Boris Mikhailovich Iofan, perspective drawing for the People?s Commissariat for Heavy Industry, Moscow, 1938. Graphite and watercolour on paper, 43 × 37.5 cm. DR1995:0003, Canadian Centre for Architecture
The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) presents12, an exhibition that investigates how architectural practices in the USA influenced those in Russia, bracketed broadly by the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
According to the CCA, few studies have undertaken a comprehensive analysis of ?Amerikanizm? in Russian architecture, which has mostly been limited to the high-rise buildings constructed in the late Stalinist era.
Through this first major study of Amerikanizm in the architecture of Russia, curator Jean-Louis Cohen provides a timely contribution to our understanding of modern architecture and its broader geopolitics by analyzing discourse, designs, and buildings, as well as politics, art, literature, cinema, and technology. From November 13, 2019 until April 5, 2020, the exhibition will highlight decades of dedicated research through which Cohen illustrates how Amerikanizm spanned all Russian political regimes through the 20th century.
?Through the CCA?s critical curatorial framework and calculated exhibition design, Cohen interprets Amerikanizm as a multifaceted phantasmagoria?borrowing Walter Benjamin?s term for the stimulating and ominous spectacle of the commodity?that helped shape not only the built form but also the...