| Derzhprom | |
| Native Name: | |
| Building Type: | office, conference |
| Architectural Style: | Constructivism |
| Address: | Maidan Svobody, 5, Kharkiv, Kharkiv Oblast, 61022 |
| Coordinates: | 50.0067°N 36.2271°W |
| Start Date: | 1925 |
| Inauguration Date: | 7 November 1928 |
| Cost: | 14,176,000 UAK |
| Antenna Spire: | 108m (354feet) |
| Roof: | 63m (207feet) |
| Floor Count: | 13 |
| Floor Area: | 60000m2 |
| Elevator Count: | 12 |
| Architect: | Sergei Serafimov, Samuel Kravets and Mark Felger |
| Engineer: | Pavlo Rottert |
| Developer: | Economic Council of the USSR |
| Website: | https://www.derzhprom.kh.ua/ |
The Derzhprom (Ukrainian: Держпром) or Gosprom (Russian: Госпром) building is an office building located on Freedom Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Built in the Constructivist style, it was the first modern skyscraper building in the Soviet Union upon its completion in 1928.[1] Its name is an abbreviation of two words that, taken together, mean State Industry. In English the structure is known as the State Industry Building or the Palace of Industry.
Derzhprom takes its place as a unique phenomenon of world architecture among the various structures that represent the modernist architecture of the first half of the 20th century, which are already on the UNESCO World Heritage List or the Tentative List.[2]
The grand opening of the "first Soviet skyscraper" took place on 7 November 1928.
The building was one of a few showcase projects designed when Kharkiv was the capital of the Ukrainian SSR. It was built by the architects Sergei Serafimov, Samuel Kravets and Mark Felger in only three years. The building became the most spacious single structure in the world by the year of its completion in 1928, to be surpassed by New York's skyscrapers in 1930s. Its unique feature lies in the symmetry which can only be sensed at one point, in the centre of the square.
The use of concrete in its construction and the system of overhead walkways and individual interlinked towers made the building extremely innovative.[3] The critic Reyner Banham in his Theory and Design in the First Machine Age regarded the building as one of the major architectural achievements of the 1920s, comparable in scale only to the Dessau Bauhaus and the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam.[4] This allowed the structure to fully survive any destruction attempts during the Second World War.
In the spring of 1926, it was decided to close the construction due to financial difficulties. Then the head of construction of the State Industry, Pavlo Rottert, left for Moscow, where he managed to find support for the construction from Felix Dzerzhinsky. In March 1926, he returned to build a skyscraper, and in August 1926 it was decided to finance the construction on an extraordinary basis.[5]
The Derzhprom complex was used as a symbol of modernity in films such as Dziga Vertov's Three Songs about Lenin and Sergei Eisenstein's The General Line. The building's notability was overshadowed following the moving of the Ukrainian capital to Kyiv in 1934, the later denunciation of Constructivism in favour of Stalinist architecture, and the Second World War. More recently, one of its towers was used as a television centre and a TV relay tower was built on its roof.
Derzhprom is a symbol of Kharkiv as an industrial, modern and big city.[6]
The architecture of Derzhprom relates to international Constructivism, its forms are industrial.[7] The house has a high aesthetic potential and functionality; its construction is compared to a "communication leap". In the 1920s, such architecture was a novelty not only in Europe but also around the world.[8]
Architectural functionalism includes the following functions: