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Kharkiv in the 1920s-1930s as the Capital of Victorious Modernism
Full text linkDocumenting and demonstrating (based on material from archives and literary primary sources) the extraordinary growth and development of Kharkiv in the interwar period with an emphasis on the time when it became the first capital of Soviet Ukraine is the main goal of this article. The ideas of modernism were vividly embodied in the architecture and urbanism of the city in the 1920s and early 1930s. Large-scale urban transformations turned it into one of the largest and most significant industrial, cultural, scientific and educational centers of the USSR in a very short period. It became the third most important city after Moscow and Leningrad. And in 1928 modernism was officially recognized as the leading direction in its architecture
Modernist Monuments of Freedom Square In Kharkiv: Destruction, Restoration, Reconstruction
Full text linkSince February 24, 2022, the architectural heritage of Ukraine has been exposed to dangerous destruction. The government center on Freedom (Svoboda) Square in Kharkiv - the largest urban development of early modernist architecture and its pearl, included in the Tentative UNESCO World Heritage List (2017) and provisionally inscribed on the International List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection (2023) - Derzhprom (The State Industry Building), were hit by a missile attack on March 1, 2022. In the conditions of non-cessation of hostilities and non-priority, the only means of protecting monuments in the city for months were, and in many places still are, sandbags, adhesive tape and plywood. The architectural research community and Government of Ukraine, together with international organizations, must take all possible actions to protect and restore the damaged architectural monuments. The article deals with the modernist monuments of Freedom Square, the chronology of their reconstruction since the Second World War and the damage received over the past almost two years. The paper raises important questions regarding their future fate with the possibility of restoring some objects of the square to their original appearance of the modernist era
Mono-Functional Housing and Changing Concepts in Kharkiv Residential Architecture during the Capital Period
Full text linkIn the 1920s - 1930s in Kharkiv, at that time the capital of Soviet Ukraine, two main programs of city development were implemented - the creation of a new metropolitan center and the development of the industrial complex. Within the framework of these programs there was an evolution of Kharkiv’s housing infrastructure, which developed largely in connection with the leading Western social concepts of architectural and urban planning practice: garden city, house-commune, residential combine and socialist city. However, in addition to these concepts that replaced each other, there was also a parallel design of “mono-functional” housing, which is an integral, important and significant component of the avant-garde architecture of Kharkiv. It was built both within the framework of the program of the creation of the capital center and within the framework of the program of development of the industrial complex. It is unfair that such housing, as a rule, is in the shadow of more vivid and radical typological avant-garde solutions and is insufficiently described. The method of systematization and analysis of literary and documentary sources was applied. In the context of Russian aggression and its unfolding of a full-scale war against Ukraine since 24 February 2022, the architectural heritage of Kharkiv, as well as the heritage of other cities of Ukraine, is under constant threat of destruction. In this regard, the documentation and introduction of undeservedly forgotten “mono-functional” residential buildings into the international scientific community is extremely relevant. The article begins to document mono-functional housing built in the 1920s-1930s, and discusses in detail several examples: Chervonyi Knygar, Slovo and Komunar
Juraj Neidhardt’s early work: Archiepiscopal Boys´ Seminary in Zagreb (1925-1929)
Full text linkThe article covers the early work of Juraj Neidhardt (Zagreb, 1901-Sarajevo, 1979) and the architectural themes he introduced. Aside from the large-scale urban projects Neidhardt worked on at the time, the Archiepiscopal Boys´ Seminary–integrated into its landscape and determined by its ambience–remains his only built design in the interwar period. And that was before his departure for Europe to work in the studios of Peter Behrens in Berlin and Le Corbusier in Paris.In 1925, the Construction Committee defined a detailed program for the metropolitan seminary; Neidhardt made sketches on his initiative under the guidance of Jože Plečnik and, in close cooperation with the Building Committee, designed and supervised the construction until 1928.Neidhardt established himself as a significant large-scale creator very early on. As part of the seminary, he designed an ensemble that can only be experienced by gradual observation and movement. The tension of the compositional axis is achieved by the dominant tower of the observatory (the only echo of Mendelsohn in Croatian architecture) on one side and the chapel on the other. The meander composition he applied–the spatial principle of overflowing space into space–will become one of the leading principles in urban planning.As a testimony of the ambivalence of the architecture of the 1920s–large buildings in a bold monumental stripped classical form, showing traces of expressionism–the seminary is often overlooked by urban architectural knowledge. Its survival was put to the test when the earthquake that hit Zagreb in 2020, left it with the red mark (extensive damage), making this an opportunity, through the method of cross-reading and analysis, to take another closer look to understand the dynamics of change and innovation in terms of urban development and individual architectural practice
How Radical Exactly? Re-examining Neidhardt’s 1937-41 Plans for Novi Sad
Full text linkThe international competition for the new regulation plan of Novi Sad was held in 1937, in which Juraj Neidhardt’s design was awarded compensation instead of a prize. However, upon further consideration, the city administration decided to adopt a new version of Neidhardt’s plan in the following years. In addition to this plan, he won the administration’s trust to design a series of lower-level plans for the city in 1938-1941. Therefore, Neidhardt became the most prominent figure in the urban planning process triggered by the 1937 competition. However, his final regulation plan for the city from 1941 was rejected in the first post-war revision in 1945, failing to lead to any fruition. Nevertheless, the researchers later characterized the radical modernist approach of this plan as the inspiration for the subsequent general plans of Novi Sad, namely due to introducing the idea of cutting new axes through the urban tissue. There is room today, however, to re-evaluate these claims about the radicalness of Neidhardt’s plan since its solutions were deemed insufficient in bringing radical quality to the urban space of Novi Sad. Furthermore, in the 1938-1941 period, he designed a series of perspective drawings for the new regulation of the streets in the oldest urban core of the city, which brought a decisively modernist approach to treating the urban heritage: keeping only a selection of the most iconic monuments while replacing the rest of it with new modernist structures. These designs can contribute to reinstate the knowledge about Neidhardt’s approach to treating historical heritage, considering his later intricate studies of Bosnian and Macedonian architectural landscapes
The Unfinished Revolution? The Palace of Culture of the Railway Workers in Kharkiv
Full text linkThe future reconstruction of Ukrainian cities from wartime devastation will require an extensive discussion on strategies and concepts of preservation of cultural heritage – including the heritage of the Modern Movement. It should involve not only the technical aspects but political and historical issues as well. The history of the Palace of Culture of the Railway Workers in Kharkiv (architect Alexander I. Dmitirev, 1927-1932) provokes a number of questions on the essence of Ukrainian pre-war Modernism and Constructivism, the idea of the Sovietisation of the theater against the Great Theatre Reform movement or the role of Workers’ Clubs and Palaces as social condensers. Thus, its analysis cannot by limited to the form and content of the edifice itself, but should be perceived in the broader context of similar projects (for example the Kharkiv Opera House) and views on architecture in the 1920s and 1930s.The Palace of Culture in Kharkiv can be considered as an example of “architecture in transition” where evolving trends in art as well as a dynamic socio-political situation left their marks and created a multi-layered palimpsest. Dmitriev’s design included the Constructivist spirit as well as conservative monumentality. It seems to become a legacy of a revolution (in architecture, theater and society) which has never been really completed
Archival Challenges for the Van Nelle Factory: Documenting twenty Years of a World Heritage Property’s Redevelopment
Full text linkMarking the anniversary of the redevelopment of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, the related project archive was formally transferred to the Rotterdam City Archive in order to enable proper archival conservation and public accessibility of this essential documentation. This article sheds light on the documentation and redevelopment process of a modern World Heritage (WH) site and on the role of archives as an example for other protected heritage projects or sites
Harmonizing the Old and the New: Urban ensemble as decoded and conceived in the texts by Dušan Grabrijan and Bogdan Bogdanović
Full text linkThis paper seeks to uncover terms of comparability between Bogdan Bogdanović’s and Dušan Grabrijan’s texts, building on a thorough translation and interpretation of the written work published by Bogdanović in Mali Urbanizam and by Grabrijan on Sarajevo between 1936 and 1942. From 1956 to 1958, at the beginning of a successful career as an architect of memorials and monuments, Bogdan Bogdanović produced a monthly column called ‘Mali Urbanizam’ (Small-scale urbanism) in Borba, the Yugoslav publication that bestowed the coveted yearly prize for architecture. This body of articles includes topics concerning urban design, architecture, art, and how reinterpretations and reflections of historical cities and heritage may suggest spatial features adaptable in the post-war reconstruction of Yugoslavia. It is no coincidence that his first article was dedicated to Jože Plečnik, whom Bogdanović considered a pioneer in small-scale urbanism.Through a comparative analysis of texts by Grabrijan and Bogdanović, this paper identifies the topic of historic urban ensembles both as precedent and as an area for modern design intervention, given the layered and multifold cultural built heritage that preceded the unification of Yugoslavia. The term ‘ensemble’ is here used to encompass the formal and historical peculiarities of Yugoslav cities, including the juxtaposition of eclectic buildings and Ottoman urban fabric, a townscape where buildings adapted to an almost untamed landscape, unlike the clashing of old and new in recent socialist urban expansions. Both Grabrijan and Bogdanović used newspaper articles as a medium to initiate an alphabetization process on the intrinsic values of urban heritage. Their efforts were embraced by a small group of students and fellow architects in an attempt to define a ‘national style’ that would capture all these complexities
From Newsletter to Open Issue
Full text linkDocomomo International is proud to present the first Open Issue of the Docomomo Journal. Creating the opportunity for scholars, practitioners, policy makers, activists or any other group of authors to publish in our journal without having to wait for a thematic Special Issue on a theme that would fit their topic felt like the logical next step in (the continued) continuing professionalization of the Docomomo Journal.In the plan of action for the candidacy of Delft University of Technology as the new headquarters for Docomomo International – presented in 2021 – open access to the journal and expansion of its reach was advocated:“In addition, Docomomo International aims to involve the Docomomo network more actively into the production of content – in particular linked with the new biannual conferences, seminars and workshops related to digitization, education and sustainability. This will strengthen the role of the Docomomo Journal as a link between Docomomo members, the Docomomo chapters to serve the Docomomo network, and its impacts on professional practices and the general public.”The Open Issue aims for contributions that do not fit within the topic of the thematic Special Issues but fit the overall scope of the Docomomo Journal. All contributions to this open issue have had the same peer reviewing process, but instead of organized by guest editors, now under the wings of the editors-in-chief. The 2024 Open Issue features articles on the Lagoa Rowing Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, industrial heritage in Egypt and Iran, on Erik Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm public library, the transformation of a former hospital to a criminal justice complex in São Paulo, and the House of Manoel Coelho in Curitiba.The creation of a yearly Open Issue in addition to the two regular thematic Special Issues is the next step in the evolution of the Docomomo Journal, that once started as a simple Newsletter and evolved into an academic peer-reviewed and indexed journal (figure 1). The first Newsletter was published in 1989 and changed into a Journal in 1993 (no. 9). Starting with no. 28 in 2003 the lay-out and graphics of the Docomomo Journal changed tremendously, marking the transition into a more academic oriented journal. Another change in graphics took place in 2010, starting with no. 42 and Ana Tostões and Ivan Blasi as editors, also marking the move towards online publication of the individual articles in the Docomomo Journal. In 2022, with the special issue on Modern Plastic Heritage (no. 66) a new lay-out and publication scheme was adopted to accommodate fast online and open access publication of new issues of the journal and its individual articles.The 2024 Open Issue (no. 71) marks the newest development and we call upon the Docomomo Community to continue using, referencing and contributing to the Docomomo Journal, not only to the thematic Special Issues, but also to the Open Issues