Gosprom
Encyclopedia

The Derzhprom or Gosprom building is a constructivist
Constructivist architecture
Constructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly Communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced...

 structure located in Freedom Square, Kharkiv
Freedom Square, Kharkiv
Freedom Square in Kharkiv is the 6-th largest city-centre square in Europe.Originally named Dzerzhinsky Square after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Bolshevik secret police , it was renamed after Ukraine became independent in 1991.A monumental statue of Lenin was erected in 1964 and...

, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. Its name is an abbreviation of two words that, taken together, mean State Industry. In English the structure is known as the State Industry Building or the Palace of Industry.

Overview

The building was one of a few showcase projects designed when Kharkiv (Kharkov) was the capital of the Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...

. Built by architects Sergei Serafimov, S.Kravets and M.Felger in only three years. It was to become the tallest structure in Europe for its time. The building also became the most spacious single structure in the world by the year of its completion in 1928 to be surpassed by New York's skyscrapers in 1930s. Its unique feature lies in the symmetry which can only be felt at one point, in the centre of the square.

The use of concrete in its construction and the system of overhead walkways and individual interlinked towers made it extremely innovative. It was rated by Reyner Banham
Reyner Banham
Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...

 as one of the major architectural achievements of the 1920s in his Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and comparable in scale only to the Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...

 Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 and the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...

. This allowed the structure to fully survive any destruction attempts during the Second World War.

The Dezhprom complex was used as a symbol of modernity in films such as Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...

's Three Songs about Lenin and Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...

's The General Line. The building's notability was overshadowed following the 1936 move of the Ukrainian capital to Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, the later denunciation of Constructivism by Stalinist Architecture
Stalinist architecture
Stalinist architecture , also referred to as Stalinist Gothic, or Socialist Classicism, is a term given to architecture of the Soviet Union between 1933, when Boris Iofan's draft for Palace of the Soviets was officially approved, and 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev condemned "excesses" of the past...

and the Second World War. More recently one of its towers was used as a television centre and a TV relay tower was built on its roof.

Interesting facts

  • The height of the Derzhprom building is 63 m. With the television tower added in 1955 it was 108 m.
  • The office area of the Derzhprom building is 60 000 m², the areas of the base is 10760 m².
  • The decision to construct the building and to finance it from the Soviet budget was made by Felix Dzherzhynsky in 1926. The cost of the buildings construction was 9 million rubles.
  • Initially the building was built by hand using primitive instruments such as shovels, wheelbarrows etc. By the time it was finished the construction techniques employed were mechanized 80%. 5000 workers were involved in its construction working in three shifts.
  • At the time of its completion it was the largest "skyscraper" in the USSR and the second in Europe. 1315 carriages of cement, 9000 tonnes of metal, 2700 cars of granite and 40000 m² of glass were used.
  • The interior walls, windows, door handles etc. were decorated with an exclusive relief of the letters DHP (ДГП) standing for Derzhprom.
  • By the recommendation of the Kharkiv department of Hygiene, all of the door handles were made of copper which was thought at that time to have antibacterial characteristics and would kill microbes.
  • 7 of the 12 original elevators still function without being replaced since 1928.
  • The length of the bridges that unite the 3 sections of the buildings is 26 metres.
  • The 5th entrance has a museum created in 1980 dedicated to the building and to Kharkiv writer Z. Zvonytsky.
  • The reconstruction and renovation of the Derzhprom building took more time (7 years) than the construction of the building itself. (3 years)

External links


  • Multiple photos of the Derzhprom building, including one in colour, taken by Luftwaffe pilots during World War II http://englishrussia.com/?p=2952
  • Panoramic view of Derzhprom building Here
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