Architectural Fantasies

Posted by Fabio 6 November 2009

This stunning collection of extravagant architectural drawings can be found at the Yakov Chernikov International Foundation’s website. Yakov Chernikov (1889-1959) was a constructivist architect and graphic designer who was greatly interested in futurist movements and the suprematism of Malevich with whom he was acquainted.

From 1927 to 1933 he published several renowned books who are among some of the most important of their time. The drawings shown here are from the book 101 Architectural Fantasies from 1933.

The book contains 101 drawings in colour and 101 in black and white and is said to be the last avantgarde book to be published during the Stalinist era. Chernikhov also produced a number of richly designed architectural fantasies of historic architecture, which were never exhibited in his lifetime.
A book on The Construction of Letter Forms containing some of his typographical designs, was published after his death, in 1959. Chernikhov produced some 17,000 drawings and projects!