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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Architecture and Leisure Park

For the suburban hotel complex, which envisages various formats of leisure, the architectural company T+T Architects proposed several types of accommodation, ranging from the classic “standard” in a common building to a “cave in the hill” and a “house in a tree”. An additional challenge consisted in integrating a few classic-style residences already existing on this territory into the “architectural forest park”.

Overview

The U-House

The Jois complex combines height with terraces, bringing the most expensive apartments from penthouses down to the bottom floors. The powerful iconic image of the U-shaped building is the result of the creative search for a new standard of living in high-rise buildings by the architects of “Genpro”.

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Black and White

In this article, we specifically discuss the interiors of the ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh. Interior design is a crucial component of the overall concept in this case, and precision and meticulous execution were highly important for the architects. Julia Tryaskina, head of UNK interiors, shares some of the developments.

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The “Snake” Mountain

The competition project for the seaside resort complex “Serpentine” combines several typologies: apartments of different classes, villas, and hotel rooms. For each of these typologies, the KPLN architects employ one of the images that are drawn from the natural environment – a serpentine road, a mountain stream, and rolling waves.

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Opal from Anna Mons’ Ring

The project of a small business center located near Tupolev Plaza and Radio Street proclaims the necessity of modern architecture in a specific area of Moscow commonly known as “Nemetskaya Sloboda” or “German settlement”. It substantiates its thesis with the thoroughness of details, a multitude of proposed and rejected form variants, and even a detailed description of the surrounding area. The project is interesting indeed, and it is even more interesting to see what will come of it.

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Feed ’Em All

A “House of Russian Cuisine” was designed and built by KROST Group at VDNKh for the “Rossiya” exhibition in record-breaking time. The pavilion is masterfully constructed in terms of the standards of modern public catering industry multiplied by the bustling cultural program of the exhibition, and it interprets the stylistically diverse character of VDNKh just as successfully. At the same time, much of its interior design can be traced back to the prototypes of the 1960s – so much so that even scenes from iconic Soviet movies of those years persistently come to mind.

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The Ensemble at the Mosque

OSA prepared a master plan for a district in the southern part of Derbent. The main task of the master plan is to initiate the formation of a modern comfortable environment in this city. The organization of residential areas is subordinated to the city’s spiritual center: depending on the location relative to the cathedral mosque, the houses are distinguished by façade and plastique solutions. The program also includes a “hospitality center”, administrative buildings, an educational cluster, and even an air bridge.

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Pargolovo Protestantism

A Protestant church is being built in St. Petersburg by the project of SLOI architects. One of the main features of the building is a wooden roof with 25-meter spans, which, among other things, forms the interior of the prayer hall. Also, there are other interesting details – we are telling you more about them.

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The Shape of the Inconceivable

The ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh brings to mind a famous maxim of all architects and critics: “You’ve come up with it? Now build it!” You rarely see such a selfless immersion in implementation of the project, and the formidable structural and engineering tasks set by UNK architects to themselves are presented here as an integral and important part of the architectural idea. The challenge matches the obliging status of the place – after all, it is an “exhibition of achievements”, and the pavilion is dedicated to the nuclear energy industry. Let’s take a closer look: from the outside, from the inside, and from the underside too.

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Rays of the Desert

A school for 1750 students is going to be built in Dubai, designed by IND Architects. The architects took into account the local specifics, and proposed a radial layout and spaces, in which the children will be comfortable throughout the day.

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The Dairy Theme

The concept of an office of a cheese-making company, designed for the enclosed area of a dairy factory, at least partially refers to industrial architecture. Perhaps that is why this concept is very simple, which seems the appropriate thing to do here. The building is enlivened by literally a couple of “master strokes”: the turning of the corner accentuates the entrance, and the shade of glass responds to the theme of “milk rivers” from Russian fairy tales.

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The Road to the Temple

Under a grant from the Small Towns Competition, the main street and temple area of the village of Nikolo-Berezovka near Neftekamsk has been improved. A consortium of APRELarchitects and Novaya Zemlya is turning the village into an open-air museum and integrating ruined buildings into public life.

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Towers Leaning Towards the Sun

The three towers of the residential complex “Novodanilovskaya 8” are new and the tallest neighbors of the Danilovsky Manufactory, “Fort”, and “Plaza”, complementing a whole cluster of modern buildings designed by renowned masters. At the same time, the towers are unique for this setting – they are residential, they are the tallest ones here, and they are located on a challenging site. In this article, we explore how architects Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova tackled this far-from-trivial task.

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In the spirit of ROSTA posters

The new Rostselmash tractor factory, conceptualized by ASADOV Architects, is currently being completed in Rostov-on-Don. References to the Soviet architecture of the 1920’s and 1960’s resonate with the mission and strategic importance of the enterprise, and are also in line with the client’s wish: to pay homage to Rostov’s constructivism.

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The Northern Thebaid

The central part of Ferapontovo village, adjacent to the famous monastery with frescoes by Dionisy, has been improved according to the project by APRELarchitects. Now the place offers basic services for tourists, as well as a place for the villagers’ leisure.

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Brilliant Production

The architects from London-based MOST Architecture have designed the space for the high-tech production of Charge Cars, a high-performance production facility for high-speed electric cars that are assembled in the shell of legendary Ford Mustangs. The founders of both the company and the car assembly startup are Russians who were educated in their home country.

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Three-Part Task: St. Petersburg’s Mytny Dvor

The so-called “Mytny Dvor” area lying just behind Moscow Railway Station – the market rows with a complex history – will be transformed into a premium residential complex by Studio 44. The project consists of three parts: the restoration of historical buildings, the reconstruction of the lost part of the historical contour, and new houses. All of them are harmonized with each other and with the city; axes and “beams of light” were found, cozy corners and scenic viewpoints were carefully thought out. We had a chat with the authors of the historical buildings’ restoration project, and we are telling you about all the different tasks that have been solved here.

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The Color of the City, or Reflections on the Slope of an Urban Settlement

In 2022, Ostozhenka Architects won a competition, and in 2023, they developed and received all the necessary approvals for a master plan for the development of Chernigovskaya Street for the developer GloraX. The project takes into account a 10-year history of previous developments; it was done in collaboration with architects from Nizhny Novgorod, and it continues to evolve now. We carefully examined it, talked to everyone, and learned a lot of interesting things.

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A Single-Industry Town

Kola MMC and Nornickel are building a residential neighborhood in Monchegorsk for their future employees. It is based on a project by an international team that won the 2021 competition. The project offers a number of solutions meant to combat the main “demons” of any northern city: wind, grayness and boredom.

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A New Age Portico

At the beginning of the year, Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport opened Terminal C. The large-scale and transparent entrance hall with luminous columns inside successfully combines laconism with a bright and photogenic WOW-effect. The terminal is both the new façade of the whole complex and the starting point of the planned reconstruction, upon completion of which Tolmachevo will become the largest regional airport in Russia. In this article, we are examining the building in the context of modernist prototypes of both Novosibirsk and Leningrad: like puzzle pieces, they come together to form their individual history, not devoid of curious nuances and details.

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A New Starting Point

We’ve been wanting to examine the RuArts Foundation space, designed by ATRIUM for quite a long time, and we finally got round to it. This building looks appropriate and impressive; it amazingly combines tradition – represented in our case by galleries – and innovation. In this article, we delve into details and study the building’s historical background as well.

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Molding Perspectives

Stepan Liphart introduces “schematic Art Deco” on the outskirts of Kazan – his houses are executed in green color, with a glassy “iced” finish on the facades. The main merits of the project lie in his meticulous arrangement of viewing angles – the architect is striving to create in a challenging environment the embryo of a city not only in terms of pedestrian accessibility but also in a sculptural sense. He works with silhouettes, proposing intriguing triangular terraces. The entire project is structured like a crystal, following two grids, orthogonal and diagonal. In this article, we are examining what worked, and what eventually didn’t.

​Igor Yavein. The Architect of Traffic Flows

Igor Yavein. The Architect of Traffic Flows