Iosif Loveyko

Iosif Ignatyevich Loveyko ; February 6, 1906, Prokhory, Imansky district, Primorsky Krai, Russian Empire - 9 September 1996, Moscow) was a Soviet and Russian architect. He served as chief architect of Moscow from 1955 to 1960. He was awarded the title People's Architect of the USSR.

Biography Born into a peasant family in the village of Prokhory (now Spassky District, Primorsky Krai).

He graduated from a vocational school, then entered the workers' school in Vladivostok. The workers' faculty teachers paid attention to his artistic abilities and sent him to the Moscow Vkhutemas (since 1926 - VKHUTEIN, since 1930 it has been divided into several universities, including the Institute of Proletarian Fine Arts, the Moscow Architectural Institute, the Stroganov Art and Industrial Institute, etc.) He applied to the Faculty of Architecture, which he graduated in 1931. The curator of his graduation project was the constructivist architect Alexander Vesnin.

After graduation, he began working in the construction section of the Supreme Economic Council of the RSFSR,

As the chief architect of Moscow, he was involved in the development of promising highways. In 1960, he announced the need to create the Third and the unrealized Fourth and Fifth road rings in the capital. He also proposed rebuilding the Garden Ring to avoid the intersection of ring and radial roads. He saw the solution to this problem in creating tunnels at street intersections. It is noteworthy that already in 1960 he noted the need to build multi-storey garages-hotels for private vehicles in Moscow.

In 1957–1959, he took part in two closed competitions for the design of the Palace of the Soviets, which was planned to be built in the south-west, not far from the Main building of Moscow State University. The first project he proposed was a monumental building with a multi-columned portico. A special feature of the idea was the orientation of the main façade to the south. The jury criticized the compositional solution: according to the judges, in such an orientation the Palace looked "turned away" from Moscow and the university. Nevertheless, the project was awarded an honorable mention.

In the second round of the competition, the architect put forward a project that reflected the ideas of his predecessor Aleksandr Vlasov. The building with a large glass area was a parallelepiped, devoid of expressive decorative elements. When developing the second project, he moved away from creating an internal layout in relation to the Great Hall. Instead, he made the "Hall of Peoples" the center of the composition, a forum-amphitheater where public meetings and festivities were supposed to be held. Like the ideas of other architects, his plan was rejected.

Mosproekt-1 and later life In 1961, he headed architectural workshop No. 2 of the Mosproekt-1 Directorate and remained in this position until his retirement in 1989.