A promising idea
In 1898, the Englishman Ebenezer Howard came up with a notoriously utopian idea, which had a great resonance throughout the world. She entered the foundation of world culture called "Garden Cities of the Future." This is how Howard called his book, which has been translated into many languages. It described the ideal type of a small village, combining elements of urban development with garden and park ensembles, without slums and factory pipes.
The author of the original idea was supported by the publisher J. Lowe Strachey. He published The Country Gentleman's Journal, on the pages of which he commented on Howard's idea. Strachey believed that garden cities should consist of farm workers' cottages. He named the amount of 150 pounds the maximum that workers can pay for cottages from their earnings.
Howard proposed to create a rational combination of city and garden, based on the principle of the harmonious unity of nature and architecture. One was supposed to naturally flow into the other, but they did not mean the suburbs of large settlements. The idea of a garden city assumed that it was not a satellite of the metropolis, but that it provided itself with provisions and many industrial goods.
The idea of an ideal cottage city was reinforced by artistic discoveries of symbolism. Interest in mythology and idealized nature was very high. The artist Eugene Grasset (1843-1917) depicted people living outside the city as inhabitants of an earthly paradise. The cycle of his works "12 months", which featured a beautiful gardener, convinced that life in nature is beautiful in any season. This is exactly how - bright and romantic - the everyday life of garden cities seemed to all admirers of Howard. Residents of future settlements, in which nature and culture intertwined, had to not only settle in this paradise, but also actively participate in its creation.
Attempts at practical implementation
The first examples of the implementation of Howard's ideas were the villages of Lechworth and Velvin. Lechworth became a symbol of urban innovation in the early 20th century. Architects from several countries, including Russia, took part in its design.
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Both villages were circular in plan. Manufacturing plants and fuel depots were located along the outer ring. There was also a green belt in the village. The covered gallery housed clubs and showrooms. Transport routes were arranged so that fuel was transported only along straight highways without a single turn. The houses were located at an impressive distance from each other and were buried in gardens.
The idea was liked by the architects of many countries, but Howard developed his plans for implementation in England and only there. But fate decreed that different countries tried to create garden cities. And not everyone succeeded. In some countries, the already established architectural environment prevented the creation of harmonious settlements, and in some places there were simply no talented architects to embody innovative ideas.
Contribution of Antoni Gaudí
The Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) also had a hand in the implementation of the garden city project. He is considered to be one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. In an era when Art Nouveau was becoming rationalistic, Gaudí brought forward the aesthetics of meandering lines in architecture.
Constantly thinking about the sublime, the great Catalan seemed to many to be detached from life - an "out of life" person. He never created his own family, was unsociable, and he died absurdly, being hit by a tram, because he was walking down the street in thought.
Antonio Gaudí y Cornet was born on June 25, 1852 in the family of a blacksmith. He grew up as a sentimental boy, painted a lot and from a young age wanted to become an architect. After studying for five years at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Barcelona, by the age of 30 he began to conclude lucrative contracts. The most important order he received was the management of the construction of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral - Sagrada Familia. The architect was then only 31 years old.
The construction of the temple was in full swing when Gaudí met his largest customer - Count Eusebi Guell, for whom he built a luxurious villa - the Guell house. In addition, Gaudí built the private houses Mila and Batlló. It was then that the architect became infected with the idea of a garden city.
The Gaudí-designed area consisted of seven houses and an equal number of parklands. As a businessman, Guell decided to sell all seven plots to future homeowners. However, not all of them were bought by the inhabitants of Barcelona, and over time the park became municipal. Thus, the project was only partially implemented, but many of Gaudi's ideas about the garden city were adequately embodied in this architectural work.
Gaudí's garden city was filled with houses that were very strange at the time. Gaudí was almost the first to combine objects of different heights in combination with a free choice of styles from different eras. Catalan architecture did not yet know such a bold combination of forms and stylistic features, but even the participation of such an innovator as Gaudi did not ensure the future of Howard's ideas in Spain.
The idea of a garden city was not feasible everywhere. The capitals of Europe proved to be unable to accept large fragments of garden and park landscapes into their super-urbanized environment. But the algorithms proposed by Gaudí for placing sculptures and fountains of bizarre shapes in parks have become part of world culture.
On Russian soil
In Russia, Howard's ideas became interested in the early 20th century. The first attempt in Russia to implement the idea of a garden city was the village of Kratovo near Moscow (now the Ramensky District of the Moscow Region). Its construction began shortly after Russia joined the International Association of Garden Cities and Urban Planning, after which bold experiments in the field of settlement began.
In 1911, Howard's book was translated into Russian. Translator of the book Ya. N. Bloch noted in the preface that the outstanding Russian revolutionary Pyotr Kropotkin could be named Howard's predecessor. For him, the idea of a city surrounded by gardens was important as a collective form of land ownership.
But besides Kropotkin, Howard had enough followers in Russia. One of the first was the talented architect Vladimir Semyonov (1874-1960), who designed Kratovo.
This man had a truly legendary biography. Semyonov was a very educated person. He happened to participate in the Boer War, during which he met the young journalist Winston Churchill.
From 1908 to 1912, Semyonov worked in England and participated in the design of the village of Lechworth. In 1912, he published the book "Improvement of Cities", in which the author developed Howard's ideas. And in 1913, the Russian Society of Garden Cities, which was created in St. Petersburg, began its work. Here is what V. N. Semyonov: “Despite the successful example of Lechworth, the construction of a garden city, its possibilities and practicality are still in doubt. But that new cities - cities under construction, cities naturally developing - should be garden cities, no one can doubt that."
However, the tsarist government always remembered that the garden cities were associated with the idea of communal self-government, and this caused concern among the officials. There was a fear that cities would be almost miniature republics breaking the vertical of power. But in 1917, the Bolsheviks raised this idea on the shield, as they promised the people the idea of a paradise on earth, and the garden city became a very successful model of such a paradise. The Soviet government wanted to mechanically transfer all the benefits of the garden city to Russian soil.
The most mysterious event associated with the implementation of Howard's idea in Russia took place in 1922. Garden cities generally ceased to be mentioned and began to be called workers' settlements of the socialist type. In workers' settlements there was no question of any local self-government. Nor did they talk about bourgeois conveniences. To this day, it remains a mystery who exactly this prohibition came from.
Mayakovsky's promise
For many years the idea of a garden city was assimilated by students through the poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky "The Ballad of Kuznetskstroy and the people of Kuznetsk," which they studied at school. Mayakovsky was interested in the image of the future and sang it himself in his poems. Therefore, he may well have been familiar with Howard's ideas firsthand, although he had not read special books on architecture. The poem, in which the poet glorified the builders of the city, was perfect in form. Against the backdrop of the difficulties of a harsh time, the oath to create a garden city sounded rhythmic, chased and very modern. There was no doubt that the author was glorifying the Soviet idea, not the English one.
But then the innovative idea, remaining only in Mayakovsky's poetry, was consigned to oblivion for more than 40 years. Only at the turn of the 1950s-1960s, when the image of the future was widely discussed (at that time it was communist), the concept of "satellite city" appeared in the Russian language. And the mention of Howard reappeared in our literature only in the 1980s.
The idea of a garden city has had a great influence on landscape gardening, 20th century cinema and visual arts. The harmonious combination of architecture and nature inspired both painters and advertising masters. And on the posters advertising travel, pictures of a real earthly paradise appeared.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №28, July 2016. Author: Andrey Dyachenko