OSA Group

The group's founders were Moisei Ginzburg, well known for his book Style and Epoch (a Soviet response to Le Corbusier's Vers une Architecture) and the painter, designer and architect Alexander Vesnin.

Unlike the earlier association the OSA group claimed for itself the name Constructivist, in that it was, in its utilitarianism and concentration on function rather than form, an architectural equivalent to the experiments of 'artistic' Constructivism.

Until its closure in 1930, SA would publish articles on a variety of subjects, including a symposium on flat roofs, a special issue on colour in architecture, and discussions of Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus, Fernand Léger, and Kasimir Malevich (who was also a contributor to the journal).

Articles in the journal was mainly in Russian, though occasionally parts of it were in German, highlighting the group's affinities with the Neues Bauen, although no OSA architects were invited to contribute to the Weissenhof Estate.

The utopian projects of Ivan Leonidov were first published in SA, and their technologically advanced, fantastic nature led to harsh criticisms from the VOPRA group of Arkady Mordvinov and Karo Alabian, coining the phrase 'Leonidovism' to attack this 'Western' group: in a 1929 editorial SA trenchantly defended Leonidov, but this was a sign of what was to come, with Mikhail Barsch being targeted in an 'anti-bourgeois' campaign at VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN.

Mikhail Okhitovich's theories of using telecommunications, roads and infrastructure to create diffuse, semi-rural cities were published in SA, and the group's proposals for the new town of Magnitogorsk were produced with his input, only to be defeated by Ernst May of Der Ring.