AVIVA RUBIN
OFFICE WORK
Projects Completed between 2007-2009
Each of these office projects have pushed my understanding of architecture towards the tactile - construction, detailing, and materiality - while incorporating the
same spatial sensitivity refined in my undergraduate work. In this retail project, I have learned how these environments can delicately dictate the choreography
of sight and movement, providing users with a glimmer of spectacle, without revealing its controlled interplay. In this residential work, I have come to grasp the
subtleties of intimacy and play with the tension of overlapping what is public and what is private.
Joining the office of Lynch/Eisinger/Design in late 2007, I began working on a Better Specialty Retail store for Calvin Klein in an outdoor mall in Glendale, CA. We
provided services for schematic design and design development as well as construction documents on several key moments. As the first two-floor Calvin Klein
store, the storefront, staircase and balustrade became the areas to develop. In the storefront, for example, the screen design was altered to account for a doubleheight space. The staircase offered an opportunity to display mannequins and other lifestyle highlights as well as rethink circulation. The design of the balustrade
attempted to hide the thickness of the floor slab, while providing a surface to highlight apparel.
At the beginning of 2009, a new building - a part-residence and part-studio space - provided an opportunity to reconfigure the public and private aspects of each
use. The client sought a building to house her studio space on the ground floor as well as a spacious apartment above. This apartment was required to have the
ability to be separated, if the client chose, in the future, to rent out the space. Playing with the levels of intimacy, we developed a design that generated flexible
spaces, depending on how the client chose to occupy it. Each space of the building extends through to the next space, spatially and visually as well as with it’s
interior and exterior spaces, with the use of openings, clerestories, and minimal partitions. The core, incorporating an elevator, bathrooms, HVAC & storage
spaces, acts as an anchor with the circulation wrapping around it. Together, the building becomes a subtle and expansive backdrop for the user’s innumerable
possible experiences.
CALVIN KLEIN: BETTER SPECIALTY RETAIL
OFFICE WORK
GLENDALE, CA
OFFICE WORK
PARK SLOPE STUDIO + RESIDENCE
VIEW FROM LIVING ROOM TO KITCHEN
OFFICE WORK
REAR YARD PERSPECTIVE
MODEL IN BUILDING CONTEXT
OFFICE WORK
CURATORIAL WORK
Summer 2011
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art brought the touring exhibition of “Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams,” which began in Germany and moved to Japan
and the United Kingdom, to the States for the first time. The exhibition presented an abridged collection of Rams’ designs, including his extensive work with the company
Braun. I assisted curator Joseph Becker in the compiling of research and information for the completion of the exhibition in late August 2011.
CURATORIAL WORK
TEACHING WORK: BOSTON ARCHITECTURAL COLLEGE: ADVANCED ARCHITECTURAL STUDIO: TOTAL [RE]DESIGN
Co-developed and taught with Daniel Weissman, Spring 2012
This studio is a C2 level studio, offering masters students at the BAC an upper level option studio. Slated to design a construction training school in Boston, students began
with readings and a design charette that challenged their concept of socially-engaged architecture. With a pedagogy of collaboration, the studio urged students to engage
in the decision making process, enabling investment in the material and developing critical decision-making skills. The once-a-week studio was supplemented with a ‘digital
studio space,’ where students could post findings, questions, thoughts, etc. to the studio group on a blog. The framework for the studio hinged on individual investigations
(mappings, diagramming, formal investigations) contributing to a collective vision for singular architectural output. The product of this collaboration (a proto-building) then
served as a frame for continued investigations into the myriad systems and processes surrounding the building; anything from structure and formal systems to pedagogy of
the institution and methods of construction.
architects to articulate design intentions, and in the absence of a built product, representations of the process and
potential products is the primary output of design studio. We will work to develop graphic representations that make
information accessible, legible, and clear to various constituents. We will produce beautiful drawings. You will, in
TOTAL [re]DESIGN
parallel to the content researched and produced, develop a representational style. As you will be expected to work
stUdio
oBJeCtiVes
across the breadth of design tools and media, skill-building
sessions
may be added depending on need.
SYLLABUS
totalstUdio
[re]design
CUltUre
A construction trAining school in the boston region
2
Within the context of this studio, you will be responsible for designing the processes and flows of material, energy
and information, not merely the physical structure of a building object or landscape. Armed with contemporary
case studies of socially-engaged architectures, this studio seeks to investigate the seeming paradox between total
design and community involvement, where education serves as a guide.
C Level Studio Spring 2012 | BAC.
Dan Weissman + Aviva Rubin
We strive to create a studio atmosphere for collective learning and risk-taking. Your participation in discussions and
rePresentation
group as
critiques
is critical to the success of the studio, and
your own development as a student. Uncritical, hurtful
My idea of the architect
a coordinator
Representation is not a passive actor but a primary means of communication. It is one of the primary means for
— whose businesscomments
it is to unify the
various
will
not be tolerated. Moreover, it is in your best
interest
todesign
work
IN and
STUDIO
asofoften
as possible,
where
architects
to articulate
intentions,
in the absence
a built product,
representations of
the process and
potential products is the primary output of design studio. We will work to develop graphic representations that make
formal, technical, social and economic
you
may
learn
from
each
other.
At
times
you
will
be
working
in
groups;
this
process
will
no
doubt
be
frustrating,
information accessible, legible, and clear to various constituents. We will produce beautiful drawings.but
You will, in
problems that arise in connection with
parallel to the content researched and produced, develop a representational style. As you will be expected to work
this
mirrors
reality of design professions. We must
learn
be master
collaborators,
to beengage
ideas
that
building — inevitably
ledsituation
me on step by
step
across the
breadthto
of design
tools and media,
skill-building sessions may
added depending
on need.
from the study of the
function
of theown
houseand
to work towards productive results.
stUdio CUltUre
are
not our
We strive to create a studio atmosphere for collective learning and risk-taking. Your participation in discussions and
that of the street; from the street to the town;
group critiques is critical to the success of the studio, and your own development as a student. Uncritical, hurtful
and finally to the still vaster implications
comments will not be tolerated. Moreover, it is in your best interest to work IN STUDIO as often as possible, where
of regional and national planning. i believe
you may learn from each other. At times you will be working in groups; this process will no doubt be frustrating, but
Pinups
and
reviews
are
for
collective
learning
as
well
as
demonstrations of understanding. YOU MUST BE PINNED
this situation mirrors reality of design professions. We must learn to be master collaborators, to engage ideas that
that the new Architecture is destined to
are not Outside
our own and work
towards productive
UPcomprehensive
BEFORE THE
CRITIqUE BEGINS, or risk not presenting.
critics
will beresults.
present for at least two reviews
dominate a far more
sphere
PinUP + reVieWs
than building means
today;
and
that
from
the
over the semester, but may be brought in under more casual
circumstances
by instructor
discretion.
Pinups and
reviews are for collective learning
as well as demonstrations
of understanding. YOU MUST BE PINNED
investigation of its details we shall advance
UP BEFORE THE CRITIqUE BEGINS, or risk not presenting. Outside critics will be present for at least two reviews
over the semester, but may be brought in under more casual circumstances by instructor discretion.
towards an ever-wider and profounder
conception of design
as studio
one great
This
iscognate
not for the feint of heart. You will be expected
work
hard,
produce
presentation
quality
materials
Thisto
studio
is not for
the feintand
of heart.
You will be expected
to work hard, and produce
presentation
quality materials
whole.
regularly and consistently. At the end of the day, remember: this is not a professional architectural office. Risks may
PinUP + reVieWs
regularly and consistently. At the end of the day, remember:
this
is only
notleads
a professional
architectural
office. Risks may
be taken
- failure
to learning. Have fun and
let your passions flourish.
be taken - failure only leads to learning. Have fun and let your passions flourish.
-Walter gropius | the new Architecture and the bauhaus, 1935
Over the years, architecture as a discipline has generally relied on a few basic premises. One is that the architect is the master
facilitator, commanding all elements of architectural production. We assume that to release the architect’s hegemonic grip
over the aesthetic product will translate to a loss of control over the process itself. And therefore, architecture has sought to
fortify the discipline from those its serving, strengthening the division between architecture and society.
sChedUle 320.MASS AvE_2012.M.4-7
sChedUle 320.MASS AvE_2012.M.4-7
Yet within the field of architecture, there is a new faction emerging - architectures of social engagement. Accelerated by
recent shows at MoMA and Cooper Hewitt, and with ever-more-popular organizations and programs such as Architecture
for Humanity and Auburn University’s Rural Studio, this burgeoning theme (at least from our vantage point in the United
States) puts forth an alternative form of architectural output that thrives on embedded engagement with under-served
communities. Is this praxis of architectural production different than other practices? At least one aspect is distinct: with
socially-engaged architecture, educational outreach becomes an integral component to the architectural product. The
architect’s dominance over aesthetic judgement can remain in tact while also allowing for dissemination of information, and
ultimately, knowledge.
We will begin each studio session promptly at 4:10, and strive to end at 7pm. This schedule is provisional, and may
be adapted as issues arise. We will keep you updated as to changes accordingly, but it is your responsibility to
inform us of any anticipated absences. BAC rules apply in regards to unannounced absences. We will have at least
one site visit and potentally a meeting with YouthBuild. Stay tuned.
We will begin each studio session promptly at 4:10, and strive to end at 7pm. This schedule is provisional, and may
be adapted as issues arise. We will keep you updated as to changes accordingly, but it is your responsibility to
Many systems and infrastructures shape the flows of society - from the economic, social, political, cultural, and
environmental. The stoplight
timing mechanisms,
frequencies, timber-sizing,
and fire-code regulations
all are apply in regards to unannounced absences. We will have at least
inform
us of cellphone
any anticipated
absences.
BAC rules
designed systems. Reconceiving of the systems at work in any design can achieve a ‘total REdesign.’ New architectures
of social engagement ultimately
of the systems
around their a
practices
in order towith
‘get it right.’
Good
onerequire
sitea redesign
visit and
potentally
meeting
YouthBuild.
Stay tuned.
1.23
1.30
2.6
2.13
2.20
2.27
3.5
3.12
3.19
ARCH
REP
REVIEW
3.26
4.2
4.9
4.16
4.23
4.30
5.7
SYSTEM
SYSTEM
REP
PINUP
ARCH
SYSTEM
REP
5.14
YOU
GROUP
designers design the building blocks of their structures, the great ones design the processes to make those blocks, and the
pedagogy of their new work forces.
INTRO
SITE VISIT TBD
SEA
CS1
ARCH
NO CLASS
NO CLASS
Looking to improve the educational opportunities in the Boston Region, Youthbuild, an international training organization for
young people, has hired you to conceive of a new type of training center. How does education operationalize the program of a
vocational school for a communitiy-in-need? David Harvey’s “Spaces of Insurgency” asserts the right for laborers to “have a
strong voice in the choice of what to produce and how to produce it.”1 But then what is the role of the architect? Can we still
have aesthetic authority and autonomy as the architectural author?
WHAT IS
SOCIALLY
ENGAGED
ARCHITECTURE?
CASE
STUDY
ANALYSIS
SITE
FORM
PROGRAM
CIRCULATION
TRANSPARENCY
VOLUME
SPACE
SURFACE
CONSTITUENCIES
SITE + LANDSCAPE
MATERIALS + FLOWS
STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS
ENERGY + CLIMATE
TRANSITIONS
MACROSCOPIC FLOWS
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
1. David Harvey,
in Subculture
Beverly, P. Cohen, and
D. Harvey (Barcelona:
1.23 “Spaces of Insurgency,”
1.30
2.6 and Homogenization,
2.13 ed. by J. 2.20
2.27
3.5 Fundacio Antoni
3.12
Tapies, 1988): p.83.
3.19
3.26
4.2
4.9
4.16
4.23
4.30
5.7
SYSTEM
SYSTEM
REP
PINUP
ARCH
SYSTEM
REP
REVIEW
VISUAL REPRESENTATION
TRANSPARENCY OF IDEAS
CONVEYANCE
PROCEDURES
COORDINATION
MEANING
5.14
YOU
GROUP
SITE VISIT TBD
INTRO
SEA
IS
TEACHINGWHAT
WORK
SOCIALLY
ENGAGED
CS1
CASE
STUDY
ANALYSIS
ARCH
NO CLASS
ARCH
SITE
FORM
PROGRAM
REP
REVIEW
NO CLASS
CONSTITUENCIES
SITE + LANDSCAPE
MATERIALS + FLOWS
VISUAL REPRESENTATION
TRANSPARENCY OF IDEAS
CONVEYANCE
REVIEW
DESIGN
3
TOTAL [re]DESIGN
socially-engaged architecture?
ESIGNASSIGNMENT 1: 128 HOUR DESIGN INTERvENTION
3
What
does
it
mean
to
design
socially-engaged
architecture?
What
changes
in
the
design
process
program. construction training + vocational school + urban agriculture
socially-engaged
architecture?
or scope from other forms of design? For the first week you will work in groups to identify a need,
ASSIGNMENT 1: 128 HOUR DESIGN INTERvENTION
a user,
and
designto an
intervention
in the public
realm. Interventions
may
be demountable
What
does
it mean
design
socially-engaged
architecture?
What changes
in the
design processor
depending
on realities
of working
in public
orpermanent
scope from
other forms
of design?
For the first
weekspace.
you will work in groups to identify a need,
a user, and design an intervention in the public realm. Interventions may be demountable or
permanent depending on realities of working in public space.
‘WhAt Are they designing?’
“Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions,
or other systems that are ‘WhAt
studiedAre
holistically
by one or more methods. The case that is the subject
they designing?’
of thestudies
inquiry are
willanalyses
be an instance
of a class
of phenomena
that provides
an analytical
frame — an
“Case
of persons,
events,
decisions, periods,
projects,
policies, institutions,
1
within which
thestudied
study isholistically
conductedbyand
the methods.
case illuminates
and
explicates.”
orobject
other—systems
that are
onewhich
or more
The case
that
is the subject
case study.
case study.
of the inquiry will be an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame — an
You will
spendwhich
the next
two weeks
working
to investigate
practice
or
1
object
— within
the study
is conducted
andindividually
which the case
illuminatesone
anddesign
explicates.”
organization. You are responsible for chosing one project to document in addition to the practice
model.
Studies:
You
will Case
spend
the next two weeks working individually to investigate one design practice or
Urban
Think
Tank
organization.
You
are responsible
for chosing one project to document in addition to the practice
Anna
Heringer
model. Case
Studies:
Rural Think
StudioTank
Urban
Growing
Power
Anna
Heringer
Architecture
Rural
Studio for Humanity
MichaelPower
Maltzan Architects
Growing
Architecture for Humanity
This research
be based
around a series of themes:
Michaelwill
Maltzan
Architects
Architecture [material systems, energy systems, structural systems]
Landscape
systems]
This research
will [ecological
be based around
a series of themes:
Urbanism [social,
political,
economic
Architecture
[material
systems,
energysystems]
systems, structural systems]
Production[ecological
[flows, workers,
assemblies, extractions, conflagrations]
Landscape
systems]
Education[social,
[informal/formal,
skills training,
design process]
Urbanism
political, economic
systems]
architecture.
architecture.
Production [flows, workers, assemblies, extractions, conflagrations]
Education [informal/formal, skills training, design process]
To explore the ideas presented through case studies, you will design a new institutional facility
for YouthBuild International. “The mission of YouthBuild... is to empower and assist under-served
young
people...with
essential
social, case
vocational,
academic,
life skills
to navigate
To
explore
the ideas the
presented
through
studies,
you will and
design
a newnecessary
institutional
facility
a positive
pathway
to self-sufficiency
and neighborhood
be responsible,
as
for
YouthBuild
International.
“The mission
of YouthBuild...responsibility.”
is to empowerYou
andwill
assist
under-served
a
group,
for
designing
the
boundary
conditions
of
the
project.
This
charrette
is
meant
to
get
your
young people...with the essential social, vocational, academic, and life skills necessary to navigate
flowing
and create anand
immediate
product
that may be You
further
over as
the
adesign
positivejuices
pathway
to self-sufficiency
neighborhood
responsibility.”
will developed
be responsible,
acoming
group, weeks.
for designing the boundary conditions of the project. This charrette is meant to get your
design juices flowing and create an immediate product that may be further developed over the
CRITERIA
coming
weeks.
1. Simplicity / rationality of form
2. Design with climate [to be developed after initial charrette]
CRITERIA
Context / /siting
/ transitions
1.5.Simplicity
rationality
of form
User / with
spatial
experience
2.6.Design
climate
[to be developed after initial charrette]
5. Context / siting / transitions
6. User / spatial experience
Boston
Given the economic disparities and locations of institutions and infrastructures across the city of
Boston, where
would this sort of program be best situated? Is it a network, campus or individual
Boston
building?
What are the
implications
of program
urban context?
What is the relationship
Given
the economic
disparities
and locations
of on
institutions
and infrastructures
across thebetween
city of
the natural,
built
andthis
social
ecologies
of the
how could
be capitalized
upon
for your
Boston,
where
would
sort
of program
be area
best and
situated?
Is it these
a network,
campus or
individual
work? What are the implications of program on urban context? What is the relationship between
building?
site.
site.
the natural, built and social ecologies of the area and how could these be capitalized upon for your
work?
3. G. Thomas (2011) A typology for the case study in social science following a review of definition, discourse and
structure. qualitative Inquiry, 17, 6, 511-521
3. G. Thomas (2011) A typology for the case study in social science following a review of definition, discourse and
structure. qualitative
TEACHING
WORKInquiry, 17, 6, 511-521
4
The program for this new institution will be partially determined by the group. However, at minimum
the institution must include:
Some classrooms (digital + analog capabilities)
An open workshop space with provisions for wood, metal, CNC
Administrative facilities
Communal recreation space(s): Cafeteria / lounge / lockers
Materials storage
Outdoor Prototyping space(s)
Urban Agriculture facilities (greenhouses, aquaponics, hydroponics, etc)
systems.
The execution of design products is a significant endeavor, but the complexity of design products
forces us to think at many scales. In the US, many parts, procedures and elements of building
production are already systematized. Others are not. After the ‘completion’ of your design, you
will ‘disassemble’ your building to understand and design methods by which the building will be
constructed, as well as its abilities at controlling flows of people, energy, material, products and
waste. You will design the systems, along with the architectural product that it relies on in this
phase of our studio.
ELEMENTS TO CONSIDER AT MACRO AND LOCAL SCALES:
Constituencies, site + landscape, materials + flows, structural systems, energy + climate, transitions,
macroscopic flows, educational programs
representation.
This process will create many distinct products:
1. MATERIALITY + STRUCTURE
This may resolve itself in physical models, exploded axonometrics, design details, wall sections,
material investigations, samples, prototypes, construction methods, finite-element analysis, etc.
2. CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS.
This set of drawings shall not be based in the standard form of CD sets seen in typical architectural
practice, but drawn for complete and simple understanding by inexperienced workers. Examples
from IKEA and SHoP Architects shall be considered.
3. LARGE SCALE MAPPINGS
As an inversion of the typical process of site analysis, this process shall zoom out to create large
scale territorial mappings. Through representations, you will uncover flows of material, energy,
work forces, students and instruction.
4. USERS + PROGRAM-ANALYSIS
The design of this construction training and design school brings a diverse set of users to the fore including community members, students, and instructors. Based on the programmatic breakdown
and structuring you design, even users from outside the neighborhood may gravitate to this place.
ASSIGNMENT 1
A1: 168 HOUR URBAN DESIGN INTERVENTION
DUE IN-CLASS ON MONDAY, JANUARY 30TH, 2012, AT 4PM
Design an intervention that affects others in a positive way. This first assignment is purposefully simple,
introducing students to the concepts of and relationships between design, urban space, and the social. We
will continue to explore these concepts over the course of this semester, building on the intricacies and
complexities of these issues.
LEARNING GOALS
1.
Develop Collaboration Skills: For this assignment, you will be working as a group to design, implement,
record, and communicate your urban intervention. Learning to engage ideas that are not necessarily your
own in a passionate and productive fashion is an invaluable skill for all designers.
2.
Building Realities: This intervention asks students to face the difficulties and realities of constructing
in the public realm. Where can an intervention take root? What materials, tools, etc. are necessary to
facilitate the intervention’s implementation and temporal duration? How does craft come into play?
Consider the cohesiveness of your intervention’s craft and assembly.
3.
Understanding Purpose, Users, Impact: What does it mean to construct something that’s explicitly meant
to perform a service for people? Is this act different from any other type of architecture? Define the service
or purpose of your intervention, the users, and the social impact its aiming to provide.
4.
Represent and Communicate your Intent Effectively: Document your project in an effective manner
to convey ideas, intentions, uses, happy accidents, etc. How do certain representation techniques convey
certain concepts?
GUIDELINES
1.
Intervention must be physical. You must add material/matter to the urban condition. (Hypothetical /
theoretical interventions are not allowed)
2.
Intervention must be documented as having made a positive effect on an existing condition. How do you
measure effect?
3.
Due to guerrilla nature of this project, intervention may be temporary / fleeting.
4.
Potential goal (extra credit!): Include a pedagogical element (intervention teaches something, engages
occupants/users/public through an educational element).
TEACHING WORK
STUDENT WORK EXAMPLE
ASSIGNMENT 3
TOTAL [RE]DESIGN A3: THE PROJECT BEGINS.
“WE HAVE TO HAVE AN EDUCATION PIPELINE FOR PEOPLE WHO COME HERE IN
POVERTY,SO THEY DON’T GET TRAPPED THERE.”
-PAUL GROGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTE IN BOSTON
For the next month we will work as a design team to develop a project that focuses on social interaction through education
and design. You will collectively be responsible for determining the product(s), program(s) and site(s) for this project. Our
initial conception of this studio was for a building located in Union square. Given your collective interests and aspirations,
we feel that it is imperative that you take a stronger role in determining the parameters by which this studio will continue
to operate.
PART 1: CASE STUDY EXTRACTION [INDIVIDUAL: 20min)
STEP 1: Document ~5 elements from your case study that you’d like to take into account for our next phase.
STEP 2: Choose elements below that operationalize your vision for the studio project.
1) Will the project be:
+ single building
+ a small campus
+ an institution
+ distributed network
+ infrastructure
+ other__________
2. Will the site be
+ singular
+ multiple
+ local
+ non-local
+ Utopic
+ formal
+ informal
+ other__________
3. Will the program be:
+ construction training
+ agricultural training
+ life training / vocational school
+ community center
+ composite
+ other__________
PART 2: DISCUSSION_SITE + PROGRAM [collective: 45min)
PART 3: LOGISTICS
Next monday = no class. We will plan to have some sort of session in the next 2 weeks, which may be a site visit (if we
collectively decide that the site will remain in Boston), and/or a tutorial session for digital skills.
Based on the decisions above we will move forward with the collective portion of the studio project, which will at minimum
include site mappings, site model (physical and digital), analytical diagrams of site and program, and proto-architecture.
FOR MONDAY 2/27: SITE MATERIALS [jobs TBD tonight]
FOR MONDAY 3/12: ARCHITECTURAL MATERIALS [TBD on 2/27]
TEACHING WORK
STUDENT WORK EXAMPLE
STUDENT WORK EXAMPLE
TEACHING WORK
STUDENT WORK EXAMPLE
TEACHING WORK
WRITTEN WORK
Spring 2011
This sample paper exemplifies the broad array of my academic interests, including art, architecture, utopias, political history, and urbanism. Reading through these lenses,
this paper analyzes El Lissitzky’s Wolkenbugel for a course titled ‘Berlin / Moscow (1918-1933) – Artists, Media, Politics,’ taught by Benjamin Buchloh and Maria Gough.
What emerges is an examination of a central figure in International Constructivism, Lissitzky, and his ‘paper architecture’ at the moment when his imagination took flight.
The Utopian Realism of El Lissitzky’s Wolkenbügel
conditions in his own project in International
Constructivism, the Socialist project, and Modernity,
Lissitzky and his work performed within and through
a dialectical procedure. The Wolkenbügel becomes a
resultant of this dialectics, developing a liminal space
for an awakened consciousness. “By colliding with its
own boundary,” the Wolkenbügel’s liminality moves
away from the conventional utopic structure and
towards utopian realism.1 “Utopian realism is critical. It
is real. It is enchantingly secular. It thinks differently…
It moves sideways, instead of up and down…It
is (other) worldly.”2 Between the multiplicities of
Lissitzky’s binaries stands the Wolkenbügel project,
as a “frozen instantaneous picture of a process”
of dialectics, producing the liminal space of utopian
realism.3
El Lissitzky’s Wolkenbügel project embodies the
liminal space between reality and utopia. Located
outside of his home country of the Soviet Union,
Lissitzky began to dream of a possible reality back
home. Over the course of three years between
1923 and 1925 and a series of designs, Lissitzky
constructed the potentiality of space in relation
to the new urban condition. The Wolkenbügel,
through a process of defamiliarization, becomes
a device for responding – to the ground, to the
skyscraper, and to the city. But in this response,
Lissitzky complicated his conception of utopia,
grounded first in his Proun work. The conflicted
dream of utopia takes form in the collision of
urbanity and Lissitzky’s Wolkenbügel hooks
itself onto the clouds as a form for critique and
refamiliarization with the city.
In his many writings on his multifarious art
practices, Lissitzky positioned himself at the
interstice – between nature and the machine, the
irrational and the rational, floating and friction,
dream and reality. Locating these divergent
WRITTEN WORK
Lissitzky’s Foundation
Known today as a prolific figure working in various
medias, El, originally Lazar Markovich, Lissitzky
began his career studying drawing and architecture.
Becoming involved after the October Revolution in
work for the IZO Narkompros, the graphics branch
of the People’s commissariat of Enlightenment, he
shifted his focus towards an art and architectural
practice steeped in the new social potential. In 1921,
Lissitzky left Russia and moved to Berlin to become
“an ambassador for activities emerging both at home
and abroad.”4
1 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New
York: Seabury Press, 1973), 5.
2 Reinhold Martin, “Critical of What? Toward a Utopian
Realism,” Harvard Design Magazine 22 (Spring/Summer 2005): 5
3 El Lissitzky, “Nasci” (1924), in El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts,
ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (Greenwich, C: New York Graphic
Society, 1968), 347.
4 It remains unclear whether his travel to Berlin was under
official or unofficial auspices. Margarita Tupitsyn et al., El Lissitzky:
Beyond the Abstract Cabinet: Photography, Design, Collaboration (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 9.
At the time of El Lissitzky’s departure to Berlin,
Russian Constructivism, coined by the Working Group
of Constructivists in March 1921, sought to develop
the role of the post-revolutionary artist. Rejecting
the individual, bourgeois artist, Constructivism
aimed to “serve the new communist collective by
fusing the formal experience gained from making
abstract constructions in three dimensions with
the ideology of Marxism and the constraints of
industrial production.”5 Constructivism attempted
to shift towards the ‘real’ of the Socialist project “by
eradicating marks of individual authorship – and
hence, they would come to believe, subjectivity –
from the work of art.”6 Through authorial erasure,
Constructivism located its works in the material
structures of construction, faktura, and tektonika,
defining construction as organization, faktura as the
material workings of a surface, and tektonika, the most
tenuously defined, as the organic use or function of
material form, based in its geological not construction
definition.7 The movement’s call for non-objectivity
sited its roots in their Russian Formalist predecessors,
namely Viktor Shklovsky.
Viktor Shklovsky’s Russian Formalism focused on the
material conditions of the artwork itself – its method,
technique and construction – “announcing a break”
from all other context.8 His theory of defamiliarization,
emerging in 1917 in his manifesto, “Art as Technique,”
challenged the habitualization of perception through
a procedure of denaturing, as a ‘break.’9 Shklovsky
declared,
5 Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1983), 3.
6 Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in
Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 8,10.
7 Gough, The Artist as Producer, 72.
8 Lee T. Lemon, introduction to “Art as Technique” by Viktor
Shklovsky (1917), in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 3.
9 Later published in 1925 as his first chapter in Theory of Prose.
The purpose of art is to impart the
sensation of things as they are perceived
and not as they are known. The technique
of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’
to make forms difficult, to increase
the difficulty and length of perception
because the process of perception is
an aesthetic end in itself and must be
prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing
the artfulness of an object: the object is not
important.10
The process of defamiliarization, as a literary
technique of Tolstoy’s, “deautomatized
perception” by lengthening and intensifying its
process – by making familiar objects unfamiliar.11
This attenuated state of defamiliarization,
Shklovsky believed, would produce an enlightened
consciousness. His valorization of perception
located art’s purpose, rousing the Constructivist
movement towards the space of non-objectivity.
“Formalist concepts: of devices laid bare, the
exposure of the process of making being the true
aim of perception, and the interdependence of
criticism and writing, i.e. of analysis and synthesis.
These became the essence of Constructivism.”12
Shklovsky’s charge to make perception
palpable informed the Constructivist project
of reconstructing artwork into a set of formal
elements to create anew – both its Russian and
International groups as well as the figure at the in
between, El Lissitzky.
In Berlin, Lissitzky attempted to foster
the bridging of cultures, bringing Russian
Constructivism to Western Europe as well as the
movements in Europe to Russia. But by this time,
Constructivism in Russia was already sectioned
10 Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” (1917), in Russian
Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, trans Lee T. Lemon & Marion
J. Reis (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,
1965), 12.
11 Ibid, 22.
12 Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of Art,
Architecture and the City (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 99.
WRITTEN WORK
into at least two groups.13 One faction focused on a
constructivism of laboratory works, as seen in the
OBMOKhU (Society of Young Artists) exhibition
of May-June 1921, and the other on art as a mode of
production itself. Moving between the two, Lissitzky’s
lineage of UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art) and
Kazimir Malevich prompted his spawning of the
International Faction of Constructivists group, which
became known as International Constructivism.14
Quickly absorbed into the “highly politicized art
world” in Berlin, which included figures like Viktor
Shkolvsky, Lissitzky began the periodical, VeshchGegenstand-Objet, in 1922 with Ilya Ehrenburg, a Soviet
writer living in Berlin.15 Written in Russian, German
and French, the periodical endorsed internationalism
in art – not under the label of Constructivism,
but still employing its language. “Objet will take
the part of constructive art, whose task is not to
adorn life but to organize it” as a form of social
transformation.16 With only two issues, both in 1922,
the periodical positioned Lissitzky and the burgeoning
movement of International Constructivism separate
13 Gough, The Artist as Producer, 8.
14 As clarified in Nancy Perloff ’s “The Puzzle of El Lissitzky’s
Artistic Identity,” it is difficult to qualify Lissitzky as a
representative of purely Russian or International Constructivism,
though this paper situates his work on the side of International
Constructivism, which Christina Lodder supports in “El
Lissitzky and the Export of Constructivism.” Christina Lodder
explicates that the association of UNOVIS and Suprematism
with constructivism emerged through Lissitzky’s own redefinition
of the term. Therefore, this paper takes the position that his
project in International Constructivism came to differ from the
movement’s overarching project, even with his co-founding of
the movement. Christina Lodder, “El Lissitzky and the Export of
Constructivism,” in Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow,
ed. Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed (Los Angeles: Getty Research
Institute, 2003), 37.
15 Éva Forgács, “Definitive Space: The Many Utopias of El
Lissitzky’s Proun Room,” in Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin,
Moscow, ed. Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed (Los Angeles: Getty
Research Institute, 2003), 61.
16 El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg, “The blockade of Russia
moves towards its end,” (1922) in El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts,
ed.Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers(Greenwich,Conn: New York Graphic
Society, 1968), 340
from his Russian Constructivist counterparts. His
International Constructivism promoted “art as a
symbolic, ideological vehicle with which to assist in the
transformation of consciousness both in communist
Russia and in the capitalist West.”17 Taking part in
other publications, like G: Material zur elementaren
Gestaltung with founder, Hans Richter, and ABC
Beiträge zum Bauen with Mart Stam and others, Lissitzky
procured a place for himself within International
Constructivism.
In the first issue of Veshch-Gegenstand-Objet, no. 1-2
in March-April of 1922, El Lissitzky, under the
pseudonym “Ulen,” documented “a crucial moment in
the Productivist vs. Laboratory Work vs. Constructivist
polemics of the day.”18 This article, titled “The
Exhibitions in Russia” (fig.1), reviewed the highpoints
in Russian art between 1910 and 1922 and among
them, the OBMOKhU Exhibition of 1921 in Moscow.
The shock of the pure and dynamic geometry
professed in this exhibition pulled the artwork off
of the wall and into the space of the gallery. “The
[artwork’s] pedestal, as such, was eliminated; the
construction and its vestigial base were now an
inseparable entity.”19 These spatial constructions
defamiliarized the art object through its skeletal
formation and the loss of the pedestal, reactivating
form and challenging its ground. Lissitzky, questioning
OBMOKhU members’ emphasis on machinic
technology, saw the unified ground of Constructivism
in “the common wish to break the barriers.”20
Interrupting the dissociation of habitualized life,
these new forms provided a new mode of thinking to
“proceed afresh through life.”21
17 Lodder, “El Lissitzky and the Export of Constructivism,” 30.
18 Kestutis Paul Zygas, “Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet: Commentary,
Bibliography, and Translations,” Oppositions 5 (Summer 1976), 116.
19 Ibid, 116.
20 Ulen (a pseudonym), “The Exhibitions in Russia,” Oppositions 5,
trans. Kestutis Paul Zygas (Summer 1976), 125.
21 Ibid, 127.
The term Proun emerged in 1919, while teaching and
working with Malevich at the Vitebsk Popular Art
Institute. Malevich’s Suprematism, originating in 1915,
activated Lissitzky, propelling him away from the
figurative and towards the non-objective movement
of Suprematism. Lissitzky’s “Beat the Whites with the
Red Wedge” (fig.2) poster in 1919 constructed the paper
space of Suprematism in which pure geometric forms can
exist, commencing his rejection of the mimetic. Through his
Proun studies, Lissitzky moved away from Malevich’s
theories, opting for an art more located in spatial
and social concerns of Constructivism than the pure
two-dimensionality of Suprematism. Spatial elements
of shifting axes and manifold perspectives lifted the
two-dimensional plane of Suprematism into the third
dimension of his Prouns. Deepening the paper space
of his Prouns, Lissitzky created “an architectural space
in which the viewer moves and circles, peering above
and investigating from below.”24 He continued to
further these works for seven year.
Figure 1: Ulen (El Lissitzky). “The Exhibitions in Russia,” Veshch/
Gegenstand/Objet “ no.1-2 (March-April 1922) 19. Research Library, The
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Proun as Conception of Utopia: “The Mixing of the
Modes”22
The position of ‘ambassador’ in International
Constructivism permitted and encouraged
Lissitzky’s own creative project of working
between multiple mediums. This movement between
opened a space for processing varied conditions;
his art, like his International Constructivism, relied
on this position of the in-between. Introducing
this desired liminality that would continue to be
seen throughout his career, his Proun work became
the space of his utopia, as “interchange stations
between painting and architecture.”23
22 Peter Nisbet, “El Lissitzky in the Proun Years: A Study
of his Work and Thought, 1919-1927,” (PhD diss., Yale
University, 1995), 295.
23 This is the only definition Lissitzky ever gives these
WRITTEN WORK
As a project in Shklovsky’s defamiliarization, Lissitzky’s
Prouns force the viewer into a constant state of
reorientation. The esoteric term of Proun dislodged
his art practice from affixing to any existing
definition or art movement. “The invention of a
new, non-referential concept” was symbolic of his
“new, non-referential art,” which stood liberated
from qualification as one meaning, one medium, or
one movement.25 His undefined neologism, today
understood as a contraction of ‘Proekt Unovisa’ (Project
by a UNOVIS) or ‘Proekt Utverzhdenya novogo’ (Project
for the Affirmation of the New), proclaimed an art,
between painting and architecture, of the new. The
autonomy of his Proun concept configured a new
language of form, isolated and in response to the
avant-garde milieu.
works. El Lissitzky and Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, Selections from
“Life Letters Texts,” in El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society,
1968), 35.
24 Nancy Perloff et al., Monuments of the Future: Designs by El
Lissitzky (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998), 3.
25 Nisbet, “El Lissitzky in the Proun Years,” 35.
Figure 2: “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919) - lithograph, 58.4cm x
48.3cm
Stedelijk Van Abbe-Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Figure 3: left: “Proun Inv. 91” (1924-25) - ink, watercolor, and collage,
64.6cm x 49.7cm, Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art. Shown in
comparison to right: “Proun 99” (1923) - oil on wood, 129.4cm x 99cm, Yale
University Art Gallery
Completed in 1924-5 near the end of his Proun
studies, “Proun Inv. 91” can be read as a paradigm
of Lissitzky’s subversion of referentiality in relation
to his problematization of architectural space
(fig.3). The pure geometry of the square, registering
its Suprematist origin, becomes complicated in
its ‘rotation’ in the X, Y & Z axes. Exposing the
operation of rotation imposed on the two-dimensional
form, Lissitzky produces a dynamic geometry that
fluctuates between protrusion and recession. In
addition to this oscillation both toward and away
from the viewer, the cube hovers above the
ground, shown as a Cartesian grid in perspective.
“The principle cubic form appears weightlessly
suspended, as if sustained by its own rotation
in space.”26 Its only connection to the ground
is two curved lines, like the “curve[d lines] of
the aeroplane,” joining at the ground in a pin
connection and opening up to the cubic form to
prolong its rotation.27 The constructed space of
this Proun produces a “tension of floating forms
which seem to be surging forward.”28 And as
Lissitzky declared in his “Proun” lecture, “while we
turn, we raises ourselves into space.”29 Lissitzky’s
Prouns challenge both space and the optical
perception of space, unanchoring perception from
Euclidean space and lifting the viewer into the
clouds of imagined space.
His Proun studies lay the foundation for the
Wolkenbügel project as a “halt on the way to the
construction of new form” and space.30 Creating
both floating imaginary space and new formal
configurations, Lissitzky’s Prouns cultivate his
utopian conception for the potential ground of
the Socialist city. As “not a world vision, but a
world reality,” these Prouns become a model of
utopia – where the elements of architectural space
– lines, planes, and volumes – are reconfigured
26 Lodder is describing “Proun 99” of 1925, a piece very
similar to “Proun Inv. 91,” except for a dark band running
down the piece’s center with semi-circles at its intersection
with the page edge. Lodder, “El Lissitzky and the Export of
Constructivism,” 33.
27 El Lissitzky, “PROUN: Not world visions, BUT – world
reality” (1920), in El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic
Society, 1968), 344.
28 El Lissitzky and Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, selections
from “Life Letters Texts,” in El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts,
ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (Greenwich, Conn.: New York
Graphic Society, 1968), 33.
29 Quote from El Lissitzky’s “Proun” lecture to INKhUK on
September 21,1921. Perloff, Monuments of the Future, 3.
30 Quote from El Lissitzky in De Stijl in mid-1922. Nisbet,
“El Lissitzky in the Proun Years,” 297.
WRITTEN WORK
in shifted rhythms to generate the new.31 Lissitzky’s
Prouns materialize the movement between these
elements, from the fluctuating Z-axis of the convexconcave three-dimensionally represented forms (fig.3)
to the X-Y axis of continual reorientation through
the viewer’s eye movement (fig.4). Undoing reality
into elements, forces and patterns reconfigures and
reorchestrates the space, forms, and motion within his
Prouns.
The Proun are architecture compositions.
But they are not groupings of planes and
volumes which stand on the ground on
foundations and pediments…They are rather:
a composition of planes and volumes seen
in space – obliquely, from above. They are
compositions with an unusually powerful
spatial effect. The impression is no longer
of something standing, but: of something
floating, resting in space. There is no ground
plan, no elevation, no top and no bottom.
The space spreads in three directions. Three
directions, at right angles to each other (as in
the work of De Stijl) – Three dimensions but
all the lines and all the planes go on into an
infinite space and it is this infinity which they
must have.32
In constructing the liberated conditions of form and
space, Lissitzky extends the three Euclidean axes into
the infinite space of the paper. His Prouns, with names
like “Town,” “Arch,” “Moscow,” “House Above the
Earth,” “System of A City Square,” conceive of a
new condition for the city – a possible new and better
world.
31 Also the name of his manifesto, written in 1920.
32 Mart Stam, “El Lissitzky’s conception of architecture” (1966),
in El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers
(Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 389.
Figure 4: “Proun 2B” (1919/1921) lithograph, 46cm x
34cm, Moscow
The Formation of the Wolkenbügel: “A Balance Between the
Tension of the Forces of the Individual Parts”33
The abstracted space of his Prouns constructed a
scaleless vision for the city, directly translating to the
urban project of the Wolkenbügel.34 Beginning at
the end of his Proun works, the Wolkenbügel project
proposed a new architectural construct for the office
or institutional building in the city. Though he was
temporarily located in Switzerland between 1923 and
1925, moving between several sanatoriums to seek
treatment for his pulmonary tuberculosis, Lissitzky
positioned this architectural design in Moscow,
the city he returned to in 1925. He analyzed the
centralized organization of the city, tracing a series
of radial streets and concentric ring boulevards. At
the intersection between the two street layouts, those
nodes with the most traffic, eight Wolkenbügels were
sited, “each punctuating the Boulevard Ring [A] – the
inner of the two roads that form a semicircle around
the Kremlin” (fig.5).35
33 Lissitzky, “PROUN: Not world visions, BUT – world reality”
(1920), 343.
34 First published in 1926 in ASNOVA Bulletin in Russia. El
Lissitzky, “A Series of Skyscrapers for Moscow: Wolkenbügel 1
(1923-25),” Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of Art, Architecture and the
City, ed. Catherine Cooke (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 198.
35 Maria Gough, “El Lissitzky: Architecture of Everyday Life,”
in Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life, ed. Matthew S. Witkovsky
(Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), 76.
Figure 5: Moscow: City center
with Wolkenbügels around the
inner ring road, Boulevard A.
Figure 6: Typical Perspective of Wolkenbügel along Boulevard (1924-25)
- photomontage (retouched) Russian State Archive for Literature and Art,
Moscow. Cat. 36
Nikitskaia Square, at the intersection between
Bolshaia Nikitsakaia Street, Nikitskii Boulevard
and Tverskoi Boulevard intersect, becomes the
site of the designed, typical Wolkenbügel (fig.6).
Recycling the German word for skyscraper,
‘Wolkenkratzer,’ which can also be translated
as “cloud-scraper,” the word and form of the
Wolkenbügel shifts this architectural typology and
literally translates to “cloud hanger” or “skyhook.”
Lifted a hundred feet above the ground of the city,
the Wolkenbügel rests on three large pylons, which
hold all its structural and infrastructural support
(fig.7). Its horizontal shape registers itself as a
ground, implying its former relation to the existing
ground of the city and its resulting emergence.
Located at these urban junctions, the proposed
structure acts as both a gateway and a lifted knot.
As a portal, the Wolkenbügels serve as thresholds
WRITTEN WORK
between the inner city and its growing surroundings.
Their locations also anticipate the future sites of
the metro stations later built in the city, celebrating
new forms of transportation for the growth of
Moscow. This is further reinforced in the design of
the building’s structure and infrastructure. Its three
structural pylons embed into the ground – one
connecting to the future subway station, and the other
two situated near streetcar stops.
As a knot of multiple branching legs, the Wolkenbügel
mirrors the intersections of infrastructure below. The
parts of the city – elements, forces, and movements
– come together in a new arrangement of form –
“not using the newly introduced forms (the square,
for example) but the forces which had been liberated
for the building of the new body.”36 Similarly to
“Proun Inv. 91,” his Wolkenbügel design deforms the
completeness of the square by assembling the lines,
planes and volumes of architectural form into traces
of movement and forces.
No self-contained, individual bodies, but
relations and proportions. The unconfined
bodies which originate from movement, from
communication and in communication. New
constructions. Taking into consideration the
fifth view (from above).37
This ‘fifth view,’ “as the most significant urban
perspective,” unifies the operations and elements
of the city into one legible ‘body.’38 He employs this
bird’s-eye, axonometric view from above in “Proun
to Wolkenbügel” (fig.8) to explain the dynamic
assemblage of the design. Tracing this formal
configuration in his Prouns, explicitly in his “Proun
88” (fig.9), and his letterhead design (fig.10), the
Wolkenbügel project gathers his study of movement
and relational conditions into one gestural form.
36 El Lissitzky, “Architecture in the USSR” (1925), in El Lissitzky;
Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (Greenwich, CT:
New York Graphic Society, 1968), 368.
37 Ibid, 368.
38 Peter Lynch, “An Imaginary Reconstruction of the Sky Over
Moscow,” 32 Beijing/New York. 5/6 (Winter 2005): 25.
Figure 8: “Proun to
Figure 9: “Proun 88” (1923) - collage, 49.9cm x
Wolkenbügel” (1924-25) 64.7cm, The State Gallery, Halle
- black paper with glossy
montage of colored paper,
ink, brush, pen, print,
22.8cm x 15.5cm. The
State Tretyakov Gallery
Figure 10: Letterhead
Design - Letter to Sophie
Küppers 2 March 1923
Private Property of Jen
Lissitzky
In representing the unified form of the building as
viewed from above, Lissitzky each time rotates the
form’s orientation on the page. Drawn together,
“Proun to Wolkenbügel” and “Plan with Folded
Facades of Wolkenbügel in Nikitskaia Square” (fig.11)
hint to its urban rotation around the Boulevard Ring
A of Moscow while also challenging the stability of
the object and its viewership, like the rotating of the
painted canvas. In shifting its orientations, Lissitzky
unanchors the Wolkenbügel from the city below,
recalling once again “Proun Inv. 91” with the rotated
square’s almost absent pin connection to the surface
of the ground.
Taking a closer look at the “Plan with Folded Facades
of Wolkenbügel in Nikitskaia Square” (fig.11),
Lissitzky projects the building’s four elevations, rotated
around the perimeter of the plan. “Everything [that
was] not the monument itself [was] masked out.”39
Standing on its own on the site, the building folds
out onto the paper space, overlapping on itself and
blurring site conditions, plan and elevations. The
plan-cut reveals the elevated office space – a grid of
39 Lissitzky and Lissitzky-Küppers, selections from “Life Letters
Texts,” 45.
fluctuate between void and mass, structural or
infrastructural definition, and glass or solid material.
This line work in his sketch perspectives, elevations
and sections (fig.13-19) abstract the building’s
definition, shaping the formal qualities of the
architecture, not its parameters. As he expresses in
his article in the 1926 ASNOVA Bulletin, which he
co-published and designed, on the advantages of this
design, “the force of the aesthetic effect is basically
determined by quality, not quantity.”41
Figure 11: “Plan with Folded Facades of Wolkenbügel in Nikitskaia
Square” (1924-25) - cardboard, with ink, pencil and collage, Published in
ASNOVA Bulletin in Moscow in 1926
columns and three elevator shafts, which register
the three pylons below. As Lissitzky explicated
in Russia: An Architecture of World Revolution, the
interior layout of the building draws from the
infrastructural conditions of the urban analysis.
This plan and the plan shown in Fig.12, remain the
only illustrations of Lissitsky’s conception of the
interior. All other drawings drawn by Lissitzky –
plans, elevations, axonometries, and perspectives –
materialize the Wolkenbügel as a form not a space.
“The resulting external building volume” disavows
the possibility of inhabitation, forcing the viewer
to hover and orbit around the building without
ever entering.40
Lissitzky’s line work, in his non-collage
representations, reinforces this desire to objectify
the architectural space of the Wolkenbügel.
Blurring the Wolkenbügel’s form, structure,
ornamentation, and materiality, the thick lines
40 El Lissitzky, “Old Cities – New Buildings,” in Russia:
An Architecture for World Revolution (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press,
1970), 56.
WRITTEN WORK
The flexibility of the Wolkenbügel’s form persists in
its varying conceptions. The structural modeling by
Zurich engineer, Emil Roth, sheds the abstractness
of Lissitzky’s thick lines, but maintains its elasticity
in its changing design. The pylons in Roth’s drawings
(fig.20) emerge two floors above the horizontal form,
diminishing Lissitzky’s coherent diagram of planar
form atop thin supports. Similarly, Mart Stam’s
“Wolkenbügel-draft” (fig.21) structurally defines
the architecture, but changes its form significantly.
Stam modifies the branching shape into one simple
rectangular volume and adjusts the weight of the
building off the vertical pylons and onto truss-like
stands for the pylons. The design of Wolkenbügel,
thus, becomes not one form, but multiple.
This multiplicity of the Wolkenbügel is further
demonstrated in the six “basic viewpoints” of the
structure, concluding the ASNOVA article (fig.22).
“From above,” “From below,” “Towards the
Kremlin,” “Looking away from the Kremlin,” “Along
the Boulevard,” and “In the opposite direction”
diagram the shifted shapes of the architecture through
the viewer’s movement.42 As Maria Gough emphasizes
in “El Lissitzky: Architecture of Everyday Life,” “No
façade (if one may still use this term) is the same as
another.”43 These six assemblages of views illustrate a
dynamic form in constant transformation, while also
providing “an absolutely clear orientation in the city
41 Lissitzky, “A Series of Skyscrapers for Moscow: Wolkenbügel 1
(1923-1925),” 198.
42 Ibid, 198.
43 Gough, “El Lissitzky: Architecture of Everyday Life,” 73.
by means of these buildings.”44
The Wolkenbügel’s many representations configure a
new form of architecture that converges the elements,
forces and movements of its urban condition.
Deriving from the formal and spatial experimentations
in his Prouns, this new urban typology proposes a
revised interaction with the street edge and a “new
situation in land ownership…The new concept of
the open street, or of the city as the expression of a
relationship of new associations as a result of which
mass and space may be organized in a different way
– even in the old parts of the city,” becomes the
impetus for Lissitzky’s design of the Wolkenbügel.45
Responding “to the demands of the new times
within the context of the old Moscow urban fabric,”
Lissitzky constructs the Wolkenbügel as an assemblage
of divergent conditions.46
Situating the Wolkenbügel: Challenging the Ground, the
Skyscraper, and the City
But now a fresh wind arose in the West. The
soil of life has been furrowed by revolution.
In place of the eight wonders of the ancient
world we have a new wonder – the modern
city.47
The design of the Wolkenbügel, as previously
introduced, thus becomes an architecture of response
– to the ground, to the skyscraper, and to the city.
As both a device and result of defamiliarization, the
Wolkenbügel, in its hovered, abstracted, rotated,
inaccessible, and flexible form, functions as a critique.
The loss of the foundation, as a kind of platform
for identification or threshold between shifted
experiences, isolates the building from the familiar
44 Lissitzky, “A Series of Skyscrapers for Moscow: Wolkenbügel 1
(1923-1925),” 198.
45 El Lissitzky, “Old Cities – New Buildings,” 52.
46 Ibid, 56.
47 El Lissitzky, “The Catastrophe of Architecture” (1921), in
El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers
(Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 366.
ground of the city below. Without a base, the
Wolkenbügel pulls the urban dweller into the
horizontal form of the building, which becomes
the new ground. Countering the skyscraper’s
grounded form, the Wolkenbügel’s lifted form
produces a momentary break from the chaos of
the city below. In occupying this space of the
rupture, the inhabitant can reflect on the city from
above. This ‘fifth view’ from above attenuates
perception, allowing one to experience the city
anew, and ultimately, themselves.
The Wolkenbügel’s critique of the ground is
figured in its overall edifice. The foundation for
architectural form in history was primary to any
construction. The block-form villas of Palladio,
like his ancestors of the Greek Acropolis and
the Egyptian pyramid, necessitated a “colossal
foundation.”48 The advent of the propeller and the
airship, as Lissitzky rightfully detected, permitted
a floating architecture, one lightly pinned to
the earth, like the Nauen tower described in
“Wheel-Propeller and what follows.” “In an age
when all the foundations of the old society have
been destroyed and the whole world is being
born anew,” the Wolkenbügel’s removal of its
base clears the ground of the old city for a new
urban condition.49 Challenging the need for an
architectural foundation, the Wolkenbügel stands
above the ground on three pylons (fig.23), which
insert themselves further into the city’s earth. Its
“deeper foundations” demonstrate a new ground
for architecture in the city.50
The urban form of the Wolkenbügel serves as a
“counter-revolution” to the capitalist structure of
the skyscraper.51 In Europe as well as in Russia,
“‘Modernity’ meant only one thing: the form and
48 Lissitzky, “Wheel – Propeller and what follows” (1923), in
El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers
(Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 345.
49 Lissitzky, “The Catastrophe of Architecture” (1921), 365.
50 Lissitzky, “Architecture in the USSR” (1925), 368.
51 Lissitzky, “The Catastrophe of Architecture” (1921), 366.
WRITTEN WORK
drama of the skyscraper.”52 The Modern skyscraper
embodied the American capitalist system – “ultraperfect, rational, utilitarian, universal,” extravagant,
and individualistic.53 Taking the pyramidal structure
to its extreme, the skyscraper, like the Eiffel Tower,
was constructed of piled-high material, looming over
the historic city and its “sea of houses.”54 Responding
to this vertical form of capitalism, the Wolkenbügel,
as a horizontal skyscraper, requires its inhabitant to
traverse laterally through its architecture. Its removed
foundation produces an elevated and horizontal form
for circulation. “Everything delivered to the building
by horizontal traffic is subsequently transported
vertically by elevator and then redistributed in a
horizontal direction.”55 Horizontal movement is
delineated from vertical movement, the former
considered ‘useful’ and the latter ‘necessary.’ The
urban dweller moves from the chaos of the city,
directly from its transportation infrastructure, up to
the lifted and open ground of the Wolkenbügel.
a change and an acknowledgement of its society’s
modernization. Mediating between the dense, old city
of Moscow and a budding Modernity for “the new
society’s needs,” the Wolkenbügel grows within this
dialectical tension.57 The second pair of ‘contrasts’
materializes in the Wolkenbügel’s new urban form.
Integrating the verticality of the skyscraper with the
horizontal, Lissitzky expands the confines of his new
typology. Without interrupting the city’s traffic and
existing infrastructure, the Wolkenbügel provides a
new urban space – on the ground of the city and in its
new lifted ground.
The city consists of atrophying old parts and
growing, living new ones. We want to deepen this
contrast.
In a dialectical equilibrium, the Wolkenbügel addresses
the problematic of the ground, the skyscraper and the
city in modernizing Socialist Moscow. The Russian
Constructivist’s call for tektonika, “where it is used to
describe volcanic eruptions spewing forth from the
earth’s core,” reappears in the shifting plates of the
Wolkenbügel’s ground.58 At these tectonic rifts, where
flows of traffic and multiple urban scales collide,
the structure of the Wolkenbügel emerges from
its urban essence to support critique. Challenging
the foundation in architectural form, the American
capitalist skyscraper, and the contrasting medieval
and modernizing city, the Wolkenbügel manifests its
tectonic roots in Constructivism in its dynamic and yet
structured formation. In its response, the architecture
shapes an urban potential, grounded in the framework
of reality.
The actual building drives its spatial equilibrium
from contrasting vertical and horizontal tensions.56
Conclusion: The liminal space of utopia and reality
The Wolkenbügel, thus, becomes an architecture in
response to the city. In his ASNOVA article, Lissitzky
states,
I have proceeded from an equilibrium between
two pairs of contrasts:
The first pair of ‘contrasts’ locates a problematic
in the historic city. No longer satisfying the needs
of its dwellers, the medieval urban fabric requires
52 Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde, 191.
53 Lissitzky, “’Americanism in European Architecture” (1925),
in El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers
(Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 369.
54 Stam, “El Lissitzky’s conception of architecture” (1966), 390.
55 Lissitzky, “Old Cities – New Buildings,” 56.
56 Lissitzky, “A Series of Skyscrapers for Moscow: Wolkenbügel 1
(1923-1925),” 198.
The Wolkenbügel literalizes Lissitzky’s utopian
desire to leave the ground, and thus to liberate
architecture from the Earth’s gravitational
pull, yet it does so in order to engage with
a concrete problem of everyday life in the
urban environment.59
57 Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde, 191.
58 Quote from Aleksei Gan, “O programme i plane rabot Gruppy
konstruktivistov,” 99-100. Gough, The Artist as Producer, 72.
59 Gough, “El Lissitzky: Architecture of Everyday Life,” 73.
In one gesture, the architecture of the
Wolkenbügel rises from the foundation of the
historic city and hovers in the clouds as a form
of utopia. Etymologically defined as both “nonplace” (ou-topos) and “happy place” (eu-topos),
utopia exists throughout history as an imagined
and potential reality, in critique of its current one.
As “a ghost that infuses everyday reality with other
possible worlds, rather than some otherworldly
dream,” the utopia of the Wolkenbügel puts forth
a new vision of reality within an existing reality.60
Being a project of the in-between, the
Wolkenbügel corresponds to Lissitzky’s
liminal position. Situated between Russian
and International Constructivism, Lissitzky
constructed his own International Constructivism
in Veshch, G, and ABC. His Proun works
cultivated a paper-space for formal and spatial
experimentations and the conception of his
utopic space. Floating in the infinite space of
these works, Lissitzky produced the Wolkenbügel
for his home country of Russia, while located in
remote Swiss sanatoriums. In a perpetual state of
partial, but not total, isolation, Lissitzky and his
Wolkenbügel become a manifestation of liminality.
This liminal space of the Wolkenbügel constructs
a utopian realism for the awakened consciousness of
the urban dweller. Through the defamiliarization of its
form (and name), the Wolkenbügel pushes beyond
reality and utopia into the dialectical space between.
“It is utopian not because it dreams impossible
dreams, but because it recognizes ‘reality’ itself as –
precisely – an all-too-real dream.”62 Occupying new
habits of perception and new spatial conditions, the
Wolkenbügel breaks and responds to the manifold
contexts of its conception.
62 Martin, “Critical of What?,” 5.
Suspended above the city, the Wolkenbügel’s
siting preserves both its accessibility and its
isolation. As Lissitzky had asserted in “The
Catastrophe of Architecture,” “We cannot
afford a romantic escape from the present
day.”61 Impossible to attain total freedom from
the ground and the city, the Wolkenbügel does
not attempt to fly, but simply to hover above.
The Wolkenbügel’s representation furthers its
impossibility, exteriorizing its form and restricting
visual inhabitation of its interior. Maintaining the
building’s realism and distance, Lissitzky locates
the Wolkenbügel close enough to relate to the city,
and yet far enough to read as a critique.
60 Martin, “Critical of What?,” 5.
61 Lissitzky, “Architecture in the USSR” (1925), 366.
WRITTEN WORK
Figure 22: “A Series of Skyscrapers for Moscow: Wolkenbügel 1 (1923-25)” - by
El Lissitzky in ASNOVA Bulletin, Moscow 1926
Emil Roth Estate, gta-Institute, ETH Zurich
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