OSA Group - From Collective Houses To Disurbanism

From Collective Houses To Disurbanism

OSA took an avant-garde position with respect to urban planning as well as architecture, one that sometimes differed from the position of the Communist Party. In 1926-29 they were active in propagandising collective houses and pioneered the notion of the social condenser. OSA architects were employed by the state to develop a standard for apartment buildings (the Stroikom apartments) for the purposes of mass production. However by 1929 there was a shift in the group's theory away from collective city blocks to 'disurbanism', perhaps influenced by the brutalities of forced collectivisation in the Soviet countryside. Mikhail Okhitovich's theories of using telecommunications, roads and infrastructure to create diffuse, semi-rural cities were published in SA, and the group's proposals for the new town of Magnitogorsk were produced with his input, only to be defeated by Ernst May of Der Ring. The 1930 debate over 'disurbanism' saw the OSA leadership (particularly Ginzburg) throw itself behind the theory, which had dire consequences when the movement was condemned by a Politburo statement. The journal was wound up in 1930, and OSA briefly became SASS (Section of Architects for Socialist Construction) before being merged into the state architecture union. The group's members continued to practice in a Modernist fashion until 1934 and the official ushering in of Socialist Realism. Most OSA members survived the great purge, with the exceptions of Alexei Gan and Mikhail Okhitovich, who were both murdered.

With the general rehabilitation of Modernism in the 1960s the issues of SA were reprinted, after decades of suppression.