Svetlana Boyms Architecture of the OffModern is an imaginative tour throughthe history and afterlife of Vladimir Tatlins legendary but unbuilt Monumentto the Th... » 

Svetlana Boyms Architecture of the OffModern is an imaginative tour throughthe history and afterlife of Vladimir Tatlins legendary but unbuilt Monumentto the Third International of 1920. Generally considered to be the definingexpression of architectural constructivism the structure was envisioned as atowering symbol of modernity and a twisting turning memorial and media centerfor the Bolshevik Revolution that would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower. Boymtraces the vicissitudes of Tatlins Tower from its reception in the 1920s toits privileged recall in the reservoir of unofficial utopian dreams of theSovietera. Boym offers an alternative history of modernism postulating thearchitecture of adventure as a poetic model for third route thinking abouttechnology history and aesthetic culture. «