Tatlin's Unbuilt Monument to the Third International: A Constructivist Dream

Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International, a colossal constructivist structure designed for Petrograd after the 1917 October Revolution, was never built. Commissioned to house the Comintern headquarters, it was to be 400 meters tall, made of glass, iron, and steel, with rotating geometric volumes: a cube (yearly rotation) for conferences, a pyramid (monthly) for executive activities, and a cylinder (daily) for a information center with telegraph, radio, and loudspeakers. Two spiral helices would transport visitors. The monument was presented at the Eighth Congress of Soviets but remained a model, later destroyed. Replicas exist at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and Centre Pompidou in Paris. A 1:42 scale model was built at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2011, erected at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich in 2017, and displayed at the University of East Anglia until 2021. Ai Weiwei's 2007 sculpture 'Fountain of Light' was directly inspired by Tatlin's design.