"Choosing Konstantin Melnikov's workers' club, the Rusakov Club, which is one of five that he designed for Moscow, is really a way in to understanding how radical and innovative constructivist architecture could be.
Melnikov was, in a sense, the maverick of the architects of this movement, producing immensely original solutions to individual building problems.
Russian theatre design from the 18th, 19th and early 20th century was absolutely no different from the design that you would find in the rest of Europe; an opera house would look like an opera house whether it was in Paris, Vienna or Munich, and likewise with theatres.
The issue with the Workers' Club, amongst other things, was to provide a large scale theatre in which not only performances could take place and the screening of films, usually propaganda films, but also lectures and speeches which were, again, very much a way of recording the achievements of the new socialist state.
In order to build the building he doesn't sit down and think: 'let's think of a traditional theatre' – what he does is he thinks this is a two level theatre with the floor flat in front of the stage, and then it has three galleries or balconies.
In the shape of the interior space he extrudes these three balconies from the exterior façade of the building, rather as if you were pulling out drawers from a chest of drawers.
It produces an extraordinary sculptural effect. What Melnikov is doing is something completely radical.
If you look to the influence of Melnikov, and the Rusakov Club in particular, a building today that immediately comes to mind is James Stirling's engineering block in Leicester, where he does exactly the same with his lecture theatres."
© Richard Pare
