#chernikov

[bluegrassred]

I like constructivism.  This is Chernikov, No. 36.

[noosphe-re]

Iakov Chernikhov

[weirdlandtv]

Designs and concepts by Russian architect, Yakov Chernikhov (1889-1951). Late 1920s/early 30s.

[8f6dh4mna7]

Yavok Chernikov, from ‘Cycle of Architectural Landscapes’, circa 1913(?). The artwork depicts a disorienting sublime image of a modern cityscape bathed in deep red light. From Chernikov’s ‘The Formations of Construction’: ... ‘... despite the extreme complexity of our life, despite the diversity of its structure, it is in certain respects being simplified though the perfection of technological achievement ... many processes that were complicated and slow are now being sped simplified and sped up ... the principles of simplification, acceleration, and purposefulness emerge ...’ ‘In former times machinery was considered something profoundly inartistic, and mechanical forms were excluded from the province of beauty ... now we know machinery not only lies within the confines of artistic conception, but also has its own indubitable and convincing aesthetic norms and canons ... able to unite the principles of mechanical production and the stimuli of artistic creation ... Primordial man, in building his dolmens, triliths, crypts, and edifices with unconsciously a Constructivist.’

[darquitectura]

Chernikhov; Architectural Fantasies 1925 -1933

[arquigraph]

Fictional Landscapes

Definitely, Chernikhov’s graphic representation anticipated a Century, it was also influential on architects and designers from Zaha Hadid to Yourself.

‘ – Architectural Fictions.’ Eleanor Gawne, AA blog 

 .. Iakov Chernikov (1889-1951) published over fifty works in his lifetime, including six works between 1927-33. Collectively, they can be seen to propose a ‘detailed course of liberating, stimulating education in the fundamental disciplines of three-dimensional design as they are encountered in the complex functional and expressive tasks addressed by architecture’. ..

One of Chernikov’s works in the AA Library, Architectural fictions: 101 coloured prints, 101 architectural miniatures (Moscow/Leningrad, 1933), was lent to the Imagine Moscow exhibition, held at the Design Museum earlier in 2017…

Consisting of 101 pages of drawings, the book also included explanations of their technique and basic principles behind them. Although published in Russian, the title pages are printed in Russian, German, French and English (in English, the word ‘fiction’ is used instead of ‘fantasies’.) The subject of the drawings is the new age of the city and industrialisation, of what Saski calls the ‘possibilities of the near future, images which had arisen in the author’s mind’. The drawings have been described as finding appropriate expression for the institutions and architecture of post-revolutionary nation. Each image has an elaborate, not very informative description; axonometric projection is the preferred drawing style. His drawings have been considered not just fantasies but insights into the possibilities of technology; the designs feature free and bold curves, and steel trusses in industrial settings.

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[leftoverlondoner]

‘An Undersea Civilization’, as drawn by commercial artist and pulp illustrator Ken Fagg for a 1954 If magazine cover. It’s a glorious cross between a Chernikov constructivist fantasy and a cake stand cover.

[noosphe-re]

Iakov Chernikhov