SCRSS Digest, Spring 2006

Information Digest Spring 2006 Price £1.00 post-war town plans for similar plans of the Contents reconstruction of cities in the USSR. The group’s first major event was in March 1948 when an Exhibition of SCR Architects and Planners Group 1945–1991 1 the Architecture of the USSR was opened at the Royal SCRSS News 2 Institute of British Architects (RIBA) by the Soviet Soviet Memorial Trust Fund News 3 Ambassador and the President of the RIBA, Sir Obituary: Terry Wade (1930–2005) 3 Lancelot Keay. 4,000 people attended the exhibition Book and DVD Reviews 4 over 17 days. The group continued to organise visits Gems from the SCRSS Library 5 to the USSR and host groups of Soviet architects and From the Russian Press 6 planners in the UK until the 1960s, when its records cease. Listings 7 In October 1985 Professor Arthur Ling wrote to the Society, saying that he felt a renewal of friendly Feature relations on both sides would be helpful. Perestroika had led to a reassessment of architecture and planning in the USSR, taking on environmental, SCR Architects and Planners conservation and national concerns. Architects were looking to exchange ideas with Western architects Group 1945 – 1991 and institutions. Therefore the time was ripe for the By Jean Turner, Honorary Secretary of the SCR to re-establish its architectural section and SCRSS encourage exchanges. Since its establishment in 1924, the SCRSS has While Dr Catherine Cooke arranged exhibitions of shown a constant interest in the architecture and student work from the Moscow Architectural Institute planning of the USSR and Russia. A large amount of at the RIBA, the SCR selected a Soviet exhibition visual and written material on these subjects is held entitled The Mission of the Architect to Build for the in the archives of the photographic and architecture People: Contemporary Architecture in the USSR. sections of the Society’s library. From post- This opened in June 1986 at the Polytechnic of revolutionary avant-garde designs to socialist realist Central London’s Marylebone Road Gallery. It was architecture, from new industrial towns built under the followed by The Restoration of Town Centres in the Five Year Plans of the 1930s to the Moscow and USSR which opened in the same gallery in Leningrad plans, from post-WWII reconstruction to November 1986 before transferring in January 1987 perestroika and the development of national town to the Huntingdon Centre in Bath, home of the Bath planning initiatives in the newly independent post- Preservation Trust. During the exhibition’s run in Soviet states, the library retains invaluable records of London, a group of Soviet architects participated in a all these periods. seminar at the Polytechnic of Central London on The City as a Cultural Phenomenon, with invited British At times leading architect members of the Society architects from the public and private sector. have come together to hold symposiums, arrange exhibitions and organise exchanges. There have As a result of these contacts, a major weekend been two high points in these activities. The first was seminar, Perestroika, the Individual and the immediately at the end of the war in 1945 when Environment, took place in February 1989 at the Britain and the USSR were both tackling post-war Beechen Cliff School, Bath. Organised by the SCR, reconstruction. The second was during the period of the seminar received the best wishes of HRH the glasnost and perestroika that followed Mikhail Prince of Wales, Environment Ministers Virginia Gorbachev’s appointment as General Secretary of Bottomly and Lord Caithness, MPs Robert Key, Tony the CPSU. Benn and Joan Whalley, and RIBA President Rod Hackney. Many local architecture and planning The SCR* Architects and Planners Group was formed organisations and individual professionals attended, on 10 May 1945 and included such illustrious names as well as a visiting group of Soviet lawyers. as Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Wells Coates, Erno Goldfinger, Arthur Ling, Berthold Lubetkin and Sir In the workshop on conservation and ecology, Charles Reilly. The group had the support of many chaired by Jo Bossanyi and David Dixon, leading local authorities that were happy to exchange their Continued on page 2 1 Soviet expert on ecology and the law Professor Oleg expressions and if art is a reflection of social Kolbasov was a guest speaker. He was concerned conditions then this is precisely the reflection of by the imbalance between economic and social disorder”. developments, and talked of the difficulties of drafting laws to protect the environment while recognising the Following the seminar, an ad hoc group of architects necessity of developing industry and agriculture and and planners came together in 1990 with the aim of improving the economy. This workshop’s green organising a joint British-Soviet Conference in conclusions have a strong resonance today, Moscow on the subject of Garden Cities and New st concerned as they were with pollution, water supply, Towns in the 21 Century. Preliminary discussions sources of energy, transport solutions and the resulted in a visit to London in May 1991 by eight operation of the profit-oriented market economy. councillors from the Moscow Oktyabrsky District, hosted by the Covent Garden Community Community planner Alan Spence chaired the Association, and a return visit by Hunt Thompson workshop on empowering the soviets. New Associates to work on a community project in the developments in the USSR aimed at de-centralising Oktyabrsky District. At the same time a group of 12 the state structure were compared with the opposite architects and planners from the Urban Design trend in the UK, where local authorities’ power was Group participated in a workshop in the Moscow being transferred to a centralised state bureaucracy. region of Pereslavl-Zalesky, supported by the Co-operative movements at local level were Moscow Cultural Initiative Foundation. These discussed and the garden city principle embodied in exchanges were a great success and brought new Letchworth Garden City was studied. understanding on both sides. However, the original idea of a conference in Moscow, planned for 1992, Sally Miller led the workshop on environmental never materialised. It was replaced with joint British- education. Visiting academic Dr Boris Koreshkov, Soviet seminars on the role of garden cities and new st Rector of the Kolumna Pedagogical Institute, towns in the 21 century which took place in London believed that ecology must be taught as an aspect of and Letchworth in November 1991. all technological and scientific studies. Prophetically, he felt that the global ecology bomb posed a greater But there, sadly, the work of the revived SCR threat than the nuclear bomb. The workshop’s Architects and Planners Group ended, when the conclusion was education, education, education. USSR collapsed in 1992. This Society can be proud of its work twenty years ago to help create a joint British and Russian understanding of the dangers of uncontrolled development which can destroy the environment, the ecological balance of towns and countryside, and historic buildings. Subsequent events have proved how right we were to do so. * Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, since 1992 the Society for Co-operation in Russian and Soviet Studies SCRSS News Ministry of Light Industry, Moscow, 1934 – Le Corbusier (SCRSS Photo Library) Annual General Meeting The workshop on designing for the city of the future The Society’s AGM will take place on Saturday 20 was chaired by Professor Berthold Lubetkin and May 2006 at 10.30am at the SCRSS premises in Jonathan Charley. Lubetkin, who had studied Brixton. Members’ nominations for election to the architecture in Russia under Malevich and next Council, seconded by another SCRSS member, Rodchenko, still had an unashamed commitment to should be sent to Head Office by 24 April. The AGM the architect as servant of society. The basic theme will be followed by a film show at 2pm. of this stimulating workshop was the connection between architecture and the social system in which it functioned. Dr Andrei Bokov, Secretary of the Garegin Asatryan USSR Union of Architects, brought material on the new Moscow City Soviet plan which was aimed at In January the SCRSS received news of the tragic restoring and preserving its historic centre. His use of death of Mr Garegin Asatryan, First Secretary at the the term ’pluralism’ provoked Lubetkin’s comment “I Russian Embassy, in a car crash in Moscow on 13 am dead against pluralism, it is second cousin to January 2006. Mr Asatryan had only recently opportunism. Pluralism means a diversity of replaced Mr Vladimir Molchanov in the post and was 2 the primary contact at the Russian Embassy for the Park, Lambeth Road, Southwark, London, adjacent Society and Soviet Memorial Trust Fund. to the Imperial War Museum. Condolences were conveyed to the Russian Embassy and Mr Asatryan’s family by the Secretary on behalf of both organisations. Obituary Events Terry Wade (1930–2005) Friday 28 April 7pm Britain’s foremost Russian language specialist Film: A Mother’s Loyalty Directed by Mark Donskoi, Gorky Central Children and Youth Studios, Moscow. A sensitive account of Terence Wade was a quiet, modest man from Essex Lenin’s mother and the important part she played in who became an internationally recognised linguist his life, told with humour and charm. 82 mins, and holder of the Pushkin Medal, presented by the black/white, English sub-titles. Russian Government for his services to Russian language teaching. Friday 12 May 7pm (TBC) Lecture: Russia's Relations with the West or The Wade went to Durham University to study German Last Empire: Russia's Relations with her and French on a scholarship, gaining a first-class Neighbours degree. But it was after he joined up for National By Professor Leonid Seleznev of St Petersburg Service in the early 1950s that his life’s course was University.

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