In 1927, CA magazine announced a non-commercial contest of a project for communal housing. Ginzburg’s proposal, “communal house” followed the idea of Le Corbusier’s ‘Five Points of Modern Architecture’ in the USSR and was considered as a direct precursor of Narkomfin Building, a ‘social condenser’ which tried to embody socialist principles in its structure.
The concept of “communal house” is conceived as the living space preserved with minimum private services and all other facilities made in common. The OSA group experimented with forms of communal housing to provide the new Communist way of life. Though Ginzburg was much more interested in the development of personality and the free individual under socialism.
After Gosstrakh and Narkomfin housing proofs, those models didn't work enough in the communist way of life. So they experimented on “Disurbanism“, in opposite to the creation of vast collective housing.
Disurbanism concept purpose small but accommodating individual housing units, which would moreover be mobile and collapsible and closer to Ginzburg’s idea focused into getting space for the cultivation of individual personality, allowing each person the freedom to associate with others.
Ginzburg was born in Minsk, graduated from Milano Academy (1914) and Riga Polytechnical Institute (1917). During Russian Civil War he lived in the Crimea, relocating to Moscow in 1921. There, he joined the faculty of VKhUTEMAS and the Institute of Civil Engineers. Founder of the OSA Group, he published the book ‘Style and Epoch’ in 1924, an influential work of architectural theory known as the manifesto of Constructivist Architecture, a style which combined an interest in advanced technology and engineering with socialist ideals.
image1. Proposal for a communal house for comrades. Perspective. Moisei Ginzburg. Modern Architecture.1928 +
