A Giant Avant-Garde Stadium Project in Ukraine: The Enigma of the 1930s

Abstract

Abstract The paper is dedicated to the study of rare undeciphered documents: colorful architectural perspectives of a giant stadium of the 1930s with a caption in French, found by the author of this text in one of the Ukrainian archives. The authorship of the graphic images and the project itself, the name of the stadium, its localization on the master plan of the city of those years were established in the process of this research. The results of the study allow us to trace the fate of the project of a giant sports complex from its concept and design stages to the beginning of its erection; to reveal the reasons for the interruption of its construction and oblivion for many decades, as well as to restore the biographies of the architects involved in the found images. Features of the difficult historical period in the architecture of Ukraine: the violent transition from modernism to “socialist realism” in the 1930s are seen through the “lens” of the fate of this unique avant-garde unrealized project.