Nikolai Kolli

Tsentrosoyuz building (1933), Moscow,
collaboration with Le Corbusier.

Chistye Prudy station of the Moscow Metro (vintage image).

Nikolai Dzhemsovich Kolli (1894 - 1966) was a Russian Modernist—Constructivist architect, Soviet architectural functionary, and city planner in the Soviet Union.^[1]

History

Kolli was born in Moscow, and studied at the Imperial Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and then at the Leninist VKhUTEMAS in Moscow.^[1]

He first came to attention with a 1918 proposal for a monument celebrating the victory of the Red Army over Tzarist General Krasnov, in the form of a red wedge cleaving a block of white stone. It became an image that artist El Lissitzky subsequently appropriated in "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge."

Nikolai Kolli is buried in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery.^[2]

Modernism

Nikolai Kolli studied under Ivan Zholtovsky as one of his "Twelve Disciples." In the late 1920s became a member of both the Soviet OSA Group (Union of Contemporary Architects), and a delegate to the international CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne) architectural group.

From 1928 through 1932 he lived part-time in Paris, assisting Le Corbusier in that architect's only built work in Moscow, the Tsentrosoyuz building (Central Cooperative Alliance offices).^[3] Planning and construction^[1]

Career

Kolli taught at the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School from 1920 to 1941, and at the Moscow Institute of Architecture from 1931 to 1941.^[1]

From 1935 to 1951 he headed the Moscow branch of the Soviet Union of Architects.

Works

The works of Nikolai Kolli include:

• All-Russian Agricultural and Cottage-industry Exhibition, Moscow, 1923 — collaborated in the design of a number of structures.^[1]
• Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, on the Dnieper River in Zaporizhzhia, 1927-1932 — with Viktor Aleksandrovic Vesnin and others.
• Tsentrosoyuz building (Central Cooperative Alliance), Moscow, (design 1928 - 1933, built 1933) — collaboration with Le Corbusier.^[1][3]
• Chistye Prudy station of the Moscow Metro, 1935.^[1]
• North Pavilion for the Park Kultury station of the Moscow Metro, 1935 — with S.G. Andrievsky.^[1]
• Paveletskaya station of the Moscow Metro, 1950 — with I. Kasetl.^[1]

See also

• Constructivist architecture
• Modernist architecture in Russia

References

1. The Free Dictionary: Nikolai Dzhemsovich Kolli . accessed 11.23.2013
2. Vvedenskoe.pogost.info: Nikolai Kolli, buried in Vvedenskoye Cemetery
3. The Charnel-House blog: Nikolai Kolli and Le Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (text & vintage images) . accessed 11.23.2013.

• The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979).
• “Arkhitektor N. Ia. Kolli.” Arkhitektura SSSR, 1964, no. 12.