Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, and he designed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America.
Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament. It emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II until the 1980s, when it was gradually replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture.
Informed by the ideologies of Soviet Constructivist theory, the Social Condenser is an architectural form defined by its influence over spatial dynamics. In the opening speech of the inaugural OSA Group conference in 1928, Moisei Ginzburg claimed that "the principal objective of constructivism... is the definition of the Social Condenser of the age." The single building most associated with the idea is the Narkomfin Building in Moscow, for which construction began in 1928 and finished in 1932.
Stalinist architecture, mostly known in the former Eastern Bloc as Stalinist style or Socialist Classicism, is the architecture of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, between 1933 and 1955. Stalinist architecture is associated with the Socialist realism school of art and architecture.
Alexey Victorovich Shchusev was a Russian and Soviet architect who was successful during three consecutive epochs of Russian architecture – Art Nouveau, Constructivism, and Stalinist architecture, being one of the few Russian architects to be celebrated under both the Romanovs and the communists, becoming the most decorated architect in terms of Stalin prizes awarded.
The Tsentrosoyuz Building or Centrosoyuz Building is a government structure in Moscow, Russia, constructed in 1933 by Le Corbusier and Nikolai Kolli. Centrosoyuz refers to a Soviet bureaucracy, the Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives. The building included office space for 3,500 personnel, as well as a restaurant, lecture halls, a theater, and other facilities. The address of the building is 39 Myasnitskaya Street, and the eastern side of the building faces Myasnitskaya Street. The western side, which was supposed to be the main entrance, faces Academician Sakharov Avenue. Currently it is the home of Rosstat, Russian Federal State Statistics Service and Federal Financial Monitoring Service.
Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin was a Georgian-British architect who pioneered modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint housing complex, the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, Finsbury Health Centre and Spa Green Estate.
The Athens Charter was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.
Alexander Aleksandrovich Vesnin, together with his brothers Leonid and Viktor, was a leading light of Constructivist architecture. He is best known for his meticulous perspectival drawings such as Leningrad Pravda of 1924.
Moisei Yakovlevich Ginzburg was a Soviet constructivist architect, best known for his 1929 Narkomfin Building in Moscow.
Constructivist architecture was a constructivist style of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Abstract and austere, the movement aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space, while rejecting decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials. Designs combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced many pioneering projects and finished buildings, before falling out of favour around 1932. It has left marked effects on later developments in architecture.
Ilya Alexandrovich Golosov was an architect from the late Russian Empire and early Soviet Union. A leader of Constructivism in 1925-1931, Ilya Golosov later developed his own style of early stalinist architecture known as postconstructivism. Не was a brother of Panteleimon Golosov.
Arkady Grigoryevich Mordvinov was a Soviet architect and construction manager, notable for Stalinist architecture of Tverskaya Street, Leninsky Avenue, Hotel Ukraina skyscraper in Moscow and his administrative role in Soviet construction industry and architecture.
The Narkomfin Building is a block of flats at 25, Novinsky Boulevard, in the Central district of Moscow, Russia. Conceived as a "transitional type of experimental house", it is a renowned example of Constructivist architecture and avant-garde housing design.
The OSA Group was an architectural association in the Soviet Union, which was active from 1925 to 1930 and considered the first group of constructivist architects. It published the journal SA. It published material by Soviet and overseas contributors. However this led to them being attacked as a 'Western' group and some individuals as being 'bourgeois'. After the closure of the group, their modernist approach to architecture and town planning was eliminated in the Soviet Union by 1934, in favour of social realism.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Okhitovich (1896—1937) was a Bolshevik sociologist, town planner and Constructivist architectural theorist, most famous for his 'Disurbanist' proposals of 1929-30.
Ville radieuse was an unrealised urban design project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1930. It constitutes one of the most influential and controversial urban design doctrines of European modernism.
Nikolai Dzhemsovich (Yakovlevich) Kolli was a Soviet and Russian Modernist—Constructivist architect, architectural functionary, and city planner in the Soviet Union.
Jean-Louis Cohen is a French architect and architectural historian specializing in modern architecture and city planning. Since 1994 he has been the Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture at New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
Contemporary Architecture was a Soviet architectural journal published in Moscow. The journal ran from 1926 to 1930, releasing six issues per year, with occasional publications of “double issues.” It was published by the OSA Group, a group of constructivist architects. Contemporary Architecture served as a platform for presenting and illustrating the constructivists’ project of revolutionizing residential living for a socialist society in the twentieth century and put forward new ideas on numerous theoretical topics and innovative new projects in the field of architecture.
