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Ivan Lykoshin / Irina Cheredina Sergey Chernyshev. Architect of the New Moscow 210 × 230 mm, 264 pages ca. 290 images, Softcover ISBN 978-3-86922-314-8 (en / rus) ISBN 978-3-86922-315-5 (rus / en) EUR 28,00 March 2015. DOM publishers, Berlin |
Now available at DOM publishers:
Ivan Lykoshin / Irina Cheredina
Sergey Chernyshev
Architect of the New Moscow
Sergey Chernyshev (1881 – 1963), founder of Soviet urban planning, is widely considered to be among the leading Russian architects of the twentieth century. However, outside Russia his name is at best to be found in a footnote. With Volume 34 in the Basics series, DOM publishers presents Sergey Chernyshev. Architect of the New Moscow, a monograph on this international Russian architect on whom there exists as yet little research. The name Chernyshev is first and foremost synonymous with the Master Plan of Moscow which Stalin adopted in 1935.
Already a renowned architect prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Chernyshev also enjoyed success in the young USSR with his spectacular designs. But most of all, he oversaw the development of the New Moscow – which was to become a socialist model city – as Chief Architect of Moscow and author of the first Master Plan. Planning decisions on neoclassical high-rise buildings have their origins in this plan and given their monumentality these buildings remain clearly recognisable today in the cityscape. Chernyshev’s vision of the world capital of socialism would leave its mark not only on generations of Soviet urban planners. Following 1945, Sergey Chernyshev played a decisive role in the reconstruction of cities destroyed by the war, such as Kiev, Leningrad, Warsaw or Berlin and, at the same time, he continued his creative work that was dedicated as much to innovation as tradition. Arguably his plans for Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin form his best-known work outside the Soviet Union.
Presented as a biography, the publicist Ivan Lykoshin and the architectural historian Irina Cheredina retell the life-story of Chernyshev by means of his architectural achievements, thus providing a living portrait of both the events of the day and urban planning under Stalin. Extensive historical images and many sketches and designs belonging to Chernyshev – including a number from the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow and the family archive – provide relevant insights into the architectural world of the USSR.
Through its portrayal of a protagonist, this book therefore offers a firm basis on which to build a historical record of construction. It is one of the first publications by DOM publishers within the framework of the co-operation and research programme Architects and Buildings of the Soviet Union in collaboration with the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow.
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