Informed by the ideologies of Soviet Constructivist theory, the Social Condenser is an architectural form defined by its influence over spatial dynamics. In the opening speech of the inaugural OSA Group conference in 1928, Moisei Ginzburg claimed that "the principal objective of constructivism... is the definition of the Social Condenser of the age." The single building most associated with the idea is the Narkomfin Building in Moscow, for which construction began in 1928 and finished in 1932.

The OSA Group was an architectural association in the Soviet Union, which was active from 1925 to 1930 and considered the first group of constructivist architects. It published the journal SA. It published material by Soviet and overseas contributors. However this led to them being attacked as a 'Western' group and some individuals as being 'bourgeois'. After the closure of the group, their modernist approach to architecture and town planning was eliminated in the Soviet Union by 1934, in favour of social realism.