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[ARCHITECTURE] Planirovka poselkov v SShA [i.e. Settlement Planning in the USA]

Khiger, R.

Item #2569

Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Arkhitektury SSSR, 1944. 116 pp.: ill. 22x16 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Fragments of spine and front cover lost, small water stain on spine, otherwise very good and clean internally. First and only edition. One of 5000 copies.
This well-illustrated work on urban planning was written by Roman Khiger (1901-1985). He was a Soviet architect and engineer, one of the ideologists of constructivism. He was taught by professor I. Golosov and created a range of innovative projects under his supervision. In the 1930s, he was one of the leading architecture critics in the USSR.

In the post-WWII period, the Soviet Union made maximum efforts to reconstruct destroyed cities and build new ones. Khiger elaborates on the American experience in construction of huge suburban areas for agricultural and military workers. In particular, he writes about temporary solutions like trailer camps that weren’t in usage in the USSR. The book contains drawn schemes, aerial photographs and plans of early 1940s settlements, neighbourhoods, photographs and plans of residential and public buildings. All sections include financial estimates. All schemes resemble projects of the garden city movement being popular between constructivist architects. The post-war concept of urban transformation also tended to many green spaces whichever plan the architect chose. This book was published before Khiger submitted the dissertation “Experience of settlement planning and housing construction in the USA” (1947). Both works encouraged contemporaries to follow American experience in planning houses and places for leisure activities. During the increasing Cold War, Khiger was blamed in admiration of bourgeois constructivism. In 1949 he was deprived of everything and ended his science activity.

Worldcat shows copies located in LoC, Columbia and Harvard Universities.

Price: $850.00