Postwar Heuristic Strategies of Exclusion and Inclusion in Moscow Architecture
pdf

Keywords

Moscow Post-socialist city high-rise buildings urban form iconic buildings urban redevelopment urban planning skyscrapers urban design monumentality

How to Cite

1. Tavi L. Postwar Heuristic Strategies of Exclusion and Inclusion in Moscow Architecture // Journal of Frontier Studies. 2020. № 1 (5). C. 54-82.

Abstract

Moscow is a city of a thousand faces, constantly changing over the centuries and its high-rise buildings has been forming the shape of the city for centuries. From the «Third Rome», without stratified urbanization, unlike the Rome it would have liked to emulate at the end of the XIV century, Moscow went through a long period in history in which the innovations and changes made to its urban landscape overlapped the existing structure, erasing the architectural features and, thus, the historical memory. This article focuses on the transformation of Moscow from a Soviet capital to a capitalist mega-city, corroborating the thesis that the «immortalization of memory», through the monumental architecture of the Stalinist era, gave a sense of stability and was meant to be remembered by posterity. After the archetypal Soviet city, which embodied the Soviet Union’s radiant future in the Thirties and Forties of the Twentieth Century, the city was characterized by a new urban appearance, made up of monumental buildings, privilege of apparatchiki (аппара́тчики), who lived in stalinki (сталинки), examples of socialist classicism, characterized by an original layout. Influenced by this Soviet legacy and its nostalgic impulses, Moscow’s contemporary urban governance framework for planning reveals a strong nostalgia for the splendours of the past. The post-Soviet Muscovite experience resembles however more like a hybrid city than a palimpsestic one.

https://doi.org/10.46539/jfs.2020.1.5482
pdf

References

Alden, J., Beigulenko, Y., & Crow, S. (1998). Moscow: Planning for a world capital city towards 2000. Cities, 15(5), 361-374.

Andreev, I. (2018). Moscow program of renovation of housing in the context of inter-party competition. MATEC Web of Conferences, 251, 1-11. DOI: 10.1051/matecconf/201825105038

Andrusz, G. D. (1984). Housing and Urban Development in the USSR. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.

Argenbright, R. (2018). The evolution of New Moscow: from panacea to polycentricity. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 59(3-4), 408-435.

Astapova, A. (2013). To what Extent are Jokes Reactional? (Based on a Joke Cycle about Yury Luzhkov’s Dismissal). Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 53, 7-28.

Barthes, R. (1986). Semiology and the Urban. The city and the sign: An introduction to urban semiotics, 8, 7-98.

Barthes, R. (1988). Semiology and urbanism. In R. Barthes. The semiotic challenge (pp. 191-201). New York: Hill a. Wang.

Behrends, J. C. (2015). Constructing a New Moscow: Observations on a Changing Symbol of Soviet Modernity. New Literary, 133(3), 18-29. (in Russian)

Blake, P. (1947). The Soviet Architecture Purge. Architectural Record, 106(3), 127-129. Retrieved from https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11452-the-soviet-architecture-purge

Brandenberger, D. (2002). National Bolshevism: Stalinist mass culture and the formation of modern Russian national identity, 1931-1956 (Russian Research Center studies, Vol. 93). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Büdenbender, M., & Zupan, D. (2017). The evolution of neoliberal urbanism in Moscow, 1992–2015. Antipode, 49(2), 294-313.

Cetin, M. (2011). Moscow; an urban pendulum swinging between the glorification of the proletariat and the celebration of absolutist power under the changing winds of globalization. International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 11(3), 1-12.

Clark, T., & Tsibizova, L. (2017). The architectural legacy of 1990s Moscow: [Interview with Daria Paramonova]. In Russia, History. Retrieved from http://inrussia.com/the-architectural-legacy-of-1990s-moscow.

Cooke, C. (1997). Beauty as a route to ‘the Radiant Future’: Responses of Soviet architecture. Journal of Design History, 10(2), 137-160.

Demintseva, E. (2017). Labour migrants in post-Soviet Moscow: patterns of settlement. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 43(15), 2556-2572.

Djilas, M. (1957). The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. Montreal: Harvest House.

Dmitrieva, M. (2006). Moscow architecture between Stalinism and Modernism. International Review of Sociology–Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 16(2), 427-450.

Evans, A. (2018). Property and Protests: The Struggle Over the Renovation of Housing in Moscow. Russian Politics, 3(4), 548-576. DOI: 10.1163/2451-8921-00304005

Foy, H. (2019, December) Yuri Luzhkov, Russian politician, 1936-2019: The mayor who rebuilt Moscow in his own image. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/b886a468-1c29-11ea-9186-7348c2f183af.

Golovina, S., & Oblasov, Y. (2018). The architecture and artistic features of high-rise buildings in USSR and the United States of America during the first half of the twentieth century. In E3S Web of Conferences, (Vol. 33, pp. 1-18). DOI: 10.1051/e3sconf/20183301032

Golubchikov, O. (2004). Urban planning in Russia: towards the market. European Planning Studies, 12(2), 229-247.

Griffiths, M. J. (2014). Writing the cityscape: Narratives of Moscow since 1991 (Doctoral dissertation, UCL. University College London).

Gunko, M., Bogacheva, P., Medvedev, A., & Kashnitsky, I. (2018). Path-Dependent Development of Mass Housing in Moscow, Russia. In D. B. Hess, T. Tammaru, & M. van Ham, (Eds.). Housing Estates in Europe (pp. 289-311). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Harding, L. (2013). Homo Sovieticus: Stalin’s failed European experiment. New Eastern Europe, 6(1), 145-147.

Harvey, D. (2003). The right to the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(4), 939-941.

Hoisington, S. S. (2003). “Ever higher”: the evolution of the project for the Palace of Soviets. Slavic Review, 62(1), 41-68.

Honda, A. (2012). Post-Soviet Architecture: Future-phobia. Japanese Slavic and East European Studies, 33, 3-16.

Humphrey, C. (2002). The unmaking of Soviet life: Everyday economies after socialism. Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press.

Huxtable, A. L. (1984). The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style. New York: Pantheon Books.

Iconopisceva, O. G., & Proskurin, G. A. (2018). Regional approaches in high-rise construction. In E3S Web of Conferences, (Vol. 33, pp.1-10). DOI: 10.1051/e3sconf/ 20183301023

Inizan, G., & de Lille, L. C. (2019). The last of the Soviets’ home: Urban demolition in Moscow. Geographia Polonica, 92(1), 37-56.

Jensen, D. N. (2000). The boss: How Yury Luzhkov runs Moscow. Demokratizatsiya, 8(1), 83–122.

Kappeler, A. (2008). Rußland als Vielvölkerreich: Entstehung-Geschichte-Zerfall (Beck'sche Reihe, Vol. 1447). München: CH Beck.

Kopp, A. (1985). Le gigantisme architectural en Union soviétique. Communications, 42(1), 45-67.

Kosareva, N., & Struyk, R. (1993). Housing privatization in the Russian Federation. Housing Policy Debate, 4(1), 81-100.

Kruzhkov, N. (2014). High-rise Stalinist Moscow. Legacy of the era. Moscow: Centrepoligraph Publishing House. (in Russian)

Kuznetsov, S. (2015b) Sergey Kuznetsov: We needed to find a sensible compromise between user comfort and price. In Project Russia (77, New standards (3), pp. 64–71). Moscow, Amsterdam: A-Fond Publishers.

Le Corbusier (1991). Precisions on the present state of architecture and city planning: With an American prologue, a Brazilian corollary followed by the temperature of Paris and the atmosphere of Moscow (E. S. Aujame, trans.). Cambridge, MA; London: Mit Press.

Lefebvre, H. (1996). The right to the city. In H. Lefebr. Writings on cities (pp. 63-181). Oxford: Blackwell.

Lemon, A. (2000). Talking transit and spectating transition: The Moscow metro. In D. Berdahl, M. D. Bunzl, & M. Lampland, M. (Eds.). Altering States: ethnographies of transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (pp. 14-39). Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.

Lotman, M. (2002). Umwelt and semiosphere. Σημειωτκή-Sign Systems Studies, 30(1), 33-40.

Maslovskaya, O., & Ignatov, G. (2018). Conceptions of Height and Verticality in the History of Skyscrapers and Skylines. In E3S Web of Conferences, (Vol. 33(1)3, pp. 1-7). DOI: 10.1051/e3sconf/20183301005

Medvedkov, Y., & Medvedkov, O. (2007). Upscale housing in post-Soviet Moscow and its environs. In K. Stanilov, (Ed.). The post-socialist city (pp. 245-265). Dordrecht: Springer.

Montefiore, S. S. (2004). Stalin: The court of the red tsar. London: Phoenix.

Paperny, V. (2006). Culture two (2nd ed.). Moscow: New Literary Observer. (in Russian)

Paramonova, D. (2013). Mushrooms, Mutants and Others: Architecture of the Luzhkov Era. Moscow: Strelka press. (in Russian)

Pliukhanova, M. B. (1995). Plots and symbols of the Moscow Kingdom (Vol. 2). S.-Petersburg: Akropol. (in Russian)

«Russia» on a start, (2007). Tall Buildings, 5, 124.

Sergievskaya, N., Pokrovskaya, T. & Vorontsova, N. (2018). The advisability of high-rise construction in the city. E3S Web of Conferences, 33, 01-10. DOI: 10.1051/e3sconf/20183301037

Simmel, G. (1997). The Sociology of Space. In D. Frisby & M. Featherstone (Eds.), Simmel on culture: Selected writings (pp. 137-169). London: Sage.

Simon, E., Simon, S., Robson, W. A., & Jewkes, J. (2014). Moscow in the Making. London, New York: Routledge.

Smith, M. B. (2010) Property of communists: The urban housing program from Stalin to Khrushchev. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press.

Soja, E. W. (2003). Writing the city spatially. City, 7(3), 269-280.

Starodubtsev, Y., Myers, J., & Goetz, L. (2011). Case study: Capital city towers, Moscow. CTBUH Journal, (2), 12-17.

Starr, S. F. (1979). The social character of Stalinist architecture. Architectural Association Quarterly, 11(2), 49-55.

Van Baak, J. (2009). Anti-Houses. Under the doom of the kommunalka. Deformations of the utopian house. In J. J. Van Baak, R. Grübel, A. G. F. Van Holk, & W. G., Weststeijn., The house in Russian literature: A mythopoetic exploration (Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics, vol. 53, pp. 419-426). Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi.

Vasilyeva, A. V. & Kosenkova, Y. L. (2015). Social tasks and practice of housing development of Moscow during 1930-1940 years. In The New Ideas of New Century. The International Scientific Conference Proceedings of the FAD PNU (Vol.1, pp. 37-43). Khabarovsk: Published by PNU. (in Russian)

Vendina, O. I. (2004). Are Ethnic Neighborhoods Possible in Moscow? The Russian Public Opinion Herald. Data. Analysis. Discussions, 3, 52-64. (in Russian)

Wolfe, R. L. (2013). Stalinism in art and architecture, or, the first postmodern style. Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, 5(1).

Zeltsman, I. (2011). Luzhkov and Void. Grigory Revzin's conversation with students of the Strelka Institute. In Project Russia (62(4), pp. 81–91). Moscow, Amsterdam: A-Fond Publishers. (in Russian)

Zlydneva, N. (2008). The tower as a semiotic message. In E. Näripea, V. Sarapik, J. Tomberg (Eds.) Koht ja Paik = Place and Location (VI, pp. 83-90). Tallinn: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum.

Zupan, D., & Büdenbender, M. (2018). Neoliberale Stadtentwicklung in Transformation. Pnd Online: ein Magazin mit texten und Diskussionen zur Entwicklung von Stadt und Region, 1, 103-112.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.