[Anti-formalism campaign: Krinsky's name removed from the title page] Lamtsov, I. V., Turkus, M. A. Elements of Architectural Composition (Elementy arkhitekturnoy kompozitsii). 1938. In Russian.

Ламцов, Иван Васильевич ; Туркус, Михаил Александрович. Элементы архитектурной композиции : второе переработанное и дополненное издание книги "Элементы архитектурно-пространственной композиции" В. Ф. Кринского, И. В. Ламцова, М. А. Туркуса / редактор инженер Б. М. Скоров ; технический редактор Д. М. Судак.
Москва ; Ленинград : Главная редакция строительной литературы, 1938. 168 страниц, с иллюстрациями; 19 x 26 сантиметров.
Твердый издательский переплет. Тираж 5 000 экземпляров.
Среди вклеек - проект Дворца советов в Москве.
Переплет удовлетворительное: ткань потерта и выцвела, бахрома по краям корешка и углам. Блок хорошее: бумага чистая, редкие пятна на форзацах.
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Lamtsov, Ivan Vasilievich ; Turkus, Mikhail Aleksandrovich. Elements of Architectural Composition : second revised and enlarged edition of "Elements of Architectural-Spatial Composition" by V. F. Krinsky, I. V. Lamtsov, M. A. Turkus / editor engineer B. M. Skorov ; technical editor D. M. Sudak.
Moscow ; Leningrad : Main Editorial Board of Construction Literature, 1938. 168 pp., with illustrations; 19 x 26 cm.
Publisher's hardcover. Print run of 5,000 copies.
Plates include the project for the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow.
Binding fair: cloth rubbed and faded, fraying along spine edges and at corners. Text block good: paper clean, occasional spotting to endpapers.

A key document of Soviet architectural pedagogy and of the political pressures that reshaped it. The book descends directly from the "Space" discipline developed at VKhUTEMAS, the Moscow avant-garde art and technical school whose Basic Division curriculum paralleled the Bauhaus Vorkurs in ambition and rigour. That discipline was codified in the 1934 volume "Elements of Architectural-Spatial Composition", written jointly by Vladimir Fyodorovich Krinsky (1890-1971), Ivan Lamtsov, and Mikhail Turkus. Krinsky was a leading figure of ASNOVA, the Association of New Architects and the institutional home of architectural Rationalism, and co-designer with Alexey Rukhlyadev of the original Komsomolskaya metro station vestibule with its Vladimir Favorsky sgraffito ceiling. By the time of this second edition his name had disappeared from the title page, a removal generally attributed to his Rationalist affiliations under the anti-formalism campaign then underway; the verso, however, still identifies him as an author of the parent work, so the excision is legible within the copy itself. The authors' preface is equally revealing: they state that in light of party and government directives certain sections should have been fundamentally revised, concede that their schemes of metric and rhythmic series were abstract and detached from architectural practice, and close by regretting that this revision could not be accommodated. The volume's substance remains the systematic analysis of spatial form, proportion, metre, rhythm, and frontal, volumetric, and spatial composition, illustrated from classical monuments alongside contemporary Soviet works including the unbuilt Palace of the Soviets. Issued in 5,000 copies, it holds strong interest for collectors of the Russian avant-garde, of VKhUTEMAS pedagogy, and of the documentary record of Stalinist cultural policy.