IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rppexx/v40y2025i3p725-750.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Architecture between empire and revolution: housing and the shaping of Soviet Leningrad

Author

Listed:
  • Markus Lähteenmäki

Abstract

This article traces the planning history of the first major housing projects built in Soviet Leningrad: the Traktornaya Ulitsa and Serafimov site housing estates. Initiated by municipal authorities in 1924, they were built according to the designs of its own Design Buro and the architects Aleksandr Nikolsky, Aleksandr Gegello, and Grigorii Simonov in 1925–1926. Spearheading the reconstruction of a large industrial suburb, these projects offer an original example of the role of housing in urban development in the Soviet Union and in one of Europe’s largest cities. The planning history of the projects illuminates the way urban development unfolded in the early Soviet context: through practice and negotiation with multiple contexts, both the historic, imperial city and the revolution. The article shows the exemplary quality of these projects and their power and means to reinvent the historic forms and meanings of the city, and reconfigure its spatial hierarchies. It analyses the sources and means at play from revolutionary ideals and avant-garde ideas on form to western models of housing, the surrounding classical city and Byzantine and Russian vernacular architecture. It thus delineates the means through which architecture acts as an instrument of social and cultural change.

Suggested Citation

  • Markus Lähteenmäki, 2025. "Architecture between empire and revolution: housing and the shaping of Soviet Leningrad," Planning Perspectives, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 725-750, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:40:y:2025:i:3:p:725-750
    DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2024.2391059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02665433.2024.2391059
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02665433.2024.2391059?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:40:y:2025:i:3:p:725-750. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rppe20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.