ne of the best known of Vkhutemas’ teacher-architects, Konstantin Melnikov, designed and built his own home and studio on a lot in central Moscow. Its two intersecting cylinders sum up Melnikov’s utopian vision of communal housing and his personal ideal of the home as castle. The structure is also a fantastic testament to efficiency and economy in use of materials in the impoverished conditions of the late 1920s.
Narkomfin building, 1930s
annes Meyer was replaced as director (forced out because of Bolshevik sympathies) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Like Gropius, Mies studied under Peter Behrens. He stayed away from politics but found himself confronted by many challenges, some connected to the economic crisis of 1929, others arising from Dessau’s disaffection for the Bauhaus. The city eventually halted all aid to the school, lowering budgets significantly and initiating no further public commissions.
In 1931 Hannes Meyer, along with a team of other architects, moved to the Soviet Union, aiming to realize revolutionary ideas but became quickly disillusioned and returned to Germany.
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Caricature of Hannes Meyer
ith the push to industrialize the country at fever pitch, there were shortages of specialists for industry. Institutions of higher learning were expected to produce them quickly. Vkhutemas’ hybrid structure (art/crafts) began to crack. A decree ordered the transfer of students from industrial and art departments to specifically industrial and art schools. The teachers and directors became forced to defend the notion of an architecture department as a creative discipline against the government’s repeated attempts to regard it as an engineering specialty.
Construction eventually ceased on the Finance Ministry complex. The design cast an enormous influence on Le Corbusier, whose famous Marseilles “residential unit” (1945) incorporates Moisei Ginzburg’s Type F plan.
