In the development of manufacturing industries and technology that was born in the frame of social change due to the progress of natural science and the development of capitalism after the Industrial Revolution, machinery came to penetrate human life....
In the development of manufacturing industries and technology that was born in the frame of social change due to the progress of natural science and the development of capitalism after the Industrial Revolution, machinery came to penetrate human life. In these circumstances, with the growth of new aesthetic consciousness, groups that regarded machinery as taboo came to exist in the 20th century. In the meantime, these phenomena were not exceptions in architecture, a field of art, and the efforts of people who pursued the integration of art and technique came to be the background of the birth of new principles in architecture.
Russia developed machinery in unique visual angle and came to face the rapidly changed order by the destruction of the old order and reorganization to a new system due to the World War. And in 1917 the first socialist state came into the world.
They destroyed all the existing ideas in politics, economy, religion, and art by the socialist revolution. According to this change, the government that was born revolutionarily with the purpose of reorganizing social structure, offered artists opportunities to take part in the circumstances of destruction of the old order and construction for a new society.
In this trend, artists came to play a central role. And propaganda, telecommunication, and education became the major concerns of artists. And in architecture the color and skill of absolutism were immediately adopted in posters and propaganda. A work in the early stage, Tatlin's the 3rd International Monument best reflected the prospect of a Utopian society that the revolution had not yet shown well.
This study centered on the Russian constructivism which told about conversion into a new society through the integration art and technology. How machinery, that had been used as a method of artistic expression, was represented in the works of Russian constructivism artists through their recognition was studied. The fact that machinery that had been recognized by the Russian constructivism artists were reinterpreted was considered. The result induced by this study is as follows.
In Russian constructivism that came into existence with the influence of western art and under the special surroundings of Russian Revolution, machinery was recognized as a means to regenerate social space structure and came to play an important role in forming the space of constructivism with the concept of a social condenser.
For Besnin machinery was recognized through 'movement' and had the meaning as a means to generate construction. For Ginsburg machinery had a meaning as a means of production for social construction like Besnin. But differently in Ginsburg machinery was not recognized as movement but as a means to generate construction through accuracy and organic linking. For Ginsburg machinery was an instrument to realize construction as a social condensor in the process to a socialist system. To realize this, Ginsburg recognized machinery as having 'an accurate function' and 'organic linkage' and further recognized construction of a social condenser as machinery itself. But Leonidov recognized machinery as a force to realize socialist Utopia rather than as a means of production. At that time the social condenser, that was generated by mechanical production, expanded its meaning from a collective body merely playing a role in a socialist system to a condenser as a field where culture is unfolded. And machinery could be recognized in the meaning to make socialist Utopia possible.
This machinery of constructivism, which was recognized by architects like Chumi and Lemkolhaz as an experimental spirit or a production for construction in Russia, was today realized through cultural change in the circumstances of construction through machinery, which mostly could not had been left in Russia. The social condenser that was recognized as a crystal of production for construction came to have Leonidov's concept as a field where culture is unfolded. Today its meaning is represented in a changed form through collective pleasure.
In this change, machinery that had been used as a means of production in Russia was expressed through the concept building of 'social condenser'. It was an apparatus to make a new society and new human types. However, in the machinery of constructivism reinterpreted by the architects today, the ideology of cultivating socialist way of life was eliminated. Instead it is used as an instrument to enhance the sensational life in a capitalist society. By making this sensational life collectively enjoyable, it is planned to maximize its stimulant function.