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[URBAN PLANNING AFTER WWII] Proyekt vosstanovleniya goroda Istry [i.e. Project of the Restoration of Istra]

Shchusev, A.

Item #2682

Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii arkhitektury SSSR, 1946. 60 pp., 2 ill.: ill. 25,8 × 34,2 cm. In original publisher’s illustrated wrappers. Loss of the pieces of the spine, tears to the extremities. Otherwise good.

Scarce. First edition. 1 of 4,200 copies.
Design by Eugene Lanceray (1875—1946), the Russian graphic artist, painter, sculptor, and illustrator associated with Mir Iskusstva [i.e. World of Art]. A project for the restoration of the istra city, which was occupied from November to December 1941 and completely ruined by German forces.
Published in 1946, this book provides an illustrative insight into the unreleased project of Istra restoration. The edition includes detailed information on the each and every aspect of the project from types of buildings to the restoration of the monastery “New Jerusalem” and financial calculations. The album includes 2 color and 69 black and white illustrations showcasing the architect’s brainchild. On November 1, 1945, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution “On Measures to Restore the Cities of the RSFSR Destroyed by the German Invaders.” Chronologically, the first project for the restoration of a Soviet city ruined during the war is considered to be the project for the restoration of Istra, made by the architect Alexei Shchusev (1873—1949) in the summer and autumn of 1942.
Shchusev’s project, first published in No. 4 “Architecture of the USSR” for 1943, assumed the transformation of the small town of Istra into a resort center. The draft took into account the natural features of the city’s environs and its historical past. Some city buildings, designed by Shchusev, were supposed to resemble structures of Russian architecture of the 17th century. On the central square, it was planned to erect buildings of red brick with white trim and window frames decorated with majolica, similar to the ceramic decorations of the New Jerusalem Monastery. Residential buildings were supposed to be low-rise wooden, repeating the shape of a Russian hut, on lightweight frame structures with partial use of the surviving old foundations. On the right bank of the Istra River, it was planned to build sports facilities with a reservoir and wooden buildings of tourist centers with luxurious interiors.
The architect’s decision to turn the city into a tourist destination is in itself quite interesting. Shchusev developed the project in 1943, at the height of the war, when the front was very close to the city and further military developments were still in question. It is widely known that in the 1970s Istra became a place where the Military-Diplomatic Academy of the Soviet Army allocated its dachas. The Academy was established in 1946 and served as the training center of the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate, an organization that played an extremely important role during the war. Against this background, it can be considered that under the guise of a project for the restoration of the resort town of Istra, Shchusev designed educational and training bases for military intelligence in 1942. However, the project was never implemented and according to Shchusev’s plan, only a few houses were built on Kooperativnaya Street.
Alexei Viktorovich Shchusev was an acclaimed Russian and Soviet architect whose works were widely regarded as a bridge connecting Revivalist architecture of Imperial Russia with Stalin’s
Empire Style. Shchusev studied under Leon Benois and Ilya Repin at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1891–1897. He embarked upon his most wide-scale project in 1913, when his design for the Kazan Railway Station won a contest for a Moscow terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the following years he designed such famous architectural constructions as Lenin’s mausoleum,
the NKVD headquarters on Lubyanka Square, Komsomolskaya station of the Moscow Metro, etc.

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at Harvard Library, Amherst College Library, University of California, Getty Research Institute, New York Public Library System, Princeton University Library, Library of Congress, and University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Price: $650.00