Authors

Meerovich Mark G., Ivanova Anastasia S.
THE NEW PARADIGM IN ARCHITECTURE: FROM CHARLES JENCKS FORECAST TO «VIRTUAL REALITY»

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (63) September, 2018

The article builds on the work of American architectural theorist and critic Charles Jencks, titled “The New Paradigm in Architecture”, which was written 15 years ago and pointed to the emergence of the next paradigm of modern architecture in those years. Today architectural science ought to recognize as a fait accompli the existence of a new paradigm called «virtual reality». This article characterizes the level of development of the modern scientific knowledge and artistic activities that have made possible the practical reality of environmental effects on the psycho-physiological state of the individual. The authors have systematized and described the so-called «visual effects» that have already fully entered the arsenal of the modern architect and designer and increasingly often dictate the quality of visual perception of the urban environment, producing a targeted impact on consumers by forming strong emotional state experiences which arise as a result of a sharp dissonance between the optical effects perceived by individuals on the one hand and sharply mismatching physical experiences from dealing with the material world on the other hand.

Meerovich Mark G.
FORCED CHANGE IN THE DIRECTION OF CREATIVITY IN SOVIETN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MID-1950s

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (61) March, 2018

Considering the Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers dated 4 November 1955 No. 1871 «On Elimination of Excesses in Design and Construction» the author reveals the mechanism used by the authorities for forcing the architectural community to modify the direction of creativity in Soviet architecture in accordance with the challenges of establishing an industry of mass conveyor-type planning and prefab-panel housing construction during Khrushchev’s housing reform and considers related typological problems of prefab housing.

Meerovich Mark G.
THE UNION OF SOVIET ARCHITECTS OF THE USSR. HISTORY OF CREATION AND THE INITIAL PERIOD

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (58) June, 2017

The history of the Union of Soviet Architects of the USSR as it was called initially reflected the nature of the human manipulation system which was specially developed by the Soviet power within its command and control production management structure, including planning and architectural-design. The article describes in detail the legislative and political contexts in which creative groupings in architecture existed in the second half of the 1920s, reveals the reasons for the decision to establish the Union of Soviet Architects adopted by the country’s leadership, lays bare the party’s and government’s "mechanics" of making and realizing such decisions, describes techniques for ensuring the submission of “non-party-member: architects to "Party member" architects, lists the functions of the "authorised" Union of Architects, its role in forcing architects to follow the policy pursued by the leadership, and presents the process of establishment of the Union of Architects as a state agency "creativity management”.

Asmankina Valentina A., Meerovich Mark G.
CLASSICISM IN 19th CENTURY WOODEN CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF IRKUTSK. Part I

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (44) December, 2013

The article reviews classist forms and techniques in the 19th century wooden civil architecture of Irkutsk. The study is the first of its kind to systematize the decorative elements of wooden classicism (balusters, pilasters, pilaster strips, modillions, coronals, etc.) by characteristic feature (form, specifics of decorative design, location on the facade) and brings them into classification groups. The research procedure is based on comprehensive collection, examination and analysis of pre-revolutionary and modern-day sources: written and graphic archival materials and results of field surveys with photofixation and graphic analysis. The examination of the decorative design of the facades confirms a consistent influence of classicism traditions on wooden residential architecture of Irkutsk throughout the 19th century.

Asmankina Valentina A., Meerovich Mark G.
CLASSICISM IN 19th CENTURY WOODEN CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF IRKUTSK (TRIGLYPHS, BRACKETS). Part II

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (44) December, 2013

The article considers two most typical forms of classicist decor realized in wood: triglyphs and brackets. The study is the first of its kind to systematize triglyphs and brackets by a number of key features: a) proportions – the external form/profile, b) decorative design, c) location on the facade. They are brought into classification groups, each of which is given a brief characteristic. The research procedure is based on comprehensive collection, examination and analysis of pre-revolutionary and modern-day sources: written and graphic archival materials, texts, and results of field surveys with photofixation and graphic analysis.

Zarubina Natalia A., Meerovich Mark G.
SIBERIAN BAROQUE IN THE 19th CENTURY WOODEN CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF IRKUTSK

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (43) September, 2013

In this article, the specific features of the façade decorations in the wooden civil architecture of Irkutsk are considered in the context of the Siberian baroque style. The study is the first of its kind into the history of Siberian (Irkutsk) baroque in the wooden architecture of Irkutsk. It formally maps and classifies types of label molds over window openings. Each of the types is assigned a conventional name and is given a short characteristic. The article also considers varieties of window fronts and slip sills of Irkutsk baroque.

The research methodology is based on the gathering, examination and analysis of pre-revolutionary and modern-day sources: written and graphic archival materials, texts, and on the findings of field studies involving photography and graphic analysis.

Meerovich Mark G.
THE SIX STYLES OF WOODEN IRKUTSK: SIBERIAN BAROQUE, CLASSICISM, MODERNISM, UNATTRIBUTED FORMS. Part I

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (42) June, 2013

The subject-matter of this article is the stylistic features of the decorations on the wooden civil architecture of the city of Irkutsk dating back to the 18th–19th centuries. The purpose of this study is to identify the main styles and their characterisation, provide visual examples, and describe peculiarities – the availability of decorative ensembles composed of several styles and the presence of unique compositions which may not be attributed to any of the styles. The method of the study is photography and ordering on the basis of repeat visual characteristics and comparison with stylistic prototypes. The article is essentially a statement of the problem, and its output is a formulation of issues in in-depth and thematically focused study of individual aspects in the genesis and form of the decorations in Irkutsk wooden architecture. The material of the article may be used as a basis for reviewing the list of Irkutsk historical and cultural heritage.

Meerovich Mark G.
THE SIX STYLES OF WOODEN IRKUTSK: SIBERIAN BAROQUE, CLASSICISM, MODERNISM, UNATTRIBUTED FORMS. Part II

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (42) June, 2013

The subject-matter of this article is the stylistic features of the decorations on the wooden civil architecture of the city of Irkutsk dating back to the 18th–19th centuries. The purpose of this study is to identify the main styles and their characterisation, provide visual examples, and describe peculiarities – the availability of decorative ensembles composed of several styles and the presence of unique compositions which may not be attributed to any of the styles. The method of the study is photography and ordering on the basis of repeat visual characteristics and comparison with stylistic prototypes. The article is essentially a statement of the problem, and its output is a formulation of issues in in-depth and thematically focused study of individual aspects in the genesis and form of the decorations in Irkutsk wooden architecture. The material of the article may be used as a basis for reviewing the list of Irkutsk historical and cultural heritage.

Meerovich Mark G.
FRAGMENTED DESIGN PRACTICE (Ernest May’s letter to Joseph Stalin)

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (38) June, 2012

The article introduces to the Russian-language research community, for the first time ever, a rare historical document, a letter to J.Stalin written by Ernest May, well-known German architect, invited in the late 1920s to work in the USSR. No written answer followed the letter, and E.May was not invited for a personal meeting with J.Stalin. The article reviews the situation in Socialist town design in those years and formulates a number of hypotheses concerning the reasons why E. May wrote that letter. The article is based on archival materials and other primary sources.

Meerovich Mark G.
"GENETICISTS" AND "TELEOLOGISTS": DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE ZONING OF THE USSR

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (40) December, 2012

As Soviet industrialisation proceeded, the former system of population settlement was cardinally reformed. The various theoretical and methodological approaches to industrial zoning that became clearly visible in the second half of the 1920s received the names "genetic", based on extrapolation of existing statistics on natural economic development tendencies, and "teleological", based on the implementation of planning directives and development of ways to achieve targets (it was defended by the "communist planners" working at the Gosplan state planning agency).

As a result of the victory of the teleological approach, a new resettlement system was developed, first theoretically and then practically, which was an absolute derivative of industrial zoning. The location of «proletarian kernels», i.e. new industrial facilities, power stations, railway junctions, primary raw material processing factories, mines, etc. was defined proceeding, first and foremost, from the objectives of developing the military-industrial complex – at agencies that were outside the scope of professional architectural and town-planning work and were in no way capable of influencing this choice in favour of locations that would be more suitable for living. Given the political victory of "teleologists" over «geneticists», local terrain, climate, culture and landscape would be sacrificed to artificially (and, sometimes, just arbitrarily) constructed «national economic development plans» for many years to come.

Meerovich Mark G., Konysheva Evgeniya V., Flierl Thomas
CRITIQUE OF ERNST MAY’S ACTIVITIES IN THE USSR

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (37) March, 2012

The article is devoted to the critique of the planning approaches practiced by the German representative of functionalist architecture E.May in designing "socialist cities” in the USSR during the first five-year periods. Initially, the critique was based on professional disagreements and concerned the regularity and ordinariness of his planning solutions, domination of line building, and priority of the functional over the artistic. Gradually, however, the critique lost professional reasoning and acquired political colouring. After 1932 E.May lost his leading position in the Soviet design system. After 1934 when E.May left the USSR, this German architect was totally denied any positive contribution to Soviet town-planning, and his heritage received the pejorative Russian term ‘Mayevshchina’ (May-ism). It was not only evidence of a turn in Soviet town-planning practice from the functionalist approach to understanding the city as an art and ideology phenomenon. And not only did it reflect the attitude of the totalitarian state towards any foreign experience as potentially dangerous and hostile. It was an expression of the system of relationships between Soviet power and creative personality. The town-planner was dependent on the central and local authorities, on commissioning agencies, on the achievement of targets, on the availability of finance and technology to support design and construction, and on the town-planning policy and ideological dogmas. If professionalism and creative beliefs entered into conflict with circumstances and political and ideological requirements, the architect and his ideas would be inevitably rejected by the system.

Meerovich Mark G.
URBANISM OR DISURBANISM? A debate about the future of the Soviet cities

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (37) March, 2012

The debate about socialist resettlement is one of the key events in the history of the pre-war period in Soviet town-planning. It is well known that the views of the participants of that debate concerning the nature of socialist resettlement were sharply divergent. However, often they were absolutely agreed on a lot of essential issues, the fact that is overlooked and is not reflected in studies devoted to the debate about socialist resettlement. Moreover, such agreement in views was present not only among participants occupying "middle" positions but also between those who occupied absolutely opposite positions, such as "urbanists" and «disurbanists».

Paradoxically as it may seem at first sight, the Soviet leaders proclaimed simultaneously both disurbanisation (uniform distribution of industry) and urbanization (concentration of proletariat in new settlements). By way of realising the postulates of the Marxist-Leninist theory on uniform distribution of industry and population across the country, the authorities tended to concentrate new labour – peasants uprooted from their villages and «proletarianised» at the building sites of the five-year period – around the enterprises of the military-industrial complex.

The logically faultlessly constructed and consistently developed town-planning ideas of urbanization and disurbanisation of the Soviet architects/theorists and their proposals for existing and future cities were rejected because they also failed to meet the requirements of that organizational and management strategy.

Meerovich Mark G.
ERNST MAY: «RATIONAL» HAUSING FOR RUS

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (36) December, 2011

The article discloses the principal reason for inviting the well-known German architect E.May in the late 1920s to the USSR, which is similarity with the municipal housing programmes in Germany in the mid-to-late 1920s, on the one hand, and the requirements for housing commissioned by Soviet authorities for workers and employees using public money: low cost, standardisation, rationality, suitability for mass construction, maximum design and construction speed, etc. on the other hand. Another similarity was participatory financing. In the Soviet variant, it became a sort of analogue to the German one: a) government loans for municipal housing construction, b) assets and funds provided by developing agencies, c) funds contributed by Soviet housing cooperatives (i.e. contributions by workers from their pay). As well as in Germany, housing construction was commissioned by city authorities; plus industry’s ministry in the role of customer. The Soviet Union, as well as Germany, considered such centralisation of financing and town-planning as a policy capable of ensuring "rationalised" housing construction.
The article is based on analysis of a wide range of archival materials and other primary sources. It formulates hypotheses and poses questions that require further profound studying.

Meerovich Mark G.
IN THE MIDST OF THE BATTLE OF TITANS

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (33) March, 2011

The rivalry between the VSNH (USSR Supreme Council of National Economy) and the GUKH NKVD (Central Municipal Services Department of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) for control over the nation-wide architectural and urban design system in the USSR is a theme that is still hidden from architectural profession historians although it is here that one can find answers to a lot of inexplicable organizational decisions and even to the conceptual approach to urban planning and design.

The paper unveils the principal driving forces behind the reforms in the national system of architectural and urban design in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s-1930s, and the reasons for the emergence of two design subsystems: "sectoral" and "local". The former dealt with the planning of residential areas associated with industrial enterprises (termed «industrial civil design»), carried out by the design organisations of the industrial Narcomats (People’s Commissariats) that were part of the VSNH and later of the Narkomtiazhprom (USSR People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry). The latter was in charge of urban planning carried out by the municipal services departments of the local authorities subordinated to GUKH NKVD, later transformed into GUKH under the SNK (Council of People's Commissars), and then into NKKH RSFSR (Commissariat of Municipal Services) (termed «civil design»).

The term «industrial civil design» is, of course, conventional; however, when juxtaposed with the term «civil design», it allows us to emphasize the sectoral nature and the different "relations" of both types of design to the «town-forming» function of the industrial enterprise - with the former entirely subordinated to the objectives of industrial development in the area, and the latter being relatively independent of the objectives of industrial development, self-sufficient and to a somewhat greater extent expressing the interests of a place and its specificity.

Meerovich Mark G.
TYPOLOGY OF MASS-BUILT HOUSING IN RELATION TO HOSUING DEVELOPMENTS OF THE 1920s-1930s

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (31) September, 2010

The article continues the theme of historical reconstruction of the Soviet town-planning policy in the first Five-Year Plan periods, highlights the role of architects in the development of environments in new-style housing developments (Sotsgorod) buildings in the context of the thematic range (Konysheva E.V., Meerovich M. G. «The Left Bank, The Right Bank»: Ernest May and open issues in the history of Soviet architecture with reference to the design of Magnitogorsk). It presents a typology of mass dwelling in Sotsgorods and considers the town-planning and housing policy of the Soviets, and characterizes commonalities in the realisation of urban master plans during the initial stage of Industrialisation. The article is based on analysis of a wide range of archival materials and other primary sources.

Konysheva Evgeniya V., Meerovich Mark G.
ERNST MAY AND OPEN QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF SOVIET ARCHITECTURE (With Reference to the City of Magnitogorsk)

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (30) June, 2010

Using the design and construction of Magnitogorsk as an example, the authors consider common trends in masterplan development and the specific features of Soviet town-planning during the initial stage of industrialization. The issues are considered through the prism of activity of foreign architects in the USSR. The article is based on a review of a broad range of archival materials.

Meerovich Mark G.
ALBERT KAHN IN THE HISTORY OF SOVIET INDUSTRIALIZATION

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (26) June, 2009

The article considers the role of Albert Kahn, the well-known American architect, in the designing of the Soviet military-industrial complex and in the implementation, in the Soviet context, of accelerated mass conveyor production of architectural and building design documentation invented by him, and in the establishment of a nation-wide system of mass design in the USSR. It describes the creative biography of the Soviet architect A.S.Fisenko, which was closely associated with Albert Kahn's name in spite of the fact that they never met personally. In the late 1920s-early 1930s, A.S.Fisenko directly contacted employees at Albert Kahn Associates Incorporated whilst managing “Gosproyektstroy-1”, the design institute that reported to VSNH, where work was conducted on the transfer of American industrial conveyor designing experience to the Soviet soil, its adaptation to the national conditions of design work and the specificity of building construction.

Meerovich Mark G.
КОНЦЕПЦИЯ СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКОГО РАССЕЛЕНИЯ

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (23) September, 2008

В статье раскрывается содержание «концепции социалистического расселения», предопределившей весь комплекс расселенческих мероприятий, начиная с 1930-х и заканчивая 1960-ми годами. Концепция предопределяла градостроительные решения, воплощая главную социальную функцию власти – уп­равление людьми. Она задавала административное деление территории страны таким образом, чтобы обеспечить партийно-государственное руководство военно- и трудо-мобилизационными образованиями, формируемыми из проживающего на данных территориях, пролетарского (с его руководящей и организующей ролью) и непролетарского населения.