The Shukhov Radio Tower (russian: Шуховская башня), 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 ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

Vladimir Shukhov Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov (russian: link=no, Влади́мир Григо́рьевич Шу́хов; – 2 February 1939) was a Russian Empire and Soviet engineer-polymath, scientist and architect renowned for his pioneering works on new ...

. The free-standing steel

diagrid A diagrid (a portmanteau of diagonal grid) is a framework of diagonally intersecting metal, concrete, or wooden beams that is used in the construction of buildings and roofs. It requires less structural steel than a conventional steel f ...

structure was built between 1920 and 1922, during the

Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

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

. 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 The All-Russia Industrial and Art Exhibitions were a series of 16 exhibitions in the 19th century Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eu ...

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət ), colloquially shortened to Nizhny, from the 13th to the 17th century Novgorod of the Lower Land, formerly known as Gork ...

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 glasswar ...

, 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 mar ...

, masts,

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

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. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

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 ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) 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. Locally nicknamed ...

, 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 Hyperboloid structures are architectural structures designed using a hyperboloid in one sheet. Often these are tall structures, such as towers, where the hyperboloid geometry's structural strength is used to support an object high above the grou ...

(

hyperbolic Hyperbolic is an adjective describing something that resembles or pertains to a hyperbola (a curve), to hyperbole (an overstatement or exaggeration), or to hyperbolic geometry. The following phenomena are described as ''hyperbolic'' because they ...

steel

gridshell A gridshell is a structure which derives its strength from its double curvature (in a similar way that a fabric structure derives strength from double curvature), but is constructed of a grid or lattice. The grid can be made of any material, ...

) consisting of a series of hyperboloid sections stacked on one another to approximate an overall conical shape. The tower has a

structure, and its steel shell experiences minimum

wind Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few ...

load (a significant design factor for high-rising

building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and func ...

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 Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of the kremlins (R ...

, but is not accessible to tourists. The street address 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 Radio Television of Republika Srpska (Serbian: ''Радио Телевизија Републике Српске'' / Radio Televizija Republike Srpske or RTRS) is the entity-level public broadcaster which operates radio and television services i ...

placed a request for tender 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 and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...

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 ASNOVA (russian: АСНОВА; abbreviation for russian: АСсоциация НОВых Архитекторов, ''Association of New Architects'') was an Avant-Garde architectural association in the Soviet Union, which was active in the 1920s ...

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

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (russian: link= no, Алексей Николаевич Толстой; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels. Despite having ...

The Garin Death Ray ''The Garin Death Ray'', also known as ''The Death Box'' and ''The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin'' (russian: Гиперболоид инженера Гарина), is a science fiction novel by the noted Russian author Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolst ...

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 The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

. * In the novel ''A Gentleman in Moscow'' by

Amor Towles Amor Towles (born 1964) is an American novelist. He is best known for his bestselling novels ''Rules of Civility'' (2011), '' A Gentleman in Moscow'' (2016), and ''The Lincoln Highway'' (2021). Early life and education Towles was born and rais ...

, 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