Home to the FIAT-based car factory, the city was part of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan of 1928, which initiated a period of massive industrialization in remote regions. This led to the creation of several monotowns built to serve a specific economic or industrial purpose. Tolyatti, designed by the Russian architect Boris Rubanenko, was inspired by Ivan Leonidov’s project for Magnitogorsk. On plan it consists of a grid of squares of 1 x 1 km, each square containing the necessary basic facilities for its residents. The rigid urban layout was designed to facilitate citizens’ movements and minimize lost time, which was regarded as unnecessary and unproductive.
These days the monotowns are in a state of inactivity. The recent economic recession has slowed down production, forcing their inhabitants to seek alternative sources of income. Drawing on the contemporary debate on the productive means of the capitalist system, the project deals with the current transformation of the concept of production, which is shifting from production of goods to production of knowledge. As the line between life and work becomes increasingly blurred, architecture has changed into an instrument of control that imposes hierarchical systems on everyday life.
The project seeks to question the way we perceive architecture, workplaces and educational institutions. It highlights the need for a transformation in design processes and goals, so that we regard architecture not as a problem-solver or a profit-making instrument but rather as a tool to investigate new ways of living and working. At the same time, the design explores the possibility of liberating production from pre-imposed economic constraints, thereby challenging the need for accumulation, classification and private property.
This perspective surpasses the limits of traditional planning. Given the scale of the project, the intention is to present an alternative perspective that invites further reflection rather than offering an immediate solution. Every layer and every component has been designed so as to be appropriated and reapplied at a different scale and in another condition. This allows the project to be as much a specific intervention as a trigger for new ideas and as such questions the way we design contemporary architecture.