Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and Strelka Press present the writings of key constructivist architect Moisei Ginzburg.
The architect of the main icon of Russian constructivism, the Narkomfin Building, Moisei Ginzburg also wrote the manifesto of the movement—Style and Epoch. What is modern in architecture? And what was believed to be modern in the 1920s—the era of social perturbations and fast-developing technology?
Moisei Ginzburg (1892–1946) was an architect and architectural theorist and one of the leading representatives of constructivism. Before World War I he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and Milan Academy of Arts. After 1914 he studied in the architectural department of Riga Polytechnic Institute. After moving to Moscow in the early 1920s, Ginzburg taught at VKhUTEMAS. From 1926 to 1930, together with Alexander Vesnin, he published the journal Sovremennaya arkhitektura (Modern Architecture), the authors of which were leading avant-garde and young Soviet architects. Ginzburg’s most famous buildings include the Narkomfin House (1928–1930) in Moscow and the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry Sanatorium (1935–1937) in Kislovodsk. He is the author of the seminal books Rhythm in Architecture (1923) and Dwelling (1934).
