Those who traveled to the festival by metro read on the ceiling of the Mayakovskaya station a quote from the classic “so that at least one star should light up over the rooftops every day”. The curators of the competitive festival "Under the Roof of a House" "ArchMoscow" made this phrase a programmatic one this year. Several years ago, journalists staged a “who wins” competition between these festivals based on the criterion of the star rating of the invited cast. Once, having invited Karim Rashid, he won the festival on Brestskaya. This year ArchMoscow is giving three points ahead: Tom Maine, David Cook and Peter Eisenman. The Italian woman from the box office of Turin Federica Patti, declared as an event of the festival "Under the roof of a house", as stated in the press release "is still little known in the professional world, but young and very talented." When names already fabricated by the Western star industry are brought here, this is even more or less understandable, although recently this "Western worship" has also provoked protests from the domestic elite. But it’s impossible to understand at all: why arrange a local promotion of Western youngsters, than the Under the Roof of the House festival seems to be even proud of, noting that it once already became a “good springboard” for the Italian (again, Italian?) Francesco Lucchese. When the organizers of the festival were asked at a press conference if they were going to somehow support Russian architectural youth, Andrei Grin, deputy chairman of the Moskomarkhitektura patronizing the festival, said that they already support - the winners of the competition within the framework of the festival are admitted to the Union of Moscow Architects without a "special procedure." I wonder what he meant by that? Yuri Grigoryan, on the air of Mayak radio, once told how he and Pavel Ivanchikov were received at the SMA - they looked at the projects they brought and asked: "Where is your work?" “This is our work,” the architects replied, pointing to the projects. "No," they said, "where is your real work - painting?" If this is the very “special procedure”, then the competition exhibitors of the festival, in fact, turned out to be ready for it.
The Rozhdestvenka bureau presented the picturesque interior of the store, although it used not its own painting, but Rubens. The abundance of stout nude bodies on the ceiling and walls of the store should probably provoke shoppers to buy more clothes. Again she resorted to painting by Rubens, creating the interior "Florentine motives", Studia Practica. Even the paintings seem to be chosen the same. So it seemed that the small exhibition hall smelled of plagiarism - the interiors were so similar. For some reason, everyone in the interior design pressed against retro nude bodies. So the designers from the Mosshtab design bureau have arranged the works of different masters of the late Middle Ages in the lobbies of the Cipollino restaurant. The creative workshop "Artel" also pulled something out of the picturesque heritage of the Middle Ages to decorate the walls of the "Premier" restaurant, but the figures were already chastely dressed. The creative union of Tikhonov & Vibe addressed the theme of nude in a sculptural version in a series of household items "Erotica of Comfort". Moving away from eroticism and other ways of presenting a person, the guys from A-Stil presented pictorial art in their interiors, depicting the crooked roofs of some burgher town on the panels of a private house. And the architectural bureau of Timur Bashkaev painted the flight of the control room of the Power Systems Management of the North-West of St. Petersburg with some kind of abstract water spark, it is not clear whether this is a symbol of the transition of the northern capital to eco-friendly power plants operating on the inertia of water, or the authors hinted at something else. …Mikhail Fillipov did not mix different types of art, presenting separately ("cutlets separately, flies separately") exquisite graphics of interior projects and their embodiment in the form of a very beautiful and detailed apartment in Moscow. In addition to painting and graphics, as already noted, sculpture was presented: as bas-reliefs in the works of the architectural studio of Natalia Savrasova, and as columns sculptured in the spirit of Salvador Dali in the interiors of the Bureau "Architecture, Technology and Service". Andrey Gorozhankin and Yuri Ryntovt turned to the art of photography, creating with the help of photo wallpaper and transparent panels with photos of branches cutting the sky, a very lyrical in mood "Cafe April". And also the bureau "Archigraph" - in the interior of the dance floor and the gallery of author's furniture "AM design", which placed at the entrance to the exposition a frightening photo of its leader in a gilded coat of arms frame.
Separately, it should be said about furniture. In her claims to be globality, she seemed to want to surpass even the restored Manezh, also presented at the exhibition. Here Natasha Tamruchi exhibited the project "Endless Table", although they visited the exhibitions, having the opportunity to wander around the concept, embodiment, standing right there, next to the stand, could contemplate and even touch the two ends of this infinity. And Vladimir Bondarenko presented a furniture group also with the loud name "Dynasty", it seemed, now there will be thrones, but no: a cabinet, a table and two low armchairs. The public's particular interest was aroused by Vasily Shchetinin's Crazy Stool. This is a lamp that turned on, shook its legs eccentrically and frightened children passing by ("Ma-a-ma!"). A nearby light installation by Ivan Shalmin looked like a bunch of prostheses for someone who might lose limbs in this frenzied dance of a stool: glowing legs of stools protruded from the dark ceiling, which, before this neighborhood, perhaps had not yet been recognized as legs. Neighborhood often leads to the birth of new meanings. This is what makes the exhibitions interesting. And finally, the parade of furniture was solemnly closed by the toilet bowls. At the stand “Litroom. Dedicated to the bathroom”of the“Archigraph”group, this item of purely personal hygiene has undergone public legitimization through quotations from some, judging by the“eram”and“yaty”, pre-revolutionary author. Here is such a revival of domestic traditions. For some reason, the stand "Lodge." placed next to the restored Manege.
In general, the feeling was created that although the authors of the exposition did not particularly ask themselves the problems of its conceptual structuring, everything on it was somehow not accidental, at the subconscious level they were rhyming someone with someone on the neighboring walls. Here we pass the acid design zone, where the insane ("Cosmopolitan advises") interiors of Elena Teplitskaya and the projects painted with highlighters and their colored glass screens are placed opposite each other. Here is a corner of the red-glass-metal commercial interiors. The chic interior of the shoe store of the Vitruvius and Sons workshop is a long metro-like corridor with the effect of a suction funnel, created with the help of glass membranes that fix the longitudinal vanes converging at one point, which, as they slide down to the floor, become shelves with shoes. And next to it is also the interior of the store, and even, it seems, built from the same materials, but because of the hats, caps and T-shirts, the designer's work can no longer be disassembled. It is probably necessary to be able to design the space in such a way as to accommodate the products and face not to lose. Further, there were zones of gray-black-gloomy decadence. A zone of exaggerated classics, with a strange spill - inside a high-rise. The wood-glass-metal zone with blue accents: the Manege of the venerable team of authors from the main patron of the festival and the Moskomarkhitektura itself Alexander Kuzmin to the majestic figure of Mikhail Posokhin with all Mosproekt-2 combined and the waiting room in the terminal of Domodedovo airport by young architects Sergey Kryuchkov, Alesya Chernova and Ilya Mukosey.
There were few solid modern interiors. Either the rehash of the classics, or don't understand, because so much is stuffed into the space that even if there was some idea, it was lost, you can't find it, no. Only the master of this business, Mikhail Filippov, succeeded in taming the elements of the classics and details loved by Moscow designers. At the same time, it turned out not deliberately old-fashioned, but very modern. It is easy to see that the owner is of classical education and tastes: here is a grand piano, and erased maps of America, and a luxurious globe, and a malbert. The interiors of a residential building on the territory of the iconic Klyazma reservoir by the architectural studio of Totan Kuzembaev stood out with clean and bold volumes of elite dark wood (floor-wall-ceiling) interspersed with light metal spans. The ability to work both in the restoration and adequate reconstruction of classic interiors (mansion on Vrazhsky), and in the design of modern minimalist spaces (“Fashionable Point” interior) was demonstrated by the “Decor-S” studio. Andrei Gorozhankin and Yuri Ryntovt exhibited “Cafe April” harmonious with the charge of the general atmosphere prevailing in the room and individual spatial and decor ideas.
All this variety - excellent and not quite design - placed, I must say, was very strange. Even in addition to the already indicated subconscious (either by color, or by materials, or by shopping theme), the principle of organizing the exposition. The competition projects - the interiors themselves - were scattered around the small transit halls, as well as on the mezzanines. The large hall was occupied by a fair of finishing materials dispersed in a circle. And in the center of this, at least in scale, the main exposition is the marked master plan of Moscow, like the Minotaur, devouring all the criminal and beautiful from Russian design. By the way, the logo of the festival "Under the Roof of a House", which is actually taking place in the building owned by the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction - such a curl in the plan with broken lines-walls, indicating the direction of the path to the visitors of the exhibition - is very similar to a maze. Such is the labyrinth label in which the Minotaur sits.
