Constructivist Architecture - A Revolution in Architecture

A Revolution in Architecture

The first and most famous Constructivist architectural project was the 1919 proposal for the headquarters of the Comintern in St Petersburg by the Futurist Vladimir Tatlin, often called Tatlin's Tower. Though it remained unbuilt, the materials—glass and steel—and its futuristic ethos and political slant (the movements of its internal volumes were meant to symbolise revolution and the dialectic) set the tone for the projects of the 1920s.

Another famous early Constructivist project was the Lenin Tribune by El Lissitzky (1920), a moving speaker's podium. During the Russian Civil War the UNOVIS group centred around Kasimir Malevich and Lissitzky designed various projects that forced together the 'non-objective' abstraction of Suprematism with more utilitarian aims, creating ideal Constructivist cities— see also El Lissitzky's Prounen-Raum or the 'Dynamic City' (1919) of Gustav Klutsis. In this and Tatlin's work the components of Constructivism could be seen to be an adaptation of various high-tech Western forms, such as the engineering feats of Gustave Eiffel and New York or Chicago's skyscrapers, for a new collective society.