Moses Ginzburg - theorist and practitioner of constructivism

Youth of the new style -
Mostly constructive,
Mature time is organic,
And wilting is decorative.

Moses Ginzburg

Recently, I read that the house of the Narcomfin on Novinsky Boulevard in Moscow (the most famous construction of Ginzburg) was supposed to stand in it without repair for no more than eight years in accordance with it. So, it is surprising that it is still worth it , but some apartments in it are quite inhabited ...

I will not touch on the ongoing struggle to preserve this world-famous constructivism monument (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-9ysvqvkn8 , “The House of the People's Commissariat and its influence on modern architecture”, a video of the lecture by Alexei Ginzburg, the grandson of Moses Yakovlevich). The largest masters of architecture, including the recently left Zaha Hadid, turned to the works and buildings of Ginzburg, counting the lessons of the master of modern classics. Nevertheless, the little that remains of Soviet constructivism is not recognized as monuments, and the state of most buildings in this style “leaves to be desired”.

I was lucky: at a young age I lived a month not only in the constructivist building built by Ginzburg, but also in the environment organized in this way. This is a complex of buildings of the sanatorium named after Ordzhonikidze in Kislovodsk, built by a team of architects under the leadership of M. Ya. Ginzburg.

In the early spring of 1940, after the severe inflammation of the lungs, my mother, who took part in construction, took me there. The sanatorium occupied three buildings - two residential and the third medical; The complex would make an honor to any of the directions of constructivism.

We lived in the first building, where there were rather spacious “rooms” with a bathroom, a toilet and a balcony-lodge; He looked like a more or less ordinary house, similar to new houses on the even side of ul. Gorky in Moscow. But the medical building was something mysterious to me - I remember that I could not “grab” its device. Now I know that according to the architectural plan, the medical building was very extravagant, but at the same time flawlessly thought out - the round volume was covered by a larger diameter of the Gallery, which made it possible to separate the case with the baths from the medical offices proper.

Quite close to the therapeutic building began a large gending staircase, which led to the park; Many years later, I learned that Ivan Leonidov designed the staircase.

Moses Yakovlevich Ginzburg (1892–1946) was born in Minsk; His artistic giftedness manifested itself early. Ginzburg received basic architectural education at the Milan Academy of Arts. Having returned to Moscow with a diploma of an architect artist, he nevertheless believed that he needed more thorough knowledge in the field of technology and technology of construction itself, so he entered the architectural department of the Riga Polytechnic, which during these years moved to Moscow. In the Polytechnic, he studied for three years and graduated with a diploma of an architect engineer.

The next four years, Ginzburg spent in Crimea, where he already had orders. At the same time, he not only built, but also studied Tatar art and architecture; The result was the work “Tatar Art in the Crimea”, which was published in the journal “among collectors” in 1921-1924.

In 1921, Ginzburg returned to Moscow, and after two or three years he had already gained fame-both as an author of articles and books, and as a teacher of Vhutemas, a member of the Gakhn and the editor of the magazine Modern Architecture.

Ginzburg loved and knew how to work. Its productivity is already amazing in the 1920s; His books “Rhythm in Architecture” (1923) and “Style and Age” (1924), articles in the journal Modern Architecture, where he was an editor, differ in the thoughtfulness of structure and impeccable language.

He wrote, as it were, for everyone at once - both for professionals, and just for those who wanted to make their opinion about new and complex matters.

In the 1920s, for obvious reasons, there were few, so that a completely small part of the then projects of Ginzburg was “in the material”. In addition to designing, he was also busy with teaching and an orthographer in the magazine and in the OSA - the unification of Soviet architects. At the OSA conference in 1928, in the report “Constructivism in Architecture”, Ginzburg gave a comparative analysis of Soviet and foreign architecture, and in response to reproaches in neglect of the form, he said: “ The form is in our stage of constant sophisticated ...”

After 1928, Ginzburg concentrated more on design, participating in numerous competitions on architectural structures of various purposes, such as the Palace of Labor, the House of Textiles, the Covered Market, the Rusgergorg building in Moscow, the House of Soviets in Makhachkala, the Government House in Alma-Ata, etc.

At the same time, Ginzburg was looking for new principles for designing a dwelling. In 1926, a residential building on Malaya Bronnaya in Moscow was being built on his project, and in 1928 the construction of the Narkomfin house began. It is this building that will go down in the history of architecture as a monument of the era; Accordingly, the name of Moses Ginzburg as its creator will go down in the history and name of Moses.

The House of the People's Commissariat, his dramatic fate, including the current conflict, acquire a truly symbolic meaning. After all, the more thoroughly the dream of a better, “correct” future has been thought out, the more painful the collapse of this dream is perceived.

The least of all, the House of the People's Commissariat can be called the fruit of the empty fantasy of the authors of the project - Moses Ginzburg and his student Ignatius Milinis; On the contrary, everything was thoroughly substantiated by architectural and aesthetically there: layout, illumination, ventilation, color solutions, and functional loads. The customer-the then People's Commissar of Finance Nikolai Milyutin-was so passionate about the implementation of this project (he himself had an architectural education), which designed a small apartment building on the roof of the house; His daughter and her husband left there only in 1980.

Two main types of apartments are deserved by a separate analysis - the “cells” of type F and K well -known to professionals - color and light solutions and much more.

The completion of the construction of the Narkomfin’s house in 1930 coincided with a critical fracture in the fate of the architectural profession in the USSR: all professional associations were dissolved, instead of them an union of Soviet architects arose, designed to determine the appearance of new Soviet architecture. Constructivism and rationalism were declared "harmful formalism."

Nevertheless, the construction of a completely “constructivist” residential building was completed - the Cooperative “Demonstration Construction” (Gogolevsky Boulevard, 8) and the projects of Ginzburg (public buildings, theaters, residential complexes) were implemented in different cities of the Soviet Union.

In 1935, Ginzburg headed the architectural workshop, which administratively subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Culture. In this workshop, a team of authors created a project of the sanatorium of the People's Commissariat of Culture in Kislovodsk. Ginzburg carried out general management of design and construction - but this is already a plot for a special story.

The sanatorium of the People's Commissariat of Culture opened in 1938. Moses Yakovlevich Ginzburg died in 1946, leaving the descendants with a whole library of detailed projects, as well as articles and books.

The House of the People's Commissariat is still worth it.

About the projects of M. Ya. Ginzburg with drawings and illustrations see.
http://www.alyoshin.ru/files/publika/khan_magomedov/khan_ginsburg_04.html