is a web project by Jeff Derksen.

Entry into the reading space is through a reprodution of Russian Constructivist Elena Semenova’s design of a Workers’ Club Lounge (1926).

All other images are from Aleksandr Rodchenko’s project for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels held in Paris.

Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club did not progress past the 1:1 model stage: it was never built and put into use. This reading room represents a conceptual reading space where reading was also ideologically imagined as work (and workers as readers).

"Many people have visited the place where the workers’ club was on show; many saw its furnishings as a novelty, others sneered, architects and artists paid attention to every detail; but those who looked at it with completely different eyes were the French workers who visited the club in large numbers. ‘This is how our club ought to be!’, exclaimed one worker, touching the space reserved for the wall newspaper."

-P. Khermanov, Rabochyi Klub, nos. 8-9, 1925, p. 81-82.