| Summary: | This paper explores the dynamics
through which design drawings structure spatial strategies,
particularly those with an agenda for socio-political change, while interrogating the drawings’
impacts on subjectivity. It dissects an early Soviet architectural drawing addressing the
1920s-30s crowd-design-problem: using architectural space to generate a robust
intersubjectivity in mass crowds. Revolutionary Soviet artists challenged inherited graphic regimes
of viewing crowds from an alienating distance, proposing devices of immersion
to radically re-visualize mass crowds and re-conceptualize collectivity. Drawing on Suprematist
compositions, the avant-garde Soviet Rationalist architects translated immersive principles from
contemporary revolutionary art. The paper articulates the Rationalists’ alternative graphic
framework which immerses the observer-cum-designer within crowd dynamics in a distinctively
architectural way, while identifying its implications on spatial design: a space of undulating
grounds, rhythmic choreographies and ‘textured’ visual fields. The paper also speculates on its
implications redefining subjectivity; re-introducing emotion amongst the relations of production
challenges canonical Historical Materialism.
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