In the manufacture of concrete (or "bentonite", as they were then called) blocks began to be widely used slag, waste from the metallurgical and coal industries. Cinder blocks were also used, which have retained their value to this day. Slag concrete stones and blocks were used in the construction of workers' settlements in the pre-war years. Industrial and public buildings were also built from them. In 1927, on the initiative of G.B. Krasin, E.V. Kostyrko and A.F. Loleit in the USSR began to use large textured blocks for multi-storey buildings. Before the war, hundreds of residential buildings and public buildings up to 8 stories high were built from such blocks in Moscow, Leningrad and in some cities of Ukraine. Of greatest interest is the 6-storey residential building in Moscow, built in 1941 by the architects A.K.Burov and B.N.Blokhin. Here, for the first time, a new two-row cutting of the walls into blocks was applied and an aesthetically meaningful structure of the facade, saturated with decorative details, was proposed.
In 1936-1937. A. N. Samoilov, M. 3. Simonov, as well as researchers who worked at TsNIPS, proposed and introduced lightweight structures based on slag, expanded clay and other porous materials. In 1958, during the construction of the metro bridge in Moscow, expanded clay concrete was widely used, from which four panel houses were first built then.
During the war years, and especially after the war, in difficult conditions for the restoration of the national economy, large-block construction played a huge role. Large factories for the production of concrete blocks were built in Moscow, Leningrad, Zhdanov and other cities. At first, they were made on the basis of slag, and then other lightweight aggregates (expanded clay, aggloporite, perlite). The effectiveness of concrete blocks is due to their industrial nature, i.e., factory production of blocks with specified dimensions and properties; the possibility of using local raw materials; the use of small mechanization; reduction of construction time.
At the same time, large blocks had their own technical "ceiling", which was well understood by the engineers of the 1920s. This "ceiling" was defined by looking at the blocks as a part of the wall, and not the building as a whole, and was conditioned by the idea of \u200b\u200ba system of load-bearing walls. Another factor that limited the scope of large blocks was the material properties: concrete, as you know, worked well only in compression.
The view of concrete as an exceptionally plastic, sculptural rather than structural material is not new; it took shape at the end of the last century during the revival of Roman concrete. This view is legitimate, because concrete really has a plastic form and is used in modern sculpture no less actively than in architecture. However, the plastic possibilities of concrete in architecture should be considered only in connection with the structural system and tectonic logic, which constitute the essential difference between the space of architecture and the space of sculpture.
Topic: Economy of the USSR in 1920-30 Development of building technologies.
Many couch warriors have already erased their tongues, proving the impossibility of building the Egyptian pyramids by ordinary people. I decided to share the Internet and, as an example, picked up photos of the Great Construction sites of the 30s.
Only 80 years ago, our ancestors with a pick and a shovel got up to such a thing that the pharaohs nervously smoke in the corner.
Let's start with white sea channel... 227 km, 3 years, from materials only stone and wood. technology NO.
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Building magnets 1929-1932
the world record set by Galiullin's team - 1196 mixes per shift on the Yeger concrete mixer. This world record has remained unsurpassed.
At the construction of the coke-chemical plant, records were also achieved in terms of reinforcement work. by Poukh's brigade (4 people) mounted - 15.5 tons per shift.
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bridge test Kiev 1914 year. an example of what you can do with your hands.
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construction of a tram line in Tver
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DniproHES 1927-1932
The project was ready back in 1905. however - Bishop of Samara and Stavropol Simeon - to Count Orlov-Davydov: "On your ancestral domains, the projectors of the Samara Technical Society, together with the apostate engineer Krzhizhanovsky, are planning the construction of a dam and a large power plant. Show mercy by your arrival to save God's peace in the Zhiguli lands and destroy conception ". canceled by the king.
accidents also happened. One of the largest happened in the spring of 1928: a fence made of metal dowels fell. There were rumors of sabotage. But it turned out that the accident was caused by the theft of the fastening cables. After 18 days, the tongues were put back in place. Throughout 1932, 90 thousand people were hired on the construction site, and 60 thousand were fired.
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In 1941 the dam was blown up. in 1944 they began to clear the rubble, the mass of which was a quarter of a million tons of crushed concrete. The tools are the same - a pick and a shovel. On July 7, 1944, the first cubic meter of concrete was placed in the destroyed dam. He was again kneaded with feet, and the construction site was mostly women. The working day lasted 12-15 hours. There were no days off. For a shift, a team of 15 girls laid up to two hundred cubic meters of concrete.
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Novokuznetsk rolling shop (KMK) 1929-1932-1935
A team of excavators A.S. Filippova, on the backfill of the trench of the main water conduit going from the water intake on the Tom River to the plant, set a world record for manually moving earth soil.
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memoirs of the foreman-bricklayer V.Ya. Schideka:
“When we finished the first battery as a gift to the XYI party conference, I did not leave the oven for 4 days, I did not come home. The rail served as a pillow for me to rest, and to make it softer, I put canvas gloves on.
Just before that, my wife fell ill, and I sent her to Tomsk, and two guys remained at home, one 3 years old, the other 7 years old. And so, on the second day after my departure, the youngest son fell ill and suddenly died. I forgot about the kids under the industrial frenzy. On the fifth day I come home and see - my youngest child has died, and the older one is somewhere walking around the site and looking for me ...
Then we worked at the blast furnace. Here we immediately went wrong.
Komsomol members worked at the Komsomol cowper. They entered a competition with us, and we did not even know about it until they brought us a surprise: you lost, they say, Shidek ...
The persecution of our brigade began, they made a call. The next day, the meeting of shock workers and we were covered in all, they directly branded us with shame at the meeting. They promised to make some kind of cart and pull us on this cart in tow.
I turned to Rabochaya Gazeta for help. She helped us, and we exceeded the task by 370 percent on the 5th and 6th cowper. We were awarded with housing. They moved from the barracks to a stone house, gave me a room. ” 
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one of the foremen A.M. Zaev caught a cold in the fall, fell ill, but did not leave an important facility. Soon A.M. Zaev realized that he would no longer rise, would not complete the tunnel. And when his comrades came to visit him, he asked to bury him not in the cemetery, but in his own section, which he headed. They buried Zaev on a searing frosty day. Smooth rubble was poured on his grave, and four large braziers were placed to prevent the rubble from freezing overnight. The next morning, the grave was filled with concrete "
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Uglich hydroelectric complex 1935-1941 (first of all)
Zholudev B.L. 1907 “I started working in the woods after an accident. When the scaffolding was made and huge vessels were raised on them for cementing, and the whole team entered, the scaffolding collapsed. Some were crippled, some went to the bottom. This was done by the 3rd department. The foreman had a term of 10 years. They planted him. After that I was given the task of making forests. I did all these forests from top to bottom. I checked each line under a load of 10 tons. He and the foreman stood there for 5 minutes until we checked everything. German prisoners worked. They worked honestly, well. You could rely on them. Our prisoners also worked. They worked for me too. He took it because there weren't enough people of his own. Those who were on the 58th article could be trusted. They carried out the task. And crooks - rations stole from honest workers. Soldering - 800 grams. Or the linen will be stolen ... And the 58th were reliable. "
Hubert D. German prisoner of war. He went to war at the age of 18. In 1943, he was wounded in Romania. The hospital was seized by the Russians and sent to prisoners in stages. Throughout Russia, we drove and walked, lodged in villages. The Russians fed them. Hubert came to Uglich in 1944. “The camp was on the left bank. There was a wooden barrack - 4 halls, beds, stoves, a corridor, a toilet, a dining room, a kitchen, a bread slicer. Various workshops: shoe, repair, fire department, boiler room. He worked in Uglich for 22 months. 148 steps ran up and down the stairs in the lock arch with a bucket for water to replace the cement.
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Yaroslavl tire and asbestos plant 1929-1933
more than 20 thousand peasants of Yaroslavl, Kostroma and other provinces took part in the construction.
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school cleanup at construction
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Bridge Nizhny Novgorod
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Turksib 1927 -1930
In summer, the heat here reached + 60 ° С and from 11 to 15 hours, when the sun was burning especially unbearable, we had to take a break. And not a single rain in the whole time. Cold drinking water was rare. in winter - long snowstorms and frosts below -40 ° С.
in order to open the movement of utility trains on the other bank of the Irtysh, a heavy sleigh was built, a steam locomotive was loaded onto them, and a road train of four cars moved on the ice. To the dismay of the participants in this expedition, the cable holding the sled from behind could not bear the load and broke off. The sleigh rushed quickly, the ice shook, but did not break. The locomotive was successfully pulled to the steppe coast and put on the rails.
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foreman of the 6th section of the 4th distance A.Ya. Eliseev announced that a complex team will build a house with an area of \u200b\u200b395 m 2 from adobe bricks in 15 days. It used to take more than a month to build such a house. Skeptics declared Eliseev "crazy", "upstart", but the house at the Aina-Bulak station grew exactly according to the planned schedule and was completed in 15 days. The workers' earnings increased by 50% compared to previous jobs, the savings in bricks and timber were 20%. A strict commission, meticulously accepting the house, came to the conclusion that "the work was done properly in 15 days."
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the path was laid by hand, but the pace was very high. On average, it was about 1.5 km per day, and on some days they laid 4 km. The annual volume of laying the main track was in the north: in 1927 - 150 km, in 1928 - 187 km, in 1929 - 343 km, in 1930 - 120 km; in the south, respectively, 5 km, 202, 350, 85 km 1930
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Great Fergana Canal 1939-1940
350 km, attracted about 160,000 people. 18 million cubic meters of earth-stones, sand, clay were removed by hand, with the help of only catmen, picks and shovels.
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Pay attention, there were prisoners, but there were also ordinary workers who tore their veins not at gunpoint, and not for a long ruble, but for an IDEA. For their children and grandchildren, i.e. you and I lived in peace and happiness.
then they threw a shovel, took a rifle in their hands, these people did not need detachments. they put their lives on the altar of victory.
what are we? Did they do everything in order not to increase, no, at least to preserve the fruits of their labor?
Great construction sites
The party, the country took up the difficult work of fulfilling the "five-year plan," as the plan was called in abbreviated form. An entire constellation of construction sites has sprung up in both old industrial areas and promising new areas that previously had little or no industry. There was a reconstruction of old factories in Moscow, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Donbass: they were expanded and equipped with new imported equipment. Completely new enterprises were built, they were conceived on a large scale and with the expectation of the most modern technology; construction was often carried out according to projects ordered abroad: in America, Germany. The plan gave priority to the branches of heavy industry: fuel, metallurgy, chemical, electric power, as well as mechanical engineering in general, that is, the sector that will be called upon to make the USSR technically independent, in other words, capable of producing its own machines. For these industries, giant construction sites were created, enterprises were erected, with which the memory of the first five-year plan will be forever connected, about which the whole country, the whole world will speak: the Stalingrad and Chelyabinsk, and then the Kharkov tractor plants, huge heavy engineering plants in Sverdlovsk and Kramatorsk, automobile plants in Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow, the first ball bearing plant, chemical plants in Bobriki and Berezniki.
The most famous among the new buildings were two metallurgical plants: Magnitogorsk - in the Urals and Kuznetsk - in Western Siberia. The decision to build them was taken after long and bitter disputes between the Ukrainian and Siberian-Ural leaders, which began in 1926 and lasted until the end of 1929. The former stressed that the expansion of already existing metallurgical enterprises in the south of the country would require less expenses; the second, the prospects for the industrial transformation of the Soviet East. Finally, military considerations tipped the balance in favor of the latter. In 1930, the decision was expanded and large-scale - the creation in Russia along with the southern "second industrial base", "the second coal and metallurgical center". The fuel was to be Kuzbass coal, and the ore was to be delivered from the Urals, from the depths of the famous Magnitnaya Mountain, which gave its name to the city of Magnitogorsk. The distance between these two points was 2 thousand km. Long trains had to shuttle from one to the other, carrying ore in one direction and coal in the opposite direction. The question of the costs associated with all this was not taken into account, since it was a question of creating a powerful new industrial region, remote from the borders and, therefore, protected from the threat of attack from outside.
Many enterprises, starting with the two colossus of metallurgy, were built in the bare steppe, or at least in places where there was no infrastructure, outside or even far from settlements. Apatite mines in the Khibiny, designed to provide raw materials for the production of superphosphate, were located generally in the tundra on the Kola Peninsula, beyond the Arctic Circle.
The history of great construction projects is unusual and dramatic. They went down in history as one of the most amazing achievements of the 20th century. Russia lacked the experience, specialists, and equipment to carry out work of this magnitude. Tens of thousands of people began to build, practically counting only on their own hands. They dug the earth with shovels, loaded it on wooden carts - the famous grabarks, which stretched back and forth in an endless line from morning to night. An eyewitness says: "From a distance, the construction site seemed like an anthill ... Thousands of people, horses and even ... camels worked in the clouds of dust." First, the builders huddled in tents, then in wooden barracks: 80 people in each, less than 2 square meters. m per soul.
At the construction of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, for the first time, it was decided to continue construction in the winter. I had to hurry. Therefore, they worked at 20, 30, 40 degrees of frost. In front of foreign consultants, sometimes admiring, but more often skeptical about this picture, which they perceived primarily as a spectacle of grandiose chaos, expensive and the most modern equipment purchased abroad was installed.
One of the leading participants recalls the birth of the first Stalingrad Tractor Plant: “Even those who saw this time with their own eyes, it is not easy to remember now how it all looked. It is completely impossible for younger people to imagine everything that stands out from the pages of an old book. One of its chapters is called "Yes, we broke machines." This chapter was written by L. Makaryants, a Komsomol member, a worker who came to Stalingrad from a Moscow factory. Even for him, American machines without belt transmissions, with an individual motor, were a marvel. He didn't know how to handle them. And what about the peasants who came from the countryside? They were illiterate - reading and writing was a problem for them. Everything was then a problem. There were no spoons in the dining room ... There were bugs in the barracks ... ”. And here is what the first director of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant wrote in a book published in the early 1930s: “In the mechanical assembly shop, I approached a guy who was grinding the sleeves. I suggested to him: "Measure it." He began to measure with his fingers ... We did not have an instrument, a measuring instrument ”. In short, it was more of a mass assault than systematic work. Under these conditions, there were numerous acts of selflessness, personal courage, fearlessness, all the more heroic, since most of them were destined to remain unknown. There were people who dived into icy water to close the hole; who, even with a temperature, without sleep and rest, did not leave their working post for several days; who did not descend from the woods, even to have a bite, just to quickly set the blast furnace in motion ...
Among Soviet authors who today entrust their reflections about that period to paper and evaluate it in accordance with their own ideological preferences, some are inclined to attribute the merit to this impulse of the extraordinary resilience of the Russian people in the most difficult trials, others, on the contrary, to the latent energy hidden in the popular masses and the liberated revolution. Be that as it may, from many memories it is clear that a powerful stimulus for many people was the thought that in a short time, at the cost of exhausting hard efforts, it is possible to create a better, that is, a socialist, future. This was discussed at the rallies. At the meetings, they remembered the feats of the fathers in 1917-1920. and called on the youth to "overcome all difficulties" for the sake of laying the foundation for the "bright building of socialism." At a time when the crisis was raging throughout the rest of the world, "the youth and workers in Russia," as one English banker observed, "lived with hope, which, unfortunately, is so lacking today in capitalist countries." Such collective feelings are not born out of spontaneous reproduction. Undoubtedly, being able to evoke and sustain such a wave of enthusiasm and trust is in itself no small merit; and this merit belonged to the party and the Stalinist trend, which henceforth completely led it. One cannot deny the validity of Stalin's reasoning, when in June 1930 at the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) he declared, in fact betraying his innermost thought, that if it were not for the idea of \u200b\u200b"socialism in one country", this impulse would not have been possible. ... “Take away from him (the working class. - Approx. ed.)confidence in the possibility of building socialism, and you will destroy all soil for competition, for labor upsurge, for shock workers. "
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From the book of 50 famous mysteries of 20th century history author Rudycheva Irina Anatolievna"Algemba" and other bloody construction sites of the century Construction of grandiose structures is always associated with huge material costs and human losses. But many of the great construction projects of the Soviet Union were bloody in the full sense of the word. And if about construction
From the book History of the Persian Empire author Olmsted AlbertConstruction of Artaxerxes Artaxerxes was approaching the end of his long and, despite numerous uprisings, rather successful reign. Most of his wealth went to construction. At the beginning of his reign, he restored the palace of Darius I in Susa, destroyed
From the book of 50 famous royal dynasties author Sklyarenko Valentina MarkovnaGREAT MOGOLS A dynasty of rulers of the state that arose in northern India and Afghanistan in the 16th century after the conquest of the Delhi Sultanate by the ruler of Kabul. In the 18th century, the Mughal empire split into a number of states, most of which at the end of the 18th century
From the book The Livonian Campaign of Ivan the Terrible. 1570-1582 author Novodvorsky Vitold VyacheslavovichV. GREAT BOWS Meanwhile, the king was not thinking about peace negotiations, but about the continuation of the war. If he suspended hostilities at the end of 1579, he did so out of necessity and mainly due to a lack of funds. The cost of the first campaign was
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From the book Stalin's Baltic Divisions author Petrenko Andrey Ivanovich6. Velikie Luki 6.1. The corps was to take part in the Velikie Luki offensive operation of the Kalinin Front, carried out from November 24, 1942 to January 20, 1943 by the forces of the 3rd Shock Army and the 3rd Air Army. The front was tasked with encircling and destroying
From the book Relics of the rulers of the world author Nikolaev Nikolay NikolaevichIII The Great Stones The "Great Mogul" Diamond The Great Mughals adored diamonds, which mostly came to them from Golconda, a historical region in the center of Hindustan. Marco Polo wrote about this area in 1298: “In this kingdom they find diamonds, and I tell you, there are many mountains here,
From the book Two Faces of the East [Impressions and reflections from eleven years of work in China and seven years in Japan] author Ovchinnikov Vsevolod VladimirovichFive Construction Goals of the Century Half a century ago, I, then a Pravda correspondent in China, set out from Beijing to the provincial town of Yichang. My fellow countrymen worked there - specialists from the Leningrad Institute "Hydroproject". They had a boat at their disposal. On it we sailed along
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From the book Louis XIV by Blues FrançoisThe buildings of Apollo When the king and court arrive at Versailles on May 6, 1682, the beautiful castle is still “filled with masons” (97). When they return here on November 16, after staying first in Chambord and then in Fontainebleau, they settle among the construction site. Despite the unflappable
The fact that residential buildings became the material for the embodiment of the idea of \u200b\u200bthe city-ensemble and were included in the complex development of the reconstructed highways influenced the very type of housing construction in Moscow. The placement of new houses, primarily on the front lines of streets undergoing reconstruction, became the rule already in 1932-1933. The pompous appearance, which began to be demanded from residential buildings, also influenced their internal organization - the new building rules introduced in 1932 for Moscow provided for a decisive improvement in the quality of housing. The height of the living quarters increased up to 3.2 m, it became mandatory to install bathrooms in all apartments, the living area of \u200b\u200bthe apartments and their auxiliary premises increased. The layout of the standard sections, along which the construction was carried out, also improved - for the first time, functional zoning of apartments began to be used (bedrooms, grouped together with a sanitary unit, were located in the depths of the apartment). However, with an acute shortage of housing at that time, an increase in the area of \u200b\u200bapartments led to an expansion of the number of rooms, which nullified the advantages of their new types. The volume of housing construction, which amounted to 2.2 million square meters. m of living space for 1931-1934, was significant, but the high rate of population growth remained (in 1939 the number of Muscovites reached 4137 thousand, twice the number in 1926). Thanks to new buildings, Moscow was growing noticeably - if in 1913 there were 107 houses in the city of six floors and above, then in 1940 their number exceeded a thousand.
The successful experience of the complex construction of residential buildings on Gorky Street was developed in the flow-speed method of their construction, proposed by the architect A. Mordvinov and the engineer P. Krasilnikov. This method was used most concentratedly on Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya Street (now Leninsky Prospekt), where in 1939-1941. built on the basis of a single section of 11 houses with 7-9 floors (houses No. 12-28). They were designed by A. Mordvinov, D. Chechulin and G. Golts. The most expressive in this group of buildings with facades, finished with bricks with pre-prepared ceramic and concrete details, house number 22 (architect G. Golts). The wall with a calm grid of window openings is clearly dissected horizontally and vertically; the few details are large and impressive. The divisions are frankly decorative; they do not disguise an apartment building as a kind of palace or mansion. Note, however, that by focusing on street facades, the architects left the courtyard facades dull and chaotic. This happened in the 30s on all highways, but on Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya it gave a particularly unpleasant effect - the courtyard facades here are facing Neskuchny Garden and are visible from afar.
Such examples, when the complexity of construction became the basis for an integral concept of a sufficiently large group of buildings, were not numerous, however. More often, large houses on highways were built on separate vacant lots, conceived and designed "piece by piece", even if included in large-scale reconstruction, as was the case on 1st Meshchanskaya Street (now Prospect Mira).
The most impressive example of such a single ceremonial building was the house on Mokhovaya, built according to the project of I. Zholtovsky (now, after re-equipment, it is used by the Foreign Tourism Office). The construction of this house with a giant architectural order, reproducing the shape of the Capitanio Palace in Vicenza, created by the great Italian architect of the 16th century Andrea Palladio, became at that time a kind of creative declaration of the direction in Soviet architecture, which came from the idea of \u200b\u200bthe eternity of the laws of beauty. "Style is a transitory phenomenon," said I. Zholtovsky, "and each style is just a variation on the only theme that human culture lives on - the theme of harmony." Hence the timeless value of the most harmonious works of the classics, according to the master. The wall of a modern large house with seven identical floors and equivalent rooms forms, as it were, the second plan of the composition, a background against which a magnificent colonnade appears, a decoration that is not subject to the pressure of the utilitarian (the internal organization of the house is also subordinate to it - in some rooms the windows are lowered to the floor level to ensure desired facade drawing). The scenery is drawn with great skill, the basis of which is a deep knowledge of the architectural classics (Zholtovsky devoted years to studying it).
The interiors of the house are also perfectly designed. The rooms in the apartments were connected into beautiful enfilades and could be combined thanks to the wide openings. At the same time, office space is conveniently grouped around the gateway. Every detail has been carefully and skillfully worked out. The work of Zholtovsky made a great impression. It promoted the development of a hobby for traditional forms, and at the same time, its stylistic homogeneity resisted the eclectic mixture of the modern and the traditional, its own and borrowed (and sometimes from many random sources).
The impression made by the house on Mokhovaya led to a widespread imitation of the techniques of Renaissance architecture. Nine-storey houses built in 1935-1938 designed by the architect I. Vainshtein (Chkalov Street, 21 and 23), symmetrically frame the passage. Their L-shaped hulls give the impression of giant monoliths. The impressiveness of the main masses is emphasized by the fragile lightness of the crowning colonnades along the entire perimeter of the facades. The golden main color of the walls is beautifully complemented by the Pompeian red decorative inserts made with the sgraffito technique (they form a continuous belt together with the windows of the fifth floor). Here it was not possible, as in the house on Mokhovaya, to achieve a solid unity of form - the prosaic roughness of the wall perforated by windows and the elegance of the decor exist on their own, they do not form an organized, expressive contrast.
The elegant formal play of decorative forms is equally independent of the prosaic basis on the facades of the house, which was built for Glavsevmorput in 1936-1937. architect E. Iocheles (Suvorovsky Boulevard, 9) The game was complicated by the need to include in the structure of the house as one of its wings an overbuilt mansion with a different height of floors than the new parts. The architect coped with this cleverly and subtly. The energetic rise of the colonnades in the central part of the house emphasizes the theatricality of the overall effect.
The expressiveness of house No. 31 on Kropotkinskaya Street, built in 1936 by the project of architect Z. Rosenfeld, is based on the opposition of “quotes” from the Renaissance architecture - a two-tiered portico raised on a high base and a cornice that is strongly moved forward - with a prosaic background of a wall, perforated by windows ... The contrast, however, is weakened by the fact that the windows, despite the obvious uniformity of their placement on the wall, are different in size and shape, which created variegation.
Built by the architect L. Bumazhny in 1940, house number 87-89 on 1st Meshchanskaya differs from the quotation eloquence of many neo-Renaissance buildings in the restraint of the decoration and its organic unity with the emphasized smooth surface of the wall. Here the contrast between wall and decor has disappeared, decorative details are felt as modulations of the wall itself. The restraint of this building distinguishes it favorably from the variegated diversity of other houses that appeared on this highway in the late 30s.
A different reading of the Renaissance heritage than that coming from Zholtovsky was suggested by the students and followers of the architect I. Fomin, who is associated with Leningrad, its architecture and cultural traditions. A typical example of it is house number 45 on the Arbat, in 1933-1935. built by the architect L. Polyakov. Through the restraint of its architecture, Fomin's desire for rigor, clarity, and integrity of the solution, learned from the "proletarian classics", appears. There is no opposition between decor and utilitarian massif - the Doric colonnade with arches carries the rusticated wall of the four upper floors. This motive comes from the palaces of Renaissance Rome, but a lot of Petersburg classicism (as well as from the Petersburg neoclassicism of the beginning of our century, by the way) was brought into it. A similar technique for a house on the corner of Krasnoprudnaya and Nizhnyaya Krasnoselskaya streets (1935-1937) was used by the architect I. Rozhin. However, if in a house on the Arbat the two-storey columns harmoniously correlate with the four-storey massif above them, then here seven floors rise above the same colonnade, forming an overwhelmingly huge mass. Such techniques were not widely used.
Another line of creative searches was developed in the 30s by I. Golosov. He believed that reliance on the principles and techniques of classical composition contributes to the solution of new problems, but this does not mean at all the need to copy some samples, literal repetition of certain details. In fact, Golosov again turned to the principles of romantic symbolism and, on its basis, connected, led to a kind of synthesis of the beginning of classical composition and modern architectural thinking. “I decided to take the path that I had outlined for myself at the beginning of the revolution - the path of creating a modern form based on the study of the classical form,” he said. According to the project of I. Golosov himself in 1934-1936. on Yauzsky Boulevard, 2/16, a powerful monumental residential building was built (the second phase of the building along Yauzsky Boulevard was completed already in 1941). In his peculiar drawing of details, and even in the system of articulations that organize the composition, Golosov does not resort to "quotations" or direct associations. He strives to artistically comprehend the properties and possibilities of new structures for the development of plasticity, monumentality and scale of form. Among the houses that were built in the 30s to form the new face of Moscow highways, this one is undoubtedly one of the most impressive.
The voice was imitated a lot. However, his talent and experience were needed to achieve success on a path similar to the one he was on. In the works of his followers, the freedom of shaping, inherent in the master, often turned into capricious arbitrariness, amateurism. Among the most notable works of this kind is house no. 5 on Kolkhoznaya Square. Back in the early 30s, the building was made of monolithic warm concrete according to the joylessly utilitarian project of the German architect Remel, and in 1936 it was completed and reconstructed by the architect D. Bulgakov. Overcoming the primitiveness of the box, he used purely pictorial, "suprematist", as he himself said, not subject to compositional logic, techniques to dismember the monotonous volume, to give it dynamism and plasticity. The lack of constructive logic gives the building the character of a cardboard layout, a huge volume breaks up into abstract, non-material planes.
A special and very interesting page of the residential architecture of Moscow in the 30s is made up of experiments with large-block buildings, which became the beginning of that powerful system of industrial housing construction, without which the city is unthinkable today. We have already mentioned the construction of large concrete blocks in Moscow in the 1920s. Then the task was posed as purely technical, and the facelessness of the structures was aggravated by the fact that the blocks were made uncoated and they had to be finished with plaster. In the 1930s, enthusiasts of large-block construction, architects A. Burov, B. Blokhin and engineer Yu. Karmanov, saw in this design not only a way to make the construction process more efficient, but also a new means of artistic expression. They realized that a path was opening from the semi-theatrical props of “houses on the highway” to genuine, organic architecture.
In 1938-1939. a house was built on Velozavodskaya (No. 6), then repeated on Bolshaya Polyanka (No. 4/10). The floor in these houses was divided in height into four parts, determined by the size of the blocks. Their processing imitated cyclopean blocks of natural stone - with a relatively thin wall, this technique became false. The large scale of the blocks did not resonate with other elements of the house and was not commensurate with human sizes. Overcoming this drawback, on the facade of house no. 11 on Bolshaya Polyanka (1939), the same authors, as it were, dissolved the boundaries of the blocks in a drawing covering the entire surface of the facade wall. This flat drawing was made in colored plaster and created the illusion of a faceted rustic texture. Such a decorative technique made it possible to replace the original sizes of structural elements with arbitrary ones; the frankness of the peculiar game is funny, the house is elegant and light. This approach to industrial architecture today may seem naive, but the energy with which its enthusiasts achieved aesthetic expressiveness remains a good example today.
In 1940-1941. Burov and Blokhin continued a series of their experiments during the construction of house No. 25 on Leningradsky Prospekt. Here the partition of the wall into piers and lintels was adopted, from which its frame was formed, as it were. The system turned out to be technically feasible, it made it possible to greatly reduce the number of types of elements manufactured at the plant (thanks to this, the principle of two-row cutting was used in mass construction back in the 1960s). At the same time, the wall was dissected vigorously and beautifully. In front of the kitchens facing the street facades, there are utility loggias in this house where you can clean your dress, dry your clothes, etc. Due to the fact that the loggias are covered from outside with decorative concrete gratings, they are inaccessible for public viewing. Openwork reliefs for loggias are made according to sketches of the artist V. Favorsky. The alternation of windows and loggias enriched the harsh rhythm of the facade, gave it decorativeness (however, and some exoticism too - for it the house was called "accordion"). However, this early example already showed many possibilities of artistic expression inherent in industrial housing construction, which, unfortunately, were somehow forgotten at the subsequent stage of its development.
The house on Leningradsky Prospekt is also interesting because the architects tried to return on a new basis to the idea of \u200b\u200ba dwelling in combination with a public service system. Internal corridors connected the apartments of the six upper floors with stairs, and on the first, a complex of public premises was designed, including a cafe-restaurant, a grocery store, a kindergarten-nursery and a service bureau, which was supposed to fulfill orders for the delivery of groceries or meals, cleaning of apartments, laundry and pr. The outbreak of war did not allow to finish the public part of the house. Then its premises were used for other purposes, and the plan remained unfulfilled.
The great construction projects of communism - that is how all the global projects of the Soviet government were called: highways, canals, stations, reservoirs.
One can argue about the degree of their "greatness", but there is no doubt that these were grandiose projects of their time.
"Magnitka"
The largest in Russia Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine was designed in late spring 1925 by the Soviet institute UralGipromez. According to another version, the design was carried out by an American company from Clinwood, and the US Steel mill in Gary, Indiana became the prototype of Magnitka. All three "heroes" who were at the "helm" of the plant's construction - the manager Gugel, the builder Maryasin and the head of the trust Valerius - were shot in the 1930s. January 31, 1932 - The first blast furnace was launched. The construction of the plant took place in the most difficult conditions, while most of the work was carried out manually. Despite this, thousands of people from all over the Union hurried to Magnitka. Foreign specialists, primarily Americans, were actively involved.
Belomorkanal
The White Sea-Baltic Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea and Lake Onega and provide access to the Baltic Sea and the Volga-Baltic waterway. The canal was built by the forces of the GULAG prisoners in record time - less than two years (1931-1933). The canal is 227 kilometers long. This was the first construction in the Soviet Union carried out exclusively by prisoners, perhaps that is why Belomorkanal is not always ranked among the "great construction projects of communism." Each builder of the White Sea Canal was called a "prisoner canal soldier" or abbreviated "zek", from where the slang word "zek" came from. The propaganda posters of that time read: "Your term will melt from hot work!" Indeed, for many of those who made it to the end of the construction site alive, the terms were reduced. On average, the mortality rate reached 700 people a day. "Hot work" also influenced nutrition: the higher the rate "zek" worked out, the more impressive the "ration" received. Standard - 500 gr. bread and seaweed gruel.
Baikal-Amur Mainline
One of the largest railway lines in the world was built with huge interruptions, starting in 1938 and ending in 1984. The most difficult section - the Severo-Mu tunnel - was put into permanent operation only in 2003. The construction was initiated by Stalin. Songs were composed about BAM, laudatory articles were published in newspapers, films were shot. The construction was positioned as a feat of youth and, naturally, no one knew that prisoners who survived after the construction of the Belomorkanal were sent to the construction site in 1934. In the 1950s, about 50 thousand prisoners worked at BAM. Each meter of BAM costs one human life.
Volga-Don Canal
An attempt to connect the Don and the Volga was undertaken by Peter the Great in 1696. In the 30s of the last century, a construction project was created, but the war prevented its implementation. Work resumed in 1943 immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. However, the date of the start of construction should still be considered 1948, when the first earthworks began. In addition to volunteers and military builders, 236 thousand prisoners and 100 thousand prisoners of war took part in the construction of the canal route and its structures. In journalism, you can find descriptions of the most terrible conditions in which prisoners lived. Dirty and lousy from the lack of the opportunity to wash regularly (there was one bath for all), half-starved and sick - this is how the “builders of communism”, deprived of civil rights, looked in reality. The canal was built in 4.5 years - and this is a unique period in the world history of the construction of hydraulic structures.
Nature transformation plan
The plan was adopted at the initiative of Stalin in 1948 after a drought and raging famine in 46-47. The plan included the creation of forest belts, which were supposed to block the road to hot southeast winds - dry winds, which would change the climate. It was planned to place the forest belts on an area of \u200b\u200b120 million hectares - this is exactly how much England, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium take together. The plan also included the construction of an irrigation system, during the implementation of which 4,000 reservoirs appeared. It was planned to complete the project before 1965. More than 4 million hectares of forest were planted, and the total length of forest belts was 5300 km. The state solved the country's food problem, while part of the grain was exported. After Stalin's death in 1953, the program was curtailed, and in 1962 the USSR was again shaken by a food crisis - bread and flour disappeared from the shelves, and sugar and butter were interrupted.
Volzhskaya HPP
Construction of the largest hydroelectric power plant in Europe began in the summer of 1953. Next to the construction site, in the tradition of that time, the GULAG - Akhtuba ITL was deployed, where more than 25 thousand prisoners worked. They were engaged in road construction, power lines and general preparatory work. Of course, they were not allowed to work directly on the construction of the hydroelectric power station. Sappers also worked at the facility, who were engaged in demining the site for future construction and the bottom of the Volga - the proximity to Stalingrad made itself felt. The construction site employed about 40 thousand people and 19 thousand various mechanisms and machines. In 1961, having turned from “Stalingrad HPP” into “Volzhskaya HPP named after the 21st Congress of the CPSU”, the station was put into operation. It was solemnly opened by Khrushchev himself. The hydroelectric power station was a gift for the 21st Congress, at which Nikita Sergeevich, by the way, announced his intention to build communism by 1980.
Bratsk hydroelectric power station
The construction of the hydroelectric power station began in 1954 on the Angara River. The small village of Bratsk soon expanded into a large city. The construction of the hydroelectric power station was positioned as a shock Komsomol construction site. Hundreds of thousands of Komsomol members from all over the Union came to the development of Siberia. Until 1971, the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station was the largest in the world, and the Bratsk Reservoir became the world's largest artificial reservoir. When it was filled, about 100 villages were flooded. The tragedy of "Angarsk Atlantis" in particular is dedicated to the piercing work of Valentin Rasputin "Farewell to Matera".