Trained to trust only aesthetics, what else would we do? This sense, made extreme by our happy obsession with overwhelmingly intangible digital realms, has led to an architecture, and more significantly a culture, of shells. The substance, that driving purpose and vision behind the original Great Ideas, was quickly lost to easy-to-copy image.
While the cultural ideal behind Modernism was fresh, the copies may have absorbed some of the original intent, but as the passion for revolutionary change grew stale, the image lingered on, and copy after copy only referenced the thing it could easily grasp at- the Modernist form- until a steel and glass box became the symbol we either loved or hated, referenced or renounced, for nothing more than its own picture.
The same weakening of meaning has happened at the end of every great movement and style, from neo-Gothic ornamentation to Constructivist geometry, and continues to happen today. We’ve inherited an outdated architectural form while making ambitious advances in technology and materials. We are waiting for the next big change.
The furious boom in computing technology and the sudden shift towards a digitally dependent society have not yet been fully realized in built work, but ghosts itself illusively in the dreamscapes of academic discourse. The recession will afford us time to think and digest the flurry of recent technological innovations, much like the War-time and Revolutionary lulls in building aided the Modernists and Constructivists in their conceptual development. We do not know what the new architecture will look like, only that it will be different, and meet the changes in our shifting energy, community, and computing needs. The question now is determining the next step to define our version of Utopia: What is our architectural morality?
This will only be determined (discovered and developed) over time as fledgling architecture students, born after the advent of computers and the internet, merge interests with practicing architects who have grown weary of the profession. “Architect as anything but Architect” is not a new phenomenon; as Gropius writes, “the art of building is contingent on the coordinated team-work of a band of active collaborators whose orchestral cooperation symbolizes the cooperative organism we call society” (57). Utopian designers hell-bent on revolutionizing all forms of media and life (via culture at large) also go hand in hand with great aesthetic shifts; indeed Constructivism, one of the clearest examples of such, was founded in collaboration among writers, artists, and designers dabbling in each other’s disciplines.
Morality, like economics and taste, fluctuates on a curve. “The creative spirit,” Pick writes in the introduction to Gropius’ text, “is ever resurgent. The tide relentlessly rises over breaking and receding waves. It is the rise of the tide that matters most.” After every great rush in the socio-economic machine, there is decline; a brief respite marked by a significant shift in morality and aesthetic. When a strong, clear Utopian agenda drives the work, architecture may become more than just a shadow of the culture that built it, but the container for a culture’s ideals. Architecture, a time capsule of an era’s political, economic, ethical, and aesthetic emphases, can become symbol of a society’s spirit. Similarly to Modernism’s allusion to a progressive, industrialized Western society, Russian Constructivism was founded upon a powerful social morality and has become the ultimate remaining emblem (or scar) of Communism, despite its ironic condemnation by Stalin in later years.
Architecture as symbol for morality
The origin of cultural morality, or a movement’s ideals, is dual-sided; ebbing with the flow of popular opinion, bristling with the influence of singular individuals. Constructivism as an artistic and architectural movement may be easily attributed to its most prominent members: Tatlin, Rodchenko, Popova, etc, whose strong support of the Communist ideals and drive for progress clearly manifested itself in their Revolutionary work, but was also echoed in the wave of Machine-Age idealists across Europe and America.
At the turn of the century, the Industrial Revolution’s unprecedented speed of change and development left a strong desire for newness; to purge society of the past and start fresh. “The vast majority of architects and artists, though their political stances may have varied, shared a view of the machine as a social liberator, capable of provoking equality between men, not only by relieving them of physical toil but above all by engendering a universal art and a truly collective society” (Eaton, 158). Sharp Futurist manifestos came pouring from Western Europe in a frenzy that mimicked the machines they idolized. Individuals like Tatlin latched onto this flurry, and through experimentation, developed their own movement that focused on redefining all levels of society through rationality, equality, and non-objectivity as a means for pure self expression (Tate Modern).
Rodchenko, Maquette for a trade union poster Trade Union is a Defender of Female Labour’ 1925 (Tate Modern)
These huge aesthetic and ideological advances coincided (not coincidentally) with the Russian Revolution and unabashedly supported Communist principles. Seeking outlets for their outspoken ideals, the early Constructivists turned their creativity to wide-spread forms of media, largely paint and print. With the advent of modern propaganda, the success of the revolution was due largely to the overwhelming saturation of new, exciting, approachable Constructivist imagery that flooded Russian culture.
The movement began as an artistic exploration in material truth, clear and expressive composition, and a desire to bring art to all members of society through painting. Tatlin, Rodchenko, and Popova’s work in abstract art and sculpture was dubbed Constructivist (and at times Productionist) for its simplistic arrangement of non-objective geometric shapes (Frampton).
The form of their artwork, and later the architectural movement, was about rational organization and expression of material honesty from subject matter to production. Advertisement and propaganda, a natural progression for “accessible art” was hugely successful with Russia’s largely illiterate populace. Ever searching for further means of influencing and reshaping society, the Constructivists spread through all forms of art and media, from theater productions (Popova’s set design for The Magnanimous Cuckold, Tatlin’s collaboration on Zangezi) to film and literature (Ginzburg’s Style and Epoch). “Tatlin’s famous expression of ‘Art into Life’ became [the Constructivist’s] rallying cry;” art was to be “as dynamic, functional and essential as the parts of a machine, aiding humankind in the structuring of its new life” (Eaton, 189). Therefore, architecture “held a privileged position” within the movement for its “ultimate means of giving form to the post-revolutionary world” (184).
Rodchenko, Construction 108
Because the Constructivist’s ideals were so strongly Utopian and their desires for social change so broad, the need for a strong, clear building type led to an iconic architecture that absorbed more meaning and political symbolism than it ever truly intended. The architecture, reflecting both individual and cultural ethics, became a lasting symbol for Communist morality.
The late 1920’s saw a campaign “aimed at transforming domestic life” called the ‘new byt’ or ‘new everyday life’ (Tate Modern). They desired to modernize the “backwards” Russian social structure into a new and technologically advanced industrialized society free of perceived social hierarchies, organized around creating socially equitable spaces. Russia before the revolution was still in the throws of serfdom, with an incredible imbalance of wealth “over a vast land where many in the countryside still lived in environments little changed since the Middle Ages” (Moffett).
Narkomfin Plan
“The term social condenser was coined to describe their aims, which followed from the ideas of V.I Lenin, who wrote in 1919 that ‘the real emancipation of women and real communism begins with the mass struggle against these petty household chores and the true reforming of the mass into a vast socialist household’” (Social Condenser). As city centres gained populace, severe housing shortages called for the rapid development of residential units and provided the perfect outlet for Constructivists to practice ‘new byt’.
This ideology reflected itself most purely in the Narkomfin building. The public housing project, built in 1928, attempted to address both the fleetingly popular concept of “social condensing” and the severe space issues of the era. The housing crisis was so desperate that any household with multiple rooms or spaces large enough to divide would be partitioned into increasingly smaller units for multiple families. To avoid this, minimally sized living quarters, most often just a single cell for sleeping, omitted all public or open spaces; communal laundry, kitchen, living, and recreation areas were placed every two floors, bordered by the private individual quarters. The complex, originally planned as 4 tower blocks, also contained a recreation center, library, and rooftop garden (Narkomfin Building).
Monument in Soviet Socialist style, converted to outdoor mall. (Private Photo)
Interior of converted Stalinist monument; an ornate monument crammed with temporary stalls and cheap goods. (Private photo)
Ironically, because of the movement’s parallel ideals with the Bolshevik party and the iconic forms that firmly captured the spirit of revolution, the bold Constructivist shape has become more of a symbol for Communism than Stalin’s own nationalized style. Enormous parks and towers in the “Soviet Socialist Realism” style, “proclaimed by Stalin in 1932 as the only acceptable artistic style,” (Eaton, 183) have been well preserved and adopted by society while the Constructivist buildings, reminders of a displeasing past, have been neglected, abandoned, and now targeted for removal. Indeed, a fringe group of international architects and historians has been established, calling themselves the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society [MAPS, for short], and makes pleas to the Moscow Government to curb the systematic destruction of the city’s historical buildings (MAPS).
Modern Repercussions
For a significant and lasting artistic and cultural movement to occur, a widespread collaboration between all design and media fields must take place over a “big event.” The big event, Revolution for the Constructivists, war and depression for the Modernists, has not fully formed in our own society. However, a foreboding sense of the apocalyptic has been coursing through all media veins, from film to architectural studio units (ala Nic Clear’s Unit 15). The beginnings of several radical shifts are apparent, from the techno boom to global warming, but are not sure what to expect. For perhaps the first time in history, it is difficult (near impossible?) to imagine life in 20 years. We are waiting for the world to change; waiting for the Big Event to push policy and whip up frenzy, to give life and meaning to our artistic fantasies.
As the Modern “era of idealists” comes to a close, we find ourselves in a perverse version of the Idealist’s Utopian visions. Machines have, in one sense, “alleviated our toils:” (Gropius) we hardly need to walk or think for ourselves; our sense of wonder has been dulled by blindingly-fast technological innovations, our sense of self responsibility marred by the immediate satisfaction afforded by computers. The Modernist’s dreams of a Machine Age have shifted into a perverse dystopia of Matrix-like landscapes; a dark and inhumane mechanized world feels more real, more believable, and more attainable than a bright and peaceful future.
Perhaps this is the cynicism brought on by darkening difficulties; perhaps it is residual influence of popular sci-fi action flicks. But from a generation noted for its laziness and apathy, we walk a precarious line between waiting and action as contemporary poets and song writers profess wisely that we’re simply “waiting for the world to change.” Sinister, yet ironically true, we architects are waiting for the apocalyptic to provide inspiration, a new problem, and a new set of briefs.
So, in hope and preparation of a significant paradigm shift, and to combat the simplistic “inevitability” of techno-control, we must seek an architecture with humanity and moral integrity: an architecture that supports small communities, sustainable small economies, and the marriage of the natural environment with technology. To abide solely by the rules and development of structural and material advances (like the Modernists, Constructivists, etc) is too steeped in the past; it is time we look beyond the mere physicality of structure, construction, and material, but again consider what the advancements in digital technology and environmental awareness might mean for a new society.
Works Cited
About MAPS. Moscow Architecture Preservation Socitey, 2004.
Eaton, Ruth. Ideal Cities Utopianism and the (Un)Built Environment. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Fazio, Michael, Marian Moffett, and Lawrence Wodehouse. Buildings Across Time: An Introduction to World Architecture. McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Frampton, Kenneth. Labour, work and architecture collected essays on architecture and design. London: Phaidon P, 2002.
Gropius, Walter. The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1965.
Hecker, Zvi. "Architecture stripped of its ornate garment." Weblog post. Lebbeus Woods. 19 Mar. 2009.
"Narkomfin Building." Wikipedia. 23 Apr. 2009.
"Social Condenser." Wikipedia. 7 Jan. 2009.
Tate Modern. Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism. Brochure. London: 2009.
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