proposed site in the center of Moscow, it would have functioned as a
propaganda and news center for the Soviet people. Within a dynami-
cally tilted spiral cage, three geometrically shaped chambers were to
rotate around a central axis, each chamber housing facilities for a dif-
ferent type of governmental activity and rotating at a different speed.
The one at the bottom, a huge cylindrical glass structure for lectures
and meetings, was to revolve once a year. Higher up was a cone-
shaped chamber intended for administrative functions and monthly
rotations. At the top, a cubic information center would have revolved
daily, issuing news bulletins and proclamations via the most modern
means of communication. These included an open-air news screen
(illuminated at night) and a special instrument designed to project
words on the clouds on any overcast day. The decreasing size of the
chambers as visitors ascended the monument paralleled the decision-
making hierarchy in the political system, with the most authoritative,
smallest groups near the building’s apex. The design thus served as a
visual reinforcement of a social and political reality.
Tatlin envisioned the whole complex as a dynamic communica-
tions center perfectly suited to the exhilarating pace of the new age. In
addition, the design’s reductive geometry demonstrates the architect’s
connection to the artistic programs of the Suprematists and the Con-
structivists. Due to Russia’s desperate economic situation during these
years, however, Tatlin’s ambitious design never materialized as a build-
ing. It existed only in metal and wood models exhibited on various of-
ficial occasions before disappearing. The only records of the models are
a few drawings, photographs, and recent reconstructions (FIG. 35-70).
GERRIT RIETVELD Some European architects explored the
ideas Mondrian and De Stijl artists advanced. One of the master-
pieces of De Stijl architecture is the Schröder House (FIG. 35-71) in
Utrecht, built in 1924 by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld(1888–1964).
Rietveld came to the group as a cabinetmaker and made De Stijl fur-
nishings throughout his career. His architecture carries the same
spirit into a larger integrated whole and perfectly expresses Theo van
Doesburg’s definition of De Stijl architecture:
The new architecture is anti-cubic, i.e., it does not strive to contain
the different functional space cells in a single closed cube, but it
throws the functional space (as well as canopy planes, balcony vol-
umes, etc.) out from the centre of the cube, so that height, width,
and depth plus time become a completely new plastic expression
in open spaces....The plastic architect... has to construct in the
new field, time-space.^56
The main living rooms of the Schröder House are on the sec-
ond floor, with more private rooms on the ground floor. However,
Rietveld’s house has an open plan and a relationship to nature more
like the houses of his contemporary, the American architect Frank
Lloyd Wright (FIGS. 35-77and FIG. 35-79). Rietveld designed the en-
tire second floor with sliding partitions that can be closed to define
separate rooms or pushed back to create one open space broken into
units only by the furniture arrangement. This shifting quality ap-
pears also on the outside, where railings, free-floating walls, and long
rectangular windows give the effect of cubic units breaking up be-
fore the viewer’s eyes. Rietveld’s design clearly links all the arts. Rec-
tangular planes seem to slide across each other on the Schröder
House facade like movable panels, making this structure a kind of
three-dimensional projection of the rigid but carefully proportioned
flat color rectangles in Mondrian’s paintings (FIG. 35-56).35-70Vladimir Tatlin,Monument to the Third International,
1919–1920. Reconstruction of the lost model, 1992–1993. Kunsthalle,
Düsseldorf.
“Tatlin’s Tower” was an ambitious avant-garde design for a Soviet
governmental building with three geometrically shaped chambers
rotating at different speeds within a dynamically tilted spiral cage.
35-71Gerrit Thomas Rietveld,Schröder House, Utrecht,
the Netherlands, 1924.
The De Stijl Schröder House has an open plan and an exterior that is
a kind of three-dimensional projection of the carefully proportioned
flat color rectangles in Mondrian’s paintings (FIG. 35-56).Architecture 961