Kazimir Malevich’s drawings and models of potential Suprematist buildings in the 1920s are elusive and enigmatic. Walter Gropius dismissed them because their forms were not related to function, while later architects like Zaha Hadid and Joào Luis Carillho da Graça have been inspired by them. In this important book, Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Paulina Bitrán present the first detailed study of these objects “from within architecture” and argue that they “reveal themselves not as architecture per se, but as glowing mirrors through which one could survey the unfulfilled dreams of architecture” (31).

The subject is fraught with difficulties. Drawings exist, but none of the original models are intact. Made from white, porous plaster, which has often disintegrated over time, they are only known from a few restored and reconstructed works or from photographs and illustrations in 1920s journals. The most complete model is Arkhitekton Alpha in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, which had to be restored using rebuilt elements in 1988. Even the precise number of models produced by Malevich is difficult to determine, although about twenty-five were exhibited in 1926 and thirty-one illustrated in 1927–28 (Kasimir Malewitsch, “Suprematische Architektur,” and “Zuschrift von K. Malewitsch,” Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst, no. 10 (1927): 412–14, and no. 3 (1928): 169–70). Frequently, a single model underwent slight changes or was photographed from different angles.

Building on the work of Troels Andersen, who first listed them in 1971, and Jean-Hubert Martin and Poul Pedersen, who were involved in studying, restoring, and reconstructing them in 1980, Alonso and Bitrán have used a method that they call “visual archaeology,” involving a detailed study of the available documentation and graphic reconstructions to identify and create a catalogue of twenty-one arkhitektons (the models) and eight planits (the drawings), (Troels Andersen, Malevich. Catalogue raisonné of the Berlin Exhibition 1927 including the collection in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; with a general introduction to his work [Amsterdam, 1970]; and Jean-Hubert Martin, ed., Malévitch: Oeuvres de Casimir Severinovitch Malévitch (1878–1935) avec en appendice les oeuvres de Nicolai Mikhailovitch Souiétine (1897–1954), [Paris, 1980]).

This catalogue forms the invaluable heart of the book (115–331). Each work has its own entry (providing a history and analysis of the item) illustrated by photographs, plans, elevations, analytical schemes and axonometric drawings, including a graphic rendering of the relative size and number of discrete elements used and the various states each item experienced. For instance, Arkhitekton Alpha (149–164) is identified as having existed in three separate states. State one is the version in the Centre Pompidou (donated by Malevich’s acolyte Anna Leporskaya), which Pedersen rebuilt in 1978–80, using only one original element and 94 rebuilt volumes and five glass eaves: 100 elements altogether (155). The second state is the version in St. Petersburg, purchased in 1926, which is missing the eaves and consists of 97 elements. State 3, also of 1926, comprises a mere fifty-one elements. The authors perform a similar function for the planits. Interestingly, the digital projections of how each planit might have looked as a three-dimensional structure frequently reveal rather ungainly buildings, far from the streamlined and fluid volumes of Malevich’s axonometric drawings, produced using aerial and reverse perspective.

Complementing this catalogue, the authors explain their methodology and outline the historiography of the arkhitektons, while providing a fascinating and original analysis encompassing a multitude of ideas, and relating them to the wider framework of modern architecture. Throughout, Alonso and Bitrán contest Malevich’s insistence that the planits and arkhitektons were an architectural endeavor, moving from the two-dimensionality of painting to the three dimensions of space and volume. Instead, they stress that these drawings and models are essentially works of art, closely related to the abstract geometry and approach to organization found in Suprematist paintings. The absence of function and interior definition means that these studies focus on the artistic relationship between plastic forms. In this respect, Malevich’s approach to composition and his emphasis on the discrete volumes of his works possesses parallels with Paul Cézanne’s pictorial strategies. The photographs of the arkhitektons not only record the models, but they also return them to two-dimensionality, completing the circle of movement that started with painting. Carefully orchestrated by Malevich to create vivid effects, the photographs also act independently as works of art, evoking sensations in the observer. Above all, the arkhitektons are inherently fluid and unstable as assemblages of cubic elements; they could be constantly disassembled and reconfigured. In place of the stability of architecture, they are characterized by dissolution and present a “plurality of changing forms” that are united by “painterly sensation” (360). For the authors, this is how Malevich led the way because “In modernist architecture … unity in plurality is the translation to a wider aesthetic quest” (360).

This thoroughly researched and thoughtful study is a valuable contribution to Malevich studies. It opens up new perspectives and is essential reading for anyone interested in abstract art, modern architecture, and the relationship between them.