Constructivism and Futurism

In 1909 Philippo Thomaso Marinetti published his "Manifest of the Futurism" in Italy. This was the birth of the futurism. These architects wanted to provoke a reaction in architecture to the fast social and economic changes of their time. Like the deconstruction at the end of our century the futurists wanted to break with traditions at it's beginning. The futurism had the same fate as any other protest movement in architecture. It was rather an intellectual movement dominated by books and manifests than a popular construction style. This style can be seen as a parallel to the expressionist movements in painting. The idea was to take distance from old norms and habits and to focus on the concept of a work of art, rather than on it's sensitive effect on the observer. Unfortunately the architects of that period shared the sad fate of their painting and writing colleagues. A lot of them entered in World War I convinced that this war was going to break up the old structures they hated so much. Many of them never came back and never had the chance to realize their works.
While Russia was undergoing the October Revolution, the mentality changed from a conservative agricultural backwardness to an absolute belief in the future and its manifestations like heavy industry etc. It was clear that this "new" culture would adopt the Futurism and chang it to constructive architecture. Buildings of constructive architects looked like a blend between several, very modern, architectural movements like the high-tech or the deconstruction. Examples for this style are the monument for the 3rd "Internationale" from Tatlin, a gigantic tribune reaching far over the crowd, which was planed for Lenin by El Lissitzkys, 1920-24, or the "Cloudhanger" next to the Nikitskije-Arc in Moskau from the same architect. None of them has ever been realized.
The plans became more and more utopic going far beyond the technical and financial possibility of that time. One of the rare accomplished works is the Lenin-Mausoleum 1930

by A. Ssutschussew in Moskau. Due to their radical and megalomaniac ideas, the constructivists sympathized a lot with communistic and fascist groups. Only during the ascension of Stalin did they began to rebel against the new social and political immobility. The choice of a non-constructive concept for the Sowjet palace in the mid 30's was the end of this movement. Even though the constructivists did not leave many works, they pointed out at a new direction in architecture, at new ideas which are still modern nowadays.

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