At the exhibition of the participants of the competition "Golden Section-2007" you can see all the works submitted for the award. At the same time, voting is underway to draw up a short-list of the prize - those who get there will be exhibited in the White Hall of the Central House of Artists in April. At the same time, on April 19, the sixth prize will be awarded, the history of which in general is 12 years old, since the award is awarded once every two years.
Today's "Golden Section" has been significantly reformed: firstly, the selection process from a two-stage process has turned into a straightforward, rather simple and understandable. The award is still given every two years, but the award now fits into several months.
Previously, two lists of nominees were drawn up annually, and a little later, among them - laureates. Now the two-stage structure has been preserved, but it has acquired a recommendatory character: one commission, the Review Council, is now busy with the shortlist of the award, which, after a closed vote, will include 10 works in each section (construction, design, publication). However, if several participants score equal points, then the number can be increased. The laureates, however, in April will not necessarily be selected from the shortlist, but from the general list of participants - in other words, the main jury, the Prize Committee, is not limited to strict limits, it may or may not be guided by the opinion of the former. Accordingly, the work of the first jury ("council") influences who will be awarded diplomas to the nominees, and the decision of the second ("committee") names the laureates, and they do not necessarily overlap with each other, but based on the material. In addition, the “committee” is not at all obliged to award the final prize, if there are no worthy ones - within one section, you can award several equals, but you can - no one. Thus, for example, three buildings and no projects can be awarded, or vice versa.
In general, the changes can be assessed as follows: everything has become simpler and clearer, approaching the structure of the Biennale, now we will remember the Golden Section once every two years, and not constantly, every year feverishly thinking what kind of tour it is and when will the final rewarding. The time between the “sections” will be taken by the Youth Prize “Perspective”, which is logical. The freedom of choice and interaction presented to the two juries also evokes sympathy in itself, but one cannot fail to notice that it also imposes great responsibility on the judges - in other words, now everything depends a little more on people, and their names are all the more interesting.
The correspondent of the Agency for Architectural News managed to find out from the organizers the composition of the Prize Committee, which will determine the laureates. The committee includes the winners of the previous awards, they could either join the jury or exhibit as participants. The Golden Section Prize Committee includes Evgeny Ass, Alexander Skokan, Sergey Skuratov, Vladimir Plotkin, Nikita Yavein.
Accordingly, the works of the jury members are not at the exhibition. But there are many Moscow "masters", in particular, Sergei Kiselev, who did not participate in the last "section" in 2005, Dmitry Alexandrov, Pavel Andreev, Alexander Asadov, Atrium, Alexey Bavykin, Andrey Bokov, Nikolai Lyzlov, Mikhail Khazanov - the exhibition turned out to be beautiful and representative. Here, venerable and relatively young participants are successfully interspersed, a balance is observed between small country houses and urban gigantic ones, and even the general "spread", which speaks of the breadth of the event, has laid down somehow successfully - the conceptual Venetian bridge of Totan Kuzembaev in one corner of the exposition is sharply shaded by the pseudo-Russian the project of the school at the opposite end of the corridor, where the temple is without windows, and the fortress tower is all covered with stained glass. There is urban planning, there is restoration, among the clear majority of modernist projects there is a good classic by Dmitry Barkhin. The reasons for such a balanced selection of applicants for the award are partly in the progressing construction boom, but in many respects this is, of course, the merit of the organizers, who managed to decide on changes in the principles of the award.
It should be added that this year, for the first time, the participants were collected using a multimedia system, now all the works can be viewed at a virtual exhibition, there is also a popular Internet voting on projects for the "Audience Choice Award".
