SPATIAL REVOLUTION by Christina E. Crawford

Author:Christina E. Crawford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2021-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.3. Laying the first housing foundation, Pionerskaia Street, Magnitogorsk, Russia, summer 1930. Magnitogorskii kraevedcheskii muzei.

Figure 6.4. Aerial view of factory construction with rows of wooden barracks in the distance, Magnitogorsk, Russia, c. 1930. Magnitogorskii kraevedcheskii muzei.

Figure 6.5. Family barracks, Magnitogorsk, Russia, c. 1931. Magnitogorskii kraevedcheskii muzei.

Internal Competition

After site reconnaissance, a month-long internal design competition ensued. Chernyshev working for Giprogor, and May for Tsekombank, were ordered by the Magnitostroi administration to complete planning schemes for the city by November 25, 1930, less than a month into the future.52 May’s team, used to working quickly, immediately began sketching alternatives in Magnitogorsk, continued on the train journey, and finished in Moscow. They purportedly converted one of their train compartments into a drafting room and “using the charcoal supplied as fuel for the samovar as pencils and drafting boards made of plywood pieces as a drawing base” produced a draft of a general plan.53 In another compartment colleagues typed up the explanatory texts for the project. The Tsekombank regional plan by the May team, dated November 1930, shows rectangular residential blocks originating at the southern end of the production zone and sweeping to the southeast (figure 6.6). The topographical model of this scheme explains the bowed shape of the housing region: it sits between the mine and industrial lake to the north, and a row of hills to the south, on the flattest land available close to the industrial zone (plate 14). The detailed site plan reveals that the Tsekombank scheme had much in common with the majority of the All-Union competition entries for Magnitogorsk, especially the “concentrated city planning” examples (figure 6.7). Repetitive residential communes fill in a wide band that wends its way in a southeasterly direction. May’s standard residential building for Magnitogorsk is a zeilenbau of the Frankfurt type, a simple double exposure bar oriented along the north-south axis for maximal east-west insolation. In the bird’s eye perspective, a drawing that uses perspectival drama to mask extreme regularity, blocks (kvartaly) for 8,000–10,000 residents extend into the distance in repeated rectangles; all buildings stand free, surrounded by green space (figure 6.8).54

Chernyshev was in the unenviable position of having to explain to his client that the project he had been working on for over a year was about to be snatched away. In a letter to the director of Giprogor, Chernyshev complained about chronic decision-making dysfunction on Magnitogorsk’s fundamental planning questions. The very location of the city was still up for grabs. “We consider the choice of city’s site to be the most critical task that stands before the State Commission,” Chernyshev stressed.55 Almost two weeks after receipt of the letter, someone at Giprogor scribbled an elliptical note at the top—“what should we do about this question?”—that confirms that Chernyshev was plagued by indecision on all sides. Nevertheless, he and his Giprogor team pushed through and finished their version of the Magnitogorsk general plan. In every planning scheme he devised for Magnitogorsk, Chernyshev utilized a fan-shaped organizational strategy that resembles a quarter

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