Konstantin Melnikov

Konstantin Melnikov (born July 22 [August 3, New Style], 1890, Moscow, Russian Empire—died November 28, 1974, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) was a Russian architect who is usually associated with Constructivism, an art movement that combined an appreciation of technology and the machine with the use of modern industrial materials. However, his unique vision had its foundations in classical forms and embraced the best of several contemporary movements.

Melnikov was born into a peasant family and at age 13 started working as an office boy in an engineering firm. Recognized for his talent by his employer, Melnikov entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture at 15, first working in the art department (1905–11) and then in the architecture department (1912–17). His diploma project, a plan for a trade school, was designed in a classic style, and it secured him a place in the studio of the Neoclassical architect Ivan Zholtovsky.

During the early 1920s Melnikov began to search for a new language of architecture that would suit the philosophy of the Revolutionary era. In 1923, at the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exposition in Moscow, Melnikov built the expressive and dynamic Makhorka (Tobacco) Pavilion, which became the exhibition’s main attraction. This work resulted in many commissions, one of the foremost of which was for Vladimir Lenin’s sarcophagus in the Lenin Mausoleum. Melnikov’s design was in the form of a glass crystal pyramid (1924).

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Architecture: The Built World

In 1924 Melnikov won a contest to design the Soviet Pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. His pavilion, built of wood and glass, was hailed by the French press as one of the most innovative architectural works of the 20th century.

In the mid-1920s the Soviet government was busy designing a communist, ostensibly modern, urbanized way of life. During this period the government undertook the building of a number of workers’ clubs. Melnikov took an active part in this construction, particularly in the workers’ clubs of the Rusakov, Frunze, and Kauchuk factories, as well as the Dulyovo porcelain factory in Moscow (1927–30).

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One of Melnikov’s most original and avant-garde works was his own house in Moscow (1930), which was made up of two interlocking three-story cylinders. Sixty-two hexagonal corbeled windows were cut into the walls so that a maximum amount of sunlight could reach the interior throughout the day. Each floor in each cylinder was reserved for a special function: bedrooms, living rooms, office, kitchen, cloakroom.

Melnikov’s active building period stopped at the end of the 1920s. With the introduction of the Soviet Union’s first Five-Year Plan, new communist requirements were placed on art. Architecture was to submit to a pseudoclassical canon that became known as “Stalinist Empire Style.” Melnikov’s bold Constructivist solutions were no longer in step with the official system. Although he continued directing architectural studios and created grandiose town-planning projects, these remained on the drawing board, and Melnikov’s name sank into oblivion.

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It was well into the “Khrushchev thaw” that Melnikov’s 75th birthday was observed, and in 1967 he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Despite a resurgence of interest in his work, he did not return to his former profession. In the final years of his life Melnikov worked on his book Arkhitektura moey zhizni: tvorcheskaya kontseptsiya, tvorcheskaya praktika (1985; “My Life’s Architecture: Creative Conception, Creative Practice”).