Monument to the Third International

The Monument to the Third International is an unbuilt design by the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin, developed between 1919 and 1920 and shown publicly as a large wooden model, proposing a spiralling iron and glass tower intended as the headquarters of the Comintern in Petrograd and conceived to stand taller than the Eiffel Tower. Its design called for three or four rotating geometric volumes, housing legislative, executive and information functions, suspended within a leaning double-helix steel framework. Never built, owing to the shortages and impracticality of the newly formed Soviet state, it became the emblematic architectural project of Russian Constructivism and a lasting symbol of revolutionary utopian ambition in modern design.