ABSTRACT
The name of the group derives from the Latin (by way of Greek) word "architecton," meaning carpenter or builder, though certainly for Lubetkin, the name held additional significance. "Tektonika" was used by Russian Constructivists to refer to a merging of the ideological tenets of communism with the proper and functional use of industrial materials, and Lubetkin grew up amidst the heated years and street protests of his Constructivist countrymen. Linking Highpoint to overarching theories of urbanism reconceived it as more than an isolated building emerging from the leafy hills of north London, in spite of the literal fact that it was exactly that. For Le Corbusier, Highpoint contained the fundamental building blocks for his conception of the city. In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York commissioned Lsszlo Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes to make a film, called The New Architecture at the London Zoo, about the Penguin Pool and other zoo buildings Lubetkin had designed.
