Social Changes of the 1920s and New Architectural Challenges by Anna Bronovitskaya

DESCRIPTION

Anna Bronovitskaya will talk about new types of housing — from house-communes to working settlements — the bold, at times utopian projects, which emerged in Europe and the Soviet Union of the 1920s.

“We will destroy this world of violence down to the foundations, and then we will build our new world.” These lines from “The Internationale” became a slogan for Soviet architects and city planners of the 1920s, who subjected the very foundations of social life to a radical rethink. At the same time, other experiments were beginning worldwide. The municipalities of "Red Vienna" and Berlin, as well as architects working in bourgeois cultures such as Le Corbusier, Jacobus Oud, Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wright, offered ways to start life afresh.

This lecture will discuss linear settlements in the Soviet Union, the urban ideas of Le Corbusier, as well as "minimal housing" and "workers’ settlements" in different countries, presenting examples of a house-commune, a workers' club, a factory-kitchen and a bathhouse-swimming pool.

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Anna Bronovitskaya is an architectural historian, director of research at Moscow’s Institute of Modernism, and associate professor at MARCHI (Moscow Architectural Institute, State Academy). In 2015 she became one of the founders of the Institute of Modernism—an independent institution that researches Soviet architecture of the 1960s to 1980s. Since 1993, she has been lecturing at MARCHI. From 2011 to 2013, Bronovitskaya was head of the DOCOMOMO Russian section. She is also the author of multiple publications on 20th century architecture.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Entrance is free, space is limited, please arrive early.

Priority booking for GARAGE members. Please, send the request on members@garagemca.org