Shukhov's High-tech architecture in Moscow - 1922

Duration 03:32 min - 21 January 2011

Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon travels through time to unlock the world of Russian art. But best of all is a ride up the Shukhov tower, an amazing construction built by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov between 1919 and 1922. If it's not quite as ignored as AGD suggests (its restoration is after all the focus of a major UNESCO campaign) it is still an astonishing construction that is wonderfully well filmed here. www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk «Lord Foster fires up campaign to save rusting Russian radio tower» - guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk www.shukhov.org Architect brands structure as a work of 'dazzling genius' and inspiration that must be saved. From a distance it looks a bit like an upturned wastepaper basket, soaring over the concrete skyline of southern Moscow. The Russian capital's unique Soviet-era radio station was built in 1922 to spread the message of revolutionary communism around the world, but it is badly neglected and suffering from corrosion. Now British architect Lord Foster has backed a campaign to save the 150-metre-high steel tower designed by the engineering genius Vladimir Shukhov. In an open letter, Lord Foster describes the tower as "a structure of dazzling brilliance and great historical importance". Calling the structure Shukhov's masterpiece, Foster says it is the "first major landmark of the Soviet period". Made up of a delicate lattice structure, the tower has five interlocking "hyperboloids", each smaller in size, giving the impression of ...