DOI issue:
Rozprawy
DOI article:Idzior, Aleksandra: Imagination with no limits: the frontier in the Soviet and American projects of a "future city" at the end of the 1920s
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42379#0073
Aleksandra Idzior
IMAGINATION WITH NO LIMITS:
THE FRONTIER IN THE SOVIET AND AMERICAN
PROJECTS OF A “FUTURE CITY” AT THE END
OF THE 1920s
Cities are not simply material or lived spaces -
they are also spaces of the imagination and spaces of representation.
Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson A Companion to the City
During the 1920s for Moscow and New York the city became a site
for a discourse about modernity.1 In projecting themselves as leading
strategic loci, they both generated the idea of a “New World” and con-
structed themselves as a model ground for modern life. In this study,
at its broadest level, I concentrate on the visualization of the city2 in its
1 I have drawn here on my Ph.D. dissertation “Urbanotopia and the Frontier: Reach-
ing Heights before the Crash in Moscow and New York at the End of the 1920s” completed
in 2004 under the supervision of Serge Guilbaut in the Department of Art History, Visual
Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. A shorter
version of my research was published as Urbanotopia and the Frontier in Moscow and
New York at the End of the 1920s, “The Journal of Architecture”, 11, 2006, pp. 569-575.
2 The subject of the visualization of architecture/city and architectural/city represen-
tation is complex and large. Topics range from the early stages of conception of specific
buildings, structures and whole cities, through images created for publication, competi-
tion, exhibition, up to those that are done because they were commissioned or executed for
the artist/architect’s private enjoyment. For observations on the American milieu see: The
Experimental Tradition: Essays on the Competition in Architecture, ed. by Hélène Lipstadt,
Princeton 1989; for the Soviet competitions, see: Catherine Cooke, Igor’ Aleksandrovich
Kazus’, Soviet Architectural Competitions 1920s-1930s, London 1992; Catherine Cooke,
Mediating Creativity and Politics: Sixty Years of Architectural Competitions in Russia, [in:]
exh. cat. of the Guggenheim Museum, The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-
Garde, 1915-1932, New York 1992, pp. 681-715; on the history of architectural rendering,
see: Werner Oechslin, “Rendering” - The Representative and Expressive Function of Archi-
tectural Drawings, “Daidalos” 25, 1987 (September), pp. 68-78; also Ada Louise Huxtable,
Architectural Drawings, (in:) eadem, Architecture Anyone?, New York 1986, pp. 272-283;
Architectureproduction, ed. by Beatriz Colomina, New York 1988; on the complex relation-
IMAGINATION WITH NO LIMITS:
THE FRONTIER IN THE SOVIET AND AMERICAN
PROJECTS OF A “FUTURE CITY” AT THE END
OF THE 1920s
Cities are not simply material or lived spaces -
they are also spaces of the imagination and spaces of representation.
Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson A Companion to the City
During the 1920s for Moscow and New York the city became a site
for a discourse about modernity.1 In projecting themselves as leading
strategic loci, they both generated the idea of a “New World” and con-
structed themselves as a model ground for modern life. In this study,
at its broadest level, I concentrate on the visualization of the city2 in its
1 I have drawn here on my Ph.D. dissertation “Urbanotopia and the Frontier: Reach-
ing Heights before the Crash in Moscow and New York at the End of the 1920s” completed
in 2004 under the supervision of Serge Guilbaut in the Department of Art History, Visual
Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. A shorter
version of my research was published as Urbanotopia and the Frontier in Moscow and
New York at the End of the 1920s, “The Journal of Architecture”, 11, 2006, pp. 569-575.
2 The subject of the visualization of architecture/city and architectural/city represen-
tation is complex and large. Topics range from the early stages of conception of specific
buildings, structures and whole cities, through images created for publication, competi-
tion, exhibition, up to those that are done because they were commissioned or executed for
the artist/architect’s private enjoyment. For observations on the American milieu see: The
Experimental Tradition: Essays on the Competition in Architecture, ed. by Hélène Lipstadt,
Princeton 1989; for the Soviet competitions, see: Catherine Cooke, Igor’ Aleksandrovich
Kazus’, Soviet Architectural Competitions 1920s-1930s, London 1992; Catherine Cooke,
Mediating Creativity and Politics: Sixty Years of Architectural Competitions in Russia, [in:]
exh. cat. of the Guggenheim Museum, The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-
Garde, 1915-1932, New York 1992, pp. 681-715; on the history of architectural rendering,
see: Werner Oechslin, “Rendering” - The Representative and Expressive Function of Archi-
tectural Drawings, “Daidalos” 25, 1987 (September), pp. 68-78; also Ada Louise Huxtable,
Architectural Drawings, (in:) eadem, Architecture Anyone?, New York 1986, pp. 272-283;
Architectureproduction, ed. by Beatriz Colomina, New York 1988; on the complex relation-