Iofan project of the palace of the councils. The Palace of Soviets is a utopian project of the USSR. Construction after the Great Victory

We will make a small excursion around the Palace of Soviets in Moscow. The grandiose and majestic building was never destined to come true. On the Internet, there are illustrations from the sketch and design documentation of the Palace of Soviets, and the set of these illustrations is limited. The idea arose to restore one of the versions of this building in 3d, to describe the history of the Palace of Soviets and to walk around the territory of the virtual building. At the end of the post, the evolution of the winning competition project of the Palace of Soviets of Boris Iofan, starting in 1933, is given. 3D version implemented in 1934

As a tour guide, I would like to ask the visitors of the virtual exhibition a few questions:

One of the communist leaders of Soviet Russia - Sergey Kirov – in 1922 proposed to create "New palace of workers and working peasants" instead "Palaces of bankers, landowners and kings"... Two years later, Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik revolution, died. His fellow party members decided that from now on for the whole country, the one who had gone to another world "Chief Bolshevik" will become "Forever alive" ... The country began to plant the cult of Lenin. The body of the leader was placed in a mausoleum - a semblance of the royal tombs of antiquity. Monuments were erected throughout the country, even in small towns "Forever living leader"... But it was decided to raise the main monument to Lenin to a gigantic height, crowned with a statue "Ilyich" super skyscraper - new Palace of the Soviets .

This building could become the embodiment of Kirov's long-standing idea. To emphasize the idea that the new palace is being built exactly "instead" shrines of pre-revolutionary times, it was decided to demolish the largest in Russia Orthodox church Christ the Savior, erected in the 19th century in memory of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812.

The idea of ​​a new palace ran into a dull discontent of the population. Many considered the demolition of the famous church blasphemy. It took a decade and I.V. Stalin to in 1931 the unique temple was blown up and a place for "Proletarian palace" freed. By this time, Stalin had already become the sovereign dictator of the USSR. The leader wanted to see in the new buildings the embodiment of the power and greatness of the new "Red empire".

Plan of the Palace of the Soviets.

That is why, from several projects of the Palace of Soviets, Boris Iofan's project , the most consistent with the set ideological task. According to this draft, The Palace of Soviets was to become grandiose structure high 415 meters away, but intended for ceremonial meetings The large hall could accommodate 21,000 people.

Palace of the Soviets Iofan thought of it as a pyramid of powerful cylinders stacked on top of each other. Crowned the building 80-meter sculpture of V.I. Lenin, inside which they were also going to equip various rooms: for example, the library, as they say, was supposed to be placed in the index finger of a reinforced concrete leader.

The construction of the Palace of Soviets has become the largest urban planning task and was proclaimed shock, that is, the most important construction site. The construction of the building was started in the most difficult conditions. Water constantly seeped into the huge pit from the nearby Moskva River and underground streams. Nevertheless, they managed to accomplish a real feat of engineering - the foundation was made, consisting of two giant concentric concrete rings that went into the ground to a depth of more than 20 meters. The foundation rested on limestone rocks, which should have imparted unprecedented stability to the titanic weight of the Palace of the Soviets.

Foundation of the Palace of Soviets.

However, despite all the efforts, the construction was never meant to be finished ... Started The Great Patriotic War... In difficult years, metal structures were converted into anti-tank hedgehogs, and steel beams were used to rebuild destroyed bridges.

In 1953 Stalin died, and the new Soviet leadership, led by Nikita Khrushchev abandoned the pompous and expensive projects of the previous era. Above the foundation of the Palace was erected outdoor pool "Moscow" that worked even in winter, enveloping the metro area "Kropotkinskaya" (formerly "Palace of the Soviets") clouds of fog.

Let's take a small virtual tour around the Palace of Soviets in Moscow. The grandiose and majestic building was never destined to come true. On the Internet, there are illustrations from the sketch and design documentation of the Palace of Soviets, and the set of these illustrations is limited. The idea arose to restore one of the versions of this building in 3d, to describe the history of the Palace of Soviets and to walk around the territory of the virtual building. At the end of the post, the evolution of the winning competition project of the Palace of Soviets of Boris Iofan, starting in 1933, is given. The 1934 version is implemented in 3d.

A phantom story of the Palace of the Soviets
The idea of ​​constructing the Palace of Soviets will celebrate its 90th anniversary next year. In 1931, an open competition was announced for the design of the building. According to the plan, the Palace of Soviets was to personify the greatness, power and successes of the young Soviet state, to become the visible embodiment of the idea of ​​the victory of communism, a bright future for everyone. About 160 projects were submitted for the competition, both from foreign architects and, for the most part, from Soviet ones. By that time, constructivism was the dominant link in architecture. Constructivism is based on strict, laconic forms, and the building space should be as functional as possible. Not a small part of the projects for the construction of the Palace of Soviets was sustained in a constructivist spirit. But for the building-symbol, the laconic and rational form did not correspond well to the changing "proletarian aesthetics". At least that's what Joseph Stalin thought. The simplicity and skeptical design of the structures were to be replaced by pompous, richly decorated facades. Architects relying on the development of classical forms more and more often declared themselves. Boris Iofan kept himself apart from the rest of the architects. A student of the Italian architect Armando Brazini won the competition for the project of the Palace of Soviets. By the way, Brasini also took part in the competition. The influence of the teacher was great, one might even say that Italian blood should have flowed in the upcoming Palace. Following the Italian Kremlin, which became the sacred center of Russia, the significant influence of Italians in Orthodox church buildings, the time came for the architectural influence on the country of the Soviets.
In 1933, architects V. Shchuko and V. Gelfreich were involved in the work of B. Iofan. According to the revised project being prepared, the height of the Palace was supposed to be 420 meters, the building was to be crowned with a 100-meter monument to V.I. Lenin - the work of the sculptor S. Merkurov. The cubic capacity of the building would be 7,500,000 cubic meters. The large hall of the Palace was designed for 21,000 people, had a height of 100 m, the small hall was designed for 6,000 people. The high-rise part of the Palace was supposed to accommodate the Presidium, the chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and some other halls.
The construction of such a building would require the reconstruction of Volkhonka and other adjacent buildings. In other words, all historical buildings and mansions would have been demolished. The huge areas around it were supposed to be asphalted and equipped with parking for 5 thousand cars. The building of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin had to be moved 100 meters.
The construction of the Palace began at the end of the 30s on the site of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior. But the truly ambitious plan of the Bolsheviks was never destined to come true. The war has made its own adjustments. Construction was halted during the foundation-laying phase. It is interesting that during and after the war, the project of the Palace of Soviets underwent changes, Stalin's hope for the implementation of the project did not leave for a long time. The post-war devastation, the death of the leader, the exposure of the cult of Stalin, the adoption of a directive on "condemnation of decoration and architectural excesses" finally buried the idea and project of further construction. Then there were many other programs and projects, attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, to oppose the USSR and the socialist camp to the world of capital and a market economy. But there was no more such a beautiful project in architecture.
The project of the Palace of the Council of Boris Iofan played an important role in the formation and further development and flourishing of Soviet architecture of the 30s - 50s, which was called "Stalin's Empire". Formed at the junction of different cultures and styles, from classicism to post-constructivism, the talented synthesis of architecture, the eclecticism of the Soviet imperial style is a significant milestone in the architecture of the world.

The Palace of Labor and the Bolshoi Cinema - these names cannot be found on the map of the modern capital, they have been preserved only in the archives. Let's try to imagine what our city would look like if all plans were destined to come true.

Moscow is a city that has been actively built and rebuilt throughout its history. Each era brought something new to the image of the capital, sometimes trying to completely change its architectural concept. This is especially true of the Soviet period, when such styles as the famous Stalinist Empire style and constructivism appeared.

Architectural projects of that time boggle the imagination. Some of them were brought to life, but many remained in the archives. However, only on paper can you see some drawings of the pre-revolutionary period. Let's try to imagine what our city would look like if all plans were destined to come true.

Pre-revolutionary subway

The first proposals for the creation of a metro in Moscow appeared back in 1875. Then the idea arose to lay a line from the Kursk railway station through Lubyanskaya and Pushkinskaya squares to Maryina Roshcha. In 1902 A.I. Antonovich, N.I. Golinevich and N.P. Dmitriev drew up a revised project, which included the construction of the Circle Line, passing along the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val, as well as Central Station in the Alexander Garden and four radial lines. Half of these pre-revolutionary branches were planned to be built on overpasses, and half in tunnels. According to the project, the ring road was supposed to run along overpasses and earth embankments.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Sparrow Hills

This temple was going to be erected in honor of the victory of Russia in the Patriotic War of 1812. The architect Alexander Vitberg proposed to build it between the Smolensk and Kaluga roads, on the Sparrow Hills, which Alexander I poetically called "the crown of Moscow." Here are several reasons that gave weight to the proposal: this is the emperor's desire to build a temple outside the city, since in Moscow "there is not enough space required for an elegant building"; these are links to the out-of-town St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome; this is also a good geographical location - after all, the Maiden Field spread at the foot of the Sparrow Hills would allow you to see the temple from afar. And the last reason: Sparrow Hills located between the paths of the enemy who entered Moscow along the Smolensk road and retreated along the Kaluga road.

The temple was to become the tallest in the world: the height of its ground part was to be 170 meters (for comparison: the height of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is 141.5 meters). In 1823, the preparation of stone began and work began to connect the upper reaches of the Volga and the Moskva River to deliver the stone to the temple. The first experiment turned out to be successful, but it was not possible to take out large consignments, because the water in the Moscow River could not be raised to the required level.

The construction of the temple did not continue. Numerous keys on the slope of the mountains, indicating sandy soils, exclude the possibility of construction large structure not only on the slopes, but also on the top because of the danger of uneven precipitation.

The Labor Palace in Moscow is an unrealized project of 1922-1923. In the center of the capital, on the site between Tverskaya Street and the squares: Sverdlovskaya, Revolution and Okhotnoryadskaya (on the site of the current hotel "Moscow"), it was planned to build a grandiose complex.

The Palace of Labor was supposed to accommodate all the workers' organizations in Moscow, large proletarian libraries, a meeting room for several thousand people, an audience for eight thousand listeners, a museum of social knowledge, a dining room with a capacity of six thousand people, sports organizations and much more.

The exhibition of projects "Palace of Labor" opened in March 1923. This largest competition was supposed to determine in many respects which way Soviet architecture would go. The project presented by the Vesnin brothers became the first building in the constructivist style. However, its construction did not begin, and in 1935 the hotel "Moscow" appeared here.

Sukharevskaya square

In 1931, a plan for the general reconstruction of Moscow was developed. He assumed a complete change in the town-planning concept of the city. In the center, wide transport highways and high-rise buildings. To do this, they began to demolish the historical buildings. In 1933, it came to the Sukharev Tower. Famous architects tried to defend the tower. The painter and restorer Igor Grabar, academicians of architecture Ivan Fomin and Ivan Zholtovsky wrote a letter to Stalin, in which they pointed out that the decision was wrong: “Sukharev Tower,” they wrote, “is an unfading example of the great art of building, known to the whole world and equally highly valued everywhere ... We ... strongly object to the destruction of a highly talented work of art, tantamount to the destruction of a painting by Raphael. "

The authors of the letter offered to develop a project for the reconstruction of Sretenskaya Square within a month, which would allow solving the transport problem, while preserving the Sukharev Tower. The architect Fomin soon presented this project - with a circular movement across the square. There were other options - to skip transport to the west of the tower, move it to another place, arrange a tunnel for transport. All this, alas, was not destined to come true.

During the dismantling of the Sukharev Tower, one of the frames of the windows on the third floor was preserved and transferred to the Donskoy Monastery, where it was embedded in the monastery wall. The clock from the Sukhareva Tower is now installed on the Tower of the Front Gate of the Kolomenskoye estate. The foundations of the tower have also been preserved, but hidden under the modern square.

In the 1980s, the Moscow executive committee decided to restore the tower. A design competition was announced, but none of them were accepted. Nowadays, only a memorial sign in the park on the Garden Ring reminds of the existence of the Sukharev Tower.

The Palace of Soviets in Moscow was designed as a gigantic building 420 meters high, which was to be crowned with a 70 meters high statue of Lenin. Thus, the building was supposed to be the tallest in the world. A place where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior had previously stood was set aside for the construction. The project was proposed by Boris Iofan, and the work on the monument to Lenin was entrusted to Sergei Merkurov. Construction was interrupted with the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War and never resumed.

Zaryadye

In keeping with the new aesthetics, the Soviet government planned to double Red Square and central squares- to reconstruct the name of Nogin, Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov and Revolution in three years. They wanted to free the territory of Kitay-gorod from the existing small buildings, with the exception of some large structures, and instead to build several monumental buildings of national importance.

The eighth Stalinist skyscraper was supposed to be the administrative building in Zaryadye. The 32-storey skyscraper, laid on the day of Moscow's 800th anniversary, was never completed. All the erected structures were dismantled, and in 1964-1967 the hotel "Russia" was built on the remaining foundation.

Zakrestovsky overpass

The decision to open the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VDNKh) influenced the reconstruction of 1st Meshchanskaya Street and Yaroslavskoye Highway. From the 1st Meshchanskaya Yaroslavka was separated by the tracks of the October railway, through which the old overpass was thrown. Its width was so small that even tram tracks could only be laid in one line.

The first draft of the architectural solution was completed in 1935 by the architect Mikhail Zhirov. The structure was supposed to have dimensions unprecedented for Moscow: its width was 40 meters. Zhirov's project was not approved, and further work on the overpasses was entrusted to a team consisting of engineer Yuri Werner and brothers-architects Konstantin and Yuri Yakovlev. The construction started in 1936 was completed two years later.

House TASS

In 1934-1935, a competition was announced for the construction of the TASS building. It took place in three rounds, and a new location was chosen for the building - Pushkin Square... The author of one of the projects was Leonid Grinshpan, a famous architect of the post-constructivist era. However, his plans were never implemented. The existing building of the Russian Information Telegraph Agency was built in 1976 on Tverskoy Boulevard according to the design of architects Viktor Yegerev, Anatoly Shaikhet, Zoya Abramova and Gennady Sirota.

Big Academic Cinema at Teatralnaya Square

The Bolshoi Academic Cinema is a large public building, which, according to the Moscow reconstruction plan, was supposed to be built on Sverdlov Square (now Teatralnaya Square), opposite the Bolshoi Theater building. Since cinema was recognized as "the most important of the arts," the new cinema was supposed to architecturally subordinate the building of the Bolshoi Theater. The cinema should surpass the Bolshoi in size: in the theater - two thousand seats, and in the Bolshoi cinema there should have been four thousand (later, however, this figure dropped to three thousand).

The competition for the project of the Bolshoi Academic Cinema was announced in the fall of 1936, but all projects were ultimately declared unsuccessful, all the proposed buildings suffered from gigantomania, which they were just beginning to struggle with. Despite the fact that the cinema never appeared on the square, it was his project that we owe to the creation of a combined lobby for the stations “Revolution Square” and “Sverdlov Square”.

Pantheon of Glory

The Pantheon in Moscow is an unrealized project of a memorial tomb, "a monument to the eternal glory of the great people of the Soviet country", where the sarcophagi of Lenin and Stalin were to be transferred, as well as "the remains of prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state buried near the Kremlin wall."

In 1953, immediately after Stalin's death, a competition for the projects of the pantheon was announced, but its specific location was not specified. The central authorities began to receive numerous projects, many of which echoed those that appeared during the competition for the construction of the Palace of Soviets.

Monument to Chelyuskinites

The return from the Pole of the Chelyuskinites, taken off the ice by Soviet pilots (by the way, they became the first Heroes of the Soviet Union), became a national holiday. Therefore, the Moscow City Council announced a competition for the design of the monument. The monument was planned to be placed on the arrow of the Obvodny Canal (now there is a monument in honor of Peter I Zurab Tsereteli on this place).

Children's railway in the I.V. Stalin (Izmailovsky Park)

In 1932-1933, a children's railway already existed in Moscow - in the kids' campus of the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure. By the end of the 1930s, it was closed.

The construction site of the Moscow ChRW was then chosen to be the City-wide Park of Culture and Recreation named after Stalin in Izmailovo (now Izmailovsky Park). The general plan for the development of Moscow envisaged turning this park into the main recreation area for Muscovites. Near the north-western entrance, the Central Stadium of the USSR named after Stalin for 100 thousand spectators was supposed to be located. In the eastern part of the park, it was planned to open the world's largest zoo, and in the center of the park, in the floodplain of the Serebryanka River, to equip a huge pond with an area of ​​more than 110 hectares with well-groomed beaches for 10 thousand people, a yacht club and a racing boat station.

The children's railway was supposed to connect all the cultural and entertainment facilities of the park and become the main mode of transport. When creating it, it was decided to abandon the practice of designing children's roads by children or young specialists in their free time, which was established in those years. A competition was announced for the best design of a children's road and all its structures. According to its terms, the architecture of the station buildings had to be at the quality level of the Moscow metro, the structures of the Moscow-Volga canal, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition and be a vivid example of “joyful Soviet architecture”. Particular attention was paid to the variety of styles, and therefore each of the participants prepared a project not for the entire road, but only for one of the stations. The results of the architectural competition were summed up in the spring of 1940.

In 1940-1941, Moscow children's technical stations and palaces of pioneers recruited young railroad workers into circles. From the very first day, they were distributed by service (movement, traction, carriage and so on). In the spring of 1941, after completing the initial theoretical course, the guys began practical training. But since the road had not yet been built by that time, the classes were held at the enterprises of the Moscow railway junction. For example, young steam locomotives, under the guidance of experienced machinists, drove passenger trains from the Savyolovsky station.

On June 20, 1941, the final version of the children's railway project was submitted for approval. And two days later the Great Patriotic War began. After the war, several attempts were made to return to the issue of building a children's railway, but they were all unsuccessful.

What the streets we are used to look like

Ambitious projects for the reconstruction of the city have touched almost all the central streets and squares of our city. Look not at all the way we used to, we could Manezhnaya square, and Tverskaya, and Kursky railway station.