IVANOVO I.1 ----------------------------------------------------- STUDIEN TEIL 1 / STUDIES PART 1 Februar / February 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- – Ein Initiativprojekt der Kulturstiftung des Bundes in Kooperation mit dem Projektbüro Philipp Oswalt, der Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau und der Zeitschrift archplus. Büro Philipp Oswalt, Eisenacher Str. 74, 10823 Berlin, T: +49 (0)30 81 82 19-11, F: +49 (0)30 81 82 19-12,
[email protected], URL: www.shrinkingcities.com ABSTRACT / ZUSAMMENFASSUNG ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ivanovo (ca. 450,000 residents) is situated about 300 km north-east of Moscow in the central Russian heartland. It is the administrative center of a district of the same name with 1.2 million residents. The region has a long tradition of textile production and was one of the most important sites of 19th cent. industrialization as well as early 20th cent. workers’ movement in Russia. The city of Ivanovo itself is relatively young (acquired town status in 1871). After the revolution and civil war, Ivanovo was briefly made the capital of a huge administrative unit within Russia and from this period as a “third proletarian capital” (besides Moscow and St. Petersburg) in the 1920s the city still displays a substantial heritage of constructivist experimental building, garden-city type workers’ settlements as well as commune houses. With the focus of Stalinist industrialization dearly set on heavy industry, the textile pro- ducing region slid into a latent economic decline already since the 1930s, as economic geographer Andrei Treivish argues in his essay. It also slid into oblivion except for the label “city of brides” – for its predominantly female working population and severe gender disbalance.