Конструктивизм. Конец эпохи

As is often the case, the style under discussion eludes precise definitions and must be described in comparative terms. Directed, according to its creators, to reduce the cost of construction via rational architecture, it sought to get as far as possible from the canons of the bourgeoisie, embodied in the Art Nouveau and Modern styles, which fascinated the cultural layer of the newly rich – merchants and industrialists of the early 20th century. Mosaics, stained-glass, window frames resembling lotus flowers, and fanciful balconies were replaced with concrete buildings and several new (or modified) architectural elements in the form of multi-story half-cylinder bay windows suspended in the air, windows built into the corners, continuous balconies along all apartments on the floor, protruding from the wall parts of the rooms in order to achieve three-dimensionality instead of flat surfaces facing the street. Fortunately, constructivism, born of the revolutionary, anti-bourgeois impulse of European-oriented idealists, avoided the pernicious intersection with the dead-end archaism of the Russ and Neo-Gothic styles, examples of which are still found around Moscow built by the order of newly baked rich patriots from all periods of the Russian 20th century. At the same time, it cannot be denied that many of the discoveries of the preceding style of Modern found their place in constructivist designs. The main difference for me comes to the fore with a closer look at the arrangement of living quarters – the realization of the dream of the utopian socialists of all times: the rejection of the family as an autonomous unit of society, and replacing it with a collective, where everyone is under a close attention by the neighbors and governing bodies (even if it was the case of the self-management). “Constructionism must become the highest formal engineering of all life,” – was said in the first issue of the "LEF" magazine – the mouthpiece of the writers of the "Left Front of the Arts", assumed to be, as it then seemed to them, the spokesmen for the ideology of the people in power.