Chapter two case Studies

Moscow State University

Moscow, Russia

Out of the ashes of the destruction wreaked by the Second World War, in the late 1940s and 1950s the Soviet Union inaugurated a new phase of monumental building. Cities such as Stalingrad, Smolensk, Minsk, and Kiev were rebuilt almost from afresh, while Moscow became the centre of a new histrionic style of building, characterized by ‘Stalinist Gothic’ skyscrapers. Moscow was transformed by a parade of showpiece complexes under the ‘Master Plan for the Reconstruction of the City of Moscow’. On 13 January 1947 a resolution was passed by the Council of Ministers of the USSR to erect a series of eight high-rise buildings (only seven were realized) across Moscow, an agenda actively promoted by Stalin.

The resolution envisaged

a series of high rise buildings which should be, in terms of size, technology and architecture, a new form of construction… The proportions and skylines of these buildings must be original in composition, both architecturally and artistically. They should be linked to the historical development of Moscow.²⁹

One of these towers was destined as the new home of the Moscow State University (founded 1755), replacing the neo-classical building it had occupied since the late eighteenth century. The university and the other six complexes, known collectively as the Seven Sisters, displayed what is termed as Stalinist Architecture, an idiom that combined striking monumentalism with patriotic and traditional decorative motifs. There was little correlation between their physical form and their function. Despite housing a range of occupations, including government offices, hotels and apartments, the buildings shared a common aesthetic, which melded sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovite architectural motifs, the classicism of the unbuilt Palace of the Soviets, and elements of early-twentiethcentury Manhattan skyscrapers, such as the Woolworth Building. It was a bombastic architecture, whose grandiosity was further heightened by the carefully chosen sitings of the towers. In accordance with current Soviet town planning theories, the buildings were diffused at key points around the city, forming a ‘necklace’ encircling the city’s heart. By creating vertical reference points, these landmark buildings radically transformed Moscow’s skyline, investing it with a unique identity.³⁰