El Lissitzky’s “Cloud-Iron” proposal from 1925; All photos: University of Western Australia ALVA

Spotted on Ross Wolfe’s invaluable, voracious, and always excellent blog are these brilliant architecture models of Soviet Constructivist architecture made by 5th year students at the University of Western Australia ALVA. The students were asked to select a project and produce a model and accompanying analysis of the design’s theoretical basis. Many of the projects are easily identifiable, from Lissitzky’s daring “Cloud-Iron” to Chernikov’s electric fantasies and Leonidov’s tensile compositions. Others, like Melnikov’s “Monument to Christopher Columbus” are harder to pin down. Either way, the sheer diversity of the maquettes on display are testament to the period’s explosive creative vision, which sparked an entirely new (and politicized) form of architectural production that has yet to be matched.

Click through for more photos.

Konstantin Melnikov’s Soviet Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition of Decorative Arts 1925

Konstantin Melnikov, Melnikov House in Moscow, 1929

Model based on one of Yakov Chernikov’s ’101 Architectural Fantasies’ (1925-1933)

Konstantin Melnikov, Monument of Christopher Columbus (for Santo Domingo), 1929

Model of Ivan Leonidov’s Palace of Culture, 1930

Ivan Leonidov, Lenin Institute, 1927

Model based on one of Yakov Chernikov’s ’101 Architectural Fantasies’ (1925-1933)

Find more (a lot more) at The Charnel House, which I really can’t recommend enough.

by Samuel Medina

posted in Uncategorized

tagged ALVA, architectural models, Constructivism, El Lissitzky, Leonidov, Ross Wolfe, The Charnel House, University of Western Australia

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