This magnificent book demonstrates how Vkhutemas's dynamics, mission, personalitiesand particularly its achievements in design, art and architecturehave stood the test of time, unlike any other educational project in modern history. [] Every page is a revelation. Michal Boncza, Morning Star, on the first edition

With her groundbreaking book Avant-Garde as Method , architect and historian Anna Bokov offered the first scholarly exploration of art and technology education in the Soviet Union. This new, revised, and expanded edition reflects the latest findings of Bokov's ongoing research on the Higher Art and Technical Studios in Moscow, commonly known as Vkhutemas, and its pedagogical program. It features rich additional visual material that has been discovered in various archives since the publication of the first edition in 2020.

Vkhutemas was the first school to implement mass art and technology education, which was seen as essential to the Soviet Union's dominant modernist paradigm. It combined longstanding academic ideas with more nascent industrial-era practices to initiate a new type of pedagogy that took an explorative approach and drew its strength from the continuous feedback and exchange between students and educators. Elaborating on the ways the Vkhutemas curriculum challenged established canons of academic tradition by replacing it with open-ended inquiry, Bokov shows how this pedagogy came to be articulated in architectural and urban projects within the school's advanced studios.

The first edition was named one of the Most Beautiful German Books 2021 and a winner of the 2021 DAM Architectural Book Awards.

• New revised and expanded edition of the authoritative study on Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vkhutemas) in Moscow and its pioneering curriculum

• Reflects the latest findings of Anna Bokov's ongoing research on Vkhutemas

• Features numerous newly discovered images and documents that were not included in the first edition of 2020

• The first edition was named one of the Most Beautiful German Books 2021 and a winner of the 2021 DAM Architectural Book Awards

Autorentext

Anna Bokov is an architect, urban designer, educator, and historian, teaching and researching as an assistant professor adjunct at Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture in New York.