OSA Group - Contemporary Architecture

Contemporary Architecture

Like the ASNOVA group, OSA grew out of the avant-garde wing of the VKhUTEMAS school in Moscow. The group's founders were Moisei Ginzburg, well known for his book Style and Epoch (a Soviet response to Le Corbusier's Vers une Architecture) and the painter, designer and architect Alexander Vesnin. Unlike the earlier association the OSA group claimed for itself the name Constructivist, in that it was, in its utilitarianism and concentration on function rather than form, an architectural equivalent to the experiments of 'artistic' Constructivism. OSA was in many ways the architectural wing of the socialist Modernists of LEF, and likewise set up its own journal in 1926.

Until its closure in 1930, SA would publish articles on a variety of subjects, including a symposium on flat roofs, a special issue on colour in architecture, and discussions of Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus, Fernand Léger, and Kasimir Malevich (who was also a contributor to the journal). The design was mainly by Aleksei Gan, who also designed the distinctive grid pattern of the covers. Photography was occasionally by Alexander Rodchenko. As well as publishing on the built projects of Modernism, the journal published experimental projects by VKhUTEMAS students such as Lydia Komarova's Comintern project, the strange pod houses of Sokolov, and the works of Ivan Leonidov. Articles in the journal was mainly in Russian, though occasionally parts of it were in German, highlighting the group's affinities with the Neues Bauen, although no OSA architects were invited to contribute to the Weissenhof Estate. The group was, however, the Soviet counterpart of Der Ring in Germany: agitating for Modern architecture and construction methods, and polemicising against the Classicism and Eclecticism that would eventually coalesce into Stalinist architecture.