Theory and Practice of the Architectural Project at VChUTEMAS. Graphic Interpretations

Abstract

In 1920 the Moscow State Technical-Artistic Higher Technical Laboratories, known as VChUTEMAS, were founded with the aim of preparing artists capable of serving industry, organizing daily life and political-cultural struggle of the working class (Komarova in Il VChUTEMAS e il suo tempo. Testimonianze e progetti della scuola costruttivista a Mosca. Editori Kappa, Roma, p. 33, 1996). There was a productivist shift in the link between industrial work techniques and the definition of new pedagogical training methodologies and new creative languages. This was the first Soviet school of design to be defined in line with the artistic, architectural and industrial revolution characterizing the international scene, often known as the ‘Bauhaus of Moscow’ (Wick in Teaching at the Bauhaus. Hatje Cantz Publishers, Stuttgart, p. 64, 2000). Students were initiated into the study of drawing and graphics and enabled to teach them according to a pedagogical method that aimed to lay the objective and scientific foundations on the construction and representation of form, on objective and spatial composition through an analytical approach. Taking into account the disciplines related to representation and graphic construction faced by the students of the workshops, the article deals with the study of two projects: the “House for a railwayman”, elaborated by L. Komarova (1924) within the atelier of Vladimir Krinsky and a study carried out by V. Petrov (1921) inside the atelier of Nikolaj Ladovskij, with the aim of producing new images of projects that have remained in that timeless dimension of Drawing in which the coexistence of the digital model and the project works offers new material for deepening and reflecting on one of the most important moments in the history of modern architecture.