Rusakov Workers' Club

The other important typology is that of the club, which in the new soviet context, is fundamental. Club represents a space of aggregation for the workers, fundamental for education (the new masses of workers were often uneducated people that had be inserted into urban life). It was crucial to promote cultural activities and one of the most important clubs is the Rusakov workers’ club. It was built in reinforced concrete and glass. It is mainly characterized by the presence of three volumes protruding towards the street, an operation of propaganda. When we go around the building, we see how it changes and how complex it is from the outside to understand its internal organization. It is possible only in plan. It is basically a triangle on which other bodies are added framing the central stage. The three bodies are suspended and project from the bearing structure. Here seats for the public and classrooms were inserted, and a sophisticated mechanism gave the possibility to close the classrooms facing the stage.

Melnikov House

Another typology is the residential one. Melnikov house is a rare example of single-family house. It represents the ideas of the architects promoting new forms of lives, of typologies of urban villa. From the plan we see two cylinders that have been put together and intersect each other. From the entrance we reach a vestibule, then a corridor serving the rooms. From the stairs we reach the living room organized in the circular body and provided with a big window towards the street. From a door we reach the other cylinder which is treated in a different manner with a sequence of small windows facing the inner garden. If we reach the third level we get to the circular studio, again treated with small windows. These 2 cylinders are worked not only in plan but also in section with double levels. The façades are therefore different, on with wide windows and the other one with small hexagonal windows. These strange windows characterize the internal space. The building is realized with bricks, and it is in consideration of this choice that we explain the hexagonal windows. No architrave is used, and the shape of the window allows the walls to be made just in bricks. But why is he doing this kind of choice? He is proposing the protochristian churches’ construction technique in Russia. Not only the walls are made in bricks, but also the slabs are realized in cheap wood, with 2 lines of wooden elements glued together and crossing each other forming a spatial structure. These used elements, bricks and wood are the cheapest ones, affordable by people. The architect is combining the research on the new typologies with traditional cheap elements, he innovates in form and space, but he works with the tradition for the structure.

Abstraction

Another important topic is the process of abstraction, the act of conceptualization of processes and techniques. In the way in which the collage destroys reality, abstraction removes narration from art. Black square on white canvas, realized by Malevič in 1915, reflects the nonsense of the time, of the war, of the society. It is just a black square on white canvas, but it has to be related to its context, to 1915. When “sense” is not acceptable anymore what happens? “non-sense”, zero degree of communication, a black square on white canvas. In architecture this zero communication happens trough pure geometry, pure colours, zero decoration. In Raphael’s painting everything is expressed and explicit on the canvas, here, there is nothing, just art, a relation between the painting and the observer interrogating himself. The avant-garde movement bases itself on several revolutions, and this black square is one of them.

Architectons

Malevič is an extremely important figure. If Tatlin works with specific materials, Malevic talks about structure, processes. Architectons are sculptures dealing with parallelepipeds in infinite declinations. It doesn’t have a function or a material, its just volumes.

Lissitzky

El Lissitzky in his Prouns paints simple geometrical forms. All representations, 2d 3d, are combined together in Infinite variations of spaces. In the 1920’s he does an experimental project, he studies a horizontal skyscraper, another break with conventions. The three legs supporting the main body are the result of the studies of the Prouns. It is in architecture that those images, hypothesis acquire a real spatial dimension. The system is also studied by an engineer to show that that structure was possible.

The role of soviet journals is also crucial for the spread of the new experiments and what remains now of these movements are basically ideas, trough journals. Graphical experimentation is in this case fundamental.

During the 30’s there is a divorce between art and politics. In architecture the stop is quite evident and the relationship with the regime breaks.