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[THE STALIN’S SKYSCRAPERS] Arkhitektura i konstruktsii vysotnykh zdanii Moskvy [i.e. Architecture and Construction of Moscow High-Rise Buildings]

Predtechenskii, V.

Item #1066

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo literatury po stroitel'stvu i arhitekture, 1952. 28, [1] pp., 13 ills., 1 folding ill. 22x17 cm. In original illustrated wrappers by Evgenii Ganushkin. Partly uncut. Very good, slightly rubbed.

First and only edition. One of 5000 copies. Edited by engineer N. Izrailovich.
Report of the early Soviet high-rise construction including the design of the 8th Stalinist skyscraper which was never built.
In the post-WWII period of reconstruction, mass multi-store structures between 8 and 14 floors became a dominant type of building. The key points of a new urban planning were supposed to be 8 Stalinist skyscrapers (of which one wasn’t built): Hotel Ukraina, Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Apartments, the Kudrinskaya Square Building, the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya Hotel, the main building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the main building of Moscow State University, and the Red Gates Administrative Building.
A project of the Zaryadye Administrative Building by Dmitry Chechulin was not implemented after Stalin’s death, but it was included in this 1952 edition alongside others.
The text covers buildings’ architecture, composition and planning, construction and decoration. Illustrations on separate leaves feature photographs and designs of their facades in general, details of decoration, floor plans, schemes of a multi-tiered frame structure, etc.
Seven Stalinist skyscrapers (‘The Seven Sisters’) were gradually finished in the 1950s showing innovative decisions in contemporary civil engineering. The bibliography lists 27 sources.

Only copy is in the Library of Congress according to Worldcat.

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