EVENT: Melnikov House: Saving an Avant-Garde Icon. 7-15 October 2019

Event: Melnikov House: Saving an Avant-Garde Icon. 7-15 October 2019

The Iconic Houses Lecture Series launched in 2014 in five cities in Europe to raise awareness about modern house museums and their frequent struggles to survive. The speakers are the directors of and experts on some of the world’s most Iconic Houses, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Eileen Gray’s Villa E-1027.
The initiative in Europe was taken by five house museums: Sonneveld House, Haus Ungers, Villa Stenersen, Villa Tugendhat and Van Schijndel House, followed in 2018 by Villa Müller.
After the successful tours in Europe, Iconic Houses is launching its first Iconic Houses Lecture Tour to three venues in the US and Canada in February 2020, with Pavel Kuznetsov’s lecture on the Melnikov House. All previous lectures can be found on the Iconic Houses website.
The 5th edition of the Iconic Houses Lecture Tour Europe takes place from 7 -15 October 2019, when Pavel Kuznetsov, Director of the State Museum of Konstantin and Viktor Melnikov in Moscow will tour six iconic houses in six European cities with his lecture on the Melnikov House in Moscow.
Lecture Itinerary in Europe 2019
Monday 7 October, Villa Stenersen in Oslo, Norway
Tuesday 8 October, Haus Ungers, UAA at the Baukunstarchiv NRW in Dortmund, Germany
Wednesday 9 October, Haus Ungers, UAA at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, Germany
Thursday 10 October, Sonneveld House at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Monday 14 October, Villa Müller at Study and Documentation Centre Norbertov, Prague, Czech Republic
Tuesday 15 October, Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic
The Melnikov House
The Melnikov House, designed by architect Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974) for himself and his family, is an icon of the Russian architectural avant-garde. The experimental cylindrical structure was built between 1927 and 1929 to test Melnikov’s concepts for mass-produced housing. Melnikov believed that the essence of his house lay in the balance and equivalence of weight, light, air and heat. The original layout, elegant spatial arrangement, and ingenious engineering techniques are combined in a unique architectural form that still looks modern. Retaining some historic elements of the 20th century, the house also reflects the tragic life of this solo architect in a collectivist society.
Pavel Kuznetsov will discuss the history of the Melnikov House from its inception in the early 20th century through establishing the museum in 2014 and conservation project nowadays. He
will explore the newly found information that uncovered the architectural, engineering, and philosophical ideas lying behind Melnikov’s ambitious plan to build an architectural manifesto in 1920s Soviet Russia.
More information about the event can be downloaded here.

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