Tatlinʼs Tower, or the project for the Monument to the Third International (1919–20),[1] was a design for a grand monumental building by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, that was never built.[2] It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) after the October Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Communist International (the "Third International").
Plans
Tatlinʼs Constructivist tower was to be built from industrial materials: iron, glass and steel. In materials, shape and function, it was envisaged as a towering symbol of modernity. It would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The tower's main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m (1,300 feet) in height,[3] around which visitors would be transported with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain four large suspended geometric structures. These structures would rotate at different rates. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and legislative meetings, and this would complete a rotation in the span of one year. Above the cube would be a smaller pyramid housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. Further up would be a cylinder, which was to house an information centre, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. At the top, there would be a hemisphere for radio equipment. There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across the clouds on any overcast day.[4]
Evaluations
There are serious doubts about the tower’s practicality given that the amount of steel required would have been impossible to obtain in bankrupt post-revolutionary Russia.[4]
Tatlin's tower was critical to Soviet propaganda. Symbolically, the tower was said to represent the aspirations of its originating country[3] and a challenge to the Eiffel Tower as the foremost symbol of modernity.[5] Soviet critic Viktor Shklovsky is said to have called it a monument "made of steel, glass and revolution."[3]
^ abcChing, Francis D.K., et al. (2011). Global History of Architecture. 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p. 716.
^ abGrey, Camilla (1986). The Russian Experiment in Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
^Hughes, L. (2010). "Art—Russia" in W. H. McNeill, J. H. Bentley, D. Christian, R. C. Croizier, J. R. McNeill, H. Roupp, & J. P. Zinsser (Eds.), Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 259–267). Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing, p. 266.
Architecture and the Russian Avant-garde (Pt 2 Tatlins Tower) on YouTube – using computer graphics, archive footage and locations in Moscow, this film illustrates Tatlin's contribution to world architecture and how his tower may have looked in Moscow had it been built after the revolution; by Michael Craig; 3:37.