CA (Contemporary Architecture, Современная архитектура) and its successor SA (Soviet Architecture, Советская архитектура) were the official publications of the Soviet Union's Section of Social Settlement and Housing and Utility Construction, tracing the path from 1920s Constructivist experimentation to the more standardised, mass-scale planning of the early 1930s.
The earlier CA, founded in Moscow in 1926, gave voice to the avant-garde projects and theoretical debates of Moscow-based architects including Ivan Leonidov, with Moisei Ginzburg serving as editor-in-chief. When the Soviet Union dissolved its regional architects' organisations in favour of Union-wide bodies, the magazine was restructured accordingly, re-emerging as Soviet Architecture from 1931.
Soviet Architecture was in turn replaced by the more standardised review Architecture USSR (Архитектура СССР), which ran from 1933 to 1992 and is catalogued separately in this database. Together, CA and SA form a bridge between the explosive creative output of the early Soviet avant-garde and its gradual reorientation toward urban, industrial, and mass-scale construction over formal innovation.
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Sourced from Wikipedia and multiple academic histories of the OSA Group. The masthead shifted in 1929 due to a Soviet ordinance requiring publications to name a single editor-in-chief.
Constructivist architect, founder of OSA, author of Style and Epoch (1924), and designer of the Narkomfin Building. Co-editor with Vesnin throughout, sole editor in 1929.
Co-founder of OSA with Ginzburg; off the masthead only in 1929, due to the single-editor ordinance.
Constructivist theorist; designed the journal's distinctive layout throughout its entire run.
Joined the editorial team in 1928 and was promoted to deputy editor-in-chief in 1930.
The Swiss-French architect briefly participated as an editor for a couple of issues, a striking instance of direct Western European involvement in the Soviet avant-garde press.
The reproductions are mirrors of totalarch.com, which holds an extensive library of Soviet-era publications, and are republished here with permission.
Copyright status varies by contribution. Under EU and Russian law, protection for a named author's work generally lasts decades after that author's death. Moisei Ginzburg died in 1946; under EU law his individually authored contributions would remain in copyright until 2016, a term that has already expired. Alexander Vesnin died in 1959, with a corresponding EU term expiring in 2029. The Architectural Periodicals Database does not assert ownership of the original creative content, only of the database itself, and republishes this material on the basis of permission obtained from totalarch.com. If you are a rights holder and believe your work has been used without appropriate permission, please contact us at info@architecturalperiodicals.com.