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18-710: 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

36-657: The Mostorg department store in Moscow, and the Ivanovo bank and DneproGES power station; works by Mikhail Barsch , such as Moscow Planetarium (with Sinyakvsky) and the Gostorg office block (as part of a team headed by Boris Velikovsky); works by Ivan Nikolaev , such as the electrical-technical complex in Moscow (with Fissenko; this work was featured in MOMA 's 1932 International Style exhibition) and

54-482: The VOPRA group of Arkady Mordvinov and Karo Alabian , coining the phrase 'Leonidovism' to attack this 'Western' group: in a 1929 editorial SA trenchantly defended Leonidov, but this was a sign of what was to come, with Mikhail Barsch being targeted in an 'anti-bourgeois' campaign at VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN. OSA took an avant-garde position with respect to urban planning as well as architecture, one that sometimes differed from

72-417: 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. ASNOVA ASNOVA ( Russian : АСНОВА ; abbreviation for Russian : АСсоциация НОВых Архитекторов , Association of New Architects ) was an Avant-Garde architectural association in

90-476: The 1925 Paris exhibition. A few realized projects survive in the former USSR. Most notable are Ladovsky's apartment block on Tverskaya in Moscow (1929) and a series of three ' social condenser ' kitchens and communal facilities built in Leningrad between 1928 and 1931 by an ASNOVA team made up of A. K. Barutchev, I. A. Gilter, I.A. Meerzon and Yakov Rubanchik . ASNOVA split in 1928 when Ladovsky set up his own group,

108-739: The Classicism and Eclecticism that would eventually coalesce into Stalinist architecture . There are several examples of built works designed by OSA members in the USSR. These include Moisei Ginzburg's apartment blocks (on Gogolsky Boulevard, Moscow, another in Sverdlovsk , and most famously the Gostrakh and Narkomfin buildings); the 1920s-'30s work of the Vesnin brothers such as the Likhachev Palace of Culture and

126-524: The Soviet Union, which was active in the 1920s and early 1930s, commonly called 'the Rationalists'. The association was started in 1923 by Nikolai Ladovsky , a teacher at VKhUTEMAS and member of INKhUK , along with other avant-garde architects such as Vladimir Krinsky and Viktor Balikhin . Ladovsky's teaching, although definitively Modernist was nevertheless more 'intuitive' than Functionalist, and

144-552: 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

162-481: 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

180-404: The group concentrated on creating 'psycho-organisational' effects (as Ladovsky put it) with architecture: a sculptural rather than functional approach, leading to accusations of 'formalism' by the nascent OSA Group . ASNOVA and OSA engaged in polemics over terminology and the claim to ' constructivism '. The group received a boost when El Lissitzky became a proponent in the mid-1920s, designing

198-793: The large collective house for the students in Moscow; and the workers' housing designed by Alexander Nikolsky in Tractor Street, Leningrad . The OSA group's leading theorists were members of the CIAM from 1928 until 1933, with Ginzburg and Nikolai Kolli members of its secretariat, CIRPAC . A small CIAM meeting with the OSA group was held in Moscow in 1932, with Sigfried Giedion and Cornelius van Eesteren in attendance. Sergei Eisenstein 's The General Line featured specially built buildings by OSA's Andrey Burov . The utopian projects of Ivan Leonidov were first published in SA , and their technologically advanced, fantastic nature led to harsh criticisms from

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216-534: The one issue of the journal ASNOVA News ( Izvestiia ASNOVA ) in 1926. In addition Konstantin Melnikov , then as now the most famous Soviet Modernist architect, was a member of the group at one point, preferring its concentration on affect and intuition to the OSA's scientific precision: although he and Ilya Golosov would form a 'centre' group between ASNOVA and OSA. Berthold Lubetkin , better known for his work in London ,

234-543: 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

252-420: 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

270-685: 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

288-403: 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

306-418: Was also an early associate of the group. The 1928 'flying city' of Georgy Krutikov was an ASNOVA project that was both famous and notorious for its Utopianism , inflected with motifs from Science Fiction. ASNOVA members were prolific in paper projects and competitions but built rarely. Members Melnikov and Ladovsky were awarded first and second place respectively in the competition for the Soviet pavilion at

324-447: Was partly based on Gestalt psychology . In 1919 Ladovsky defined architectural rationalism as 'the economy of psychic energy in the perception of spatial and functional aspects of a building', as opposed to a 'technical rationalism'. The group's researches were particularly influenced by the work of Hugo Münsterberg , and Ladovsky built a psychotechnical laboratory in 1926 based on Münsterberg's theory of industrial psychology. In general

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