Drawing the Unbuildable

Seriality and Reproduction in Architecture

Nerma Cridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317654308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Architecture is conventionally seen as being synonymous with building. In contrast, this book introduces and defines a new category - the unbuildable. The unbuildable involves projects that are not just unbuilt, but cannot be built. This distinct form of architectural project has an important and often surprising role in architectural discourse, working not in opposition to the buildable, but frequently complementing it.

Using well-known examples of early Soviet architecture – Tatlin's Tower in particular – Nerma Cridge demonstrates the relevance of the unbuildable, how it relates to current notions of seriality, copying and reproduction, and its implications for contemporary practice and discourse in the computational age. At the same time it offers a fresh view of our preconceptions and expectations of early Soviet architecture and the Constructivist Movement.

Part I
The unbuildable monument

1
Tatlin's Tower

An image outside of time

The subject of this chapter was chosen reluctantly. Being such a famous project, it seemed at first to be unlikely that anything remotely new could be said about it. However, even simple initial research showed that although Tatlin's Tower is an iconic piece of architecture, it is hard to obtain concrete information regarding it. Any ‘original’ material is either scant or lost altogether. This lack of information is combined with the wealth of interpretations, including confusing and contradictory ‘facts’ and many misinterpretations. I would argue that, not despite but precisely, because it appears to be so well known, Tatlin's Tower illustrates adequately an important mode of operation for the unbuildable. This perception enables some projects to be famous or even iconic, yet not known at all. A vast space for speculation, creativity, and imagination, opened in this way, is coupled with the unique idealism of the early Soviet period, enabling the Tower to surpass the period of its creation and stand literally outside of time.

Although an immediate reaction almost always is of an overwhelming familiarity, in fact, there is little physical evidence of the Tower's existence. We find many different accounts, much speculation, and a multitude of interpretations. My aim is not to prove that any particular interpretation is the correct one and even less so to create yet another interpretation. I wish to focus on discovering the underlying reasons as to why this project may still be so current and influential and why it has not yet been exhausted. Despite being conceived so long ago, why does Tatlin's Tower still appear to stubbornly retain an active role in the current architectural discourse? The potency and ultimately the value of the Tower will be proposed to be precisely due to this factual and material absence.

Persistent visual reference

A photograph taken in 2005 of a five-star hotel in Kunming in China illustrates the perpetual return of the Tower's image. Apparently copied from a different time, this picture, a paler, smaller copy of the image of Tatlin's Tower, with one corner obscured by a traditional Chinese temple, has been pasted into twenty-first century post-communist China. Although the top of this building may have the shape of Tatlin's Tower, it is no longer revolving, not red in colour, nor inclined. Of a much smaller scale, this copy is only reminiscent of the original, resembling a miniscule paler version. It seems ironic that this symbol of the international communist movement was given a reincarnation as a luxury hotel in post-communist China. This process of copying and pasting of the image, at times completely betraying the ideas originally behind it, is evidently far from unusual. New theories and literature written about Tatlin's Tower appear all the time, followed closely by ‘new’ copies. For a long time, its simplified image was used as a logo for the New Left publishing house, which later became Verso, and one of the leading Russian architectural papers is still carrying Tatlin's name. Well-known academic and architect Wolf D. Prix¹ has recently published a book titled Unbuildable Tatlin?, just to name one.

We ask again, how can a structure that not only was never built, but may in fact be unbuildable, remain such a constant point of reference, with every new tower built, or just imagined, automatically being compared to it? Several comparisons could be considered logical, some may be blatantly obvious, whereas others could be considered apparently generic, several audacious, and a few even ridiculous.

Tatlin's Tower is most commonly associated with the Tower of Babel. However, an important difference between the two is that the Babel's centre is fixed and solid, whereas Tatlin's Tower positioned the structure outside the core, with the dynamic rotating shapes in the centre. Many comparisons of Tatlin's Tower are plausible, several are spurious and a considerable few are even ridiculous. In any case, it is persistent. The Tower asserts itself as a constant benchmark, a reference point, to which every tower or tall building, whether built or simply imagined, must, even just in passing, be compared. References include buildings that preceded it (Tower of Babel, Boccioni, Eiffel Tower, Novodevichy Monastery Bell Tower in Moscow, and others) and those that followed (CCTV in Beijing), including those yet to be built (Crystal City in St Petersburg). Perhaps, among the most daring was the association of Tatlin's Tower with the three-legged alien monsters from the Hollywood blockbuster, The War of the Worlds. A more recent comparison of Tatlin's Tower included Olympic Arcelor Mittal Orbit Tower built in 2012 in London, designed by the British artist Anish Kapoor. Another testament to the ubiquitous presence of this image is evident, this time as a piece of furniture, an Edra sofa, which is currently available for sale.

Most of such referencing is impossible to conclusively prove; however, the fact that it continues to serve as a constant benchmark demonstrates the general wish to hold on to this image. After being repeated so often, the picture of the Tower maintains a continuous presence, even where any true resemblance is at best far-fetched. This Tower survived by becoming an architectural reference, a shortcut, and a synonym; at once, the Tower is an ideal project and a cliché. However, whether it achieved significant change in terms of an architectural conceptualisation of a monument remains questionable.

Monumental propaganda

Often described as a mark of a singular moment in history, the historiographical and symbolic framework of this design remains underscrutinised. Undoubtedly, Tatlin had an ambition towards the creation of the ‘new’, and this seems to be widely accepted as being achieved. Tatlin claimed that his intention in the design was in ‘uniting purely artistic forms with utilitarian aims’.² He further wrote: ‘I placed at its basis the screw, as the most dynamic form – a symbol of time: energy, lucidity, striving. The transparent construction from metallic forms has the form of a spiral – inclined at the angle of the earth. The inclined forms to the angle of the earth are the most stable, soft forms’. The spiral shape naturally resulted in the Tower's comparison to many other spiral structures. However, a spiral cannot be considered as a ‘new’ form because spiral structures, evidently, existed previously, the tower of Babel being one of the most famous. The ‘new’ element is that the spiral is inclined.

The comparisons with more conventional, traditional structures never ceased. Among others, the Tower was said to resemble St Basil's Cathedral and the Novodevichy Convent,³ creating yet another opportunity for misinterpretation. For example, Karl Schlögel seems to forget that Tatlin did not build the first model in Novodevichy but in St Petersburg, with the convent being the birthplace of ‘LeTatlin’, a project developed later on.⁴

Although the spiral was obviously not an entirely new form, an important difference is that Tatlin places it at an angle. The skewing makes the Tower's structure a cross between spiral, stairs, and ladder. The inclination would distort the perspective, making it appear to be higher than it actually was; also, it could be perceived as being damaged and falling. Alignment with the earth's axis has been interpreted in many different ways; one interpretation included the concept that the intention was to make the structure comprehensible only from outer space. Caught in between the past and the future, jump and fall, the angle of inclination reinforces the Tower's dual, at times directly opposite, meanings. The drawing depicting the side elevation shows the Tower as a dynamic spiral, with three clearly distinct, simple geometric shapes inside. The spiral structure was to be made of iron, with the three glass shapes representing debating chambers rotating at different speeds. The diagonal structure, a dynamic symbol, albeit with straight instead of curved forms, had been commonly used in many Constructivist designs. On a romantic level, this structure alludes to the absence of a stable ground, replacing it with the sea. If constructed, the effect of the dramatically leaning Tower to the observer on the ground would be different from that of a straight tower. Another curious fact would be if the Tower was actually constructed, it would resemble the scaffolding less, and the centre would appear to be more solid, despite the rotation. The speed of the rotating chambers was related to the duration of a day, month, and year; e.g. a cylinder, a cone, and a cube was each to house a different activity. The reasons for using such pure geometrical forms are likely rooted in the investment in the power of visual communication that goes beyond words and language, instead using the universal language of geometry. Simultaneously, plausible arguments were made that the four geometric figures follow the same pattern as that of the Russian Orthodox Church building structures.

In addition to the diagonal inclination and the simplicity of the debating chambers, a particularly Constructivist element is the use of rotation. Depending on the speed, different geometric shapes, e.g. triangle and cube, would be perceived as drum-like. In other words, the perception of the outer shape of an object would be altered through the trajectory and the speed of its movement. Although the speed would make it difficult to perceive an instant change, the building's overall appearance would be altered, rendering all of the shapes behind the primary structure to become blurred and drum-like, thus creating the appearance of continuous outlines instead of a clearly defined shape. We should not forget the more straightforward connection that revolution also means rotation.⁵ Svetlana Boym⁶ argued that the word ‘revolution’ connotated repetition and rotation, and only after the seventeenth century was the term used in the opposite meaning, as it is now used to refer to the rare and unrepeatable event. The rotation of each geometrical element uses a cinematic language; one recalls the rotation of the film carousel of the early cinema. Instead of the rotating projector/camera/tape/eye, portions of the building itself would rotate and create movement, while the viewer would remain static at a distance. The rotation also evokes, especially on the model scale, a playful image because it resembles a merry-go-round and a child-like event. One easily imagines the model being perceived as a theatrical prop, especially with a little boy turning the wheel at its base, instead of a serious architectural proposal. In reality, if it was built according to the scale it was imagined, the movement would be too slow for the naked eye to perceive; however, the building would sustain a constantly varied appearance. With the rotation and inclined angle, the projection, the height, the overall scale, and more importantly the propagandist function of the structure were extended further.

From the outset, Western reception of the Tower continues to conflate it with Constructivism and this movement into a homogeneous single-minded group with Tatlin as its leader. Little actual evidence seems to support this. In fact, many accounts suggest the opposite, contradicting first that Tatlin could be considered a leader and even seriously undermining the very existence of any such easily defined movement as Constructivism. For example, records of immediate reactions to the Tower show them to be varied, similar to the subsequent accounts. Evidence suggests that many of Tatlin's fellow artists (including supposed members of the same movement) were far from enthusiastic towards the Tower. For example, Malevich initially formed a friendship with Tatlin, but then criticised the Tower before even seeing the monument: ‘Tatlin [who] wants to receive the sums for the invention of a utilitarian monument not offering any new meaning’.⁷ According to Darran Anderson, Tatlin's Tower was dismissed by the political leaders, most pertinently, Lenin and Trotsky: ‘Lenin agreed with Trotsky who dismissed Tatlin's Tower and had his studio forcibly closed’.⁸ However, little evidence supports that either of them disliked the Tower itself, and Tatlin⁹ continued in fact to work in his studio until his death. It is more likely, as Lynton has suggested, that the political leaders Lunacharsky and Trotsky may have been against the rotation on the basis of cost and practicality; however, they were generally in favour of the modernist design.¹⁰ Trotsky¹¹ indeed wrote that the Tower resembled scaffolding, which, judging from the photographs of the model used in the street demonstrations, was a fair observation. Evident in his records, Trotsky's support for the Tower, in general, was clear. However, Trotsky disliked the scaffolding and the heavy structure required to support the Tower in order to make it rotate: ‘we would probably accept the cylinder and its rotating, if it were combined with a simplicity and lightness of construction, that is, if the arrangements for its rotating did not depress the aim’.¹²

Long after Trotsky, Boym¹³ developed this notion further, proposing that the Tower continues to be symbolically used as scaffolding, with different, often contradictory, meanings easily attributed to it. However, it seems clear that an unfinished structure or a structure that required strength and excessive support to stand up would have been considered to be an inappropriate attribute for the symbol of revolution. Incomplete, still in anticipation of the final image, the Tower can continue to inspire a full range of interpretations, including the opposite ones. If we refer to Benjamin's pictorial detour, which privileges ‘architectural’ structure over a mere picture, Tatlin's unbuildable form seems to convert an excessive, unnecessary structure into a pure picture. This could be why it is so readily accepted as a plausible, even technologically, innovative ar...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Category of the unbuildable
• Part I The unbuildable monument
• Part II The unbuildable series
• Bibliography
• Image credits
• Index