The “Restless Allure” of (Architectural) Form: Space and Perception between Germany, Russia, and the Soviet Union

This essay – as well as Luka Skansi, Teaching Architecture: “Space”, the Basic Course at Vchutemas, “Casabella”, ISSN 0008-7181, Mar. 2015, year 79, iss. 847, pp. 4-19, 108-111 – is the outcome of research conducted on the Schickler-Lafaille Collection at the CCA – Canadian Centre for Architecture. In the collection, we find a valuable photographic fund which documents the experimental work conducted within the VKhUTEMAS classrooms, one of the main Soviet educational institutions following WWI, and the place where 20th-century Soviet architectural culture was formed. The collected works comprise a vast selection of images depicting models and drawings produced by students of the 'Space' course taught by architect Nikolaj Ladovskij and assisted by Vladimir Krinskij and Nikolaj Dokuchaev, one based on the renowned psychoanalytical method. The course was part of the so-called Osnovno otdelenie, the preliminary course program, and was regarded a fundamental step in the educational system and a key opportunity to direct students’ attention to the more general problems of architecture, rather than demanding their immediate involvement in more specialised disciplinary tracks. The essay depicts the origins of teaching techniques in German art history and philosophy, in the so-called Munich Formalist school, where many Russian-Soviet artists and art theorists were formed before the First World War (Vladimir Favorskij, Aleksander Gabričevskij, Naum Gabo, Igor Grabar, and many others).