We went to the Russian Constructivist Architecture exhibition at the Royal Academy the other day -
Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935
There were all sorts of extraordinary buildings beautifully photographed by Richard Pare in their various states of crumbling delapidation. The sense of a new architecture for a new order must have been incredibly compelling and exciting for the architects who designed and the people who inhabited the buildings.
For me though, the most magical and ethereal images were of Schukov's towers. This is his radio tower in Moscow, built in 1920-22. It is so extraordinarily delicate and ghostly.
And these twin sentinals (sadly no longer standing) are electricity pylons, overlooking the Oka River, built between 1927 and 1929. They feel almost visionary in their grace and scale.
