Proposal for the Palace of the Soviets, 1931

Moisei Iakovlevich Guinzburg was born in Minsk in 1892 and died in Moscow in 1946. He had an architectural training since childhood, as his father was an architect, so he was able to study in Italy, at the Academy of Art in Milan. When he finished, in 1914, he returned to Russia and enrolled at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, from where he graduated with an engineering degree.

After the revolution, he moved to Moscow, where he began his pedagogical work, first in engineering and later in architectural composition. He was part of the famous VJUTEMAS workshops, where he taught theory and history of architecture, which allowed him to translate his teachings into some books that were fundamental for the consolidation of constructivist architecture. The first was Rhythm in Architecture (1923), followed by Syle and Epoch (1924). This, recently translated into English and French (see footnote), was a complete exposition of the stylistic principles of Constructivism, and in it Guinzburg defended the need to conceive a new architecture for the new socialist state...[+]