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Front to Rear: Architecture and Planning during World War II, March 7-8, 2009 >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30265
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| Title: | War as a Challenge to Architecture. Andrei Burov's Civic Designs at the
Time of World War II |
| Authors: | Dmitrieva-Einhorn, Marina |
| Keywords: | architecture
Soviet Russia
Burov, Andrei Konstantinovich
World War II |
| Issue Date: | 15-Sep-2011 |
| Abstract: | The development of wartime technologies had a stimulating effect on
architecture in Europe and the United States. The war left its traces
not just in the shape of heavy edifices such as bunkers, or
fortifications like the Atlantic Wall or monuments like the Line of
Glory on the frontiers of the Reich, but its legacy also stimulated
experiments in temporary and civil architecture. This was particularly
visible in the use of new materials and lightweight constructions, which
were implemented not only in military construction, such as Pier Luigi
Nervi's hangars, but also in residential housing, ranging from barracks,
to communal housing, and single family homes. Focusing on the impact of
the war on the style of Soviet civic architecture, I shall analyse the
wartime projects of the Soviet architect Andrei Konstantinovich Burov
(1900-1957). A graduate of Vkhutemas, Burov began his carrier as a
constructivist. He produced modernist set designs for the theatre and
the cinema (among others, for Eisenstein’s film 'The old and the
new'//'General line'). But in the history of Soviet architecture he is
best known as the architect of classical Stalinist residential houses in
Moscow rather than as a modernist. In fact, in the 1930s he preached
down the constructivist school and promoted the classical tradition in
architecture. During the war, however, Burov turned his attention to
much more innovative projects, uniting the contradictory directions of
his earlier career. His wartime designs were based on new materials
applied to future dwellings, originally inspired by wartime
technologies, which embodied a utopian dream of a new architecture
healing the world. This new turn in his work was reflected in his
extravagant project of a reconstruction of the Black Sea resort of
Yalta, which was damaged during the war. Burov invented and developed
the so-called 'anisotropic' technologies for prefabricated architecture,
which were equally suited for residential housing, such as his designs
of typified small storey houses for the Southern regions of Russia, and
for large buildings of museums and exhibition halls, as exemplified in
his projects for the War Monuments in Stalingrad. However, none of
Burov's wartime projects was realized. In analyzing Burov's visions and
theoretical concepts of architecture, this paper seeks to show a
discrepancy between technological achievements, pragmatic needs and
ideological tasks, which was characteristic for the architecture of the
late Stalinism. In doing so, it encourages viewing Soviet architecture
of the post-war period in a more differentiated manner. Soviet
architects, the paper argues, found a variety of answers to the new
challenge posed by wartime architecture. As such it required a response
both on the level of technology and in the ideological interpretation of
the role of architecture in Soviet society--a response that, however,
mostly remained a unrealised project. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30265 |
| Appears in Collections: | Front to Rear: Architecture and Planning during World War II, March 7-8, 2009
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