1965. Rem Koolhaas in the Soviet Union

Abstract

The article examines the formative interrelations between the phenomenology of impressions and the formation of a projective approach to architecture based on the fact of the journey of the Dutch architect R. Koolhaas to the Soviet Union (1965). The conducted research involves a textual analysis of the facts in the architect’s biography, which directionally reveals the specifics of the influence of the “phenomenology of impressions”. The article clarifies the significance of the architect’s visit to the USSR, and establishes the formation features of a design approach to architecture. For the Dutch architect, the avant-garde architecture of the Soviet Russia and, in particular, constructivism, represented the basis and the vector of influences that determined the formation of the professional value orientations reflected in the specific concept of the purified formal aesthetics of architecture. The author of the article determines the factors in the formation of R. Koolhaas’ approach related to the experience of conceptual projects of V. Tatlin, K. Malevich, M. Ginzburg, and I. Leonidov. The cited sources (interviews, statements, and lectures) document the pragmatics of the experience of the Soviet constructivist architecture in the context of modern conceptual reality of the deconstruction movement and global architecture. Conclusions are drawn about the relationship between the phenomenon of the Soviet avant-garde architecture (genetic continuity, reception of ideas) and the modern architecture of the deconstruction movement.

Keywords

• text in architecture
• rem koolhaas
• moisei ginzburg
• ivan leonidov
• peter eisenman
• oswald mathias ungers
• constructivism
• deconstruction
• projective approach