Workers’ romantic dream of one-story Kharkiv

Residential cottages of workers' settlements in Kharkiv in 1923 – 1924 In the 1920s–1930s, when Ukraine was a part of the USSR, blocks of flats and the individual cottages became the most popular types of housing. They were characterized by a compact and functional spatial planning, rational construction, and new types of industrial building materials. In 1923, the Kharkiv City Department of Public Utilities called “Gorodkomkhoz” begun the initial construction of three so-called “workers' settlements” near industrial enterprises. Those blocks of low-rise buildings were inspired by Ebenizer Howard’s Garden City concept [1, p. 288; 2, p. 43]. In 1923–1924, the architect Trotsenko designed 3 new blocks near the industrial enterprises of Kharkiv. We might call it settlements conditionally because the social and household infrastructure’s objects were not built [3, p. 291]. He worked in collaboration with P.Krupko, a senior technician, and with students of the Kharkiv Art College –  I. Bogomolov, I. Taranov-Belozerov. In 1924, the35 identical blocks of two-story brick cottages with residential gardens, undivided by fences or auxiliary buildings, were erected. Those four-apartment two-story buildings contained two mirror-symmetrical sections. Each of them consisted of two individual three-room apartments on two levels, different in layouts, but identical in composition. They were designed to accommodate families of 4-5 persons. On the ground floor, there was a lobby with a wooden staircase to the first floor, a toilet under the stairs, a kitchen, and a living room. On the first floor, there were two rooms, one of which had a balcony. Those brick houses had wooden floors, sloping tiled roofs, and heating stoves. The means of artistic expression were at a consonant with the motives of traditional Ukrainian architecture. The picturesque image of those buildings is influenced by the planning and spatial structure, common for Ukrainian folk architecture: sloped roofs with large outcrops, verandas, terraces, and balconies. The surfaces of the unplastered walls were enlivened by such details as brick “rows” of inter-floor cornices, windowsills, and lintels above the windows, as well as wooden racks of canopies that were carved with traditional Ukrainian motifs. Trotsenko was inspired by the exploration of old Ukrainian chats in the Kharkiv region he took part in, with the Museum of Ukrainian Art’ staff. In 1921, the publication appeared, illustrated with dimensional drawings by V. Trotsenko [4]. In the 1920s, projects of architect V. Trotsenko reflected his desire to follow the Ukrainian traditions, taking into account the ideological and social demands of society, embodied in the aesthetics of innovative architecture. The works of the architect combine features of functionality, originality, and connection with traditions. Given the social order, the traditional architect thoroughly refined the techniques for producing proper functional forms. Moreover, thanks to a comparative analysis of folk architecture, V. Trotsenko pointed out the similarity of the traditional architecture of different regions with similar climatic conditions. In the opinion of the architect, the similar building materials and climate defined the logic of construction, using similar architectural forms and techniques. All attempts to bring the features of Ukrainian architectural traditions have been criticized by avant-garde architects. This criticism can be seen in popular historical and architectural publications of the 1970s. “Countless porches, verandas, balconies, and attics overload the look of cottages, depriving it of integrity, vastly complicating the three-dimensional composition”, B. Bondarenko wrote about the cottages of Kharkiv workers’ settlements [5, с. 27]. The search for national identity in the architecture of the USSR was in line with the designing of new types of buildings and attempts to develop new structures and materials. This created the environment in which innovation could thrive. The development of new types of residential buildings and use of modern materials and structures, as well as a rethinking of folk traditions, lay the ground for the work of traditionalist architects. As architectural styles have changed from historicism to modernism, Ukrainian traditional architectural forms were transferred to a new stylistic background. Author: Denis Vitchenko