavilion”In Moscow (Nikolai Kolli and Sergei Andrievsky, 1934), now lost. The trapezoidal volume tapering upwards gives rise to understandable associations with the Egyptian pylon or the truncated mastaba pyramid. This is a topic that was popular in Soviet architecture in the mid-1930s, but the peculiarities of its interpretation by Ginzburg address us to precedents in the avant-garde period of Ivan Leonidov's work in the early 1930s. We find a composition very similar to the Ginzburg building in one of Leonidov's sketches, attributed to his work in Igarka in 1931 [4] (Fig. 12, A above). Solved by a single stained-glass construction, the mastaba rests on a stylobate, also widening downward, and not so far from the stepped one near Ginzburg. A similar giant glass mastaba was proposed by the former students of Leonidov in the project of the Palace of Soviets (1932, VASI brigade) and here it is difficult not to see the influence of their teacher and idol (Fig. 12, A below). In Leonidov's project for the reconstruction of the Krestyanskaya Zastava Square (1932), the center of the ensemble is occupied by a structure in the form of a truncated pyramid. And if the early sketch of Leonidov could be unknown to Ginzburg, then these two projects were familiar to him for sure.
IN. On top of the mastaba of the building, the panorama is completed with a canopy of slab-covered pillars curvilinearly expanding upward, touching their upper ends. The assumption about the influence of Leonidov's hyperbolic aesthetics is also supported by a specific analogue - the entrance portico in the project of a collective farm club with a hall for 800 seats (1935) (Fig. 12, B on the right).
FROM. The entrance portal to the building of the panorama is formed by two pylons carrying two inverted stepped pyramids, on which a slab with a sculptural composition is erected. In this composition, without too much risk, one can see the development of cantilever pedestals for sculptural groups in the projects of the Izvestia combine (Fig. 12, C on the right) and in other projects of Ginzburg described above.
Thus, this late project of Moses Ginzburg, which at first seems unprecedented, fits well into the logic of the development of the late work of the architect, who is closely connected with the formal world of Ivan Leonidov.
II.5. Wooden single-family dwelling house (1944). Moses Ginzburg
This country house, unusual for its time, hides some mystery. Selim Khan-Magomedov, who published it as a “one-apartment country house”, does not indicate its location [5]. There are also disagreements regarding the date of creation: either 1944, or 1945. Could Ginzburg himself have owned it, and who else could have ordered not a small private house of such defiantly modernist architecture during the war years?
I transmit the available information from the words of Nikolai Vasiliev: this, alas, has not come down to us the dacha of Moisei Ginzburg himself in the village of SNT "NIL" in the Istra district, where, since 1935, many famous architects were built: Semenov, Vesnin, Vladimirov and others. In the architecture of his own dacha, Ginzburg was able to realize his dream of a "villa", demonstrating the relevance of his Corbusian passions at the end of his professional career.
The large open terrace on the second floor with a staircase leading to it is an obvious reminder of the famous Villa Stein in Garches (1926) by Le Corbusier (Fig. 13). At the same time, the very translation of the originally concrete Corbusian prototype into wood has a precedent authorized by Corbusier himself: the log house of Antonin Raymond in Karuizawa in the Japanese prefecture of Nagano is a replica of the unrealized project of Le Corbusier's stone house for the Chilean diplomat Ortusar Errazuriz.
II.6. Sanatorium in Lower Oreanda (1945-1948). Moses Ginzburg and Fyodor Mikhailovsky
The last projects of Moisei Ginzburg, implemented after his death in February 1946, were two sanatoriums: "Mountain Air" in Kislovodsk (together with Nikolai Polyudov) and a sanatorium in Nizhnyaya Oreanda (together with Fyodor Mikhailovsky). The object in Kislovodsk is, in fact, the third building of the sanatorium im. Ordzhonikidze, is interesting as a continuation of the constructivist typological line of correct multifaceted prisms. However, stylistically, the building already fully belongs to post-war Stalinist monumentalism and is beyond the scope of this study.
The sanatorium in Lower Oreanda is of much greater interest. The first version of the project on the site of the ruins of the imperial palace burned down in 1882 was completed by Ignatius Milinis in 1936. The construction started was interrupted by the war. The circumstances of the transfer of the object to Ginzburg are unknown to us.
The sanatorium has two residential buildings: No. 1, designed in the forms of dryish neoclassicism, and a smaller building No. 2, the extravagant architecture of which will be the subject of further consideration.
The laconic two-story prismatic volume with an inner courtyard is crowned with a pergola characteristic of Ginzburg, familiar to us, among other things, from the medical building of the sanatorium in Kislovodsk. Smooth cladding and the absence of pronounced vertical accents bring the hull architecture closer to soft modernism, close to interwar European counterparts. This attribution does not contradict the arcade porticoes of the first floor with a delicate pattern of masonry seams (Fig. 14). The building is characterized by barely outlined cornice ledges, with the only exception being a three-storey projection of the northern facade with a large ledge ledge.
With such a restrained architecture, a few decorative details acquire more weight. The arcaded porticoes of both facades have sections of cornice-fillets of a recognizable Egyptian design, and the corners of the southern triangular portico are accented with wedge-shaped crepes. Reminiscent of the solution of the corners in the design of the Paris pavilion, these wedge-shaped accents look like the next stage in the transformation of an element that was originally a cantilever tribune, then a base for a sculpture or a flower girl (Fig. 15, E). The southern portico facing the sea with its three identically interpreted faces logically rises in a series of late constructivist multifaceted prisms, especially given Ginzburg's parallel design of the polyhedron of the Mountain Air sanatorium in Kislovodsk (Fig. 15, A). Egyptian associations are supported by the shape of the columns of the loggia on the third floor of the northern façade (Fig. 14, left). These columns are directly related to their predecessors in the project of the Izvestia combine, differing from them in octahedral, instead of round, section. The props of the pergola with a characteristic curvilinear expansion upward belong to the same Leonidovian line in its origins (Fig. 15, C).
Vases and fountains are an essential part of the late Leonidov's style. They are also in Lower Oreanda. The fountain in the courtyard, which is a stylized faceted inflorescence, at the same time continues the line of Leonidov's hyperbolic objects (Fig. 15, C). A pair of vases, flanking the approach to the sanatorium from the north, with their parabolic shape correlates with another type of Leonidov's vases. Ginzburg's vase, in contrast to the round Leonid's, is again faceted (Fig. 15, D).
In conclusion, a few comments to Table 3 (Fig. 15), which is an attempt to chronologically reduce the architectural and decorative themes of Ivan Leonidov with those of Moisei Ginzburg. It is not difficult to see how the extravagant forms of Leonidov's buildings in the early 1930s, by the middle of the decade, are transformed into the scale of architectural details and decorative elements. And in the late Ginzburg, this repertoire of already decorative techniques evolved into the forms of the final for this master of the sanatorium in Nizhnyaya Oreanda. The only theme that has preserved the architectural scale is a multifaceted prism, and Ginzburg also turns consoles, vases and columns, round by Leonidov, into faceted ones - with six or eight sides.
[1] Architectural newspaper. 1936. No. 32. [2] Podgorskaya N. O. USSR pavilions at international exhibitions. Moscow: Mayer, 2013. P. 77. [3] Architecture of the USSR. 1937. No. 11. Pp. 51–52. [4] Gozak A., Leonidov A. Ivan Leonidov. London: Academy Editions, 1988. P. 101. [5] Khan-Magomedov SO Moisei Ginzburg. Moscow: Architecture-S, 2007. P. 106–107.
