The Search for the Principles of Designing New Southwestern District of Moscow in 1935-1941 (Based on the Materials of Urban Planning Institute of USSR Academy of Architecture)

Abstract

The article focuses on the history of design the planning and development projects of the Southwestern district of Moscow in the period 1935-1941. The study and analysis of these projects became possible thanks to documents newly identified in the fund of Urban Planning Institute of USSR Academy of Architecture in the Russian State Archive in Samara (RGA in Samara. F. Р-147). These documents, together with the materials of USSR Academy of Architecture from the Russian State Archive of Economics andlittle-studied publications of 1935-1940, allowed, first of all, to restore the chronology of the development the planning projects of the Southwestern district in the period from the adoption of the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the VKP(b) "On the Master Plan for the reconstruction of Moscow" in 1935, thanks to which the district was annexed to Moscow, and almost before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. They also made it possible to trace what tasks were solved at different stages of design, and what principles were at the heart of the organization the residential development of the new district. In addition, archival materials made it possible to see from a qualitatively new perspective the role of Urban Planning Institute of USSR Academy of Architecture and its Workshop of Experimental Design and Planning in the Moscow reconstruction. It was found that this workshop not only actively participated in the development of the Southwestern district project in 1940-1941, but also actively implement the idea of a "microdistrict" (neighborhood unit). In the design proposals developed by the architects of the workshop, the neighborhood was considered as a group of blocks bounded by main streets.