HE CHANGED THE FACE OF THE CITY: IRKUTSK ARCHITECT S.A. GUSAROV (1914-2001)

Kuzmina Anna Alekseevna

On the anniversary of the Victory Day, there is a natural interest in the biographies of front-line architects, whose efforts restored and built the country's cities. With the help of a large range of archival materials and local press materials it was possible to reconstruct the biography, war path and trace the main milestones of the professional biography of the famous Irkutsk architect Sergey Andreevich Gusarov - a participant of the Great Patriotic War, the oldest member of the Irkutsk branch of the Union of Soviet Architects, a deputy of the Irkutsk City Council and the chief architect of Irkutsk in the middle of the XX century. The contribution of S.A. Gusarov to the formation of the modern architectural image of the city of Irkutsk is defined: the professional biography of Sergey Andreevich is unique and covers the most interesting period of the formation of Soviet architecture - from the development of residential projects based on the development of the classical heritage of the mid-1930s –1940s to the final transition to industrial design and house-building of new residential areas and cities of the 1950s - 1970s. S.A. Gusarov is the author of significant projects in urban planning of Irkutsk, the construction of which reflected the transformation of the principles of architectural activity in the context of urban transformation of provincial cities of the USSR.

Keywords:S.A. Gusarov, Irkutsk, urban planning, Irkutsk organization of the Union of Soviet Architects, the Great Patriotic War.