The Manifestation of Caring Architecture Through Public Spaces

60

SOVIET WORKER’S CLUBS THE MANIFESTATION OF CARING ARCHITECTURE THROUGH PUBLIC SPACE

GABRIELA ROBLES-MUNOZ

Soviet worker’s clubs, gathering spaces for the working class and their families, were a unique class of building pioneered by Soviet modernist architects in the 1920’s and 30’s. The worker’s clubs (mainly centered in and around Moscow) served as flexible community spaces that provided resources for Russia’s working class to rest and enjoy leisurely activities. They were also a part of a larger mission to create a more unified culture within the Marxist society of Soviet Russia by striking down Bolshevik propaganda. However, the means of doing so was left open to interpretation, thus creating a diverse group of structures scattered across Moscow. Architects of each club were free to explore form and function as they saw fit; the interpretation of leisure as it related to the surrounding community the clubs would serve was freely decided by the designers. This freedom created what some people deem to be among the most important structures to reference when discussing the evolution of Soviet architecture; The ability of the architectural avant-garde to be made available to the masses fostered a design climate that was truly unique.

Each club was completely different from the next. Some clubs explored principles of modernism and its offshoots; they sowed seeds of ideas from Konstantin Melnikov’s experiments in modulation that were consistent though never stale. Others observed El Lissitzky’s prominent contributions to the Constructivist movement and its applications to modernist architecture, and yet others fit more clearly into the mold of the brutalist scheme that many consider to be the calling card of Soviet architectural design.

Separate from the discussion of the significance of worker’s clubs to the development of an architectural identity that was unique to Soviet Russia, there remains the topic of the clubs themselves: How did they function? What was their goal? Ultimately, the answer to these questions depends on who you ask. El Lissitzky argues that the worker’s clubs intended to liberate the community from the oppression of the church and state. This thought holds validity, as the clubs served as a free space for people to gather and spend free time watching theatre, playing games, reading, etc.; a space where they could forget responsibilities that they owed their government. In contrast to Lissitzky, Marxist theorist (and founder of the subsequent Trotskyism) Leon Trotsky referred to worker’s clubs as institutions for the “culturalization of the masses”; factories of propaganda

Zauchuk Factory Club, Konstantin Melnikov attempts of the Union to ingrain its

shrouded in the guise of a glimpse of freedom. These two ideas are two extremes among many possible viewpoints, but in reality, either could be true.

In Moscow today, very few of the worker’s clubs that remain standing are still active as public space; it can be public space existed and was available

argued that their decline is due to their role as a symbol of Marxist Ideologies represented through architecture. They embody the radical agenda for community-empowering public space, an ideal that was prevalent in Marxism, but is controversial to current-day Russia.

The workers clubs were but a patch in the prodigious quilt that is Soviet played was one that was deeply personal and interconnected with their occupants; the clubs were moments for people to connect with one another, instances of humanism in the sterile environment that was Soviet Russia. The capacity in which Soviet architecture was able to explore the convergence of many architectural styles (e.g., brutalism, classicism, modernism) but still remain distinctly Soviet speaks volumes about the propaganda into the literal building blocks of its society.

All these factors considered, it is not a stretch of the imagination to consider worker’s clubs as a form of caring architecture. Regardless of the club’s intentions, it is clear that their role in the lives of the citizens of Russia was a positive one. The fact that government-subsidized, legitimate architecture, but the role that they

to the masses in abundance is a feat that has seldom been replicated.

Now, especially in capitalist societies like the U.S., nearly all “public spaces” are not actually such. Plazas in city centers are usually privately owned and closely monitored. Parks and other environments, while freer, can become scarce as a result of underfunding, 61

62 Zuev Workers Club, Ilya Golosov

and can still be gatekept if occupants are considered “undesirable” or act in ways that do not conform to the social norms of these spaces.

With these limitations come many questions: Is it possible to create community-empowering public space without referencing the politically charged-design of Soviet Russia? If so, how can we implement the central concepts of caring architecture to a capitalist system that is inherently uncaring? In doing so, how do we overcome the limitations that capitalism and bureaucracy impose on architecture? Such questions have no direct answers, but can prompt us to examine if we are truly weighing the importance of historical implications on our design decisions, test our limits in finding ways of valuing the human condition over efficiency and capital, and daring us to remain designers with prominent, individual voices within a system that seeks to push its own agenda.

References

Chatel, Marie. “Melnikov and Moscow Workers’ Clubs: Translating Soviet Political Ideals into Architecture.” ArchDaily, June 13, 2016. https://www. archdaily.com/789374/melnikov-and-moscow-workers-clubs-translating-sovietpolitical-ideals-into-architecture.

Jardine, Bradley. “Welcome to the Club: How Soviet Avant-Garde Architects Reimagined Labour and Leisure.” The Calvert Journal, August 14, 2017. https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/8735/welcome-to-the-clubsoviet-avant-garde-architects-labour-leisure-workers.

Landes, Nora. “The Icons of Communist Architecture.” Artsy, November 20, 2016. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-icons-of-communistarchitecture.

Siegelbaum, Lewis H. “The Shaping of Soviet Workers Leisure: Workers Clubs and Palaces of Culture in the 1930s.” International Labor and Working-Class History 56 (1999): 78–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0147547999002859.

“Workers’ Clubs.” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, January 29, 2016. http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/workers-clubs/.

63

Work by Gabriela Robles-Munoz