Tatlin Tower - 1/42 scale model
Vladimir Tatlin was a Russian artist and architect. After the 1917 Revolution, V.I.Lenin tasked him with replacing Tsarist monuments with ones expressing revolutionary ideals.
Tatlin’s proposed tower was an abstract iron and glass sculpture 400m tall (Eiffel tower is 300m). The tower's axis tilted parallel to that of Earth's.
The monument was to be the headquarters of the Comintern, the international grouping of Communist parties. A lower glass cube housing the Legislature would revolve once a year. Above that was the Executive in a pyramid rotating once a month. Above that, a cylinder would hold press and communications and revolve daily. The entire edifice was to straddle the Neva in Petrograd (St Petersburg).
One prescient feature was the surrounding double helix – Tatlin’s radial struts could almost represent its canonical amino acid bases! Had the existence and structure of DNA – the key to life – been known to Tatlin it would have been of immense symbolic importance.
Tatlin’s constructivist monument in one sense harks back to the 1890s of Eiffel’s France. In another it looks far forward to the twisted and otherwise non-rectilinear steel and glass postures of almost any present-day city finance quarters.
Tatlin’s Tower was never realised although he and students made a 4.2m high mostly wooden model in 1920.
The model pictured here is 1/42 scale and was erected in 2011 at the London Royal Academy. For some reason the lower geometrical solid is a cylinder rather than Tatlin's cube. The model was subsequently moved to the UEA Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, Norfolk.
The Sainsbury Centre, architect Norman Foster, is in background at left. The UEA Ziggurets are at right.
Tatlin Tower - 1/42 scale model
Vladimir Tatlin was a Russian artist and architect. After the 1917 Revolution, V.I.Lenin tasked him with replacing Tsarist monuments with ones expressing revolutionary ideals.
Tatlin’s proposed tower was an abstract iron and glass sculpture 400m tall (Eiffel tower is 300m). The tower's axis tilted parallel to that of Earth's.
The monument was to be the headquarters of the Comintern, the international grouping of Communist parties. A lower glass cube housing the Legislature would revolve once a year. Above that was the Executive in a pyramid rotating once a month. Above that, a cylinder would hold press and communications and revolve daily. The entire edifice was to straddle the Neva in Petrograd (St Petersburg).
One prescient feature was the surrounding double helix – Tatlin’s radial struts could almost represent its canonical amino acid bases! Had the existence and structure of DNA – the key to life – been known to Tatlin it would have been of immense symbolic importance.
Tatlin’s constructivist monument in one sense harks back to the 1890s of Eiffel’s France. In another it looks far forward to the twisted and otherwise non-rectilinear steel and glass postures of almost any present-day city finance quarters.
Tatlin’s Tower was never realised although he and students made a 4.2m high mostly wooden model in 1920.
The model pictured here is 1/42 scale and was erected in 2011 at the London Royal Academy. For some reason the lower geometrical solid is a cylinder rather than Tatlin's cube. The model was subsequently moved to the UEA Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, Norfolk.
The Sainsbury Centre, architect Norman Foster, is in background at left. The UEA Ziggurets are at right.