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Abstract
The typological theories articulated by Moisei Ginzburg and the architects of his circle guided the development of Soviet architecture and remain influential in Russia today. Re-visiting these ideas highlights their relationships to the concepts and theoretical principles that were elaborated by the academic schools, which were grounded in the traditions of the past. Recent historical studies have revealed this intimate connection between the academic tradition and the modernism that was born to negate it, emphasizing continuity in the historical path of architecture. Applied to the history of Soviet architecture, this insight does not raise questions about the nuances in stylistic or theoretical similarities or differences between Soviet constructivism and modernism, but rather between those ideological links that form two branches of one integral current in the evolution of twentieth-century architecture.
Notes
1. Alexander Pushkin, “…Vnov’ ia posetil…,” in A.S. Pushkin, Sochineniya v trekh tomakh, (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya Literature, 1986), 1:574; English translation, “I have visited again,” by D.M. Thomas. http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/elements_of_lit_course6/The_%20Romantic_Period/collection%208/I%20Have%20Visited%20Again.htm
2. Ginzburg’s return (almost spiritualist in a metaphorical sense) in response to these constant and persistent references—from the point of view of historiographic interest or in historical and theoretical research, conducted critically or in a poetic and romantic manner—is a kind of self-consistent and persuasive reminder. The historical memory of one of the patriarchs of Soviet architecture, represented by his designs, building, essays and precepts, could probably be brought together with the Nietzschean idea of eternal return as a poetic, an almost sacred or mystical, embodiment of several moments of everyday life, imprinted with or personifying the historical memory in symbolic forms, signs, figures, events and actions, which could help to preserve the evident, but difficult to explain, connection between the past, the present and the future. Despite the profound philosophical meaning of this phenomenon, a physical, speculative or any other type of return possesses several nostalgic aspects, associated with individual experiences of the historical period, moments that can be poetically communicated by means of metaphors. In this sense, Ginzburg’s eternal return recalls Alexander Pushkin’s famous return to the hamlet of Mikhailovskoe after ten years away:
…Where a road, scarred by many rainfalls, climbs
The hill, three pine trees stand – one by itself,
The others close together. When I rode
On horseback past them in the moonlit night,
The friendly rustling murmur of their crowns
Would welcome me. Now, I have ridden out
Upon that road, and seen those trees again.
They have remained the same, make the same murmur –
But round their aging roots, where all before
was barren and naked, a thicket of young pines
Has sprouted; like green children around the shadows
of the two neighbouring pines. But in the distance
Their solitary comrade stands, morose,
Like some old bachelor, and round its root,
All is barren as before.
I greet you, young
and unknown tribe of pine trees! I’ll not see
your mighty upward thrust of years to come
When you will overtop these friends of mine
And shield their ancient summits from the gaze
Of passersby. But may my grandson hear
Your welcome murmur when, returning home
From lively company, and filled with gay
And pleasant thoughts, he passes you in the night,
And thinks perhaps of me….
Pushkin, “…Vnov’ ia posetil…”, 1:574; English translation, “I have visited again”, by D. M. Thomas.
3. I.S. Grossman-Roshchin, “Zametki profana” [“Notes of an Ignoramus”], Sovremennaia arkhitektura [Contemporary Architecture] 2 (1926): 77–8.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. P. Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture 1750–1950 (London: Faber and Faber, 1965).
7. Alan Colquhoun, “Historicism and the Limits of Semiology,” in Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), 133.
8. Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, 1960).
9. Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Recueil et parallèle des edifices de tout genre anciens et moderns, remarquables par leur beauté, par leur grandeur ou par leur singularité, et dessinés sur une meme échelle (Paris: De l'imprimerie de Gille fils, 1801).
10. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder praktische Ästhetik: ein Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler und Kunstfreunde (Band 2): Keramik, Tektonik, Stereotomie, Metallotechnik für sich betrachtet und in Beziehung zur Baukunst (Munich: Friedrich Bruckmann's Verlag, 1863).
11. J. Gaudet, Eléménts et théorie de l’architecture, cours professé à l’école nationale et special des beaux-arts (Paris: Librarie de la construction modern, 1900).
12. S.O. Khan-Magomedov, M.Ia. Ginzburg (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1972).
13. M.Ia. Ginzburg, Stil’ i epokha. Problemy sovremennoi arkhitektury (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924); English translation, Moisei Ginzburg, Style and Epoch, trans. Anatole Senkevitch, intr. Kenneth Frampton (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1982). See also M.Ia. Ginzburg, “Novye metody arkhitekturnogo myshleniia,” Sovremennaia arkhitektura 1 (1926): 1–4; M.Ia. Ginzburg, “Mezhdunarodnyi front sovremennoi arkhitektury,” Sovremennaia arkhitektura 2 (1926): 41–46; M.Ia. Ginzburg, V.A. Vesnin and A.A. Vesnin, “Tvorcheskaia tribuna. Problemy sovremennoi arkhitektury,” Arkhitektura SSSR 2 (1934): 63–69.
14. Ginzburg, Stil’ i epokha, 24.
15. A. [Antoine-Chrysostóme] Quatremère de Quincy, Encyclopédie méthodique, tome 3, Architecture (Paris: Agasse, 1825).
16. Ginzburg, Stil’ i epokha, 79.
17. Idem.
18. Ibid, 79–80.
19. Ibid, 80.
20. Idem.
21. Ibid, 134.
22. Ginzburg, “Novye metody arkhitekturnogo myshleniia,” 2.
23. Ginzburg, Vesnin and Vesnin, “Tvorcheskaia tribuna. Problemy sovremennoi arkhitektury,” 66.
24. Ginzburg, “Novye metody arkhitekturnogo myshleniia,” 2.
25. Ibid.
26. Ginzburg, Stil’ i epokha, 145.
27. Ginzburg, Vesnin and Vesnin,“Tvorcheskaia tribuna. Problemy sovremennoi arkhitektury,” 67.
28. Ibid.
29. Banham, Theory and Design, 104.
30. Ginzburg, Stil’ i epokha, 89.