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ARCHITECTURAL CONSTRUCTIVISM IN ODESSA: VISUAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2023. Issue 4 (38). P. 167-189

The article analyzes the theoretical and methodological foundations of a visual-anthropological research on Soviet residential architecture in the constructivism style in Odessa. In the Soviet context, architecture played the role of a source of renewal. Constructivists consciously participated in the creation of the “new”, that is, modern man, ready to live in an era of global change and build a society of the future. This thesis is concretized by conducting a cultural-anthropological research in Odessa. Considerable attention is paid to the development and substantiation of a comprehensive methodological approach based on an anthropological perspective in the study of the city, a philosophical and anthropological understanding of culture as proportionate to a person, taking into account the diversity of forms of visual experience in modern culture, and based on the latest research in visual communication. The thesis is defended that with the help of the proposed methodology it is possible to discover new rather than predetermined meanings. One of the key conclusions is that the realized visual-anthropological research confirms the importance of the semiological approach to architecture. It allows exploring how architecture shapes human behavior, how the design of a new type of housing, to which both the authorities and architects paid special attention, participates in the creation of a new set of life connections. The constructivist house is studied as a specially organized space that conveys certain meanings. The results obtained make it possible to comprehend and reconstruct the “mechanisms” of cultural communication, ways of translating cultural meanings. The results of the study contribute to the reconstruction of the image of Odessa in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as to a deeper understanding of the anthropology of the socialist city.

Keywords: constructivism, house, cultural anthropology, visual semiotics, urban anthropology, visual anthropology, architectural anthropology, practice