Avant-garde Station

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“Avantgarde” ANASTASIA LIPATOVA SHAMIL GAR AEV

GETTY IMAGES/ FOTOBANK, ITARTASS

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For architects across the world Moscow is the undeniable capital of the Russian avant-garde, the only art movement whose development in Russia was followed abroad with great interest.

AVANTGARDE ARCHITECTURE STILL FASCINATES AND CHAL LENGES THE MINDS AND IMAG INATIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS AND ARTLOVERS ALIKE. It is not uncommon for people to visit Moscow solely for the purpose of admiring its avantgarde masterpieces and particularly works of Russian constructivism. Quite often it is only after they have done so that many visit the Kremlin.

One of the most important names of the Russian avant-garde is Konstantin Melnikov. The architect’s own unique residence in Krivoarbatsky Lane is arguably his most famous work: a three-story brick house in the form of a cylindrical tower famously decorated with a pattern of hexagonal windows. “A symbol of refinement in architecture,” as the master himself called it, and a world heritage site, unfortunately, at the moment it has fallen into a state of disrepair. Apart from the Melnikov House, Moscow is home to a dozen more of Melnikov’s buildings scattered across the city alongside many other contemporary structures of varying value and state of conservation. The Avant-garde architecture, a guidebook by E. Ovsyannikova, N. Vasilyeva et al. c published in 2001, lists nearly 500

entries of Moscovite architecture – and this while listing an ensemble of buildings or a workers’ quarter under a single entry!

It is often the case that you don’t even have to actively search for buildings with the beauty and energy so charactarestic of 1920’s and 1930’s: you easily find them clustered in the city centre, lining the streets routinely taken during the week. You only need to stop and take a moment to observe them.

Take the Krasnye Vorota area, for instance, where in close proximity you can find some of the most famous avant-garde buildings standing almost side by side. You have here not simply a metro station, but a station opened eleven years after the death of Lenin; not just a clinic, but an architectural monument; not just a highway with an ever-present traffic jam, but aline of unique buildings showcasing the achievements of the new socialist world interspersed with pre-revolutionary tower blocks.

Le Corbusier, Ivan Fomin, Nikolai Ladovsky, Alexey Shchusev. These buildings have more style, significance, integrity and inspiration than most subsequent structures, especially more recent ones. To put it simply: you stand witness to the avant-garde.

The Krasnye Vorota area starts with the ground vestibule of the eponymous station (Krasnye Vorota Square), often called “the shell”.

The entrance is decorated with arches that flow into the wall plane symbolizing a metro tunnel going underground. Krasnye Vorota station opened in 1935 as part of the first segment of the Moscow Metro between Sokolniki and Park Kultury with a separate line from Okhotny Ryad to Smolenskaya. The pavilion was designed by Nikolai Ladovsky, founder of ASNOVA, the first Soviet association of architects, and leader of the rationalist movement, a movement opposed to constructivism.

Facing “the shell”, on the other side of the Garden Ring, is a grey building with a distinctive eightstory tower, a corner clock and balconies characteristic of 1920’s and 1930’s architecture. This was once the Ministry of Transport (2/1 Novaya Basmannaya, bldg. 1) and the building now houses the headquarters of Russian Railways.

The 18th-century building which used to stand here was rebuilt

by Ivan Fomin who incidentally is Krasnye Vorota station’s architect.

Fomin’s work was constructed entirely in keeping with the spirit of the “proletarian classics”: a combination of traditional architecture

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paired with the ground-breaking ideas of the avant-garde. This is all witnessed in the abrupt right angles, the neat combination of parallelepipeds of varying volume, the rhythm of the semi-columns, and the intersection of accentuated horizontal lines with vertical windows, a motif which came to epitomize the classic and simple avant-garde.

This motif was an architectual solution to the problem of the lack of façade space for horizontal windows.

Just a few steps away from what was once the Ministry of Transport (5 Novaya Basmannaya, bldg.1) stands a clinic erected in 1933, a year before the Ministry. It is a four-story building with

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a small porch facing Basmannaya Street. It is worth noticing the rounded narrow sidewalls interlacing with the sharp corners, while both are traced with ribbon windows. There is a terrace on the second floor, which rests on the porch’s columns. The clinic is still open and primarily recieves patients from Russian Railways . If you open one of the doctors’ windows, you will be greeted with a classical, yet strangely dear and almost intimate view of Alexey Dushkin’s Stalin skyscraper.

On the outer side of the Garden Ring, between Academician Sakharov Avenue and Orlikov Lane, stands the building of

The People’s Commissariat for Agriculture (11/1 Sadovaya-Spasskaya). It is notable for its distinctive and uncommon red colour, a colour that does not derive from bricks. The building was designed

by Alexey Shchusev and erected between 1928 and 1933. Not long before this Shchusev was in charge of the first Soviet city-plan known as “The New Moscow”. The People’s Commissariat for Agriculture, which is now the Ministry of Agriculture, occupies the whole city quarter. This administrative building with its varying level of stories resembles a giant multideck liner with rows of windows running across its facades, the characteristic THE MELNIKOV HOUSE. 10 KRIVOARBATSKY LANE

THE RUSSIAN R AILWAYS HEADQUARTERS. 2/1 NOVAYA BASMANNAYA ST,, BLDG. 1

THE KR ASNYE VOROTA METRO STATION SOUTH ENTR ANCE

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juxtaposition of vertical and horizontal lines, a cylindrical tower and a rounded front with a rostrum-like corner on the sixth floor followed by two more giant, ovehanging stories. It is an imposing sight and yet the building still feels weightless; it resembles an enormous ocean liner, capable of breaking through towering waves. This is a typical example of Shchusev’s victorious battle with the forces of nature.

The reddish-brown of the Tsentrosoyuz building (39 Myasnitskaya) dominates the area between Academician Sakharov Avenue and the parallel segment of Myasnitskaya Street. Constructed by Le Corbusier in 1927-1936,

it represented something unseen to that day not only in Russia, but in all of Europe. It consists of a number of constructions, different in size and capacity. Segments of red tuff stone blocks are followed by curtain-wall façades and ribbon windows, while the entrance area, rounded in shape and therefore vaguely resembling a submarine, rests on pilotis. It is one of the first office buildings of its kind and could accommodate 3500 people. Ten years after its completion, Le Corbusier designed The United Nations Secretariat, which many believe is just one of Tsentrosoyuz’s blocks set upright. Now home to the Russian State Committee for

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Statistics, the building continues to look modern and new despite all the later reconstructions, additions and changes such as the aluminum windows which admittedly greatly suit the ever-forward-looking avant-garde architecture. This is especially true in sunny weather.

Almost a century later, the future of Moscow’s avant-garde architecture is neither solid nor secure. Every year a couple of names disappear from the list of these historical monuments, a fact that only adds to the value and urgency of visiting the remaining structures and appreciating the grandeur and genius of early 20th-century masters.

THE RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE MINISTRY. 11/1 SADOVAYA SPASSK AYA ST.

HOSPITAL OF RUSSIAN THE TR ANSPORT MINISTRY. 5 NOVAYA BASMANNAYA ST., BLDG.1

RUSSIAN STATE COMMITTEE FOR STATISTICS. 39 MYASNITSK AYA ST.