If architecture has the ability to influence social behavior, the concept of the Social Condenser aimed to recondition social dynamics in the public sphere and generate a new social organisation to existence by creating socially equitable spaces.
Александр Дейнека “В Районном Клубе” ///// Alexander Deyneka “At the local club”
‘In 1927, the editors of the leading Constructivist journal, Contemporary Architecture [Журнал Современная Архитектура], sketched out a radical architectural concept intended to foster a social revolution.
Led by Moisei Ginzburg, the editors declared that it was the duty of the Soviet architect to develop the “social condensers of our epoch”.
A “social condenser”, they explained, was architecture that “shaped and crystallised a new socialist way of life”.
Be it in the form of communal housing, public kitchens, workers’ clubs, administrative buildings, factories or parks, they insisted the social condenser should cultivate a new code of behaviours, norms and habits that would elevate human consciousness and secure the advancement of humanity, through the as yet unrealised potential of socialist organisation.
This was a daring vision based on the imagined virtues of greater human interaction and cooperation.’
from The Architectural Review
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