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[ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT GUIDES TO THE SOVIET SPORTS ARCHITECTURE] Fizkul’turnyye sooruzheniya [i.e. Physical Culture Facilities]

Zverintsev, S., Nesterov, S.

Item #894

[Moscow]: Onti. Glav. red. stroit. lit-ry, 1935. 359 pp.: ill. 26.2x18.4cm. With dust-jacket. In original cloth binding with the letterpress design on the front board and the spine. Neat restoration of the dust-jacket, previous owner’s inscription on the front board (in pen) and its verso (in pencil), a couple of last pages lack small fragments of the upper margin (no text affected). Otherwise in a very good condition.

Extremely rare with the dust-jacket. Third revised edition. First edition published in 1932. Dust-jacket and book design by the artist, V. O. Velem. Introduction by the Soviet constructivist architect and city planner, Nikolai Kolli (1894-1966). A richly illustrated handbook compiled by one of the most famous Soviet experts in the sports architecture, Sergey Zverintsev and specialist of physical culture, S. Nesterov.

From the late 1920s, involvement in physical culture and sports came to be viewed as the perfect snapshot of the New Soviet Person and the ideal testimony of the “happy” and “healthy” Soviet lifestyle. In 1931, the Soviet state decided to allocate an estimated of 21 million rubles to physical culture and issued a decree announcing mass construction of the sport and leisure sites across all of the Soviet republics. Published only a year later, “Physical Culture Facilities” (1932) came in specifically handy since there were no Soviet guidebooks on the proper design of the sport constructions and the work turned out to be the primary practical manual on the issue.

In this third revised edition of the book, Zverintsev and Nesterov compare the Soviet and foreign experience in construction, offering multiple calculations and tables that define a required quantity of physical culture facilities in different regions across the USSR, average norms of the space that should be occupied by the constructions (according to the specifics of the settlement), general sizes and allocation of different facilities (including swimming pools) within a sport base, etc.

The authors expand upon the features of swimming pools, velodromes, water sport complexes, football and baseball fields, tennis, basketball, volleyball, handball courts, facilities for cycle, motorcycle, auto and winter sports. The book pays particular attention to the construction of stadiums abroad and provides both an architectural
overview and authors’ personal assessments of various sport parks and stadiums: Deutsches stadium in Berlin, Elberfeld stadium in Germany, Frankfurt am Main stadium, stadiums in Stuttgart and Potsdam, sport parks in Cologne and Amsterdam. Photographs and schemes presented in this chapter of the book are specifically interesting since
most of the sport sites had been reconstructed or even demolished (Deutsches stadium in Berlin) over the course of time. Aside from the aforementioned, the authors give advice on the organization of the military education areas (shooting range, parachute tower, etc) and offer a detailed overview of different types of tribunes and peculiarities of their construction.

Showcasing both the Soviet and foreign sport facilities of the 1930s, the book provides a valuable insight into the ABC of the Soviet sports architecture.

The only copy is at NYPL, according to Worldcat.

Price: $1,200.00