Igor Yavein. The Architect of Traffic Flows

Oleg and Nikita Yavein created a website about their father, Igor Yavein: it contains the full archive of the projects designed by this master of avant-garde, the founder of the transportation hub theory that anticipated its time by decades, and the author of the book about the architecture of traffic flows that is still relevant today.

Written by:
Natalia Koriakovskaia
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

15 July 2019

in memoriam

Igor Georgievich Yavein, 1903-1980

Website: igoryawein.ru
All of the materials collected on this website belong to Igor Yavein’s personal archive, and will later on be included in a book by Oleg Yavein, in the course of preparation of which this website appeared.

About the architect. Igor Yavein, the pupil of Alexander Nikolsky’s, became known for his innovative approach to designing transportation facilities. In the competition for the best design project of Moscow Kursky Railway Station, he, for the first time in the history of Soviet Architecture, interpreted a railway terminal as a hub that connects different kinds of transportation – from the metro line up to a small airfield on the roof. In his project bearing the motto of “Complex of Seven Types of Transportation”, this railway terminal presents itself as a multilevel structure, whose architecture essentially determines the traffic flows, and is determined by the traffic flows as well. In this competition, Igor Yavein got the highest second prize, the first prize being awarded to nobody. This project was decades ahead of the needs of the 1930–40’s, and looked utopian to many experts of those days. However, in 1964, Igor Fomin recognizes Yavein’s project as the design code for transportation architecture, and in the 1960–70’s Igor Yavein gets back to the ideas of his early years.

The choice of profession

Igor Yavein was not a hereditary architect – he was born to a family of an epidemiologist, the professor of the Emperor’s Clinical Institute of the Great Princess Elena Pavlovna, George Yavein and his wife, Poliksena Shishkina-Yavein, who was a social activist and the chairwoman of the Russian League for Women’s Rights. Oleg Yavein, who wrote for the website a detailed biography of his father, believes that the cult of serving science, which reigned in their family, later on visibly manifested itself in architecture, becoming the moral basis for their creative method: “For these people, a strong belief in the intrinsic perfection of Nature and the unconditional value of Cognitive Reason was closely connected with the idea of Progress and a peculiar cult of the natural origin in us as human beings, and this complex symbiosis was naturally transferred to their life and art. Igor Yavein found this symbiosis in avant-garde architecture or, to be more precise, this is how he interpreted this architecture for himself”.

Igor Yavein did not follow in his father’s medical footsteps, and entered LIGI (Leningrad Institute for Civil Engineering), studying in his first year in the studio of professor Andrey Ol. In his third year, Igor meets his main mentor – the academician Alexander Nikolsky, a brilliant representative of avant-garde architecture and an inventor of a highly individual creative approach. According to Oleg Yavein, father always called Alexander Nikolsky a teacher with a capital T.

“Time was jam-packed back in those days; years felt like epochs, and our student works would sometimes become milestones for us” – Oleg Yavein writes about the period of his father’s life from 1923 to 1927. Once, towards the end of his course, Alexander Nikolsky gives the young Igor Yavein a task to inscribe a tram stop into a narrow triangle of railway tracks, saying “Let’s see if you can find your way out of it”. And the pupil makes a brilliant study that flawlessly conveys the dynamic image. Later on, these hidden dynamics and rhythmic motion will become a signature feature of all of the transportation facilities that he designed. His project of Museum of Agriculture (1927) displays his unique creative approach that Alexander Vesnin will later on call “new organic architecture”. Remaining a constructivist, instead of fracturing and breaking up his architectural volumes in order to single out functional blocks, Igor Yavein prefers to create them within a single unbroken and flowing shape.

The competition for Moscow Kursky Railway Station / 1932

This competition became an important milestone in Igor Yavein’s creative career: it was in that competition project of Moscow Kursky Railway Station that he first proposed “the idea of streams”, which the architect further developed in his dissertation and implemented in his subsequent projects. Still in his diploma paper entitled “Leningrad Central Railway Station”, Igor Yavein began to develop the idea of a transport facility as a complex interchange hub, whose form making is determined by various pre-calculated traffic streams. As Oleg Yavein writes, Kursky Railway Station presented itself as a “multilayered bridge thrown over the railroad tracks, with a ship deck roof and sprouting ramps, overpasses, driveways, escalators; an image that anticipated one of the key branches of transportation architecture”.

“This was more than just an idea. The structure, the functional diagrams, the outward appearance – our father elaborated on everything in fundamental detail – Nikita Yavein reminisces – What was written in his book that was published in 1938, is still absolutely relevant today. Even today few people seem to realize that a railway station or a railway terminal is not a “house” in the traditional sense of this word but rather a casing, a shell for the transport and pedestrian flows, a hub where people switch from one kind of conveyance to another”.

Designing railway stations becomes Igor Yavein’s main specialty. In 1930, he developed an experimental competition project of a railway station in Novosibirsk – a very modern-looking “hypercube” building that covered various traffic streams that were spaced apart.

“Constructivism after Constructivism”

Igor Yavein allowed himself to remain a constructivist even after the Stalin epoch of neoclassicism set in. His manifesto project of that period (1933-1941), which Oleg Yavein jokingly called “constructivism after constructivism” was the Svirstroy housing complex in Leningrad, one of the last “specialist community houses”. Igor got this commission winning a competition in 1932 but by the moment the construction began in 1938, Russian architecture was already ruled by the neoclassical style. Nevertheless, the house was essentially avant-garde – the asymmetric façade plan, the cutaways at the corners, filled by balcony recessions, the absence of “unemployed” columns, and “excessive monumentalism of form”, as the author himself was wont to say – everything indicated its relation to the architecture of the 1920-30’s.

The epoch of neoclassicism still left its mark on the creative work of this passionate constructivist. In 1945, Igor Yavein wins the competition for designing a railway station in the city of Kursk (not to be confused with Kursky Railway Station) – presenting its building as a triumphal arch at the entrance to the city, still devastated by the Nazi troops at that time. And it is the victory imagery that this classical symmetrical construction was based upon, the most solemn and powerful of all archetypal forms. During the years of postwar reconstruction, this same Moscow–Kursk railroad line gets a whole string of typical railway stations for 50 and 100 people, designed by Igor Yavein.

However, in the competition project for designing a railway station in Veliky Novgorod, for which he got the first prize in the same year as he got for the Kursky Railway Terminal, the architect again distinguishes himself as a rightful heir of the avant-garde tradition, alloyed, as Oleg Yavein writes, with “archaic” forms of the unique Novgorod and Pskov architecture. The architect uses the archaic elements, explaining this by the fact that in the postwar Novgorod, the architect essentially had at his disposal the same construction materials as 600 years ago. However, a keen observer may notice that these forms conceal asymmetric avant-garde composition of volumes that was explained by the presence of functional and motivated cause-and-effect connections. For this project, Igor Yavein’s friends jokingly called him a “constructivist who hid himself in Novgorod underground”.

Stadium on the Krestovsky Island: Nikolsky and Yavein

The grand-scale project of Nikolsky’s – the stadium and the seaside Park Pobedy (“Victory Park”) on Saint Petersburg’s Krestovsky Island, while partially implemented before the Great Patriotic War, was suspended in 1952-53 because of the architect's illness. Then Teacher offers his Student – Igor Yavein – to take part in completing some of the project works in the second stage of construction. Igor Yavein joins the project team, does the project details in the vein of his Teacher’s style, and does his best to keep the original ideas unchanged. Oleg Yavein remembers this period in the life of his father quite vividly. “Father helped Nikolsky with designing the Kirov Stadium when Nikolsky fell seriously sick. I was a little boy back then, sitting next to him, and drawing a stadium too...”

Continuity of Generations

In the 1950–1970’s, Igor Yavein again returns to designing “expandable railway stations” but now the theme of the flows merges with the ideology of the epoch of industrial construction. The so-called “integrated home-building factories” are built, new possibilities for expansion and transformation appear. In 1960, Igor Yavein presents for a competition an “avant-garde” project of the Leningrad Sea Terminal, three years later taking part in the competition for the railway terminal and its square in Sophia, Bulgaria. The imagery of this project will later on resurface in the railway station built at Latvia’s Dubulty, which Igor Yavein already designed together with his son, Nikita. This railway station, which served three kinds of transportation at once – railway, busses, and riverboats – was finished by 1977; its resilient arc straddling the railway tracks looks truly impressive. Later on, a similar motif would again resurface in the projects by Studio 44.

Father’s personality charm was tremendous – Oleg and Nikita Yavein are reminiscing, so their own choice of profession was a natural one. The diploma paper that Nikita Yavein did in the Saint Petersburg University of Architecture and Civil Engineering was, according to his own words, a continuation of the ideas proposed by his father.

Igor Yavein’s book “Architecture of Railway Stations” was first published in 1938, and its ideas about the influence of traffic streams on designing transportation facilities determine the architecture of railway stations up to the present day.

15 July 2019

Headlines now

The Big Twelve

Yesterday, the winners of the Moscow Mayor’s Architecture Award were announced and honored. Let’s take a look at what was awarded and, in some cases, even critique this esteemed award. After all, there is always room for improvement, right?

Object

Above the Golden Horn

The residential complex “Philosophy” designed by T+T architects in Vladivostok, is one of the new projects in the “Golubinaya Pad” area, changing its development philosophy (pun intended) from single houses to a comprehensive approach. The buildings are organized along public streets, varying in height and format, with one house even executed in gallery typology, featuring a cantilever leaning on an art object.

Report

Nuanced Alternative

How can you rhyme a square and space? Easily! But to do so, you need to rhyme everything you can possibly think of: weave everything together, like in a tensegrity structure, and find your own optics too. The new exhibition at GES-2 does just that, offering its visitor a new perspective on the history of art spanning 150 years, infused with the hope for endless multiplicity of worlds and art histories. Read on to see how this is achieved and how the exhibition design by Evgeny Ace contributes to it.

Object

Blinds for Ice

An ice arena has been constructed in Domodedovo based on a project by Yuri Vissarionov Architects. To prevent the long façade, a technical requirement for winter sports facilities, from appearing monotonous, the architects proposed the use of suspended structures with multidirectional slats. This design protects the ice from direct sunlight while giving the wall texture and detail.

Report

Campus within a Day

In this article, we talk about what the participants of Genplan Institute of Moscow’s hackathon were doing at the MosComArchitecture booth at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition. We also discuss who won the prize and why, and what can be done with the territory of a small university on the outskirts of Moscow.

Overview

Vertical Civilization

Genpro considered the development of the vertical city concept and made it the theme of their pavilion at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition.

Interview

Marina Yegorova: “We think in terms of hectares, not square meters”

The career path of architect Marina Yegorova is quite impressive: MARHI, SPEECH, MosComArchitectura, the Genplan Institute of Moscow, and then her own architectural company. Its name Empate, which refers to the words “to draw” in Portuguese and “to empathize” in English, should not be misleading with its softness, as the firm freely works on different scales, including Integrated Territorial Development projects. We talked with Marina about various topics: urban planning experience, female leadership style, and even the love of architects for yachting.

Interview

Andrey Chuikov: “Optimum balance is achieved through economics”

The Yekaterinburg-based architectural company CNTR is in its mature stage: crystallization of principles, systematization, and standardization helped it make a qualitative leap, enhance competencies, and secure large contracts without sacrificing the aesthetic component. The head of the company, Andrey Chuikov, told us about building a business model and the bonuses that additional education in financial management provides for an architect.

Object

The Fulcrum

Ostozhenka Architects have designed two astonishing towers practically on the edge of a slope above the Oka River in Nizhny Novgorod. These towers stand on 10-meter-tall weathered steel “legs”, with each floor offering panoramic views of the river and the city; all public spaces, including corridors, receive plenty of natural light. Here, we see a multitude of solutions that are unconventional for the residential routine of our day and age. Meanwhile, although these towers hark back to the typological explorations of the seventies, they are completely reinvented in a contemporary key. We admire Veren Group as the client – this is exactly how a “unique product” should be made – and we tell you exactly how our towers are arranged.

Object

Crystal is Watching You

Right now, Museum Night has kicked off at the Museum of Architecture, featuring a fresh new addition – the “Crystal of Perception”, an installation by Sergey Kuznetsov, Ivan Grekov, and the KROST company, set up in the courtyard. It shimmers with light, it sings, it reacts to the approach of people, and who knows what else it can do.

Object

The Secret Briton

The house is called “Little France”. Its composition follows the classical St. Petersburg style, with a palace-like courtyard. The decor is on the brink of Egyptian lotuses, neo-Greek acroteria, and classic 1930s “gears”; the recessed piers are Gothic, while the silhouette of the central part of the house is British. It’s quite interesting to examine all these details, attempting to understand which architectural direction they belong to. At the same time, however, the house fits like a glove in the context of the 20th line of St. Petersburg’s Vasilievsky Island; its elongated wings hold up the façade quite well.

The Wrap-Up

The competition project proposed by Treivas for the first 2021 competition for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025 concludes our series of publications on pavilion projects that will not be implemented. This particular proposal stands out for its detailed explanations and the idea of ecological responsibility: both the facades and the exhibition inside were intended to utilize recycled materials.

Birds and Streams

For the competition to design the Omsk airport, DNK ag formed a consortium, inviting VOX architects and Sila Sveta. Their project focuses on intersections, journeys, and flights – both of people and birds – as Omsk is known as a “transfer point” for bird migrations. The educational component is also carefully considered, and the building itself is filled with light, which seems to deconstruct the copper circle of the central entrance portal, spreading it into fantastic hyper-spatial “slices”.

Faraday Grid

The project of the Omsk airport by ASADOV Architects is another concept among the 14 finalists of a recent competition. It is called “The Bridge” and is inspired by both the West Siberian Exhibition of 1911 and the Trans-Siberian Railway bridge over the Irtysh River, built in 1896. On one hand, it carries a steampunk vibe, while on the other, there’s almost a sense of nostalgia for the heyday of 1913. However, the concept offers two variants, the second one devoid of nostalgia but featuring a parabola.

Review

Midway upon the Journey of Our Life

Recently, Tatlin Publishing House released a book entitled “Architect Sergey Oreshkin. Selected Projects”. This book is not just a traditional book of the architectural company’s achievements, but rather a monograph of a more personal nature. The book includes 43 buildings as well as a section with architectural drawings. In this article, we reflect on the book as a way to take stock of an architect’s accomplishments.

Inverted Fortress

This year, there has been no shortage of intriguing architectural ideas around the Omsk airport. The project developed by the architectural company KPLN appeals to Omsk’s history as a wooden fortress that it was back in the day, but transforms the concept of a fortress beyond recognition: it “shaves off” the conical ends of “wooden logs”, then enlarges them, and then flips them over. The result is a hypostyle – a forest of conical columns on point supports, with skylights on top.

send.project

Transformation of Annenkirche

For Annenkirche (St. Anna Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg), Sergey Kuznetsov and the Kamen bureau have prepared a project that relies on the principles of the Venice Charter: the building is not restored to a specific date, historical layers are preserved, and modern elements do not mimic the authentic ones. Let’s delve into the details of these solutions.

The Paradox of the Temporary

The concept of the Russian pavilion for EXPO 2025 in Osaka, proposed by the Wowhaus architects, is the last of the six projects we gathered from the 2022 competition. It is again worth noting that the results of this competition were not finalized due to the cancellation of Russia’s participation in World Expo 2025. It should be mentioned that Wowhaus created three versions for this competition, but only one is being presented, and it can’t be said that this version is thoroughly developed – rather, it is done in the spirit of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, the project is interesting in its paradoxical nature: the architects emphasized the temporary character of the pavilion, and in its bubble-like forms sought to reflect the paradoxes of space and time.

The Forum of Time

The competition project for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025 in Osaka designed by Aleksey Orlov and Arena Project Institute consists of cones and conical funnels connected into a non-trivial composition, where one can feel the hand of architects who have worked extensively with stadiums and other sports facilities. It’s very interesting to delve into its logic, structurally built on the theme of clocks, hourglasses and even sundials. Additionally, the architects have turned the exhibition pavilion into a series of interconnected amphitheaters, which is also highly relevant for world exhibitions. We are reminding you that the competition results were never announced.

Mirrors Everywhere

The project by Sergey Nebotov, Anastasia Gritskova, and the architectural company “Novoe” was created for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025, but within the framework of another competition, which, as we learned, took place even earlier, in 2021. At that time, the competition theme was “digital twins”, and there was minimal time for work, so the project, according to the architect himself, was more of a “student assignment”. Nevertheless, this project is interesting for its plan bordering on similarity with Baroque projects and the emblem of the exhibition, as well as its diverse and comprehensive reflectiveness.

Report

The Steppe Is Full of Beauty and Freedom

The goal of the exhibition “Dikoe Pole” (“Wild Field”) at the State Historical Museum was to move away from the archaeological listing of valuable items and to create an image of the steppe and nomads that was multidirectional and emotional – in other words, artistic. To achieve this goal, it was important to include works of contemporary art. One such work is the scenography of the exhibition space developed by CHART studio.

The Snowstorm Fish

The next project from the unfinished competition for the Russian Pavilion at EXPO 2025, which will be held in Osaka, Japan, is by Dashi Namdakov and Parsec Architects. The pavilion describes itself as an “architectural/sculptural” one, with its shape clearly reminiscent of abstract sculpture of the 1970s. It complements its program with a meditative hall named “Mendeleev’s Dreams”, and offers its visitors to slide from its roof at the end of the tour.

The Mirror of Your Soul

We continue to publish projects from the competition for the design of the Russian Pavilion at EXPO in Osaka 2025. We are reminding you that the results of the competition have not been announced, and hardly will ever be. The pavilion designed by ASADOV Architects combines a forest log cabin, the image of a hyper transition, and sculptures made of glowing threads – it focuses primarily on the scenography of the exhibition, which the pavilion builds sequentially like a string of impressions, dedicating it to the paradoxes of the Russian soul.

Part of the Ideal

In 2025, another World Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan, in which Russia will not participate. However, a competition for the Russian pavilion was indeed held, with six projects participating. The results were never announced as Russia’s participation was canceled; the competition has no winners. Nevertheless, Expo pavilion projects are typically designed for a bold and interesting architectural statement, so we’ve gathered all the six projects and will be publishing articles about them in random order. The first one is the project by Vladimir Plotkin and Reserve Union, which is distinguished by the clarity of its stereometric shape, the boldness of its structure, and the multiplicity of possible interpretations.

Object

The Fortress by the River

ASADOV Architects have developed a concept for a new residential district in the center of Kemerovo. To combat the harsh climate and monotonous everyday life, the architects proposed a block type of development with dominant towers, good insolation, facades detailed at eye level, and event programming.

Object

In the Rhombus Grid

Construction has begun on the building of the OMK (United Metallurgical Company) Corporate University in Nizhny Novgorod’s town of Vyksa, designed by Ostozhenka Architects. The most interesting aspect of the project is how the architects immersed it in the context: “extracting” a diagonal motif from the planning grid of Vyksa, they aligned the building, the square, and the park to match it. A truly masterful work with urban planning context on several different levels of perception has long since become the signature technique of Ostozhenka.

Object

Generational Connection

Another modern estate, designed by Roman Leonidov, is located in the Moscow region and brings together three generations of one family under one roof. To fit on a narrow plot without depriving anyone of personal space, the architects opted for a zigzag plan. The main volume in the house structure is accentuated by mezzanines with a reverse-sloped roof and ceilings featuring exposed beams.

Object

Three Dimensions of the City

We began to delve into the project by Sergey Skuratov, the residential complex “Depo” in Minsk, located at Victory Square, and it fascinated us completely. The project has at least several dimensions to it: historical – at some point, the developer decided to discontinue further collaboration with Sergey Skuratov Architects, but the concept was approved, and its implementation continues, mostly in accordance with the proposed ideas. The spatial and urban planning dimension – the architects both argue with the city and play along with it, deciphering nuances, and finding axes. And, finally, the tactile dimension – the constructed buildings also have their own intriguing features. Thus, this article also has two parts: it dwells on what has been built and what was conceived

Object

New “Flight”

Architects from “Mezonproject” have developed a project for the reconstruction of the regional youth center “Polyot”(“Flight”) in the city of Oryol. The summer youth center, built back in the late 1970s, will now become year-round and acquire many additional functions.

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The Yauza Towers

In Moscow, there aren’t that many buildings or projects designed by Nikita Yavein and Studio 44. In this article, we present to you the concept of a large multifunctional complex on the Yauza River, located between two parks, featuring a promenade, a crossroads of two pedestrian streets, a highly developed public space, and an original architectural solution. This solution combines a sophisticated, asymmetric façade grid, reminiscent of a game of fifteen puzzle, and bold protrusions of the upper parts of the buildings, completely masking the technical floors and sculpting the complex’s silhouette.

​Igor Yavein. The Architect of Traffic Flows

Igor Yavein. The Architect of Traffic Flows