«Architectural Fairytales»

1927-1935

I sought the architecture of all times, epochs, and peoples. The legends, sagas, true stories, fairy tales, fantastic narrations, old tales, poems and all that was based on the fantastic contents nourished me when I composed architectural fairy tales.

I delved into the most treasured places of inventions and fantasies. I revealed unseen treasure troves of perceptions and moved myself and the viewer to the world of unknown, sharp and most interesting experiences.
His fantasy penetrates into the deepest layers of the architectural creativity of forgotten and half forgotten civilizations and revives not just the architecture of bygone epochs but also revives the feasible fantasies of master-builders whose names, alas, time has not preserved. This is day-dreaming, “memories of the future”. After all, if in today’s understanding the architecture of the Renaissance and all subsequent history is inseparable from the architectural fantasies of Leonardo da Vinci and Piranesi, Boulle and Mendelsohn, Sant'Elia and the Russian Constructivists, then we recognize architecture of earlier periods only through actual structures. “We do not know and can never know what they dreamed about, those architects of antiquity, which worlds and compositions arose in their consciousness. For it is difficult to imagine that in all times the architect thought only in categories of the canon. Probably there have always been architects, whatever they were called and in whatever circumstances they worked, who dreamed and fantasized about more that they were able to implement.”

“I choose the subject of architectural dreams because I found it necessary to realize in practice the result of “uncontainable fantasies” and see what it would lead to. I wanted to see and be convinced by real facts as to what sort of transformative effect would ensue in visual, seeable images of “uncurbed and unlimited fantasy”. That persistent desire appeared as a result of what I thought to myself, that the normal human mind could never create an absurdity, no matter how “fantastic” architectural product. In my “wishings” I permitted even more – a complete detachment from the real world, and a switching over to the area of utopias, illusions, and ephemeral perceptions. Together with this I often heard from people not familiar with my new experiments that my works veered into the realm of pure fantasy entirely separated from reality. The opinions of most people came down to the fact that I should stop my “ungrounded”, although beautiful, search, and get involved in “actual, real designing” on which “everyone” works.”

“In spite of the fact that we cannot use outmoded architecture either from a constructive or from any other point of view, it still represents a most interesting stage in the architectural landscape. The return to long past time through only image-graphic constructions appears as part of our demand for picturesque processes of architectural content in contrast to the contemporary mechanized art of building. From the most primitive architectural buildings of clay, reeds, wood, stone, etc., to complex stylish structures, I achieved an understanding of how ”space is formed,” how it is “ornamentally rendered”.

In my fairy-tales I allowed myself all sorts of deviations, conglomerations, exaggerating and conventionality. But on the other hand I was capable of detecting drawbacks and merits of the properties which regulate appearance of the image.

The abstraction which I allowed myself when working on the fairy-tales directed me to a number of new ideas and contributed to putting in order some notions. The result of fantastic arrangements of architectural fairy-tales had an impact that I started approaching the spatial panoramic compositions”.