ACTUAL IDENTICAL
to the 60th anniversary, 100th anniversary, 300th anniversary and 1025th anniversary of the Russian Avant-garde
"Art has moved its vanguards out of the tunnels of times gone by."
K. Malevich, "Architecture as a slap in the face of concrete-iron", 1918
Church of the Tithes in Kiev
AVANTGARDE 1.0 Baptism of Rus and Orthodox Architecture for the 1025th anniversary of the founding of the Tithe Church and Sophia of Novgorod
989 - on the day of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, Prince Vladimir baptizes the people of Kiev in the waters of the Dnieper. In the same year, the first stone cathedral of the Old Russian state was laid - the Tithe Church (Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos) in Kiev and the 13-main wooden church on the site of the future Sofia of Novgorod.
Everything that we know today, as the primordial tradition of national architecture, became for contemporaries a powerful turning point in cultural identity that set a new vector for the development of the state.
“Vladimir was glad that he knew God himself and his people, looked up to heaven and said:“Christ God, who created heaven and earth! Look at these new people and let them, Lord, know you, the true God, as Christians have known you. countries. Confirm in them the correct and unswerving faith, and help me, Lord, against the devil, may I overcome his intrigues, relying on you and on your strength. " And having said this, he ordered to chop down churches and put them in the places where idols used to stand. And he set up a church in the name of St. Basil on the hill where the idol of Perun and others stood, and where the prince and people performed their services for them. And in other cities they began to erect churches and appoint priests in them and bring people to baptism in all cities and villages. " "The Tale of Bygone Years"
Transfiguration Church in Kizhi
AVANTGARDE 2.0
Peter's reforms and wooden architecture
to the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Transfiguration Church in Kizhi
1714 - in September, Peter I issues a decree on the prohibition of stone construction. In the same year, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord was founded on the island of Kizhi.
The church, which today we consider the pinnacle of wooden architecture, for its time became an avant-garde gesture, with its baroque motives going against the architectural tradition.
Arkhangelsk Vice Governor
Mr. Lodyzhensky.
Ponezhe here a stone structure is very slowly being built because it is difficult to get stonemakers and other artists of that work and for a reasonable price, for the sake of this, for the sake of it all the state is prohibited for several years (as long as there is pleasure in building here) any stone structure, whatever the name may be, under the ruin of the entire estate and exile. And declare this decree in all the cities of your province, so that no one should be discouraged by ignorance, and as it will be announced to everyone, write to us about it.
Peter.
From St. Petersburg
on the 17th day of September 1714"
Peter I, "Decree on the prohibition of stone construction", 1714
Tower of the III International (V. Tatlin)
AVANTGARDE 3.0
World War I and the Russian Avant-garde to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Avant-garde
1914 - World War I begins in July. In the same year, Kazimir Malevich wrote the Black Square, and Antonio Sant'Elia published a manifesto of futuristic architecture.
The cultural avant-garde of the young Soviet state turned out to be such a powerful phenomenon that it has already firmly taken its place in the tradition of modern world architecture.
“Here is the supreme nonsense of the new architecture, which lives on thanks to the selfish participation of academies, real isolators of knowledge, where young people are forced to copy classical models instead of revealing their own talent in search of a sphere and solutions to a new and urgent problem: a futuristic house and a futuristic city. The House and the City, which could be built from modern materials and correspond to the spirit of our time, within which our fast-paced life could unfold, where there would be no place for absurd anachronisms.
To create an architecture that corresponded to the specific conditions of modern life, our perception of the world - and this would become its aesthetic value. This architecture cannot be submissive to any law of historical succession. It must be new, as the state of our soul is new.
In architecture, one must see an attempt to freely and boldly bring the environment and the person into harmony; that is, to make the world of things a direct projection of the world of the spirit. Antonio Sant'Elia, Milan, July 11, 1914
Museum of Cosmonautics in Kaluga (B. Barkhin, V. Strogiy, N. Orlova, K. Fomin, E. Kireev)
AVANTGARDE 4.0
The fight against excesses and Soviet Modernism for the 60th anniversary of the Decree on the fight against architectural excesses
1954 - Nikita Khrushchev criticizes architectural excesses at a meeting of builders in December. The next year, a decree was adopted "On the elimination of excesses in design and construction."
The last tangible wave of modernization has created the architecture that we today perceive as a typical development, traditional for the entire post-Soviet space.
“Some architects try to justify their wrong attitudes and excesses by referring to the need to fight against constructivism. But under the flag of the fight against constructivism, the squandering of public funds is allowed … Such architects can, perhaps, be called constructivists inside out, since they themselves have slipped "towards aesthetic admiration for form in isolation from content" … The fight against constructivism should be carried out by reasonable means … We are not against beauty, but against excesses. Facades of buildings should have a beautiful and attractive appearance due to good proportions of the entire structure, good proportions of window and door openings, skillful arrangement of balconies, correct use of texture and color … truthful identification of wall details and structures in large-block and large-panel construction. " N. Khrushchev, speech at the All-Union meeting of builders, December 1954
Improvement and improvement of the quality of the urban environment are undoubtedly important tasks that Russian architecture faces today. Cities should finally become not only an effective form of settlement, but also an elementary comfortable and pleasant place to live, contributing to the improvement of the environment and social relations. At the same time, architecture is not an area that can successfully develop in a semantic vacuum. Ultimately, architecture is about generating ideas. As a rule, these ideas answer one of two questions - how by means of architecture to bring a person closer to God and build heaven on earth, or how to build a lot and cheaply, and then sell it profitably.
The idea of comfort is tempting, but not strong enough to become meaningful for Russian architecture for a long time. At the same time, today the authorities and society are forming a demand for architecture as a carrier of new ideas and meanings. The professional community has two ways - to ignore this request, waiting for instructions on how the “ideological” architecture should look, or to accept the challenge, formulating the meanings around which the identity of the current Russian architecture could be formed, thereby setting its own agenda.
Today we can observe an amazing picture, when professional architects conservatively associate kokoshniki a la russe with the identity of Russian architecture, while government officials begin to set the masterpieces of Soviet architecture of the 1920s as an example for modern architects. The feeling is that over the past thirty years the intelligentsia and the authorities have changed places … The special project "Five Avant-gardes" is an attempt to explain that Barma and Postnik have done no less for the Russian avant-garde with their radical ideas than Ivan Leonidov and Konstantin Melnikov,and the Shukhov Tower and the Radio Electronics pavilion at VDNKh are as significant and integral components of national identity as white-stone churches and wooden architecture, while meaningless imitation in the pseudo-Russian style is a direct path to the destruction of ideas, the carrier of which is tradition. Festival curators Andrey and Nikita Asadov
The full text of the concept is at the Zodchestvo festival in Gostiny Dvor from 18 to 20 December.
