How a petroleum engineer decorated the Moscow GUM and built a tower on Shabolovka: Vladimir Shukhov

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Vladimir Shukhov is remembered for his architectural heritage. Hyperboloid structures, the "Shukhov tower" on Shabolovka, the glass ceiling of GUM … He is considered the "father" of functionalism, who inspired more than one generation of architects. However, he himself devoted five decades to the oil industry and invention …

Vladimir Shukhov was born in 1853 in the town of Grayvoron, Kursk province, in the family of an auditor. As a child, he shocked teachers and parents with his exceptional talents. For example, in the fourth grade I came up with my own proof of the Pythagorean theorem - an order of magnitude better, more logical and more beautiful than the existing ones. After graduating from the St. Petersburg gymnasium, he entered the Moscow Imperial Technical School (now - the Bauman Moscow State Technical University). To many, the load there seemed unbearable, but Vladimir Shukhov got real pleasure from his studies, and in his free time he disappeared either in the workshops or in the library. He was only twenty-one years old when he created his first invention - the steam nozzle for burning liquid fuel.

Shukhov brilliantly graduated from the Imperial School and was awarded a trip to the United States as part of a scientific delegation. From there, the young man brought a lot of impressions - in America in those years, technical progress proceeded at an accelerated pace, and philanthropists donated huge amounts of money to the development of technology and technology. In Russia, he was expected with open arms. The director of the school, Zhukovsky, begged him to stay and teach there, mathematician Pafnutiy Chebyshev persuaded him to go to work at St. Petersburg University, but … Shukhov did not see himself as a high-brow theorist or a stern professor. He was only interested in invention, only in a living creative process, only in practical engineering. True, then he himself could not have thought that he would become the ancestor of modern architecture.

However, it is Vladimir Shukhov who owes its development to the domestic (that domestic - the world!) Oil industry. It was like this: after returning from the USA to St. Petersburg, twenty-five-year-old Shukhov rejected all flattering offers and got a job in the drawing bureau of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway. It seemed that only routine work, gray everyday life and no flight of imagination lay ahead, but then a certain Alexander Bari burst into his life - and it started. Bari met Shukhov back in the USA and was very impressed with his intelligence and giftedness. At that time, Bari signed a lucrative contract with the partnership of the Nobel brothers, who were engaged in oil production in Baku. It was not without difficulty that he found his friend in Russia - and immediately offered him a position. Shukhov agreed almost without hesitation.

An unpleasant surprise awaited him at the Baku field. Complete confusion reigned there, terrible mud, they did not even remember about safety precautions. The ground was saturated with fuel oil, the air was filled with a thick smell of gasoline fumes. Shukhov resolutely got down to business - he intended to change everything. First of all, cracking was introduced in production - Shukhov's personal invention, the process of separating oil into fractions. Now it has become possible to obtain from oil not only kerosene, as it was before cracking, but also diesel fuel, fuel oil, motor oils … In Baku, he assembled the world's first cracking unit. Then there were steam nozzles, a pipeline for pumping oil, cylindrical tanks - all designed by a young engineer.

The collaboration between Bari and Shukhov became a creative union that one can only dream of, and it lasted for half a century. Bari highly appreciated Shukhov's abilities and gave him complete freedom of action.

At the end of the 19th century, Shukhov became interested in the creation of metal structures. His first major work in this area was the glass floors of GUM. In 1896, the All-Russian Art and Industry Exhibition was held in Nizhny Novgorod. There Shukhov presented to the public eight pavilions with the world's first overlapping in the form of mesh shells, a ceiling in the form of a steel membrane and a stunning hyperboloid tower. This was followed by hundreds of projects of engineering structures - lighthouses, arched vaults, power line supports … Shukhov's designs were light, durable and truly innovative.

Shukhov had a stormy romance with Olga Knipper, the future wife of Chekhov, but later he tied the knot with Anna Medintseva, a relative of the Akhmatovs. The family had five children. In 1919, he lost his youngest son - he died of tuberculosis (although there is a dramatic legend that the cause of death was torture and hunger transferred in prison; it is also indicated that for the release of his son Shukhov transferred patents to the state for all his inventions, which, according to - apparently not true). Subsequently, two of Shukhov's sons were indeed repressed.

The engineer did not accept the October Revolution, but he strove to be above politics. “Everyone needs boilers and towers - and we will be needed,” he wrote. And even though he was not a supporter of socialist ideas, work did not stop. In 1922, the skies were pierced by a hyperboloid radio tower on Shabolovka, one of several sister towers scattered around the world.

Above the Oka, a transmission line of a tower structure stretches - also an invention of Shukhov. The factories built according to his designs started working, and none of the Soviet construction projects of the first five-year plans could do without his innovations … Shukhov's achievements were recognized. He received the Lenin Prize and the Star of the Hero of Labor, he was admitted to the Academy of Sciences.

At the age of eighty-six, Vladimir Shukhov received extensive burns during a fire in his own home and died after five days of fighting for his life. Some of its buildings were irretrievably lost, but many continue to function. His inventions are still used in the oil industry, and the towers regularly receive and transmit signals. Among his admirers are Norman Foster (creator of the Mary Ax Tower in London) and many other creators of modern architecture.