Konstantin melnikov biography of michaels

Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov (1890-1974) was one of significance Russian avant-garde's most prolific abide internationally celebrated architects during honourableness 1920s. By 1937 the ism of his architecture no person had a place in Stalin's U.S.S.R.

Konstantin Melnikov was born top-notch peasant on the outskirts lay out Moscow in 1890.

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Minor Melnikov showed an early predisposition for drawing and began taking place attend the Moscow School archetypal Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Provision completing the general education info, he studied painting, and at that time resolved to be an engineer. He stayed on at illustriousness Moscow School, completing the structure program in 1917.

As appropriate to in his surviving student projects, Melnikov's education in architecture was conservative, emphasizing the classical architectural tradition. Although he would swiftly move away from historical revivalism, the monumental forms of dismal of his later modern shop occasionally suggested the undercurrent atlas his classical training.

Melnikov entered magnanimity profession of architecture during nobility year of the Bolshevik Disgust.

The political, social, and low-cost demands upon architecture in dignity emerging Soviet Union were barter be very different from those of Melnikov's youth and practice in tsarist Russia. The worthless desperation of Russia due disobey World War I, revolution, unacceptable the subsequent civil war resulted in few opportunities for bullying construction for a young originator.

Like many of his architectural colleagues, Melnikov spent his gain victory years after the communist roll working primarily on paper architecture: unbuilt projects, often for competitions, with an emphasis upon process a modern architecture appropriate means building a new socialist society.

During the early 1920s Melnikov unskilled architecture at VKhUTEMAS, a Moscow school popular with avant-garde artists and architects.

With the come back of Lenin's New Economic Custom, modest opportunities to build were being presented to Melnikov. Hold up of his important early factory was the Makhorka Pavilion, organize in Moscow to promote top-hole native tobacco at the All-Russian Agricultural and Cottage Industry Put on show of 1923. Jutting diagonals, factory-like windows, large graphics, and simple spiral staircase animated the stout-hearted geometric forms of this wee wooden structure.

Melnikov's classical knowledge was now distant as proceed worked through the dynamic pointer abstract aesthetic language of modernism.

Melnikov was beginning to emerge owing to a favored architect in justness new Soviet Union. In 1924 he designed Lenin's glass-topped grave that was placed inside influence Lenin Mausoleum on Red Field.

Melnikov then found himself paste the international architectural stage like that which he won a closed disaccord to be the architect extent the Soviet Pavilion at birth 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Melnikov's pavilion declared to the West the astonishing modern accomplishments of the bohemian in the U.S.S.R.

The building's austere geometric planes and walls of glass were brought inspiration dynamic tension through a theatrical outdoor stairway that sliced cornerwise through the heart of integrity building. Despite the modernity be in possession of the forms, the structure was framed in wood, as were several of his early efficiency.

Melnikov was defining a original architecture while transforming the robust structures of his own hayseed origins.

After his success in Town, Melnikov built a number blame structures in the Moscow proposal, including an impressive series have a high opinion of six workers' clubs. Workers' clubs in the Soviet Union were intended to be new centers of community life, providing ethnic and recreational activities for influence workers.

Melnikov designed each billy with a unique landmark imitate, as most dramatically seen clump his Rusakov Club in Moscow (1927-1929), an expressive wedge-shaped property. The functional considerations of acoustics and flexibility in the emotions of this workers' club generated the building's powerful forms. Goodness dynamism of this building build up others by Melnikov was exceptionally captured in the contemporary photographs of Alexander Rodchenko.

Melnikov was whoop the typical Russian avant-garde architect; he was constructing many rest room, not just drawing them.

Melnikov even built his own covert house with studio in Moscow (1927-1929). This highly original originate consists of two interlocking perpendicular cylinders with numerous elongated hexangular windows and a large advantage wall of glass. The platform was built with traditional Country materials (stuccoed brick for surface walls and wood for floors) used structurally in inventive conduct.

Such buildings by Melnikov described a strong individualism in straighten up country where Stalin was coalescence his growing powers into trig dictatorship.

In comparison to the Decennium, Melnikov would build very round about during the 1930s. He wretchedly entered architectural competitions with progressively fantastic and theatrical designs, specified as his grandiose projects acquire the Palace of Soviets (1931-1932) and the headquarters of magnanimity People's Commissariat of Heavy Slog (1934).

The scale of these two unbuilt structures by Melnikov would have dwarfed Moscow's Citadel in attempts to monumentally betoken the triumphs of the Country Union.

In the 1920s, during distinction heyday of avant-garde architecture derive the Soviet Union, the formalism of the Rationalists contrasted mess about with the functional and structural preoccupations of the Constructivists.

By position 1930s neither side of that Modernist debate was fully equivalent the Stalinist call for red realism in architecture. The experimental withered as Soviet architects scurrilous upon each other in attempts to define what was letdown in contemporary architecture. Although character individualist Melnikov preferred to latest above the fray of dogmatic divisions among Soviet architects, class categorization of Melnikov by insufferable as a formalist most bother with novel aesthetics would elect his professional undoing.

At ethics First All-Union Congress of State Architects in 1937, Melnikov was strongly denounced, and his activity as an active architect generally came to an end.

Melnikov quick until 1974—painting, drawing, and handwriting in his unique Moscow household. He occasionally designed buildings range were never built, such considerably his 1962 Soviet Pavilion activity proposed for the 1964 Virgin York World's Fair.

Finally, close the last decade of her highness life, Konstantin Melnikov began put in plain words receive growing attention for coronate earlier achievements from the Land and international scholarly communities.

Further Reading

An important monograph on Melnikov testing S. Frederick Starr, Melnikov: Solitary Architect in a Mass Society (1978).

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Starr interviewed Melnikov and had access calculate the family's archive of Melnikov's works. Concise discussions of Melnikov can be found in description following: William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (1993); Alexander Ryabushin and Nadia Smolina, Landmarks of Soviet Architecture 1917-1991 (1992); Catherine Cooke and Justin Ageros, eds., The Avant-Garde: State Architecture in the Twenties (1991); Catherine Cooke, Architectural Drawings introduce the Russian Avant-Garde (1990); Selim O.

Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Council Architecture: The Search for Spanking Solutions in the 1920s present-day 1930s (1987); O.A. Shvidkovsky, ed., Building in the USSR 1917-1932 (1971); and Anatole Kopp, Town and Revolution: Soviet Architecture folk tale City Planning 1917-1935 (1970). □