Docomomo Journal

Kharkiv Modernism

Uta Pottgiesser — 2024-04-15

In 2022, Docomomo International launched a call for papers on Modern Movement in Ukraine together with Docomomo Ukraine. More than 20 proposals were received, most of them from authors based in Ukraine itself—despite the difficult circumstances. The Docomomo Journal 67 presented a first selection of those articles to display regional and architectural particularities and current challenges of archiving, documenting, protecting, and preserving the modern heritage. Nearly 100 examples of Ukrainian modern buildings were presented in a graphical overview. The modern Ukranian architecture was dominated by Constructivism from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, with Kharkiv as the epicenter of production, while Socialist Realism with the Stalin Empire emerged from 1932, lasting until 1955, with Kyiv as the capital of Ukraine. From December 1919 to January 1934, Kharkiv was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the cultural, economic, and educational center of the new Ukrainian Republic. The status as new capital led to prestigious master plans and construction projects, among them the world-famous Derzhprom building at Freedom Square–as a symbol of Constructivism–or the Kharkiv Tractor Factory–as a symbol of the industrialization of agriculture. The leading role of Kharkiv as a forerunner and capital of Constructivism is often expressed by the famous State Industry House (Derzhprom) built from 1925 to 1928. Being the only modern ensemble in Ukraine nominated as UNESCO World Heritage, it became and still is the focus of identification and pride—despite the many controversial reflections and discussions about the conservation efforts and changes carried out since the original construction in the 1950s and after the year 2000. This explains the many articles dealing with Freedom Square and Dherzprom as a reaction to the call for papers in
2022 and also Docomomo International’s commitment to dedicate this special issue of the Docomomo Journal to Kharkiv under the title From Constructivism to Modernism in Kharkiv.

Kharkiv in the 1920s-1930s as the Capital of Victorious Modernism

Svitlana Smolenska — 2024-04-15

Documenting and demonstrating (based on material from archives and literary primary sources) the extraordinary growth and development of Kharkiv in the interwar period with an emphasis on the time when it became the first capital of Soviet Ukraine is the main goal of this article. The ideas of modernism were vividly embodied in the architecture and urbanism of the city in the 1920s and early 1930s. Large-scale urban transformations turned it into one of the largest and most significant industrial, cultural, scientific and educational centers of the USSR in a very short period. It became the third most important city after Moscow and Leningrad. And in 1928 modernism was officially recognized as the leading direction in its architecture.

Gosprom Ensemble in Kharkiv and the Concept of Modern Style

Alexander V Shilo — 2024-04-15

The ideologists of Constructivism and “production art” of the 1920s put forward the slogan “not style, but method!”. However, the Constructivists-“productionists” movement carried a stylistic charge of great power. The intentions of the Constructivists-“productionists”, their manifestos and slogans are polemically pointed evidence of their awareness of their own place in the Soviet culture of the 1920s. Creative practice continued the development of a certain artistic tradition. It is necessary to reconstruct the development of the problem of style in the concept of “productionists” as a natural and historically determined stage of the movement. The manifestation of the rejection of the idea of style in artistic creativity in the concept of “production art” paradoxically corresponds to its specific conditions in setting the task of creating and identifying the mechanism for the development of modern style. They are analyzed in the article.
The “anti-stylistic” orientation of “production art” was paradoxically opposed to the orientation towards a “Constructivist style”. In the late 1920s, it covered a wide range of architects and artists who did not belong to the Constructivist movement and who opposed them. In this regard, the fate of several outstanding monuments of the Modern Movement in the architecture of Kharkiv is indicative — the House of State Industry (Gosprom), the House of Projects and the House of Cooperation. They were the largest and most integral ensemble in their architectural and compositional solution, which embodied the ideas of the Modern Movement in Soviet architecture. The reconstruction of the ensemble after the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) showed the contradictions that were embedded in the Constructivist concept of the modern style. The duality of understanding the art form in it was revealed. On the one hand, it acted as an independent stylistic entity. On the other hand, it could also be considered as a framework, a “draft” of some further work with the form. The concept of modern style defended by the “productionists” was problematized by the practice of “Constructivist stylizations”.

Composition Methods of the Soviet Architectural Avant-Garde

Оlena Remizova — 2024-04-15

This paper explores the composition logic of the creativity of the Avant-garde masters and to identify the principles of the composition language of the architecture of modernism.
To characterize the composition language of Avant-garde architecture, systemic, historical-genetic and semiotic methods of research are used. Architectural composition is interpreted as an activity that has its own semantic, morphological and syntactic features. In the example of Svoboda Square (the former Dzerzhinsky Square) in Kharkiv, the logical methods of artistic activity and thinking of the architects of the Soviet Avant-garde of the 1920-1930s are studied.
At the beginning of the 20th century avant-garde movements were created artificially, consciously, by an act of will, and they strove to dictate their ideas, concepts and principles as universal and general. The architectural language of the Avant-garde is normative, ascetic and rigidly organized. Distinctive features of the artistic movements of the Avant-garde are the deep analyticity of thinking and the normativity of the declared requirements, abstract concepts and symbols. The logical principles of composition are often repeated thanks to stable semantic associations and are reflected in geometric structures and forms. Thus, the methods of compositional thinking of the Avant-garde form a monological system, i.e. they are internally holistic and normative, not allowing alternatives. It was possible to identify and show that the Avant-garde, as a monological language system, is characterized by the following features: internal integrity, self-sufficiency, normativity; stability of figurative language devices; restriction of freedom of artistic expression with the help of a concept, declaration, slogan, clear conceptual system.
Researchers and designers should treat the phenomenon under study not as a “closed”, stylistically defined object, but see it as a complex historical process of structure formation based on an even more complex process of development of thinking and activity of architects and builders of a particular period.

Modernist Monuments of Freedom Square In Kharkiv

Mariia Rusanova — 2024-04-15

Since February 24, 2022, the architectural heritage of Ukraine has been exposed to dangerous destruction. The government center on Freedom (Svoboda) Square in Kharkiv - the largest urban development of early modernist architecture and its pearl, included in the Tentative UNESCO World Heritage List (2017) and provisionally inscribed on the International List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection (2023) - Derzhprom (The State Industry Building), were hit by a missile attack on March 1, 2022. In the conditions of non-cessation of hostilities and non-priority, the only means of protecting monuments in the city for months were, and in many places still are, sandbags, adhesive tape and plywood. The architectural research community and Government of Ukraine, together with international organizations, must take all possible actions to protect and restore the damaged architectural monuments. The article deals with the modernist monuments of Freedom Square, the chronology of their reconstruction since the Second World War and the damage received over the past almost two years. The paper raises important questions regarding their future fate with the possibility of restoring some objects of the square to their original appearance of the modernist era.

Public Buildings in the Architecture of Ukrainian Modernism

Olha Deriabina — 2024-04-15

Among the avant-garde monuments preserved in Kharkiv and creating its unique architectural character, the buildings of workers’ clubs occupy a special place. The construction of buildings with such a function began in Kharkiv at the beginning of the 20th century, but after the October Revolution, workers’ clubs became almost the main symbol of the era, because they symbolized the desire for a new life and the creation of a new person. In the works of avant-garde architects, the club became a favorite design theme. During the architectural competitions of the early and mid-1920s, a typology of club buildings was compiled and original compositional and artistic solutions formed, which reflected a creative discussion about the development of Ukrainian architecture: the struggle against the revival of baroque trends ended with the victory of a new direction — Modernism. The architecture of Kharkiv workers’clubs in the 1920s and 1930s reflects the development trends of Ukrainian modernism, but it has its own characteristics related to both regional features and the individuality of the masters who took part in their design. Kharkiv’s clubs reflect the diversity of views of, and approaches to, form-giving by architects with different views and experience, whose buildings constitute a unique architectural heritage. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristic features of Kharkiv workers’ clubs and determine their place in the general picture of Ukrainian modern architecture for the further development of a program for their preservation. The research uses the methods of historical-architectural, functional-structural and stylistic analysis, which includes traditional general scientific approaches. The material collected, analyzed and systematized in this article can be used for further scientific research in the field of the development of historic architecture, for the implementation of project proposals for the restoration and conservation of individual monuments, and in education.

The Unfinished Revolution?

Błażej Ciarkowski — 2024-04-15

The future reconstruction of Ukrainian cities from wartime devastation will require an extensive discussion on strategies and concepts of preservation of cultural heritage – including the heritage of the Modern Movement. It should involve not only the technical aspects but political and historical issues as well. The history of the Palace of Culture of the Railway Workers in Kharkiv (architect Alexander I. Dmitirev, 1927-1932) provokes a number of questions on the essence of Ukrainian pre-war Modernism and Constructivism, the idea of the Sovietisation of the theater against the Great Theatre Reform movement or the role of Workers’ Clubs and Palaces as social condensers. Thus, its analysis cannot by limited to the form and content of the edifice itself, but should be perceived in the broader context of similar projects (for example the Kharkiv Opera House) and views on architecture in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Palace of Culture in Kharkiv can be considered as an example of “architecture in transition” where evolving trends in art as well as a dynamic socio-political situation left their marks and created a multi-layered palimpsest. Dmitriev’s design included the Constructivist spirit as well as conservative monumentality. It seems to become a legacy of a revolution (in architecture, theater and society) which has never been really completed.

Kharkiv International Competition

Svitlana Smolenska — 2024-04-15

One of the sides of a large study dedicated to the forgotten international competition of 1930 for the Project of the State Ukrainian Theater of Mass Musical Action in Kharkiv is touched upon in this article. Its purpose is the reconstruction of the competition events, identifying the features of the process of their organization. The competition attracted a record number of foreign contestants not only from many European countries, but also from other continents (from the USA and Japan). Why did it generate such widespread interest? Which famous architects took part in it? Who evaluated the projects and according to what criteria were the awards distributed? The author of this article is looking for answers to these questions. The problems of the research are due to the fact that the originals of the competition projects have not survived, and their photocopies and preparatory sketches are scattered in the archives of many countries. Information about the competition and its contestants is scarce and is documented in different languages: Ukrainian, German, French, Russian, Japanese, English, Croatian, Swedish. Only painstaking gathering, meaningful and comparative analysis of textual and graphical information obtained during the study, allows the author to reproduce the course of the competition, to reveal its significance for the development of architecture in Ukraine and for the world Modern Movement. The article analyses the methods that ensured a high level of organization of the competition and an open, unbiased assessment of its results. The distribution of prizes and the authors of the winning projects are also listed. The Kharkiv competition took place at a crucial period for the Soviet avant-garde: 1930-1931 were the last years of its heyday, after which it was banned and persecuted for many years. That is why it is so important to collect these lost puzzles of architectural history.

Mono-Functional Housing and Changing Concepts in Kharkiv Residential Architecture during the Capital Period

Kateryna Didenko — 2024-04-15

In the 1920s - 1930s in Kharkiv, at that time the capital of Soviet Ukraine, two main programs of city development were implemented - the creation of a new metropolitan center and the development of the industrial complex. Within the framework of these programs there was an evolution of Kharkiv’s housing infrastructure, which developed largely in connection with the leading Western social concepts of architectural and urban planning practice: garden city, house-commune, residential combine and socialist city. However, in addition to these concepts that replaced each other, there was also a parallel design of “mono-functional” housing, which is an integral, important and significant component of the avant-garde architecture of Kharkiv. It was built both within the framework of the program of the creation of the capital center and within the framework of the program of development of the industrial complex. It is unfair that such housing, as a rule, is in the shadow of more vivid and radical typological avant-garde solutions and is insufficiently described. The method of systematization and analysis of literary and documentary sources was applied. In the context of Russian aggression and its unfolding of a full-scale war against Ukraine since 24 February 2022, the architectural heritage of Kharkiv, as well as the heritage of other cities of Ukraine, is under constant threat of destruction. In this regard, the documentation and introduction of undeservedly forgotten “mono-functional” residential buildings into the international scientific community is extremely relevant. The article begins to document mono-functional housing built in the 1920s-1930s, and discusses in detail several examples: Chervonyi Knygar, Slovo and Komunar.

Innovatory Kharkiv Mass Housing Estates in Urban Planning of the 1960s-1980s

Nadiia Antonenko — 2024-04-15

The destructions of the Russo-Ukrainian war are leading to a rapid loss of cultural heritage in Ukraine, including contemporary 20th century monuments in Kharkiv, the cradle of Ukrainian modernism. At the greatest risk are the sites, which were complex and not well understood heritage before the war - mass housing estates of 1960s-1980s. In view of the postwar reconstruction, there is a great need to analyze mass housing estates in Kharkiv as potential objects of preservation. The purpose of this article is to reveal the architectural and historical value of the first Kharkiv mass housing estates in terms of their innovation, which might be the basis for further preservation steps. The article focuses on the three earliest areas of mass housing estates of the city - Pavlovo Pole, Novi Budynky and Saltovsky mass housing, which were designed and built during the period of the transition to rapid and large-scale pre-fabricated industry in the late 1950s - early 1960s. It is namely during the design and construction of these estates that innovatory technologies and approaches were developed and tested, which were later used in the construction of new housing estates both in Kharkiv and in other cities of Ukraine. These innovations included the system of microdistricts, the staggered system of services for the population, and the method of focusing in urban planning. The creation of a number of standard series of pioneering residential buildings for mass industrial development by the “Kharkovproject” and “Ukrmistostroyproject” design institutes. The study is based on the reconstruction of the historical chronology of design work of 1960’s - 1980’s in the history of Ukrainian city planning; a comparative analysis of the first-erected housing estates, and the definition of the unique solutions of Kharkiv city planners that were implemented in the development of the first housing estates in Kharkiv.

A Study of the Kharkiv Architectural Avant-Garde

Kateryna Cherkasova — 2024-04-15

The article addresses the issue of preserving Kharkiv’s architectural heritage from the first third of the 20th century. The main focus is on the preservation of authenticity of the early modernist heritage in the context of a crisis situation associated with the overall state of heritage preservation in Ukraine and during active military operations. The research was conducted in the context of the planning development and spatial structure of the Kharkiv historical center and suburbs, where new workers’ settlements were formed, as well as considering the architectural layers within the structure of historical districts of Kharkiv. The main objective of the study is to determine the value and authenticity of the architectural heritage of early modernism. The study employed the methods of historical, retrospective, and comprehensive analysis. The general plan of the “Socialist Reconstruction of Kharkiv” from 1931-1933 and the historical-architectural reference plan of Kharkiv from 2019 were analysed as additional sources. The research results provide comprehensive information about the architectural and urban heritage of this period and emphasize the attention to the issue of preservation of authenticity. The conclusions of this work will serve as a basis for further development of specific measures for the conservation, restoration, and preservation of historical monuments in Kharkiv from the first third of the 20th century. The research will also contribute to raising public awareness about the value of early modernist architectural heritage and encourage the implementation of restoration programs to preserve these important landmarks.

The Role of City Partnerships in the Reconstruction of Ukraine

Oliver Schruoffeneger — 2024-04-15

In 2015, there were around 80 city partnerships between Germany and Ukraine. In addition to the major partnerships between Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig with Kyiv or Berlin and Nuremberg with Kharkiv1, these were mostly partnerships between smaller municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. Many of these partnerships were very old and had their basis in the old structures between the Soviet Union and the former Germand Democratic Republic (GDR). Only a few new partnerships were formed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Others resulted from the old peace movement in the West, which organized active support after the Chornobyl accident with vacation stays for Ukrainian children in Germany in conjunction with direct humanitarian and medical support.

Archival Challenges for the Van Nelle Factory

Edward van Hevele — 2024-04-15

Marking the anniversary of the redevelopment of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, the related project archive was formally transferred to the Rotterdam City Archive in order to enable proper archival conservation and public accessibility of this essential documentation. This article sheds light on the documentation and redevelopment process of a modern World Heritage (WH) site and on the role of archives as an example for other protected heritage projects or sites.

Being a Ukrainian Architect during Wartime by Ievgeniia Gubkina

Various — 2024-04-15

The ETOM NEB-Lab for the New European Bauhaus and the ETOM – European Triennial of Modernism

Robert K. Huber — 2024-04-15

The collaborative trans-European dimension of Modernism engenders particularly three huge potentials – especially exploring the developments beyond east and West dichotomies: first, a scope of incredibly rich and diverse modern cultural heritage, second the vital realm and diversity of historic protagonists as well as of current actors, topics, and formats and, third, its fruitful relevance and diverse perspectives for contemporary challenges and opportunities.

Concreto Academy kicks off

Concreto Academy — 2024-04-15

The Concreto Academy has officially launched its mission to advance modern concrete heritage conservation with an impactful kick-off meeting held on March 6th at the Town Hall of the City of Ivrea. The event, attended by a diverse and enthusiastic audience, marked the beginning of an ambitious Erasmus Plus funded project aimed at preserving architectural heritage through innovative approaches.