Catherine Cooke; Authority on Soviet architecture
Hyfler/Rosner
Scholar of Soviet architecture
28 February 2004
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Catherine Anne Chichester-Cooke (Catherine Cooke),
architect and architectural historian: born 2 August 1942;
Lecturer in Design, Open University 1978-2004; died
Cambridge 20 February 2004.
The architect and Russian scholar Catherine Cooke was one of
the world's leading experts on Soviet avant-garde
architecture and socialist urban planning.
She led an immensely busy life working from a home base in
the back streets of her beloved Cambridge. From there she
managed to combine her work as a Lecturer in Design at the
Open University with that of an international peripatetic
teacher, writer, editor and examiner as well as personal
tutor to generations of degree students.
Her life was fully focused on her subject, and she had
immense reserves of energy and an outgoing personality that
made her friends everywhere she went. This week, at the
exhibition "Russian Graphic Design: from Tsarism and
Avant-Garde to Perestroika" at the St Bride Printing Library
in London, representing part of her unique collection of
Soviet and Russian memorabilia, a friend said that "she
brightened every room she entered". She had a formidable
presence. She could be friendly, feisty, effusive,
informative and profound in equal measure; she was immensely
generous with her time, money and ideas.
At the time of her death in a traffic accident, Cooke was at
the height of a research and writing career that began
nearly 30 years ago. In 1975 she left Clare Hall, Cambridge,
having gained a PhD for a thesis on "The Town of Socialism:
the origins and development of Soviet town planning". She
became confidently fluent in Russian.
Earlier she had studied Architecture at New College,
Cambridge, between 1961 and 1967, before commencing work as
an architect and gaining experience in the office of Alvar
Aalto in Finland and with Casson Conder and Partners in
London. But it was her doctorate that was to provide the
springboard for the growth of her interest in all aspects of
Soviet architecture and town planning. These interests
included art, architecture and design as well as the theatre
designs, furniture and graphics of the Constructivists.
In the 1980s, when many of the Modernist Soviet buildings -
particularly in Moscow - were threatened with demolition,
she began to record and list them, drawing the attention of
her colleagues to their state of disrepair. This passion led
to her joining Docomomo, the international organisation for
the Documentation and Conservation of Modern Movement
Buildings, for which she served on the International
Education Committee and, more recently, as Chair of Docomomo
UK.
The daughter of a brigadier-general - who was also in charge
of the Royal Yacht Squadron - Catherine Cooke shared her
father's passion for sailing. It was reflected in many
aspects of her life and many of us who were privileged to
visit her house in Cambridge were convinced that she had
designed it (or "them", as it was really two connected
cottages) like a boat, with a minimal sleeping space and the
rest laid out as her unique archival working library, art
collection and private gallery - or perhaps it was her
English version of a dacha?
After receiving her doctorate, she was reluctant to go back
to architectural practice and began to work as an editor,
engaged on a raft of publishing projects. She became an
editorial consultant for Academy Books and their
Architectural Design magazine, a post that gave her the
freedom to publish lavishly illustrated books about Russian
artists and architects, including the English version of
Iakov Chernikhov's works, Chernikhov, Fantasy and
Construction: Iakov Chernikhov's approach to architectural
design (1984) and her now definitive Russian Avant-Garde:
theories of art, architecture and the city (1995).
Together she and I worked on a special issue of the
Architectural Association Quarterly in 1979 on Russian and
Soviet architecture for which she brought in a formidable
array of distinguished scholars including Oleg Schvidkovsky,
S. Frederick Starr and Evenya Kirichenko as well her own
students as contributors. More recently we worked on a book
for Docomomo International, The Modern Movement in
Architecture (2000), a survey of Modern Movement buildings
in 32 countries.
In 2002 Cooke resigned from her position as chair of
Docomomo UK in order to concentrate again on her academic
work and to pursue her newer interest in Russia after
perestroika. This included an investigation of the new kinds
of planning that were introduced into the post-socialist
marketplace. Her recent audits of the Russian scene after
socialist planning led to a series of lectures in London
recently, the last of which was presented at the
Architectural Association a week ago.
Cooke's interests took her back many times to the Soviet
Union and more recently to countries within the Russian
Federation. Her goal was simple: to get the Russian people
to acknowledge the enormous contribution their architects
and architectural teachers had made to their own cultural
life and built environment. She contributed much to a
country that has seen and experienced the most fundamental
changes in her own lifetime. Her untimely death will be
mourned there as much as here.
Dennis Sharp