RUSSIA: AN ARCHITECTURE FOR WORLD REVOLUTION
El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky: RUSSIA: AN ARCHITECTURE FOR WORLD REVOLUTION. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970. First edition. Octavo. Tan cloth titled in black. Printed dust jacket. 240 pp. 60 black and white plates. 39 text illustrations. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Remarkably well-preserved: a fine copy in a fine dust jacket.
5.75 x 8.25 hardcover book, with 240 pages with 39 illustrations and 62 black and white plates. This edition was translated and edited by Eric Dluhosch and contains the revised 1965 edition of the 1930 German original. Lissitzky's book is a classic in architectural and planning theory, as well as an important document in social and intellectual history. It contains an appendix of excerpted writings by his contemporaries—M. J. Ginzburg, P. Martell, Bruno Taut, Ernst May, M. Ilyin, Wilm Stein, Martin Wagner, Hannes Meyer, Hans Schmidt, and others—all of whom illuminate the architecture and planning of Europe and Russia during the 1920s.
Includes work samples from El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Taitlin, Ginsburg and many other Russian architects from the Constructivist era. Highly recommended for both scholars and laymen.
From the Book: "The birth of the machine signaled the onset of the technological revolution, which destroyed the handicrafts and played an essential role in the rise of large-scale modern manufacture. In the course of a single century new production systems transformed all aspects of life.
"October 1917 marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution and the opening of a new page in the history of human society. It is to this social revolution, rather than to the technological revolution, that the basic elements of Russian architecture are tied.
"The individual, private client has now been replaced by the so-called “social commission.” Emphasis has shifted from the intimate and the individual to the public and the universal. Today, architecture must be judged according to different criteria. The whole field of architecture has now become a problem. And what is more, in Russia this problem had to be faced by a country exhausted by war and hunger and tightly sealed off from the rest of the world. These new architectural problems could not be solved until a foundation had been provided by the restoration of order in the economy. Prewar production levels were quickly achieved. For our present needs, however, such prewar levels and rates of production are inadequate. To be effective and to fulfill our mission in the world, we must strive to accelerate the rate of growth, to force the pace. This can only be accomplished if we do not limit ourselves to what we have inherited but, instead, completely reconstruct it. We must not only build, but rebuild. We are rebuilding industry, we are rebuilding agriculture. This restructuring of production creates a new conception of life that nurtures culture, including, of course, architecture. Our new architecture does not just attempt something that has been temporarily interrupted. On the contrary, it is poised on the threshold of the future and committed to more than mere construction. Its task is to comprehend the new conditions of life, so that by the creation of responsive building design it can actively participate in full realization of the new world. Thus the thrust of Soviet architecture is directed toward the goal of reconstruction." -- El Lissitzky, Moscow, October 1929