Architect Korol: creative heritage

Overview

Vladimir Adamovich Korol (b. 27.12.1912 – d. 28.05.1980) was born in the town of Cherven, Minsk Region. After completing his studies at the Vitebsk Art School in 1931, he worked as a school teacher and principal in the town of Dzerzhinsk, Minsk Region. In 1934, he entered the Russian Academy of Arts to study architecture, later successfully defended his diploma project and entered postgraduate studies.

In July 1941, V. Korol joined the people’s volunteer army and took part in the defense of the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) as a military engineer assistant for the division. In November 1941, he was commissioned from the front to work at the Russian Academy of Arts. In 1942 Korol, together with a group of the academy’s scholars and students, was evacuated to Central Asia. In 1945, Vladimir Korol moved to the Belarusian capital Minsk, which had been badly damaged in WWII by the Nazi occupiers. He was appointed head of the architectural workshop at the Belgosproekt Design Institute in Minsk, which was in charge of the postwar town reconstruction, producing designs for the expansion of the city center.

In 1946, Vladimir Korol in collaboration with architects S. Speranski and N. Trakhtenberg, executed a project for the central part of Minsk designed as a complex of architectural ensembles. At the competition for the best design of the capital’s center,   the project produced by V. Korol, G. Badanov, M. Osmolovski and M. Parusnikov was judged one of the best. V. Korol also took part in the design of the second line of Lenin Avenue (now Independence Avenue) – from Victory Square to Kalinin Square. In 1968, a group of architects, V. Korol among them, was awarded the State Prize of the BSSR for the creation of the  architectural ensemble of Lenin Avenue.

Vladimir Korol was also engaged in the development of many civil buildings and public structures. The General Post Office on Skorina Avenue and the Central Telegraph Office on October Square in Minsk, both designed by V. Korol in collaboration with A. Dukhan, are distinctive Belarusian architectural monuments of the 1930s – 1940s. Also noteworthy is the apartment block for the personnel of the fine-cloths factory on Miasnikov Street in Minsk and numerous residential buildings in Gomel, Polotsk and other Belarusian towns.

In 1950, an open competition was announced in the Soviet Union to create in Minsk the monument to the Soviet Army soldiers and partisans who perished in WWII. The project proposed by V. Korol and G. Zaborski was judged the best. The monument was mounted in the center of Minsk on July 3, 1954 marking 10 years since Belarus’ liberation from the Nazi invaders, and became a symbol of the restored Belarusian capital. Vladimir Korol is also one of the authors of the Memorial Complex Brest Fortress – the fortress garrison was one of the first to engage with the German troops on June 22, 1941 and heroically defended the city of Brest for almost one month. In 1955, Korol became head of the State Committee for Construction under the Council of Ministers of the BSSR. As a representative of Belarus, he also participated in the Committee for Housing, Construction and Town Engineering within the UN European Economic Commission.

Since 1947, Korol had been working as a teacher and later a head of the town engineering department at the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute. Korol’s scholarly views are represented in his numerous articles, reports, recommendations and fundemental works on town engeneering. In 1970, Vladimir Korol was awarded the title of the People’s Architect of the USSR.

The Belarusian State Archives of Scientific and Technical Documentation (BGANTD) holds 1 011 documents from Korol’s personal fond 51, related to his life, service and social activities: manuscripts of his articles, speeches, reports, photographs, and personal papers, in all 325 files from the period 1925-1980.

Information on Vladimir Korol and the survey of documents from his personal fond, was prepared by G. I. Shostak, leading research assistant at the BGANTD.