Mono-Functional Housing and Changing Concepts in Kharkiv Residential Architecture during the Capital Period

Abstract

In the 1920s - 1930s in Kharkiv, at that time the capital of Soviet Ukraine, two main programs of city development were implemented - the creation of a new metropolitan center and the development of the industrial complex. Within the framework of these programs there was an evolution of Kharkiv’s housing infrastructure, which developed largely in connection with the leading Western social concepts of architectural and urban planning practice: garden city, house-commune, residential combine and socialist city. However, in addition to these concepts that replaced each other, there was also a parallel design of “mono-functional” housing, which is an integral, important and significant component of the avant-garde architecture of Kharkiv. It was built both within the framework of the program of the creation of the capital center and within the framework of the program of development of the industrial complex. It is unfair that such housing, as a rule, is in the shadow of more vivid and radical typological avant-garde solutions and is insufficiently described. The method of systematization and analysis of literary and documentary sources was applied. In the context of Russian aggression and its unfolding of a full-scale war against Ukraine since 24 February 2022, the architectural heritage of Kharkiv, as well as the heritage of other cities of Ukraine, is under constant threat of destruction. In this regard, the documentation and introduction of undeservedly forgotten “mono-functional” residential buildings into the international scientific community is extremely relevant. The article begins to document mono-functional housing built in the 1920s-1930s, and discusses in detail several examples: Chervonyi Knygar, Slovo and Komunar.