Avant-garde between east and west: Modern architecture and town-planning in the Urals 1920-30

Avant-garde between east and west: Modern architecture and town-planning in the Urals 1920-30

Budantseva, T.Y.

Bollerey, F. (promotor)
Macel, O. (promotor)

Architecture

2007-12-17

On hearing the term "Soviet modernism", images of Moscow and Leningrad spring to mind. These two cities may compete with each other for the title of the Russian modernist paradigm. Meanwhile little attention has been paid to the developments in more remote areas of Russia. Apparently, the Ural region played a remarkable role in the history of Soviet avant-garde architecture. Without a clear picture of the developments in the Urals, our knowledge of the Soviet modernism is not complete. Within the framework of the state programme of socialist industrialisation, Soviet and Western modernists implemented in the Urals a number of innovative town-planning concepts, such as decentralization of big cities by building satellite towns. Development of cities, industrial sites and settling systems was carried out with consideration of geographical, climatic, economical and other characteristic features of the location. The Urals cities, therefore, represent a unique complex, which fully demonstrates conceptual regularities of modernist town-planning, placed into regional context. In the 1920-30s, Sverdlovsk, the capital of the Ural region, was a major regional centre of architectural and town-planning activities. It was closely connected with the vanguard "headquarters" in Moscow and Leningrad. Today this city (renamed into Ekaterinburg) possesses an extensive collection of modernist monuments that deserves a close attention of specialists.

history
architecture
town-planning
Russia
Soviet Union
avant-garde
modernism

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b42303ca-8c76-4aab-b691-944ab28a87ba

Zjoek Publishers

978-90-812102-2-5

Institutional Repository

doctoral thesis

(c) 2007 T.Y. Budantseva; Zjoek Publishers