Spatial Order versus Social Chaos: on the Question of Design Methods in Constructivist Architecture

Abstract

The paper discusses the architectural design ideology formulated in the texts of Soviet Constructivism theorists and embodied, to varying degrees of consistency, in their practice. Primary attention is paid to their understanding of function – the category through which Constructivist ideologists linked spatial and social aspects of architecture and articulated plans for social engineering. The interpretation of this concept (for example, the inclusion of psychological aspects in the notion of function) was one of the important foundations for distinguishing architectural groups in the 1920s. The seminal Constructivist texts, primarily the publications of Moisei Ginzburg, reveal the logic of the “functional method,” which envisions the spatial optimization of architecture and the minimization of user’s energy expenditures. The article addresses the language of Constructivist texts and the practice of using physical metaphors to describe social processes and architectural phenomena. It also deals with the public perception of Constructivist designs and the ideas they embodied. Examples are given of the application of the principles of the “functional method” to the analysis of residential and other building layouts at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, spatial optimization practices based on the Taylorist approach and physiological standardization were employed in architectural design of the subsequent period, despite the architects’ forced shift toward “the adoption of heritage.”