Talk:Constructivist architecture

Comment
This is truly an outstanding start to an article. Obviously it needs to be referenced, (probably with in-line citations as these appear to be the flavour of the month at WP:FAC). I think a mention should be made about the integration of typography and slogan with architecture. --Mcginnly | Natter 11:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

re- the refs...problem is there isn't really any quotation here, it's just factual stuff, which is why i added a bibliog but left it unreferenced.

(that was Owenhatherley 15:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC) by the way)
 * Trouble is, the people at WP:FAC seem to insist on inline citations - it's supposed to be up to you if you read WP:CITE but really the de facto policy seems to be "If you want an article to receive Featured article status - it needs inline citations". That's my experience anyway. DVD/RW and myself got Deconstructivism to FA status with a combination of a Bibliography and inline citations. Regards --Mcginnly | Natter 15:21, 7 September 2006 (UTC) PS are you the author of this ? It's really interesting.

i've just added a gallery as well. also, i do think this would look better with a picture at the top of the page. by all means shrink it, but i'd rather it wasn't deleted. thanks for tidying up though, Owenhatherley 13:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

thanks. yes, i did write that btw... i'll work on citations, but it might be a little while.Owenhatherley 18:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)==Gallery Moved from article== As per discussion at User_talk:Carnildo:-

Leningrad vs. St. Petersburg
There's quite a lot of historical revisionism going on in the world these days, and Wikipedia is certainly a center of this. Which is why -- completely against the logic of context, or even historical accuracy -- references to "Leningrad" are being systematically changed wherever possible, and "St. Petersburg" put in their place.

It's misleading to have an article which references soviet work in "Leningrad" or "Petrograd" as having taken place in "St. Petersburg", as if historical context is meaningless and only the exigencies of the hour matter totally, no matter how they distort and obscure.

Where St. Petersbug fits -- by all means put in St. Petersburg. I myself fully expect the name of the town to be changed back to Leningrad or somesuch some day. I don't like references to either saints or personal dictators -- but truth and accuracy über alles (most critics of Lenin and communism and revolution aren't the least qualified to judge any of it -- including the wisdom of renaming this town in Lenin's name). And it's more than a little ironic than the forces which loudly decry totalitarianism themselves are exemplars of its practice once they get the upper hand.

Note that I don't consider this to be an innocent slip either. It's a very deliberate policy of some tendencies to try and obliterate all references possible to communism when they can -- not to mention this practice being mean-spirited to the sacrifice of millions of workers who believed in a better world. Many still do. Many more will.

So change the damned name back to Leningrad as per the logic of the piece. Consider this a NPOV issue.

Pazouzou 06:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with the substance of your comments and personally have no problems with changing the name to Leningrad - It makes sense, for instance to refer to events of the crusades in Constantinople (today Istanbul), and I think this is equally valid for Leningrad (today St. Petersburg). Your tone however, is unnecessarily strident - we can be civil here, no point of view pushing or historical revisionism was intended and we welcome your contribution to the debate - edit the name as you see fit - perhaps it would be polite to leave a message on Owen's talk page letting him know your intentions. --Mcginnly | Natter 08:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Change away, is not a problem, though the reason I used St Petersburg was to avoid having to use eg Petrograd for the Tatlin Tower or Leningrad for Chernikhov stuff, and just having the original name seemed to avoid confusion. But is no problem. Owenhatherley 14:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Failing GA
Fred-Chess 16:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Footnotes go after punctuations, as per References
 * Copyediting is necessary to make the prose more fluent. Some peculiar formulations are for example
 * "creating ideal Constructivist cities- see also El Lissitzky's Prounen-Raum 'Dynamic City' (1919) of Gustav Klutsis."
 * Though after the Civil War the USSR was too poor for any new building projects, the Soviet avant-garde school Vkhutemas started an architectural wing in 1921,
 * Without inline citations I can't tell if the mentioned architectural works are truly the most significant works. Which of the references are the most important sources for the article?
 * Lead section does not summarize article, please conform to WP:LEAD. Expand it with one-two paragraphs.

Why Shukhov?
Shukhov towers were built since 1890s, and were as Constructivist as a piece of steel pipe or HMS Dreadnought. A structural engineer, not artist, he served all kind of projects. Interestingly, modern critics (i.e. Vyacheslav Glazychev) specifically place his Moscow tower in opposition to constructivists (old school built in steel, new youth built in plywood). NVO 17:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Shukhov is in there because a) of his collaborations with Melnikov, and b) because his radio towers in the 1920s were more futuristic in form than their western equivalents, and considered to be such by the likes of Rodchenko, who often photographed them or used them in photomontages. The divide engineer/artist that you're using here is exactly what Constructivism was set against. So I see no reason not to have him in here, although its clear he didn't regard himself as an avant-gardist of any sort.Owenhatherley 13:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You missed the point. By 1920 those towers were ubiquitous. Hundreds were built before 1914 by railroads, i.e. they were exposed to millions of train riders. No novelty at all. The 1926 Moscow tower was quite big for its settings, indeed, but - just one of many.

But there's another question. In 1926-1929, when constructivism was in vogue, nearly all practicing architects built constructivist buildings - client's orders. Even the old neoclassicists like Shchusev, Fomin, Zholtovsky and "non-aligned" folks like Ilya Golosov. Would you put them in this category, too, simply because they jumped on the opportunity? NVO 06:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The 'novelty' or otherwise of the Shukhov towers is unimportant. Standardisation was an integral part of the Constructivist project.
 * Which project? Was there anything standardized in 1920s - the real buildings, not the paper talk? NVO 21:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

- No: but they wanted what they did to be standardised, and that it wasn't was political rather than due to their own practice. Owenhatherley 13:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC) Also: this article essentially uses 'constructivist' as a cipher for 'early Soviet modernist'. Lissitzky, Ladovsky and Melnikov all considered their work Rationalist rather than Constructivist; though their connections with Vkutemas meant that they were intricately involved in the debates that are usually subsumed under Constructivism. When very strictly defined, the only Constructivist architecture was that of the OSA group (Vesnins, Ginsburg etc). But in general parlance, as the links at the bottom of the page indicate, Constructivist architecture is generally used to encompass everything from Melnikov and Golosov, Schusev's Narkomzem building, and the hardline theoreticians of OSA. A Modernism similar to, but in significant ways unlike, that of Germany or France. Hope that clarifies things somewhat! Owenhatherley 12:58, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Got the point - that is my own understanding, didn't ever consider Melnikov to be within Ginzburg faction (or Ladovsky's rationalism) NVO 21:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

- Melnikov was an ASNOVA member for a while, according to Catherine Cooke: but he was out on his own, sure. Owenhatherley 13:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Info Requests
NVO, as you seem to be the person to ask about this: do you know anything about the following Moscow buildings? As in who the architects were, whether they still exist, year built etc. These are all 1930s pictures. and the Mosselprom Building (above, in the gallery)? Also: this looks like Nikolaev's Dom Kommuny but am not sure:
 * 'Modern Flats'
 * Stankotrest Building
 * Central Electoral Commission
 * 

and outside Moscow:
 * Cinema in Khabarovsk
 * Tenement in Kharkov

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Bold (?) renaming proposal
Two years ago, in one of my first wikipedia edits (one screen above on this page) I wondered why Schukhov appears on this page. I still do. The page dumps constructivits, rationalists, suprematists, independents like Melnikov and Ilya Golosov, one-off wunderkinds like Ivan Nikolaev and their followers into one pile. The name of this pile is Modernist architecture of the Soviet Union or perhaps Avant-garde architecture of the Soviet Union, and constructivists are just one facet of it. It's like dumping all art of the Second French Empire into Impressionism, and there is no way of reducing current article to constructivism proper without removing a lot of current content. No matter what current college textbook says, we should respect the original creators' opinions: when they said they were not constructivists, they really meant it. Comments? NVO (talk) 12:51, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I see your point and agree in principle - if it can be fixed so that a search for 'constructivist architecture' leads here, then I would be in theory be fine with something like 'Soviet Modernist Architecture' - BUT, and it's a big but, such an article would have to expand into the Modernism that re-emerged after 1953, something which is only alluded to in the last section. The advantage of Constructivism as a term is that, in the Soviet context, Constructivism is seen as something that ends definitively in the early '30s. So what could be done is a renaming and rewriting of this page, with info on the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, something which is very much more your territory, NVO - and I could sort out a shorter page called 'Constructivist architecture' centring on the OSA. Which might be more trouble than it's worth What do other people think?. Owenhatherley (talk) 12:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It's an unexpected twist :)) I seriously researched the period of 1955-1960, after Khrushchev's crackdown on architecture but before it materialized in tangible concrete - graveyard of mammoths - these five years witnessed far more professional and personal dramas than the dreaded 1930s. Honestly, there's very little to write about past 1960, the profession was dead. "Copy Boston City Hall, make it wider and paint it white" - is this modernism? NVO (talk) 08:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Owen: I found a ref explaining the European take on the subject, precisely: : "this inclusive application of a movement's name is abundantly documented, but remains unexplored and at times even repudiated by architectural historians... cultural innovations invariably escape the jurisdiction of their originators..." ( p. 136).NVO (talk) 17:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

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Famous Constructivist buildings since the 1950s
Recently the following illustrations (4, 5 and 6) were deleted by Andy Dingley. The illustrations are an essential part of the main article Constructivist architecture and should be replaced according to the following argumentations.

In Modern architecture (International Style, Expressionist- and Constructivist architecture) are three different periods of development:

1. Period 1910-1930, time of the pioneers in Europe and Russia. Few examples of the new styles are existing.

2. Period 1930-1945, time of repression of Modern architecture by the Nazi- and Stalin-regimes, economic crisis et al.

3. Period since the 1950s, time of acceptance in many countries. The International Style was successful in the US. The first example of Expressionist architecture after WW2 was Ronchamp by Le Corbusier. A further development of Constructivist architecture was High-Tech with famous buildings since the 1950s.

Leuk2 (talk) 19:30, 10 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Actually I didn't remove them, I reverted the article to its state before you added them. They were not part of the article until then.
 * Per WP:BURDEN, it's incumbent upon you, as the editor wanting to add them, to show (if challenged) why they belong here.
 * I don't think they belong here. They're not part of the Constructivist tradition. Not Modernism, not Internationalism, not '70s-'80s high-tech, but Constructivism. A Soviet Russian movement of the '20s and '30s. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:38, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

According to your personal site on Wikipedia, you have no relation to Modern architecture (and Western constructivism). Leuk2 (talk) 22:00, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you either mean, or what relevance you think this has here? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:21, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Leuk2: I agree with Andy Dingley, the images above are not Constructivist architecture unless reliables source say so. You need to provide references that state as much if you wish to include them in the article; though the article is well populated with images already. And since Wikipedia is not a repository for images, users can see more at Commons. Coldcreation (talk) 09:11, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Just waiting a while, hoping no one is looking, and then repeating the same contested change is not acceptable. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:19, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Andy Dingley (talk) 12:05, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * See: Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring.   Thank you. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:23, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

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