Architecture of the Modern Era

At the beginning of the 20th century, global art was marked by a creative race for the "universality" of artistic ideas. Artists believed that art could change the world and explore new dimensions, shifting their focus to abstract concepts such as space, time, energy and movement. This gave rise to one of the key directions in Soviet architecture — the Avant-garde.

Developing the ideas of European Cubism and Futurism, Kazimir Malevich arrived at the fundamental discovery of one of the most influential artistic and stylistic movements of the 20th century — Suprematism. Suprematism’s main rival in the search for universal principles of world-building was Constructivism — a design and architectural approach based on structural logic, engineering principles and the efficient use of materials in accordance with a building’s purpose and social function.

Constructivism was the Russian version of functionalism in design, born out of abstract art. Constructivists adopted the scientific principle of experimentation and objective methods for exploring art, the technical ethos of material economy and expediency, and the artistic drive for invention, imagination and composition.

Alongside the Avant-garde and Stalinist Empire style, one of the three principal directions in Soviet architecture became architectural Modernism — a term introduced by critics in the early 21st century to describe the period from 1955 to 1991.

Soviet Modernism, like Brutalism, is characterised by the functionality of massive forms and structures and the urban character of its buildings. Its compositional solutions likely sought to reflect the scale of progressive ideas and the anti-bourgeois principles of Soviet life.