Recently, I often hear from my acquaintances: "I have stopped watching TV." Almost all of them attribute this to a reluctance to expose themselves to propaganda. They can be understood, although for some reason they do not stop flipping through Facebook every day, where the same atmosphere of hatred and mistrust reigns as on TV. It’s strange. I also don't really watch TV, or rather, I watch only one channel there - RBC. On it every half hour they play news. RBC presenters report news, albeit ostentatiously, but dispassionately, they like to appeal to numbers that create a sense of objectiveness in the presentation of information, and generally give the impression of smart, educated people. I like all this wildly. But I am even more delighted with the running lines at the bottom of RBC TV broadcasts, which are with the viewer all the time - they do not go anywhere, day or night, interrupting only for the duration of the advertisement. One line displays the latest news from the world of politics, economics, less often - culture, which is indicative, on the other - market quotes. These running lines instill in me a feeling of reassurance, at first glance, completely inexplicable. Sometimes it seems to me that if they suddenly stop, it will mean the end of the world. The realization that the world once existed quite well without these lines, and without television, and without the very concept of "quotation", does not cancel this fear. It's funny, because I don't even really know how to "read" quotes …
Recently our editorial office moved to the Old Arbat area, and now I am returning home by trolleybus. I often stay up late at work, and therefore, when I come to a bus stop in front of the Foreign Ministry building, as a rule, there are no people around - there are only cars in front of my eyes. They sweep along the Garden Ring, flashing headlights and signaling, indifferent to me, to the magnificent building of Gelfreich and Minkus and to each other …
I brought these everyday sketches here for a reason. It seems to me that creeping line with quotes and car traffic are two main symbols of modern reality. The line symbolizes the movement of money, and the car flow symbolizes the pursuit of money. Money is the fifth element. And this element has completely subjugated our life. The heroes of our time are not architects, not directors, not politicians - they were heroes of the 20th century. Today's heroes are economists and financiers. For me, the world of money is chaotic, but for them it is at least comprehensible, as much as possible, manageable. However, even they - the priests of the money cult - sometimes find themselves confused.
A sociologist I know once compared life in a big city to running in a circle. I cannot agree with this analogy. Life in a metropolis is more like a shuttle relay. The person runs until he receives money in his hands - after that comes the respite phase. But money is spent over time, so at some point he is forced to start running again. Some lucky ones manage to save so much money in order to get out of this tiresome game for a while or forever. Although it does not tire someone so much as it entertains, and if such a person succeeds [1], he, quite naturally, begins to make attempts to adjust the game for himself. Remember the words of the character of the cult film "Wall Street" Gordon Gekko performed by Michael Douglas: "Greed is good," "money is a bitch that never sleeps," he teaches in Oliver Stone's films. Under these two slogans, I think, all the so-called. the rulers of the world are those who have learned to manage the element of money and enjoy this process. But we must understand that they are also dependent on money, and almost more than mere mortals: “He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, and he who loves wealth does not benefit from it. And this is vanity! Property multiplies, and those who consume it multiply; and what good is it for the one who owns it: is it only to look with one's own eyes? Sweet is the sleep of the worker, whether you never know, how much he will eat; but the satiety of the rich keeps him awake,”says Ecclesiastes.
The modern metropolis, being a kind of accumulator of cash flows, imposes on a person a certain rhythm of life, which can hardly be called pleasant: fast movement from one point to another, fast food, quick conversations, constant waiting for the next phone call, email or chat message, instead of a full one rest - shopping, instead of reflection - ready-made explanations of everything and everything from the authors of glamorous magazines … More than half a century ago, Ray Bradbury wrote: “Try to imagine a man of the nineteenth century: dogs, horses, carriages - a slow pace of life. Then the twentieth century. The pace is accelerating. The zipper has replaced the button, and now there is no more than half a minute to think about something, dressing at dawn, in this philosophical and therefore sad hour. Life turns into a continuous merry-go-round. " The American science fiction writer, writing his masterpiece "Fahrenheit 451", could hardly have imagined to what extent this "carousel" would eventually unfold, how many "revolutions" per day the average city dweller would make in the 21st century.
How does today's megalopolis inhabitant perceive the reality around him, is he sensitive to beauty, is he able to empathize? The answer to all these questions can be summed up in one word - indifference. Let me give you another quote from the essay “Big Cities and Spiritual Life” by the German philosopher Georg Simmel in 1903: “The psychological basis on which the personality of a big city stands is the heightened nervousness of life, resulting from the rapid and continuous change of external and internal impressions. Stable impressions, flowing with small differences, in a familiar way and evenly and representing the same opposites, require, so to speak, less expenditure of consciousness than a kaleidoscope of rapidly changing pictures, sharp boundaries within one instantaneous impression, unexpectedly flowing sensations. A big city creates just such psychological conditions with its street bustle, fast pace and variety of economic, professional and social life. This makes clear the predominance of the intellectual character of mental life in large cities compared to small cities, where more manifestations of the soul and relationships based on feeling are required. By this, a typical resident of a large city creates for himself a means of self-defense against the currents and contradictions of the external environment that threaten his existence: he reacts to them not with feeling, but mainly with his mind, to which the developed consciousness has brought hegemony in mental life. Large cities have long been the centers of the monetary economy. The monetary economy and the predominance of rationality stand in the closest connection with each other. They both have a specific businesslike attitude to people and things, in which formal justice is often combined with merciless cruelty. A purely rational person is indifferent to everything that is essentially individual; in the same way, the principle of money eliminates all individuality of phenomena. The spirit of modernity is more and more imbued with mathematics. The ideal of natural science - to turn the world into an arithmetic problem, to put each part of it into a mathematical formula - corresponds to the mathematical accuracy of practical life, which follows from the money economy. This arithmetic character of money introduced certainty in the relationship between the elements of life, accuracy in determining equivalences and differences, unconditionality of contracts and conditions; as an external change, thanks to this arithmetical character, one should also point to the universal spread of clocks. Punctuality, calculation, accuracy, to which the life of a big city compels, its complexity and spaciousness not only stand in close connection with its monetary, economic and intellectual character, but should also color the inner content of life and contribute to the destruction of those irrational, instinctive, autocratic properties and impulses that have a tendency to independently determine the forms of life instead of taking it from the outside in the form of a ready-made scheme. There is, perhaps, no other such phenomenon of mental life, which would be so unquestionably characteristic of a big city, as insensitive indifference”[2]. Amazingly, for more than a hundred years, Simmel's thoughts have only added to their relevance.
An excellent illustration of the philosopher's conclusions and my personal feelings can serve, oddly enough, the 2002 video for the single Remind Me by the Norwegian musical duo Röyksopp, which describes - mostly in the language of statistics and graphs - a standard weekday of a conventional Londoner. I also cannot help but recall in this context the graphic work of the British self-taught artist Mark Lacell Thornton, impressive in its dimensions and incredibly sophisticated in its technique of execution, The Machine of Happiness, depicting a generalized metropolis and reflecting the author's reflection on globalism, consumerism and other characteristic trends of modern the world [3].
In light of the above, I am frankly surprised by the complaints of some Muscovites that over the past decades the Russian capital has lost its charm and has become an uncomfortable and ugly city. You yourself wanted to live under capitalism! The bulk of people inhabiting Moscow do not care about architecture - they are too busy with the issue of making money. Today, few people look around, and almost no one looks up. I believe that the attitude to the urban environment in many ways shapes this environment. Just as every nation has the government it deserves, so every city dweller has the city he deserves.
Probably the last refuge of an individual within a big city is a residential interior: waking up in the morning, a person leaves his home and goes on business, but at the end of a working day he returns to it - only here he can truly relax, concentrate on himself, your family. Some, working in the city, manage to live in nature, in their own homes, but in this case we are interested in the statistical majority. The owner of the apartment, by definition, is not indifferent to his ownership - it expresses his self, and here he finds himself again and again. Although, according to Artem Dezhurko, “the institution of private property broke the warm personal ties between a person and a home [4] - many began to perceive their own housing as liquidity. It's sad if so. [1] For the majority today, the main criterion for success is financial solvency, so I took the liberty of using the word "success" as a synonym for the word "security". [2] G. Simmel. Big cities and spiritual life // Logos. No. 3/4 (34). 2002. [3] Stott R. Artist Mark Lascelles Thornton On His Completed Masterwork “The Happiness Machine” // Archdaily.com, 27.08.2014. [4] A. Djurko. Vague housing // PR76. 2015. S. 102–105.
Content of PR76
news
Asya Belousova. Replenishing the vacuum
Anatoly Belov. Walking around Moscow
Asya Belousova. Hostel versus sky-offices
Maria Elkina. Architecture of St. Petersburg: Anniversary Indicators
Lara Kopylova. Summoning the spirit of Palladio
Dmitry Shvidkovsky. It is necessary to design so that the new seems to exist
Alisa Prikhudailova. 20th "Golden Section": Metamorphoses
Anatoly Belov. Charity event in support of M. M. Posokhin
Sergey Kulikov. 20th "ARCH Moscow": The meeting place cannot be changed
Author's columns
Dmitry Shvidkovsky. May: Feeling of Rome
Varvara Melnikova. A great future 50 years ahead
Maxim Atayants. The answer of the classics
Sergey Mishin. In the sandbox on the catturns
Alexander Rappaport. We are looking for a way out of the crisis
Evgeny Shirinyan. Cultural value is not always technological
Room object
Wowhaus. Stanislavsky Electrotheatre on Tverskaya st. in Moscow
Life on the run
Anatoly Belov. From the editorial board
Cyril Ass. The property
Sergey Sitar. Architecture and time
Home
Artem Dezhurko. Vague housing
TOTEMENT / PIPER. Apartment on ave. Marshal Zhukov in Moscow
AI_Studio. Apartment on Tsvetnoy Boulevard in Moscow
Evgeny Monakhov. Apartment on 2nd Tverskaya-Yamskaya st. in Moscow
ArchI Those Who. Penthouse in MIBC "Moscow-City"
On the way
Artem Chernikov. There is a city that …
Project team 8. Public transport stop "Drama Theater"
on Predtechenskaya st. in Vologda
Metrogiprotrans. New stations of the Moscow metro
Hintan Associates, VOX Architects, Nefa Architects. New passenger terminal of Kurumoch international airport in Samara
At work
Anatoly Belov. Labyrinth of workers
Gikalo Kuptsov Architects. Negotiation area in the office on Andreevskaya embankment in Moscow
Atrium. Yandex office at st. Leo Tolstoy in Moscow
AML. Office of the company "Rusagrotrans" on the 2nd Boevskaya st. in Moscow
Aukett Swanke. Business center "Arkus 3" on Khodynsky Boulevard in Moscow
ADM. Bankside business center at Mentornichesky per. in Moscow
At lunch
Nelly Konstantinova. Something is missing in this soup
Art. Lebedev Studio. Automated kiosk "All by myself"
Evgeny Monakhov. Cafe-confectionery "Brothers Karavaevy" on the 1st Brestskaya st. in Moscow
Gikalo Kuptsov Architects. Cafe "Coffee and waffles" on board the art ship "Valery Bryusov"
NB Studio. Restaurant "Ugolёk" on Bolshaya Nikitskaya st. in Moscow
Leisure
Maria Fadeeva. Leisure as a nuanced state
Kleinewelt Architekten. Public catering and bike rental pavilions at VDNKh
Nowadays. Temporary improvement of Industry Square at VDNKh
Archiproba. Hairdresser Noir in Staropimenovskiy per. in Moscow
Anna Butenko. Creative studio "Air" in the 3rd Samotechny lane. in Moscow
Monitor
Maxim Neymokhov. Draft design for "Ysyakh Youth - 2015" in Yakutia
ARCH. 625. Private country house t_9
architects ass. Private house in Kratovo
Yuri Grigoryan. Scenography of the play by Black & Simpson at the Praktika Theater
Design and technology