The Shukhov Radio Tower (), also known as the Shabolovka Tower (), is a broadcasting tower deriving from the

Russian avant-garde The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its e ...

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 ...

Vladimir Shukhov Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov (; – 2 February 1939) was a Russian and Soviet engineer-polymath, scientist and architect renowned for his pioneering works on new methods of analysis for structural engineering that led to breakthroughs in indu ...

. The free-standing steel diagrid structure was built between 1920 and 1922, during the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

History

Design

Vladimir Shukhov invented the world's first hyperboloid structure in the year 1890. Later he wrote a book, ''Rafters'', in which he proved that the triangular shapes are 20-25% heavier than the arched ones with a ray grating. After that, Shukhov filed a number of patents for a diagrid. He aimed not only to achieve greater strength and rigidity of the structure, but also ease and simplicity through the use of as little building material as possible. The first diagrid tower was built for the All-Russia Exhibition in

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

in 1896, and later was bought by

Yury Nechaev-Maltsov Yury Stepanovich Nechaev-Maltsov (1834–1913) was a leading glassware manufacturer, landlord, patron of the arts, and the major private donor to the Pushkin Museum. He owned a number of shops in Moscow and St. Petersburg where the glassware ...

, a well-known manufacturer in the city. Shukhov was responsible for constructions of a new types of

lighthouses A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses mark ...

, masts,

water towers A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a water distribution system, distribution system for potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. Water towe ...

and transmission towers. The broadcasting tower at Shabolovka is a diagrid structure in the form of a rotated

hyperboloid In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by def ...

. The Khodynka radio station, built in 1914, could no longer handle the increasing amount of radiograms. On July 30, 1919,

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

signed a decree of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, which demanded "to install in an extremely urgent manner a radio station equipped with the most advanced and powerful devices and machines", to ensure the security of the country and allow constant communication with other republics. Tower designing was started immediately across many bureaus. Later that year Shukhov's Construction Office won a competition. The planned height of the new nine-sectioned hyperbolic tower was ( taller than the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889. Locally nicknamed "''La dame de fe ...

, which was taken into consideration when creating the plan) with an estimated mass of 2,200 tons (the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons). However, in the context of the Civil War and the lack of resources, the project had to be revised: the height was reduced to , the weight to 240 tons.

Installation

Tower construction was carried out without any cranes and scaffolding, but only with winches. 240 tons of metal that was required for construction, was allocated by Lenin’s personal decree from the stocks of the Military Department. For lifting five wooden winches were used, which were moved to the upper sections. The tower is composed of six sections, one above the other. Each section is an independent hyperboloid based on a larger one. The sixth section was installed and finally secured on February 14, 1922.

Structure

The Shukhov tower is a hyperboloid structure (

hyperbolic Hyperbolic may refer to: * of or pertaining to a hyperbola, a type of smooth curve lying in a plane in mathematics ** Hyperbolic geometry, a non-Euclidean geometry ** Hyperbolic functions, analogues of ordinary trigonometric functions, defined u ...

steel gridshell) consisting of a series of hyperboloid sections stacked on one another to approximate an overall conical shape. The tower has a diagrid structure, and its steel shell experiences minimum

wind Wind is the natural movement of atmosphere of Earth, air or other gases relative to a planetary surface, planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heatin ...

load (a significant design factor for high-rising

building A building or edifice is an enclosed Structure#Load-bearing, structure with a roof, walls and window, windows, usually standing permanently in one place, such as a house or factory. Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, a ...

s). The tower sections are single-cavity

s of rotation made of straight beams, the ends of which rest against circular foundations.

Location

The tower is located a few kilometres south of the

Moscow Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall along with the K ...

, but is not accessible to tourists. The

street address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...

of the tower is "Shabolovka Street, 37".

Possible demolition

As of early 2014, the tower faced demolition by the Russian State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting, after having been allowed to deteriorate for years despite popular calls for its restoration. Following a concerted campaign calling for the preservation of the tower, on July 3 the Ministry of Culture of Russia announced that the tower will not be demolished, and in September 2014 that Moscow City Council had placed a preservation order on the tower in order to safeguard it. In January 2017 the RTRS placed a

request for tender An invitation to tender (ITT, also known as a call for bids or a request for tenders) is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business activ ...

for a plan to renovate and preserve the monument.

Models

There is a model of Shukhov's Shabolovka Tower at the Information Age gallery at the

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, Industry (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...

in London. The model is at 1:30 scale and was installed in October 2014.

In popular culture

* In 1922 one of the members of ASNOVA

Vladimir Krinsky Vladimir Fyodorovich Krinsky (Владимир Фёдорович Кринский; 19 December 1890 – 2 April 1971) was a Russian people, Russian artist and architect active with the ASNOVA architectural organisation and linked with the Cologne ...

made a "Radio speaker of the Revolution" mural with a picture of a tower. * A science fiction novel by

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer whose works span across many genres, but mainly belonged to science fiction and historical fiction. Despite having opposed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he was abl ...

The Garin Death Ray was inspired by the public reaction towards construction of the tower. * Shukhov Tower was a logo of a "L'art de l'ingénieur" exhibition in Centre Georges-Pompidou. * In the novel ''A Gentleman in Moscow'' by Amor Towles, set in 1922, the character Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich declares the Shukhov tower a thing of beauty, "a two hundred foot structure of spiraling steel from which we can broadcast the latest news and intelligence - and, yes, the sentimental strains of your Tchaikovsky ..." (Windmill Books, p.85)

Gallery

Image:Shukhov Hyperboloid Tower Project of 350 metres of 1919 year.jpg, Shukhov Tower Project of 350 metres, 1919. File:1979 stamp Radio Moscow.png, 1979 File:Shukhov tower shabolovka moscow 02.jpg, 2006 File:Shukhov Tower photo by Sergei Arsenyev 2006.JPG, 2006 File:2015-may-9-Moscow.jpg, 2015 File:Shukhov-April2016-Ivtorov.jpg, 2016

References

Literature

* P.Gössel, G.Leuthäuser, E.Schickler
"Architecture in the 20th century"
Taschen Verlag; 1990; .
Elizabeth C. English“Arkhitektura i mnimosti”: The origins of Soviet avant-garde rationalist architecture in the Russian mystical-philosophical and mathematical intellectual tradition”
a dissertation in architecture, 264 p., University of Pennsylvania, 2000.

ttps://web.archive.org/web/20071122135221/http://www.uibk.ac.at/baugeschichte/mitarbeiter/graefe.html Rainer Graefeund andere, 192 S., Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990, . * Jesberg, Paulgerd Die Geschichte der Bauingenieurkunst, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart (Germany), , 1996; pp. 198–9. * Ricken, Herbert Der Bauingenieur, Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin (Germany), , 1994; pp. 230. * Picon, Antoine (dir.), "L'art de l'ingenieur : constructeur, entrepreneur, inventeur", Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1997, * Fausto Giovannardi "Vladimir Shukhov e la leggerezza dell'acciaio" a
giovannardierontini.it

External links

*
The Shukhov's Radio Tower
* ttps://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=912047&t=k&om=1 Shukhov Towers in Google Maps*
3D model of the Shukhov TowerViews of the hyperboloid towerInvention of Hyperboloid Structures
{{in lang, zh

Constructivist architecture Lattice shell structures by Vladimir Shukhov Towers completed in 1922 Tourist attractions in Moscow Russian avant-garde High-tech architecture Hyperboloid structures Towers in Moscow Cultural heritage monuments of regional significance in Moscow