Spatial Revolution

Christina E. Crawford

Open Access Published by Cornell University Press 2022

Spatial Revolution

Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union

Christina E. Crawford

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501759215

Overview
Contents

About this book

Spatial Revolution is the first comparative parallel study of Soviet architecture and planning to create a narrative arc across a vast geography. The narrative binds together three critical industrial-residential projects in Baku, Magnitogorsk, and Kharkiv, built during the first fifteen years of the Soviet project and followed attentively worldwide after the collapse of capitalist markets in 1929.

Among the revelations provided by Christina E. Crawford is the degree to which outside experts participated in the construction of the Soviet industrial complex, while facing difficult topographies, near-impossible deadlines, and inchoate theories of socialist space-making.

Crawford describes how early Soviet architecture and planning activities were kinetic and negotiated and how questions about the proper distribution of people and industry under socialism were posed and refined through the construction of brick and mortar, steel and concrete projects, living laboratories that tested alternative spatial models. As a result, Spatial Revolution answers important questions of how the first Soviet industrialization drive was a catalyst for construction of thousands of new enterprises on remote sites across the Eurasian continent, an effort that spread to far-flung sites in other socialist states—and capitalist welfare states—for decades to follow.

Author information

Christina E. Crawford is an architectural and urban historian, a licensed architect, and Assistant Professor of Architectural History at Emory University.

Reviews

Heather DeHaan, Binghamton University, author of Stalinist City Planning:

"Christina E. Crawford presents the Soviet spatial revolution as a process rather than as a series of political ruptures, and her theoretical and terminological richness promises to reshape the fields of architecture and urban history."

Jean-Louis Cohen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University:

"Christina Crawford's brilliant, path-breaking book fundamentally renews the knowledge of the interrelations between avant-garde strategies and urban developments in the first fifteen years of the Bolshevik power. Shedding light on the designs of the "Red" experts of various extraction active in three cities, she has mapped the political networks and the professional cultures at play and unveiled how concretely planned—or not—the socialist economy was."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Glossary Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Note on Transliteration and Translation Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I. Oil City: Baku, 1920–1927
1. Socialism Means Housing Open Access Download PDF	17
2. From Garden Cities to Urban Superblocks Open Access Download PDF	49
3. A Plan for the Proletariat Open Access Download PDF	83
Part II. Steel City: Magnitogorsk, 1929–1932
4. The Great Debate Open Access Download PDF	121
5. Competition and Visions Open Access Download PDF	150
6. Frankfurt on the Steppe Open Access Download PDF	186
Part III. Machine City: Kharkiv, 1930–1932
7. From Tractors to Territory Open Access Download PDF	219
8. Socialist Urbanization through Standardization Open Access Download PDF	248
Conclusion Open Access Download PDF	285
Appendix: Magnitogorsk Competition Brief Open Access Download PDF	301
Notes Open Access Download PDF	311
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	361
Index Open Access Download PDF	377

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 424
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 40
- Tables: 2
- Images: 70
- Line drawings: 21
- Other: 70 b&w halftones, 21 b&w line drawings, 40 maps, 2 charts, 28 color plates
Keywords: early Soviet architecture and urbanism; transnational architectural exchange; architecture of the Soviet first Five-Year Plan; socialist space; Baku; Magnitogorsk; Kharkiv

eBook

Published: January 31, 2022
ISBN: 9781501759215