The Derzhprom () or Gosprom () building is an

office building An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

located on Freedom Square in

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. Built in the Constructivist style, it was the first modern

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Most modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise bui ...

building in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

upon its completion in 1928. Its name is an

abbreviation An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...

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. Derzhprom takes its place as a unique phenomenon of world architecture among the various structures that represent the modernist architecture of the first half of the 20th century, which are already on the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Heritage List World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritag ...

or the Tentative List. On 28 October 2024, Derzhprom was bombed by Russia, sustaining significant damage.

History

The grand opening of the "first Soviet skyscraper" took place on 7 November 1928. The building was one of a few showcase projects designed when Kharkiv was the capital of the

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

. It was built by the

architects An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

from

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Sergei Serafimov, Samuel Kravets and Mark Felger in only three years. Upon completion in 1928 it was the most spacious single structure in the world, and wasn't surpassed until the 1930's. Its unique feature lies in the symmetry which can only be sensed 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 the building extremely innovative. The critic

Reyner Banham Peter Reyner Banham (2 March 1922 – 19 March 1988) was an English architectural critic and writer best known for his theoretical treatise ''Theory and Design in the First Machine Age'' (1960) and for his 1971 book ''Los Angeles: The Architectu ...

in his ''Theory and Design in the First Machine Age'' regarded the building as one of the major architectural achievements of the 1920s, comparable in scale only to the

Dessau Dessau is a district of the independent city of Dessau-Roßlau in Saxony-Anhalt at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the ''States of Germany, Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Until 1 July 2007, it was an independent ...

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

and the

Van Nelle Factory The former Van Nelle Factory () on the Schie in Rotterdam, is considered a prime example of the modernist and functionalist architecture. It has been a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014. Soon after it was built, prominent architec ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

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

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. In the spring of 1926, it was decided to close the construction due to financial difficulties. Then the head of construction of the State Industry, Pavlo Rottert, left for

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

, where he managed to find support for the construction from

Felix Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (; ; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed Iron Felix (), was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka a ...

. In March 1926, he returned to build a skyscraper, and in August 1926 it was decided to finance the construction on an extraordinary basis. The Derzhprom complex was used as a symbol of modernity in films such as

Dziga Vertov Dziga Vertov (born David Abelevich Kaufman; – 12 February 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary ...

's ''Three Songs about Lenin'' and

Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is no ...

's ''

The General Line ''The General Line'', also known as ''Old and New'' (), is a 1929 Soviet propaganda film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov. ''The General Line'' was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as c ...

''. The building's notability was overshadowed following the moving of the Ukrainian capital to

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

in 1934, the later denunciation of Constructivism in favour of

Stalinist architecture Stalinist architecture (), mostly known in the former Eastern Bloc as Stalinist style or socialist classicism, is the architecture of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, between 1933 (when Boris Iofan's draft for the Palace o ...

, and the

. More recently, one of its towers was used as a television centre and a TV relay tower was built on its roof. The building was placed under in the tentative

World Heritage list in 2017 and was placed under provisional enhanced protection by UNESCO in 2022. During the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...

, Derzhprom was hit by a Russian guided bomb on 28 October 2024, believed to be of the

FAB-500 The FAB-500 is a Soviet-designed general purpose air-dropped bomb with a high-explosive warhead, primarily used by the Russian Aerospace Forces, former Soviet republics and customer countries. The original M-54 model was rolled out in 1954, ...

model, causing significant damage and nine injuries. As the result, the mayor of Kharkiv

Ihor Terekhov Ihor Oleksandrovych Terekhov (; born 14 January 1967) is a Ukrainian politician who is serving as the mayor of Kharkiv since 11 November 2021. He ascended to the mayoralty on 24 December 2020 following Hennadiy Kernes' death due to COVID-19 co ...

and the Bureau of UNESCO in Ukraine have initiated an accelerated procedure of nominating the Freedom Square ensemble (including Derzhprom) to the World Heritage list.

Architecture

Derzhprom is a symbol of Kharkiv as an industrial, modern and big city. The architecture of Derzhprom relates to international

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...

, its forms are industrial. The house has a high aesthetic potential and functionality; its construction is compared to a ''"communication leap"''. In the 1920s, such architecture was a novelty not only in Europe but also around the world. Architectural functionalism includes the following functions: *

Utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...

– a place for industrial management activities in Ukraine. *

Ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

– the disclosure of the idea of

industrialization Industrialisation (British English, UK) American and British English spelling differences, or industrialization (American English, US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an i ...

as a progressive

phenomenon A phenomenon ( phenomena), sometimes spelled phaenomenon, is an observable Event (philosophy), event. The term came into its modern Philosophy, philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be ...

. * Social – a spacious center of the new Kharkiv, a socially significant object of

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

, a place of mass events such as holidays and demonstrations. * Symbolic – ''"organized world"'', a symbol of a new era and of industrialization. * Compositional – dominance in the spatial structure of the city; connecting the spaces of the square and the city; demarcation of the square and the city (at the level of the square). * Symatic – laconic forms that lead to archetypal schemes; inclusion in the symbolism of the landscape.

References

External links

1930s photographs by Robert Byron

View during the war

Photos by Luftwaffe pilots during World War II, some of the Derzhprom building

Photo of the Derzhprom building

Derzhprom/Gosprom building, photographs by Georges Dedoyard and others

Canadian Centre for Architecture The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA; ) is a Architecture museum, museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 1920, rue Baile (1920, Baile Street), between rue Fort (Fort Street) and rue Saint-Ma ...

digitized items
{{coord, 50, 0, 23, N, 36, 13, 38, E, type:landmark_region:UA, display=title Buildings and structures in Kharkiv Buildings and structures built in the Soviet Union Commercial buildings completed in 1928 Constructivist architecture 1928 establishments in the Soviet Union World Heritage Tentative List

History

Architecture

See also

References

External links