«Architecton: proceedings of higher education» № 36 December 2011
History of architecture
 | Meyerovich Mark G. Professor, Irkutsk State Technical University |
ERNST MAY: «RATIONAL» HAUSING FOR RUSSIA
The article discloses the principal reason for inviting the well-known German architect E.May in the late 1920s to the USSR, which is similarity with the municipal housing programmes in Germany in the mid-to-late 1920s, on the one hand, and the requirements for housing commissioned by Soviet authorities for workers and employees using public money: low cost, standardisation, rationality, suitability for mass construction, maximum design and construction speed, etc. on the other hand. Another similarity was participatory financing. In the Soviet variant, it became a sort of analogue to the German one: a) government loans for municipal housing construction, b) assets and funds provided by developing agencies, c) funds contributed by Soviet housing cooperatives (i.e. contributions by workers from their pay). As well as in Germany, housing construction was commissioned by city authorities; plus industry’s ministry in the role of customer. The Soviet Union, as well as Germany, considered such centralisation of financing and town-planning as a policy capable of ensuring "rationalised" housing construction.
The article is based on analysis of a wide range of archival materials and other primary sources. It formulates hypotheses and poses questions that require further profound studying.
Key words: garden city, Soviet workers’ settlement, Socialist town, industrialisation, the town-planning policy in the USSR