Item #521 [URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].
[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].

[URBAN RENEWAL IN THE 1930s] Rekonstruktsiya gorodov SSSR: (Al’bom) / Gosplan SSSR [i.e. Reconstruction of USSR Cities: (Album) / State Plan of the USSR].

Moscow: Standartizatsiya i ratsionalizatsia, 1933. Item #521

[240] pp.: ill. 15,5x21,5 cm. In original
constructivist cardboards. Illustrated endpapers. Very good, vertical
crease of the front and back boards, tears and small losses of the spine,
darkening of the spine and front endpapers, owner’s signature on the
free leaf of the front endpaper (pen), darkening of the title page.

First and only edition. One of 4000 copies. Book design by N. Il’in.
This album illustrates the achievements in the field of
construction and public utilities in the first Five-year plan: it gives the
most typical and interesting objects in various parts of the USSR, photos
and plans for the reconstruction of cities. The album was released as an
annex to the two-volume eponymous book.

The book includes short introduction on plans of construction
and renewal in USSR, sections on city planning, construction of living
and public housing, green plantations, renovation and improvement
of the streets, city transport, power supply, water supply, sewerage,
bath and laundry. Each section is opened with short description of the
current state of this issue and planned changes.

The significance of the album is in its plans and photographs
with captions. The most interesting are newly built houses and clubs
of workers like house on Novinsky boulevard in Moscow (on the pillars
after Corbusier’s system), workers’ clubs in Moscow (one of them by K.
Mel’nikov) and Kramatorsk (Donbass), commune housing on Khavskaya
Street in Moscow (in front of Shukhov tower) and in Baku, mechanical
laundry in Ivanovo, design projects of bath/laundry in Dnepropetrovsk
and in Murmansk, design projects of a hotel in Kharkiv machinery for
cleaning streets, yard trash cans, pipe laying, fire fighters and power
supply system, Moscow metro construction, trams and river trams,
dispensaries,a newly built hospital in Moscow and Kuzbass, department
store, etc.

The album itself has an interesting constructivist design made
by Nikolai Il’in (1894-1954), graphic artist who started to work with
books in the early 1920s in Nizhny Novgorod. Later in Moscow he
worked at Detgiz and became the main artist of Goslitizdat. As a book
designer and printing expert, Il’in successfully solved the problem of creating a whole image of the book as one. He designed many books
and magazines with expressive and diverse covers, fonts of various
styles. He also worked on the creation of new typographic fonts.

Worldcat locates copies at NYPL, Columbia, Yale, Stanford.

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