Customer Reviews

Pioneers of Soviet Architecture

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This is THE book to have on the Russian Avant-Gard and the Constructivism movement. It covers all phases of the movement from prior to the October revolution to Post-Stalinism and rediscovery. It addresses all the varied schools of thought and the various architects that collectively made up the Constructivism and Suprematism Movements. This book has THE single BEST COLLECTION OF PHOTOS AND PLANS OF ANY BOOK of this subject. If you can find this book BUY IT. Do not hesitate especially if your a student and this subject interests you. This should be a must for all Art and Architecture students.

I agree with the previous reviewer, this is the definitive book on modernist Russian architecture. I've always been fascinated with this topic, not only because the Russians took the modernist theories a few steps beyond their western European counterparts, but because they managed to get a fair amount of this outrageous stuff built. There's something about the audacity of the whole project, the creation of avant-garde palaces for the public and housing designed to restructure the nuclear family, that's compelling to me--added to it the drama lurking in the background, the impending obliteration of all this artistic exhuberance by Stalin's straightjacket conformism. This replaced the constructivists' free-wheeling utopian visions with the tyranny of the "official" style, a bombastic and sentimental neo-classicism. This book is insanely expensive now, but so many architecture books are high-priced these days. I'd almost recommend buying it anyway, despite the price, if you have any interest at all in this topic, because it's so well done. You won't find a better source.