>sotsgorod/ bauhaus brigade/ hannes meyer

After his dismissal as director of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Hannes Meyer became professor at the architecture institute WASI in Moscow. Until 1933, he taught his students functionalism as the base of good aesthetics, like he did at the Bauhaus. Sobriety was an important issue. All concrete and metal was used for the heavy industries, for houses only wood and bricks were to be employed.

From 1931 Meyer worked as urban designer. He designed and advised for Giprogor, the Soviet institute for urban planning. During the second Five Years Plan (1932-1937) there was a new wind blowing through the Soviet Union: nationalism went hand in hand with monumentalism.

By this time Meyer led the Eastern Siberia sector of Giprogor. With a Soviet economist, a Soviet architect and his future wife Bauhaus student Lena Bergner, he made expeditions to Chita, Birobidzhan and Krasnoyarsk. Work was hard and didnÕt lead to much. Meyer had the feeling all his plans were dismissed because he was a foreigner. He left the Soviet Union in 1936.

Hannes Meyer in a letter in 1936: "What can I do to contribute to the 'national Soviet architecture'? For you I am a cold rationalist, a systematic type. So I am useless for now. That is why I am resigning."
hannes meyer in 1931

Birobidshan

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