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#0076
74
ALEKSANDRA IDZIOR
called “paper architecture”.7 “Paper architecture” constitutes, in my opi-
nion, a more compatible ground for analysis of these two distinct centres
than a comparison of any constructed works would allow. It offers the
opportunity to circumnavigate the considerable disparity in economic
situations and technology that affected the construction activities in both
countries during the 1920s. Soviet Russia experienced economic condi-
tions that limited its building processes. After the October Revolution of
1917, the Bolsheviks inherited under-developed industry, and the coun-
try’s economy was further weakened by the Civil War of 1918-1921.
Even though hopes and plans for a new life under communism were offi-
cially proclaimed with enthusiasm, large-scale projects were realized on-
ly rarely, and architecture continued to be plagued by aesthetic contro-
versy, political pressures and material deficiencies throughout the
revolutionary period.
At the same time, the U.S.A., between the end of the First World
War and the Wall Street Crash in 1929, experienced an economic boom
based on industrial development and financial accumulation, and the
7 The notion “paper architecture” in its broadest sense indicates any architectural re-
presentation on paper. This term is often used as equivalent to other categories, such as
ideal, visionary, utopian, unbuilt, or fantastic architecture, although each of them carries
a different set of meanings. In general, however, all of them denote works that are charac-
terized by one or all traits, such as: perfect, speculative, imaginary, and/or theoretical.
Throughout my text, I apply all these terms interchangeably. See: Irina Kokkinaki, Archi-
tecture on Paper. The Evolution of Dreams, “Apollo”, 131, 1990, January, pp. 14-17; Gen-
nady Revzin, Paper Architecture in the Age of the French Revolution [in:] Tekstura. Rus-
sian Essays on Visual Culture, trans, and eds., by Alla Efimova, Lev Manovich, foreword
Stephen Bann, Chicago-London 1993, pp. 219-231 (Revzin suggests that the Soviet avant-
garde architects are heirs to the utopian projects of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-
Louis Boullée); Christian W. Thomsen, Visionary Architecture: From Babylon to Virtual
Reality, Munich-New York 1994; Alison Sky, Michelle Stone, Unbuilt America: Forgotten
Architecture in the United States from Thomas Jefferson to the Space Age, New York 1976;
George R. Collins, Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning: 20th Century through
the 1960s, New York-Cambridge (MA) 1979; Ruth Eaton, Ideal Cities. Utopianism and the
(Un)Built Environments, London 2001; Antoine Picon, Learning from Utopia: Contempo-
rary Architecture and the Quest for Political and Social Relevance, “Journal of Architec-
tural Education”, 67, 2013, 1, pp. 17-23; Vladimir Sedov, Irina Sedova, Architektur im Kul-
turkampf - Architecture in Cultural Strife, cat. of the exh., Berlin 2014. In 1984, alumni of
the Moscow Architectural Institute (Yuri Avvakumov, Michael Belov, Alexander Brodsky,
Nadia Bronzova, Mikhail Flippov and Ilya Utkin) re-introduced the term “paper architec-
ture” to describe the genre of conceptual design in the USSR since the 1980s. PA (Paper
Architecture) association comprises more than 10 groups and 50 architects - called Pa-
per Architects - who design mainly for specialized journals, exhibitions, and competitions
of concepts; see: Ines Weizman, Interior Exile and Paper Architecture: A Spectrum for
Architectural Dissidence [in:] Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures, ed. by Florian
Kossak et al., London 2009.
ALEKSANDRA IDZIOR
called “paper architecture”.7 “Paper architecture” constitutes, in my opi-
nion, a more compatible ground for analysis of these two distinct centres
than a comparison of any constructed works would allow. It offers the
opportunity to circumnavigate the considerable disparity in economic
situations and technology that affected the construction activities in both
countries during the 1920s. Soviet Russia experienced economic condi-
tions that limited its building processes. After the October Revolution of
1917, the Bolsheviks inherited under-developed industry, and the coun-
try’s economy was further weakened by the Civil War of 1918-1921.
Even though hopes and plans for a new life under communism were offi-
cially proclaimed with enthusiasm, large-scale projects were realized on-
ly rarely, and architecture continued to be plagued by aesthetic contro-
versy, political pressures and material deficiencies throughout the
revolutionary period.
At the same time, the U.S.A., between the end of the First World
War and the Wall Street Crash in 1929, experienced an economic boom
based on industrial development and financial accumulation, and the
7 The notion “paper architecture” in its broadest sense indicates any architectural re-
presentation on paper. This term is often used as equivalent to other categories, such as
ideal, visionary, utopian, unbuilt, or fantastic architecture, although each of them carries
a different set of meanings. In general, however, all of them denote works that are charac-
terized by one or all traits, such as: perfect, speculative, imaginary, and/or theoretical.
Throughout my text, I apply all these terms interchangeably. See: Irina Kokkinaki, Archi-
tecture on Paper. The Evolution of Dreams, “Apollo”, 131, 1990, January, pp. 14-17; Gen-
nady Revzin, Paper Architecture in the Age of the French Revolution [in:] Tekstura. Rus-
sian Essays on Visual Culture, trans, and eds., by Alla Efimova, Lev Manovich, foreword
Stephen Bann, Chicago-London 1993, pp. 219-231 (Revzin suggests that the Soviet avant-
garde architects are heirs to the utopian projects of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-
Louis Boullée); Christian W. Thomsen, Visionary Architecture: From Babylon to Virtual
Reality, Munich-New York 1994; Alison Sky, Michelle Stone, Unbuilt America: Forgotten
Architecture in the United States from Thomas Jefferson to the Space Age, New York 1976;
George R. Collins, Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning: 20th Century through
the 1960s, New York-Cambridge (MA) 1979; Ruth Eaton, Ideal Cities. Utopianism and the
(Un)Built Environments, London 2001; Antoine Picon, Learning from Utopia: Contempo-
rary Architecture and the Quest for Political and Social Relevance, “Journal of Architec-
tural Education”, 67, 2013, 1, pp. 17-23; Vladimir Sedov, Irina Sedova, Architektur im Kul-
turkampf - Architecture in Cultural Strife, cat. of the exh., Berlin 2014. In 1984, alumni of
the Moscow Architectural Institute (Yuri Avvakumov, Michael Belov, Alexander Brodsky,
Nadia Bronzova, Mikhail Flippov and Ilya Utkin) re-introduced the term “paper architec-
ture” to describe the genre of conceptual design in the USSR since the 1980s. PA (Paper
Architecture) association comprises more than 10 groups and 50 architects - called Pa-
per Architects - who design mainly for specialized journals, exhibitions, and competitions
of concepts; see: Ines Weizman, Interior Exile and Paper Architecture: A Spectrum for
Architectural Dissidence [in:] Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures, ed. by Florian
Kossak et al., London 2009.