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Simbirtsev, Vasily (Nikolayevich)
(b St Petersburg, 14 Jan 1901; d Moscow, 19 Oct 1982). Russian architect and urban planner. In 1921 he entered the painting faculty of the Vkhutemas, Moscow, and from 1922 to 1928 he studied in its architectural faculty, at first in the workshops of Nikolay Ladovsky, Vladimir Krinsky and Nikolay Dokuchayev, and then in the studio of Aleksandr Vesnin. In 1929 he was one of the founding organizers of VOPRA (Rus.: All-Union Society of Proletarian Architects), which sought to redress the perceived élitism of contemporary architectural theorizing. He participated successfully in a number of large competitions, including that for the Palace of Soviets in Moscow; in the second round of the competition his design (1931; with Karo Alabyan) was awarded one of the first prizes. From 1934 to 1940, also with Alabyan, he worked on the design and construction of the Red Army Theatre, Moscow. In addition to its theatre function, the building was conceived as a monument, the general outline of the ground-plan conforming to the shape of a five-pointed star, the Red Army insignia. This same design appears in the cross-section of the columns of the modernized Corinthian order. During World War II, Simbirtsev worked on industrial construction and from 1944 to 1959 he was the chief architect of the reconstruction of Stalingrad (now Volgograd). With Alabyan and others he developed a general plan for the city in 1945 and a further, more detailed version of the plan in 1951. Within the city itself he designed the central part of the River Volga Embankment (1951–2), with I. I. Fialko (1916–85), the Regional Party School (1949–50) on the Square of the Fallen Warriors (Ploshchad’ Pavshikh Bortsov) with Ye. L. Levitan (b 1916), and the Planetarium (1951–2) on Mir Street, with I. Khomutov. Simbirtsev also participated in the design of the memorial on Mamayev Hill. From 1959 he worked on experimental designs and scientific research projects in Moscow.
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