Salyut Hotel in the context of soviet avant-garde
Comparative case study of El Lissyzky principle.
1) Introduction (explaining the context that led to soviet architecture in USSR and Ukraine);
Most of the Soviet heritage is of particular interest to Europe with the former’s blend of incredible creative originality and necessity to cope with ideological restrictions. Architecture is not an exception.1 Soviet leaders understood the importance of government-controlled architectural vision and both encouraged new daring projects in the beginning of the Soviet State to express their political power, but later restricted their architectural specification without pity to the architects’ ambition.2 A specific architectural example will show to what extent all USSR republics shared the same architectural vision. Since the author of the essay is from Kiev, a particular Kiev building will be the main point of analysis. This essay is going to analyze the Salyut hotel, a Ukrainian hotel built in 1980s, an architectural project that followed the avant-garde influences of Russia, since Ukraine back then was part of the bigger USSR context. The essay is going to introduce the design development process of the hotel and then analyze specific points in detail, i.e., describe the geographical, social, political and aesthetic context. The next stage of the analysis will be to identify the avant-garde links and preliminary sources, which in this text will be a particular example of the Russian avant-garde artist and architect - El Lyssizky, who was developing the movement in the very beginning. Being an example of so many soviet showing-off hotels which were originally supposed to «defend» the Soviet ideology, it is also an example of architectural heritage, that does not seem to be of particular importance for contemporary authorities. Hopefully, this essay will show how much thinking process was involved in the design of the hotel and therefore, explain the need for the project’s protection. The essay will not try to prove that all of the Ukrainian soviet architecture is dramatically different from Russian soviet architecture (even though particular projects were of course specific to their sites, that fitted within the larger context of the Ukrainian culture, which was of course different from Russian culture), instead, the essay will try to link the Ukrainian Salyut hotel project with the Russian avant-garde roots. In other words, the 20th century geographical location was less important than belonging to the same cultural tradition.3
2 Vadim Bass. ‘Arzamas Academy’ Lecture and Journals: ‘Architecture in the service of dictators’ Lecture number 4 of the course “Architecture as a means of communication”(Published on 20 May 2016) https://arzamas.academy/courses/12/4 (accessed date July 24, 2018)
3 Old picture, showing the facade of Hotel ’Salut’ (Source: ’Kyivmiskbud’ archives 1985.)
2) Historical context of Ukraine and why Ukraine shared soviet avant-garde (examples of soviet avant-garde architecture in Ukraine): influence of soviet architecture on modern architecture;
Ukraine became part of the USSR in 19224, with meant that it shared political and ideological program of Russia. This also concerned architecture. A lot of the so-called «soviet architecture», similar to Russian projects can be found in Ukraine, starting from the constructivist projects like Russian and Ukrainian TsUM — Central Universal Department5. Store and later evolving in «soviet futurism» projects Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, St. Petersburg (1) and Sanatorium «Friendship», (2) Yalta6, to which the Salyut Hotel belongs.Figure 2: 1. Russian.
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Figure 3: 2. Ukrainian.
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While constructivism was all about experimenting with directional lines and basic simple volumes7, futurism was incorporating forms that architects imagined could be later applied even outside Earth (the idea of space travels being on the peak in these days). Even though The Salyut Hotel, since it was build in 1984, formally belongs to soviet futurism, in the wider context however, it also belongs to soviet avant-garde and further text will show in details to what extend it is true. The futuristic building inspired by spaceships, was built by the order of Gosplan8, as a result of which it turned out to be completely different from what was originally planned.
4 History.com Editors, ’Ukraine declares its independence’ in History Journal: ’HISTORY’ (November 5, 2009)
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ukraine-declares-its-independence (accessed date January 3, 2018)
5 Figure 2: showing the facade of Moscow TsUM (source: Ksenia Sidorova, https://ria.ru/20180703/1523839067.html, July 3, 2018)
Figure 3: showing the facade of Kiev TsUM (source: User: Alexostrov, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Крещатик,_38-2_-_ЦУМ_(01).jpg, September 29, 2012
6 Figure 4: showing the facade of Institute of Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, St. Petersburg (Frйdйric Chaubin. Book: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed) p. 107.
Figure 5: showing the facade of Sanatorium «Friendship», Yalta (Frйdйric Chaubin. Book: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed) p. 195
7 Khan-Magomedov S. Soviet Avant-gard Architecture. Book 1 (Moscow: Stroyizdat, URSS. 1996, 2001.) p.112-113
8 Gosplan-(The State Planning Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers) is a state body that carried out nationwide planning for the development of the national economy of the USSR and monitored the implementation of national economic plans and operated from 1923 to 1991.
3) Avraham Miletsky + people's impressions of the Salyut building;
Avraham Miletsky, the author of the Salyut hotel project, embodied the spirit of Soviet futurism and the flight of
technical thought of that time, both in the shape of the building and in the interiors. Due to this the hotel became one of the symbols of Kiev. It was built by Kievgorstroy9 in 1982–84, designed by renowned local architect Avraham Miletsky (Kiev Project Institute, co-authors N. I. Logotskaya, V. G. Shevchenko) on the street of the January Uprising (now Ivan Mazepa Street) near the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
Very well chosen location of the building, from the point of view of the hotel business - both historical monuments and parks for tourists a district for business residents are located nearby. Guests of the capital could live in the very center of the cultural historical city and could quickly walk to such important sights as the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Park of Glory,
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Not so long ago, it was published in the news that the hotel reconstruction might take place. Of course, for now this is only a hypothetical version. But market analysts have suggested that the hotel may well be converted into apartments, because the hotel market is oversaturated, and the existence of the hotel as such does not correspond to market demands. Such versions, as long as they are only theoretical, still attract the attention of people and worry architects, aware of the historic importance of this project.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ukraine experienced dramatic changes in society, which, of course, affected the architectural life. With the coming to power of the Communist Party in 1920, the state began to control literally all sphere of people’s lives and an official ideology of socialism and later communist was imposed. Obviously, not the last role was assigned to architecture in the performance of this task. Thus, the Soviet architecture becomes one of the «conductor» of state ideas12. The first post-revolutionary decade (1920s) is characterized by a rich creative atmosphere, which is a consequence of fundamental changes and the desire to actively search for new approaches.
Figure 10.
The language of avant-garde, first developed in art (the famous black square13 of Kazimir
Malevich breaks old rules and introduces the new world and art vision of abstraction), was
considered the most complete reflection of the revolutionary era of the breakdown of class society. Romantically elevated perception of life is read in the buildings of this period, which were created as the most understandable symbols of the new era. Later (starting from the 1930s) the restricting state goal of the soviet architectural solutions was to inspire the
working people, anticipating the life of the future communist society.
In the early 1960s, the rejection of Stalinist neoclassicism (which was an architectural movement solely celebrating the communist state and Joseph Stalin in particular, being the ruler of the new «empire») led to the emergence of a new architectural thinking. The fight against architectural “surplus” and the requirement of economic efficiency became the basis of Soviet Neo-Modernism. Its aesthetic embodiment was determined by the post-war generation of architects, who perceived utopia and progress not as ideological fictions, but as necessary components of the specialty “architect”. It is this generation of architects that in many ways created Kiev the way we know it today. Architects of the 1960s claimed the role of demiurges who create large scale works of art, and artists, respectively, sought to be full-fledged co-authors of architectural projects. It was an attempt to turn the city into a space for the implementation of artistic thinking - as opposed to the existing practice of a rigid unification of the city in the format of typical buildings. At the same time, the material basis of this attempt was just a gigantic array of residential construction in the USSR, which made possible the emergence of a “superstructure” in the form of innovative projects of social, cultural and industrial importance.14
9 ‘Kyivmiskbud’ - Kyivmiskbud is a major construction holding company of Ukraine and the biggest construction company in Kyiv.
10 Figured 6: Old picture, showing the facade of Nikolsky Slupsky monastery. (Source: ’Kyivmiskbud’ archives)
11 Figure 7, 8, 9: showing interior design of Hotel ‘Salut’ (Sourced: Author’s Own, December 18, 2018)
12 Ryabushin Alexander, Smolina Nadia. Landmarks of Soviet Architecture (New York: Rizzoli 1992) p. 9.
13 Figure 10: Kazimir Malevich, Black Square 1915 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (Sourced: Author’s Own, July 25, 2018) 14 Novikov Feliks, Belogolovsky Vladimir, Soviet modernism. 1955-1985. (Published: TATLIN, 2010 г.) p. 130-140.
4) Salyut hotel as an example of combining old and new;
In its current form, the Salyut Hotel captures the complex history of interaction between architectural thought and the "bureaucratic party apparatus” - government and had to restore the historical accent - bell tower Nikolsky Slupsky.15
Figure 11.16
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According to the idea of Abraham Milentsky and his team, the hotel on the Square of Glory was to become a high-rise built using an innovative construction, using cables. The project received the support of the "party elite", but after the team refused to add their party curator to the list of sponsors, the construction and design process began to stall.
Financing problems began and as a result, the initial project had to be cut off by more than half - despite the fact that the foundation was designed for a much taller building. The architects tried to save the project, providing alternatives after the start of the construction: it was necessary to balance a disproportionately large amount of stylobate (socle). Therefore, an unusual form of the hotel "Salute" was the result of a direct collision of architecture and government.
Instead of steel cables that were supposed to hold slabs, the authors used 19 reinforced concrete walls between the
rooms, which cantilever extend from the central core with elevators and a circular ramp. Thus, due to the small number
of rooms and the inability to expand them, the hotel from the very beginning turned out to be ineffective and could not
pay off for a long time. Miletsky was crushed, but it was not possible to fight the bureaucratic machine The building is
supported by a concrete pipe, on which six residential floors, having an ellipse shape in plan, are cantilevered. Inside the pipe there are elevators, risers of all communications and a spiral ramp, from which you can go down from the floors of
the hotel. On the second floor of the stylobate part of the building there is a restaurant. From above, under the roof, a second restaurant was supposed to be - a summer restaurant. In the basement there is a parking for cars.17
Here's what the former chief architect of Kiev, the people's architect of Ukraine, Valentin Yezhov, tells about this: «The older generation of architects are well aware of the sad story of designing a hotel on Glory Square. How many times the author - Avraham Miletsky - was summoned to the Gosstroy and party instances, demanding a sharp decrease in the height of the hotel! We drove to a large company on the left bank of the Dnieper (Kiev river-author’s note), in the area of Hydropark and Rusanovka, visually tried on where the hotel was due to the upper edge of the slopes, and assumed how much it would argue with the Lavra bell tower. Under the pressure of high authorities, the fate of the building was decided - instead of a beautiful, round, slender tower, they received a low barrel-shaped structure.»18
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According to the memoirs of the author Miletsky, the building made «..A strange impression of an unfinished tower (Gothic cathedral); it looked like grenades..»19, as a result is paved for a chapter «Attempts to rectify the situation — the ellipsoid plan, the shifted top floor visor, the enlarged screens of the partitions between the balconies of the rooms, which now stand behind the fencing line, have in many ways added to the building’s brutalist heaviness caused by changes in its original proportions. The number of rooms was cut by half, the payback period of construction has increased significantly. Still, here and now there is a hotel that remains popular with tourists, not least because of its unusual appearance. But even in the modern, “trimmed” form, the Salyut hotel is impressive, but for me, for example, it is as interesting as the surrounding “classic” Kiev sights. True, today it looks like an alien body, which happened to be in this place and this time.20
Figure 14.
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https://darriuss.livejournal.com/384320.html (accessed date October 20, 2018)
Figure12. showing Facade of Hotel ‘Salut’ (Sourced: Author’s Own, December 18, 2018)
Figure13. showing construction of Hotel ‘Salut’ (Sourced: Author’s Own, December 18, 2018) 19 Pilipchak Boris. "Architecture of Soviet Kiev" (Publishing House A + C. Kiev. 2010) p. 534-536. 20 Figure 14. Socialist Modernism. Cut Hand model, Hotel “Salyut” (Alex Bykov, Oleksandr Burlaka and Oleksiy
Radynski - “Superstructure” project) http://socialistmodernism.com/hotel-salyut-kiev/ Figure 15. Socialist Modernism. First idea hand model, Hotel “Salyut” (Alex Bykov, Oleksandr Burlaka and Oleksiy
Radynski - “Superstructure” project) http://socialistmodernism.com/hotel-salyut-kiev/
5) The need for conservation and protection;
Since the collapse of the USSR in 1992 several decades have passed, and now, due to the poor quality of materials and lack of repair cases, samples of Soviet architecture already look unattractive. Often, people consider these architecture projects lewdness, which is too new to have historical value, and developers look at the "tidbits" of the land beneath them. In the 1990s, public buildings were massively resold and leased. As a result - the loss of the initial function, the original appearance, neglect or destruction. Only now our society is beginning to think about the significance of this architecture. Unfortunately, the conservation area does not always keep pace with these trends. Moreover, bureaucratic resistance interferes. “Not everyone understands these objects, so it’s very difficult to agree on the status of the documentation,” notes Elena Mokrousova,21 chief specialist of the department for accounting of monuments of the Kiev Scientific-Methodological Center for the Protection, Restoration and Use of Historical, Cultural and Protected Territories.
Kiev Neo-Modernism, remained an unfinished, utopian project. On the way of its realization political and censorship barriers occurred, as well as material difficulties, and then - the collapse of the Soviet state and the discrediting of modernist aesthetics as “totalitarian”. Kiev became a city where Neo-Modernism was paused, frozen at the stage of protracted construction. In remained in an imaginary dimension, in the gap between the conceived and the embodied. Still, the snapshot of the Salyut hotel appears in almost every photo album of futuristic soviet architecture together with the Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi22 and the Druzhba Hotel in Yalta23, that share the same futuristic visual language. The house is a successful completion of the ensemble of the Square of Glory and it seems to reference the complex of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra (at least in the original design, where the architect wanted to build a tower, mirroring the towers of the monastery), located nearby.
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22 Fifure 16. Rota Simona, Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi, #SOSBRUTALISM Journal.
http://www.sosbrutalism.org/cms/15891705 (accessed January 4, 2019)
23 Figure 17. Antipin Konstantin, Pension "Friendship" in the Carpathians, Livejornal (published April 11, 2016 14:40)
https://p2beep.livejournal.com/40184.html (accessed Desember 20, 2018)
6) Global context;
Similar round constructions, with floors strung on a central pillar, were popular in the 1960s.24 In general, both buildings already mentioned (the Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi and the Druzhba Hotel in Yalta), like the Salyut hotel “corn” form, refer us to the course of metabolism and Kiyonori Kikutake25, in particular (the project of the sea city, which was presented in 1958). Due to the similarity of architectural solutions with the outlines of biological forms, connoisseurs often attribute the hotel to the so-called “metabolism” style.
The architectural trend under the biological name "metabolism" originated in Japan in the late 1950s. 26The theory of metabolism is based on the principle of bionics, i.e., the borrowing of constructive decisions by a person from living nature. Metabolism, however, did not follow the path of direct imitation of biological forms; instead, they used the fundamentally biological principles of modularity, spiral development, and the placement of elements around the axis.
Buildings built in the style of metabolism do not look like biological objects, but they are organized similarly to them: for example, the building may take the form of a honeycomb, wheat stalk, corncob or even sporangia - a microscopic fungus. 27An important feature of metabolism was the incompleteness, "understatement", the openness of the structure of buildings.
These ideas are still alive today: metabolic structures, changing plastics in time, continue to be built until now in this regard, it is interesting to recall the project of the Soviet artist El Lissitzky in the project, he proposed to place eight "horizontal skyscrapers" above transport roads, following the step to spatial urbanism. his ideas of spatial urban planning were taken from the principles of Japanese metabolists.28
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Increasingly, there are calls to demolish uncomfortable objects or rebuild them in projects that do not take into account neither the building’s function nor the cultural and social context. So, from the high-rise building where the Ministry of Social Policy used to form, the sunflowers are gradually dismantled. Officials insist that they are in disrepair and can harm someone when they fall. Not indifferent citizens, among whom there are architects, are convinced that everything can be restored.
24 Ross Michael Franklin, Beyond Metabolism: The New Japanese Architecture (New York; London: McGraw-Hill 1978) p. 23. 25 Ross Michael Franklin, Beyond Metabolism: The New Japanese Architecture(New York; London: McGraw-Hill 1978) p. 30. 26 Ross Michael Franklin, Beyond Metabolism: The New Japanese Architecture(New York; London: McGraw-Hill 1978) p. 7.
27 Ross Michael Franklin, Beyond Metabolism: The New Japanese Architecture(New York; London: McGraw-Hill 1978) p. 56-57. 28 Loktev V.I., The theory of metabolism in modern urban planning in Japan (Moscow: State Committee on Civil Engineering and Architecture under the USSR State Structure, 1967) p. 14-16 29 Figure 18 Loktev V.I., The theory of metabolism in modern urban planning in Japan (Moscow: State Committee on Civil Engineering and Architecture under the USSR State Structure, 1967) p. 9 30 Figure 19. Loktev V.I., The theory of metabolism in modern urban planning in Japan (Moscow: State Committee on Civil Engineering and Architecture under the USSR State Structure, 1967) p. 15
7) El' Lissizky introduces avant-garde;
El Lissitzky’s round geometric shapes and vertical axises. Concept on the plane.
The creative way of El lissitzky (his active work proceeded from 1917 to 1933) is not without complex contradictions, incomplete searches, maybe even paradoxes, but the era itself was extremely difficult - the time of the ruthless struggle of class ideas and ideologies in culture and art and the extreme development of the new industrial way of life:
“We left to the old world the concept of our own house, our own palace, our own barracks and our own temple. We set ourselves the task of a city - a single creative business, a center of collective effort, a mast of radio, sending an explosion of creative efforts into the world: we will overcome the chilling foundation of the earth in it and rise above it... this dynamic architecture will create a new theater of life...”.31
The famous architect of the twentieth century, who was born in Tsarist imperial Russia, but was formed as an architect in Soviet times. Having Jewish roots, he is nevertheless considered a Russian soviet architect.32 El Lissitzky graduated from art school with his friend, the future famous ‘artistic Commissar’, Marc Chagall. Then Lissitzky and Chagall then went on to manage an art school together. On the formation of Lissitzky the Suprematism of Malevich had an important influence.33 Like Malevich, Lissitzky begins to experimenting in the genre of suprematism, gradually coming to his own style. Shortly after El Lissitzky "became pregnant with architecture." While continuing to work as a teacher at an art school, he began to develop his future architectural projects. He goes to Germany and in the 1920s he meets Kurt Schwitters.34 In the same place he becomes fond of constructivism and creates his famous Moscow “horizontal skyscraper” from 1923 to 1925, as well as many other architectural works.
Lissitzky was fascinated with supremacism for a very short time — he then begins to work on the basis of combination of constructivism and suprematism, synthesizing them into his own style: he created his own system of prouns — expressing them in art and architecture, a sort of three-dimensional “suprematic models and worlds” 35
“We saw that a new pictorial work created by us is no longer a picture. It does not represent anything at all, but
constructs space, planes, lines with the goal of creating a system of new relationships of the real world. And it was this new structure that we gave the name of “proun”. El Lissitzky
Lissitzky created a dynamic space in all his works.36 The architect opposed the re-construction of previous architectural shapes, the formal continuity of the architecture of the past centuries. The main thing in the works of Lissitzky is the struggle with the old architectural understanding of space, which until now seemed static.
Lissitzky wanted to return to the architecture its natural functions, which were always determined by the search for new forms and structures. Speaking about his first projects, it is necessary to pay attention to the Vesnins project as the first step towards new construction, although some of its elements were still “traditional”. Lissitzky himself says, that this was "our first attempt to create a new form for a social task."
31 Balandin Sergey ’The architectural theory of El Lissitzky’, Totalarch Journal: Architecture of the USSR and the socialist countries (1968 http://ussr.totalarch.com/architectural_theory_of_el_lisitzky) 32 Cooke, C., Russian Avant-Garde. (1st ed. Great Britain: Academy Editions.1995.) p. 154. 33 Khan-Magomedov S. Soviet Avant-gard Architecture. (Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1987) p. 64. 34 Khan-Magomedov S. Soviet Avant-gard Architecture. (Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1987) p. 279. 35 Khan-Magomedov S. Soviet Avant-gard Architecture. (Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1987) 36 Shatskikh, A., Vitebsk. (1st ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.2007) p. 22.
CASE STUDY:
8) "El' Lissizky's principle”;
In Lisstzky's creative work, his paintings are very important, which can be viewed as a preparatory stage for spatial
architectural projects. Lissitzky created a whole series of paintings that, in my opinion, set a general tone for the future course of constructivism and indirectly influenced the work of Abraham Miletzkly. The three pictures presented can be compared both from the point of view of geometry and from the point of view of the spatial illusion created by flat geometric figures.
On the one hand, in the pictures 1920 the same elements appear: elegant, narrow, vertical lines and geometric figures intersect a large horizontal circle. Because of the intersection of perpendicular elements, a grid is created, or a coordinate system in which the author builds his world. (In this essay I will call this compositional and dynamic decision the “Lissitzky principle”, and even though it is not an official name, I will use this criteria to describe the relationship between Lissitzky and other constructivist architects). We can see how in his drawings Lissitzky is experimenting with the principle that he and the architects following him will apply in their architectural projects. This is the principle of movement and dynamics. As mentioned earlier, the main thing in Lissitzky's works is the struggle against the old architectural understanding of space, which was perceived as static and motionless. An example of such a static and outdated architecture is the architecture of Versailles. Here, static and calm are transmitted using symmetry, which El Lissitzky violated in his works, on the contrary.37
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Figured 21: Old picture, Plans and Axonometric of the Hotel ‘Salut’ (Source: ’Kyivmiskbud’ archives.)
9) Constructivism projects with "El' Lissizky's principle" applied;
Next, I will show how the initially flat Lissitzky principles were applied to three-dimensional projects by the next
generation of constructivists. Lissitzky would be glad to see how his aesthetic ideas come to life: “they will spill over the whole world under construction, and the roughness of concrete, the smoothness of metal, the shine of glass” will become “the skin of a new life”. Constructivist architects of the cities of the future followed its compositional principles to add these characteristics to the real urban environment.
For example, Tatlin and Shukhov picked up a wave of constructivism from Lissitzky, and began to apply its principles, when a thin plane crosses a circular plane.38 Thus, it seems to me that in their towers as objects, it can be traced how the flat circle turns into a cylinder and a cone and intersects with a multitude of cables/beams, just like on the above Lissitzky pictures. What was first embodied in a purely abstract image is now embodied in a three-dimensional form.
Figure 22.39
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38 Khan-Magomedov S. Soviet Avant-gard Architecture. (Published: Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1987) p. 64-65.
39 EL Lissitzky Principle, diagram related to Hotel ’Salut’ (Sourced: Author’s Own, October 25, 2018)
10) "El' Lissizky's principle" in hotel Salyut;
In the final part of the essay, I want to prove that in the project of the hotel Salyut Miletsky borrows the “Lissitzky
principle” (in this case it does not matter, consciously or unconsciously). We will compare ideas and their
implementation in terms of visual and spatial methods and in terms of the ideological background.
Visually, Lissitzky takes the concept of a circle and a vertical and applies it to the hotel project. (After analysis, the
impression was created that Miletksy did not draw pictures for his projects, unlike Lissitzky). Earlier in my work, I
described how Lissitzky applies the principle of the metabolism architecture, and we can see similar motifs from
Miletsky, who also implemented the principles of metabolism. To show the influence of Lissitzky on Miletsky, I showed how a circle and a vertical, first drawn by Lissitzky in a plane, evolved through the projects of towers in the project of the hotel Salut. That is, the Salyut hotel is a kind of continuation of previous projects-towers.
It is very interesting to compare the ideas of both architects. In both cases they thought about the beautiful future, about how it could look, and both showed it in different techniques. One is in painting, one is in an architectural project (which was embodied in life, not just on paper). As already described earlier, Miletsky initially conceived the building as a tall tower, but due to the party decision it was necessary to cut down this tower (officially so that it would not compete in importance with the dome of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra aspiring upwards: heaven). The beautiful future, it was growing towards, was also cut off.
(In the photo of the layout it is clear that Lissitzky’s “principle” is embodied on two levels: not only in the tower, where circles are strung on the vertical and repeating window elements along each circle-floor, but also in the overall composition of the project where the round tower and the rectangular block create one complex);
Figured 23. 40
11) What does the Salyut hotel mean today? Is it an important part of architecture heritage that should be preserved?;
It takes time and hard work to maintain the complicated body of a city. To begin with, every citizen needs to understand that he is part of the city.Therefore, in the question of Kiev Neo-Modernism (or any other relatively young architecture movement, which is not accepted as such by everyone) that continues the tradition of soviet avant-garde, value is not in concrete and steel, but in understanding the importance of this architecture as an idea and phenomenon. Soviet avant-garde, and in particular the hotel "Salute", became the starting point for the creation of modern world architecture.
Today one of the key examples of the style is in a deplorable state. But such a building is not only historical, but also of visual value for the city of Kiev. “In fact, these are the most recent examples of metropolitan architecture that can be called modern. Because almost everything that has been built in Kiev since the early 1990s is a flawed attempt to recreate XIXth century architecture with stucco molding on the facades,” a cultural scientist Alexey Radinsky says.41
There are cases of complete destruction or partial change of the original image of the buildings of Soviet Neo-
Modernism in Kiev. That is why in Kiev, the #savekyivmodernism movement was created, which calls on professionals and just residents of the city not to forget their history and value their heritage. Few people passing by the “Salute” or being its guests or co-workers think about what role the building played in the history of architecture.
This legacy’s protection is needed as a foundation for the cultivation of the new architectural language. It is not about the architecture style itself... we must be able to defend our history, principles and values in general. But the destructive behavior regarding the architecture of Soviet avant-garde shows that the problem is systemic and the scale of thoughtless destruction has reached the peak already. Values have been cultivated for years. But we, as a community, do not have much time - if there is no movement of architectural heritage protection, there will be nothing to appreciate at all.42
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12) Conclusion.
The active search of new concepts that architects wanted to incorporate in the new architectural language of the high-rise buildings, is read in the original project of the building of the Salyut Hotel and restaurant.
The Salyut Hotel reflects the main ideological features of the Soviet era: an unusual solution for floors and balconies, has seemed to evolve around one dominant idea/axis - the idea of equal opportunities for all. For this reason almost every window has the same view upon Kiev and the Dnieper River.
Of course, if the original idea of Miletzky was fully realized, we would have a high futuristic structure that would rise upwards - thus emphasizing the ideas and achievements of the communist future.
The hotel complex is waiting for a bold and daring decision of the reconstruction, which would emphasize the beauty of the place in which it is located and turn it into the business card of the future city.