Constructivism is usually called avant-garde trends in architecture, decorative, applied and visual art and photography. This style was developed from 1920 to the beginning of the next decade.
The main characteristic features of constructivism are severity, conciseness of forms, geometry and solidity of appearance. Constructivists even created their official creative organization and developed their own functional design method. This method is based on a scientific analysis of the functioning of structures, buildings, complexes. Constructivism in architecture has been preserved in its characteristic monuments - kitchen factories, labor palaces, work clubs, communal houses that were built in those days.
Those creative views that combine the concept of "constructivism", embodied not only in architecture, but also in other areas of human activity, for example, in literature.
Despite the fact that this direction is considered a Soviet phenomenon, like any other trend, it is not limited to the framework of the countries of the former USSR. Perhaps for some this will be news, but the harbinger of the constructivism style in architecture is also the Eiffel Tower, combining both constructivist and modernist elements.
Such a trend arose in the context of a continuous search for something new. The innovators of that time proclaimed the rejection of “art for art's sake”, and believed that it should serve production. Adherents of this opinion called on artists and architects to do only useful things, thereby ensuring a good life in comfortable cities. The term "constructivism" was introduced into the Russian language by the theorists of "production art", the main reason for this was the frequent use in the brochures and speeches of architects of the words "constructive", "construction", "construction".
The architecture of constructivism, like any other direction, has its brightest representatives. These are the brothers Leonid, Victor and Alexander Vesnin, who realized the laconic aesthetics of this direction, being already experienced specialists in the field of building design, painting and book design. The project of the brothers stood out at the competition for the projects of the Palace of Labor in Moscow. A rational plan, the correspondence of the external appearance to the aesthetics of our time, the use of the latest designs and building materials - all this became an impetus to the development of the "constructivism" trend.
Architecture is a very complicated concept, and the next stage for the Vesnins turned out to be somewhat more complicated than the previous one. So, they needed to design the building of the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda on a tiny piece of land. The brothers created a small six-story building, but there was everything: an office room, and editorial rooms, a newsstand, and a lobby, and a small reading room, because the ability to group many necessary rooms in one is the main task of the constructivists.
As mentioned above, constructivism in architecture had its own functional method. According to constructivists, each function corresponds to the most rational structure.
There was a time when the movement was criticized by conservatives defending the right to use traditional forms; later it was banned. In the Soviet Union, an active struggle was waged against bourgeois formalism and right angles. When the constructivists fell into disgrace, some of the architects forgot, and some adapted to change. Some Soviet scholars argue that “post-constructivism” has replaced the current.
Constructivism in architecture once again made itself felt in the 60s, when the struggle against “architectural excesses” began, and in the early 1990s, some non-embodied ideas of the 20s became a reality. Today, this trend is increasingly manifested in the architecture of large cities.