Shukhov Tower(also known as Shukhov TV tower , Shabolovskaya television tower , Shukhov Radio Tower) - a metal radio and television tower, an architectural monument of Soviet constructivism. Located in Moscow on Shukhova Street next to the television center on Shabolovka. Built in 1920-1922 according to the design of the architect and inventor Vladimir Shukhov.
Story
Design
The first mesh tower of forms was built for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896, after which it was purchased by manufacturer Yuri Nechaev-Maltsov. Based on Shukhov's designs, structures began to be built as lighthouses, water towers, ship masts and power lines.
One of the mesh structures in the shape of a hyperboloid of revolution was the radio antenna tower on Shabolovka. The Khodynka radio station, built in 1914, could no longer cope with the growing volume of radiograms. On July 30, 1919, Vladimir Lenin signed a resolution of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, which contained the requirement "to establish, extremely urgently, a radio station in Moscow, equipped with the most advanced instruments and machines with power" sufficient to ensure the security of the country and constant communication with republics The design of the tower for these purposes began immediately. As a result of the competition, Shukhov’s “Construction Office” received the order.
Shukhov’s engineering talents became in demand amid a shortage of metal in the country. Shukhov often used materials from dismantled structures - bridges, factories. The complexity of the work was also determined by the lack of qualified workers after the First World War; personnel had to be trained directly at the construction site.
The planned height of the new tower of nine hyperbolic sections was 350 meters (15 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower, which was taken into account when creating the plan) with an estimated weight of 2200 tons (the Eiffel Tower weighs 7300 tons). However, under the conditions of the Civil War and lack of resources, the project had to be revised: the height was reduced to 148.5 meters, and the weight was 240 tons. The new project was approved personally by Lenin.
Vladimir Shukhov regularly kept a diary, in which you can track the history of the structure and the evolution of engineering thought:
| August 29, 1919.<…>The contract with GOZY was signed on August 22, 1919: within a week, wood specifications for scaffolding and scaffolding, as well as for the working bridge, and specifications for tools and machines should be given. August 30. There is no iron, and a design for the tower cannot yet be drawn up. |
Construction and design features
We are the all-powerful titans, A poem about the beginning of construction of the Shukhov Tower in the Petrograd magazine “Flame”, No. 41 of 1919 |
The construction of the tower was carried out without scaffolding or cranes, using winches. The creation required 240 tons of metal, which was allocated by Lenin’s personal decree from the reserves of the Military Department. For lifting, five wooden cranes were used, which moved to the upper section and helped lift the parts.
The tower is made up of six sections, located one above the other. Each section is an independent hyperboloid, based on the larger one below. Each section was installed inside the circuit and raised to a given height. In order for the base of the section to pass, the lower diameter was tightened, and after being pulled into the installed section, it was loosened, joined and mounted. The original design implied that the load-bearing ribs located in the vertical sections of the tower would come into contact with the imaginary surface of the hyperboloid only at nodal points located on the horizontal belts of the hyperboloid. The lower support ring is attached to the foundation with anchor bolts on both sides of the nodal support gussets.
| October 6. Something stupid has been done. The calculation of the passage through the bottom neck was missed.<…>It is a pity that such a good thing as assembly without scaffolding is not understood by comrades. Rework will take a lot of time.<…> My omissions: strengthening of the lower blocks, poor strengthening of the transverse upper blocks; tightening the bottom of the tower with a ring to pass into the neck and intermediate rings; winch with one drum instead of two. Diary of Vladimir Shukhov |
In parallel with the construction, Shukhov made adjustments to the design of the tower. During the installation process, there was a strike of workers due to poor food and delays in payment, the rest of the time they worked slowly and even staged an Italian strike due to lack of rations, but in winter frosts they worked twice as long as required - 7 hours instead of 3.5. The sixth section was installed and finally secured on February 14, 1922; on February 28, a mast was placed on the tower, which ended Shukhov’s work. On March 19, radio broadcast transmitters were installed on the tower and radio broadcasts began. The first was a concert of Russian music with the participation of Nadezhda Obukhova and Boris Evlakhov. The power of the arc generator on the tower was 100 kW, and the range was 10 thousand km. It was more powerful than the radio stations of Paris, New York and Berlin, and could be contacted by stations in Nauen and Rome.
According to his son, Vladimir Shukhov refused the awards. The charges against the engineer were dropped, and the execution sentence was overturned.
Operation in the USSR
Since 1937, experimental broadcasts of shortwave cathode television began to be broadcast from the tower. In 1939, after the construction of a television center on Shabolovka and the installation of a television signal transmitter on the Shukhov Tower, the first television broadcast in the USSR took place from it - a documentary film about the opening of the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), on this day the broadcast in Moscow was received by 100 TK-1 televisions . Further television broadcasts from the tower were carried out four times a week for two hours.
In the same year, 1939, a single-engine mail plane flying from Kyiv to Moscow lost control and hit one of the cables of the Shukhov Tower with its wing, but it withstood the impact so that no repairs were needed.
In 1948, the tower was again converted to accommodate high-frequency television. Since the final height of the Shukhov Tower was 160 meters, for a long time it was the tallest building in the country until the construction of the Ostankino TV Tower in 1967. In the 1950s, the Shukhov Tower became the official symbol of Soviet television; its image was used for a long time in the screensavers of television programs, for example, “Blue Light”. With the start of operation of the television center in Ostankino, the Shukhov Tower continued to be used for transmitting programs from Shabolovka and for outside broadcasts. After the fire in Ostankino in August 2000, Shabolovka supported the broadcasting of the main Russian television channels for a year and a half.
Current state
During its entire existence, the Shukhov Tower has never undergone a full restoration. In 1947, a full study of the tower showed that the main elements were corroded by 5%, the anchor bolts by 5-10%, they were cleaned of rust and painted. In 1949, 1950 and 1964, anti-corrosion painting of its elements was carried out. In 1971, after a study of the condition of the tower, with the participation of the Melnikov Central Research Institute of Construction and Construction, the foundation of the tower was strengthened and the supporting units were concreted, which increased corrosion and damaged the structure, which was originally intended to be movable.
In 2012, a round table “The Legacy of Academician V. G. Shukhov” was held in the Central House of Architects, where the head of the department for inspection of buildings and structures, Alexander Mamin, stated that the state of the monument was close to emergency. According to him, the Shukhov Tower was in urgent need of restoration.
Residents of Shabolovka also spoke out against the transfer. In the summer of 2014, a referendum was held among Muscovites on the future fate of the monument: 90% of respondents were in favor of preserving the Shukhov Tower.
In the fall of 2015, the “antenna” section of the Shukhov Tower, built in 1991, was dismantled. Vladimir Shukhov also expressed the idea of conserving the facility and carrying out anti-corrosion work. In March 2016, a structure was installed inside the tower to support the walls and relieve some of the load from the frame.
Shukhov Tower in culture
In the year of completion of construction, architect Vladimir Krinsky created the panel “Radio Horn of the Revolution” with an image of the tower. Alexei Tolstoy's science fiction novel "Engineer Garin's Hyperboloid" was inspired by the public outcry caused by the construction of the Shukhov Tower. The image of the Shukhov Tower became the logo of the exhibition “The Art of Engineering” at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Also, a six-meter model of the tower was installed at the exhibition “The best designs and structures in the architecture of the 20th century” in Munich in 2003.
In total, there are eight Shukhov towers in Russia; the Kobe port tower in Japan, towers in Zurich, Liberec, Sydney, as well as the 600-meter Canton Tower in Guangzhou, are also modeled after Shukhov’s hyperboloid structures. The ideas of hyperboloid structures are used in the design of skyscrapers in the Moscow City business center.
The Shukhov Tower became the winner of the “Radiomania-2007” award in the “Radio Legend” category.
Gallery
| Shukhov Tower in different years | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Notes
- The Shukhov TV tower on Shabolovka cannot be dismantled (undefined) . Echo of Moscow (February 4, 2004). Retrieved October 9, 2017.
- Yakov Lysenko. Tower on air (undefined) . Gazeta.Ru (March 19, 2017). Retrieved October 9, 2017.
- Back to a new way of life: five main constructivist buildings in Shabolovka (undefined) . Official website of the Mayor of Moscow (September 18, 2017). Retrieved October 9, 2017.
- Shukhov hyperboloid of revolution (undefined) . GeekTimes (March 18, 2016). Retrieved October 10, 2017.
- , With. 39.
- , With. 47.
- Nastya Krasilnikova, Denis Romodin. Hyperboloid of engineer Shukhov: What is happening to the tower on Shabolovka (undefined) . The Village (March 19, 2017). Retrieved October 9, 2017.
- Tim Skorenko. Invented in Russia: The History of Russian Inventive Thought from Peter I to Nicholas II. - Moscow: Alpina Publishers, 2017. - 533 p. - ISBN 9785961449303.
- , With. 49-51.
- , With. 36.
- , With. 189.
- , With. 260.
- , With. 319-320.
- , With. 258.
- , With. 258-259.
- , With. 48.
- , With. 261.
- , With. 9.
- Television Shukhov Tower on Shabolovka. Reference (undefined) . RIA Novosti (March 19, 2012). Retrieved October 9, 2017.
- , With. 263-264.
- , With. 264.
- , With. 14.
- , With. 113.
About the famous tower on Shabolovka and its terrible condition has been remembered from time to time for many years: the last time in early February, when the sharp-tongued deputy head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, Alexey Volin, suggested simply disassembling it. Allegedly, the tower could collapse on the heads of passers-by at any moment, and “to avoid a man-made disaster in the center of Moscow, it is necessary to dismantle the tower as soon as possible.”
One of the most recognizable objects of the Soviet avant-garde is once again in the spotlight. City defenders began to talk about an impending crime. The engineer’s great-grandson Vladimir Shukhov, architect Norman Foster and others spoke in defense of the tower.
The creator of the design in the form of mesh metal shells was the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov. He designed his first tower using this technology for the largest pre-revolutionary All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition, which took place in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896. The light and beautiful tower created a sensation - it was the world's first hyperboloid structure. After the exhibition closed, it was bought by the famous philanthropist, manufacturer, and owner of glass factories, Yuri Nechaev-Maltsov. Then the tower was dismantled under the supervision of Shukhov himself and transported to the estate of the manufacturer Polibino in the Lipetsk province, where it was reassembled.
The design of the tower became successful, and Shukhov patented his invention: at that time there were many businessmen who stole ideas for commercial gain. Shukhov towers began to be erected in many cities and large enterprises as lighthouses, power transmission masts, and water structures. They were distinguished by lightness, economy of steel and, most valuable, reliability of the design. It was these qualities and characteristics that Soviet Russia required when the task arose of building a mast for the first radio center in Moscow.
The first project of the tower on Shabolovka was developed by Shukhov in 1919. The tower had an estimated height of 350 meters and was supposed to be 45 meters higher than the Paris Eiffel. At the same time, the estimated weight of the Shukhov tower was 2,200 tons versus 7,300 tons of the Eiffel. And the metal consumption was almost three times less, which was extremely important for a country whose industry and economy were almost destroyed. True, the project still had to be revised due to economic considerations: reduce the height to 148.3 meters and reduce the number of sections from nine to six.
Construction began in March 1920 and was carried out using the telescopic method, that is, each new section was assembled at the base of the tower and lifted up on winches without scaffolding or cranes. The work lasted intermittently for two years: installation had to be frequently interrupted due to a lack of materials. And during the lifting of the fourth section of the tower in severe frost in the winter of 1922, an accident occurred - three workers died. Shukhov himself was then accused of sabotage and sentenced to suspended execution with a suspended sentence until construction was completed. Nevertheless, in record time it was possible to restore the fourth section, build two more, and begin the first radio broadcasts on March 19. The charges against Shukhov were dropped and the suspended execution was cancelled.
The light openwork design was elegant and simple. The shape of the tower sections is single-sheet hyperboloids of revolution, made of straight beams resting their ends on ring bases. This design turned out to be very stable and withstood a collision in 1939 with a postal plane from Kyiv, which, due to a breakdown, touched a cable stretched at an angle from the top to the ground with its wing. The examination showed that Shukhov's structure withstood the impact and did not need repair.
Hyperboloid Shukhov's designs are no longer used in our country in the second half of the 20th century, but they turned out to be very popular abroad
The tower immediately became a symbol of new times. It was she who inspired Alexei Tolstoy to create the novel “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin.” It was with her that the first regular television broadcasts in the USSR began in March 1939, which were received by more than a hundred televisions.
The tower itself already in the 1950s became a symbol of Soviet television and the screensaver of many television programs, including the New Year's “Blue Light”. She retained her leadership in Moscow until the construction of the Ostankino TV tower in 1967. Unfortunately, Shukhov’s hyperboloid designs ceased to be used in our country in the second half of the 20th century, but they turned out to be very popular abroad and are described in detail in many European books on the history of architecture. And at the exhibition “Engineering Art” at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the image of the Shukhov Tower was used as a logo.
For example, in 1963, the 108-meter Shukhov Kobe Port Tower was built in the port of Kobe in Japan. And just five years ago, the 600-meter hyperboloid mesh Shukhov Canton Tower was built in Guangzhou, which became a new symbol of modern China. Meanwhile, the Moscow tower stands without reconstruction. Fortunately, the idea of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications to “disassemble and reassemble” was rejected, otherwise the original object would simply be lost and a modern copy would appear in its place. There is a federal law on objects of cultural heritage, and Article 243 of the Criminal Code, according to which only scientific restoration of an object of this status is possible.
The Shukhov Tower, better known as Shabolovskaya, is more than 90 years old. It is called one of the most outstanding achievements of engineering in the world.
However, it was far from the first tower of this type. First there were water towers. In total, more than 200 towers of this type were built in Russia. It is believed that the very first of them was built for the Nizhny Novgorod fair and then moved near Lipetsk to Polibino in 1896
The world's first hyperboloid tower - at the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition in 1896 (left) and today
The Shukhov Tower in Polibino was originally built by engineer and architect V. G. Shukhov for the largest pre-revolutionary All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, which took place from May 28 (June 9) to October 1 (13), 1896 and transported to the village of Polibino near Kulikov fields at the end of 1896 after the end of the exhibition. The tower is the world's first hyperboloid structure.
Writes dima_chich
When I found out that there was such a wonderful building nearby, I immediately went there, distance is no obstacle)
The tower is in a terrible state, no one needs it, like everything else in this country. The staircase is almost torn off, swaying in the wind. That’s why I never got to the top. :(
It was offensive and unpleasant for me to watch all this.
It is a monument of federal significance.
PS. World famous Shukhov Towers:
Shukhov lighthouses are 100 years old (built in 1910-1911)
Height 64 meters. This is the tallest single-section hyperboloid tower built by V. G. Shukhov.
Adzhigol lighthouse near Kherson
Shabolovskaya Tower
The round conical body of the tower consists of 6 sections, each 25 meters high. The lower section is installed on a concrete foundation with a diameter of 40 meters and a depth of 3 meters. The construction of the tower was carried out using the telescopic method without scaffolding or cranes. The upper sections were assembled in turn inside the lower ones and were lifted onto each other using blocks and winches. On March 19, 1922, the unique antenna tower on Shabolovka came into operation. Over its more than 90-year history, the Shukhov Tower served as a support for the antennas of large radio and television stations: the Moscow Radiotelegraph Station, the 40-kilowatt Bolshoi Comintern broadcasting station, and later the antennas of the Moscow Television Center.
Shukhov Tower on Shabolovka illuminated at night
Support towers
In 1927-1929, according to the project and under the leadership of Vladimir Shukhov, three pairs of multi-sectional steel hyperboloid support towers with a height of 128, 68 and 20 meters were built on the Oka River, near Nizhny Novgorod between Bogorodsk and Dzerzhinsk. Unique high-rise structures - 128-meter steel mesh towers served as a support for the crossing of the Oka River for the NiGRES 120 kilovolt power line. After changing the route of the power line, four Shukhov towers with a height of 68 and 20 meters were dismantled for scrap metal. The two remaining high-rise towers on the Oka River were recognized as cultural heritage monuments protected by the state. Despite the protection of the law, in the spring of 2005, one of the unique support towers was barbarously dismantled for scrap metal.
The surviving Shukhov Tower on the Oka River
At the last Shukhov tower on the Oka, in March 2008, 16 stolen steel beam profiles of the lowest, basement section and two steel rings of the base were restored. The tower was made with a huge margin of safety - it held tens of tons of high-voltage steel wire and, despite the absence of a third of the metal structures of the base, withstood 3 years, relying on only 24 remaining original Shukhov base profiles. The Shukhov Tower has been preserved despite the fact that its base is completely flooded during a flood and can withstand multi-ton pressure of water and ice for a week.
In general, in addition to the world famous ones, there are at least three Shukhov towers in the Moscow region.
Near Lobnya
In Petushki. 70 meters high. Year of construction: 1927.
Shukhov Tower in Kolosovo near Nizhny...
On the ancient street of Moscow, which developed along the way to the village of Shabolovo in the 18th century, there is a unique calling card of the capital - the Shukhovskaya (Shabalovskaya) television tower. Viewers remembered the address of the television center - , 37 - from the beginning of television broadcasting in the Soviet Union.
This openwork hyperboloid structure, which is a unique steel load-bearing shell, is located next to the television center.
Almost a century ago, in 1919, an outstanding architect and scientist developed his first project for the Shabolovskaya Tower. At first it was planned to build a tower 350 meters high, but during the Civil War an acute shortage of metal did not allow this project to be completed. Therefore, they began to build the tower according to the second project, which provided for its height to be 148.3 meters.
Despite the fact that there was a constant shortage of materials, construction was almost uninterrupted, it was strictly controlled by Lenin, and was finally completed in March 1922. The start date for radio broadcasts from the Shukhov Tower is March 19. Thus, in March 2012, this recognized engineering masterpiece turned ninety years old.
Already from the beginning of construction, the tower on Shabolovka aroused great delight among those who saw it. It is known that she inspired the writer Alexei Tolstoy to create the novel “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin.”
Single-sheet hyperboloids, which are sections of this tower, rest their ends on bases made in the form of rings. Hyperboloids were created from straight beams. The main danger of high-rise buildings, wind load, is minimal, since the tower created by Shukhov has an original mesh design.
At the same time, it is quite durable. Another characteristic feature is the fact that in comparison with the Eiffel Tower, which weighs 7,300 tons at a height of three hundred meters, it is much lighter. The metal consumption per unit height of the Shukhov Tower is three times less than that of the Eiffel Tower.
The Shukhov TV Tower was built without the use of cranes and scaffolding. The assembly of its upper sections was carried out inside the lowest section, then they were raised on top of each other. All elements of the tower were fastened with special rivets.
For the lower section, a foundation was laid, the diameter of which is 40 meters and its depth is 3 meters. In total, the tower body is assembled from six sections, each of which reaches 25 meters in height. Externally, the entire structure has the shape of an openwork cone.
The Shabalovskaya (Shukhovskaya) tower has been a support for antennas of television and radio stations all this time.
In 1939, on March 10, the Shabolovsky television center showed a documentary about the opening of the 18th Party Congress. This moment is considered the beginning of regular television broadcasts using transmitters located on the Shabolovskaya Tower. Soon the broadcast schedule was established; they were conducted for two hours, four times a week. In 1939, there were already more than a hundred working televisions in Moscow.
The Shukhov Tower also faced a very serious test. In 1939, a mail plane got caught on a cable stretching from the ground to the top of the tower. The tower survived, despite the fact that the blow was very strong, but the plane, unfortunately, crashed. A thorough examination was carried out. She showed that the tower itself does not even need repairs.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the Shukhov Tower retained its function as a transmitting center until 1995. For a very long time her image was the screensaver of many television programs and the emblem of Soviet television, and she herself is ranked among the seven masterpieces of the Russian architectural avant-garde.