The guidebook "Arch of Moscow 2007" was quite specific: the lecture of the Dutch architectural group Maxwan will be held on May 30 from 21:00 to 22:00 at the "Red October" club, located in one of the buildings of the factory of the same name (the map with the location marked on it club was attached) … In the end, it turned out that the Red October club was not a club at all, but a factory building (no one sold coffee or mineral water, there were no tables), temporarily equipped as a lecture hall, rather shabby, with a macabre touch in the spirit of Lynch's later films (remember Ben's lair from Blue Velvet, Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, or Silencio Club from Mulholland Drive): the walls are covered with red cloth, the lighting is dim, somewhere in the middle, the room is blocked by a wall with an opening about three meters wide and two and a half high - well, purely a stage in a theater.
I must admit right away that I was ten minutes late - that is, I arrived at 21:10. But, of course, I expected to see at least 70% of the material presented. It was not so: for some reason unknown to me, the lecture began at 20:45 and at the time of my arrival was nearing completion, so I managed to catch only the most tedious part - the "questions from the audience." I blamed the compilers of the Arch of Moscow program for the carelessness and became terribly nervous - why should I write in the end!
However, something else surprised me much more. Upon arrival, having opened the metal door of the “club”, I saw the arch of Moscow curator B. Goldhoorn impatiently stunning with a microphone at the screen - not the Maxwan group or at least its representative, but for some reason Mr. Goldhoorn. I, of course, was a little taken aback … But then, making my way through the front rows to the gallery, I noticed a modest, ascetic-looking Japanese man, perched on a bench near the wall - to the right of the curator, tortured by the stuffiness. As it soon became clear, this was the representative of Maxwan. He was broadcasting something so barely audible - however, the listeners also did not differ in loudness and intelligible diction when they asked him their questions.
Bart Goldhoorn performed the role of translator from English (and into English, depending on who spoke) - he spoke not without hesitation, but at the same time, perhaps the loudest. Probably, it is precisely because of this that I got the deceptive impression that Bart Goldhoorn is the main "hero of the occasion": that is, as if he was not just the editor-in-chief of "Project Russia" and co-founder of the rest of "Projects …" reason - also a member of the Maxwan group.
It was unbearably stuffy in the hall - the air conditioners were not working, everyone present about every three minutes wiped sweaty foreheads and backs of their heads with napkins, dreaming, in my opinion, of only one thing - to get out as soon as possible. However, some, the most shameless, realized this dream even before the end of the lecture … Every time another inquisitive listener reached out and asked a question to Mr. Hiroki Matsura (that is the name of the Maxwan representative), an incredibly tense atmosphere hung in the hall - people who did not dare to dare leave the hall, nervously shaking their knees and cursing the questioner in a whisper.
When it was over, those present, greedily gulping air, poured into the street in a disorderly stream, not paying any attention to Hiroki Matsur and Bart Goldhoorn. The Japanese, obviously expecting much more attention to his person, somehow wilted and began with a gloomy look to collect his laptop in a bag.
And then I come up to him in the hope of soliciting at least some materials from those demonstrated at the lecture. As soon as I shoved him my flash drive and mumbled something in English, he immediately perked up and began to tell me that they are a very young bureau, that their boss is only 45 and that they are looking forward to the future nowhere … business, I did not ask him about anything like that, but I was pleased that he at least somehow reacted to me. I thought that I would immediately be sent in three letters.
Maxwan call themselves "architects and urbanists", but at the same time there is much more urbanistic - that is, urban planning - in their work, apparently, much more than volumetric-spatial.
The first project shown in the lecture - judging by the sequence in which the files were placed in the folder that Mr Matsura copied to me - is called De Gasperi Housing development: it is a conceptual proposal for the development of 5.2 hectares on the periphery of Naples. At the moment, there is a completely nightmarish area consisting of dirty, grayish-brown colors, five-story buildings, in the courtyards of which there is practically no green space. Half of the streets there end in dead ends. All this strongly resembles the Russian provinces, where all the Khrushchevs and rickety wooden sheds are all, and where the only hint of public space is a house of culture or a village club, which is scary to enter. With the only difference that the local residents prefer to poison themselves not with alcohol, but with hard drugs (one of the photos copied to me showed the roadside, strewn with a huge number of syringes). Maxwan's idea is to make all passages through and thus "lighten" the space within the district. Instead of the existing crooked houses placed here and there, it is proposed to build a three-two-storey block house, which does not bend in any way in plan and has a ledge shape. These houses will be united into groups (three or four in each), the center of which will form a small courtyard - the terraces of the blocked housing will also face to it. It is also planned to build a school and a post office, to which a park with tennis and basketball courts and a small piazza will be adjacent.
I doubt that all these benefits will be able to distract the Neapolitan proletarians from drugs - a port city, what can you do. But the fact that the life of the local population at least in some areas after all the planned changes will noticeably improve, I'm one hundred percent sure.
The next project is much more ambitious - the area intended for development here is 180 hectares. This is an industrial zone on the banks of the River Thames in the northeastern tip of London, located in the Barking Riverside area, with an extremely primitive infrastructure (I would even say that there is almost no infrastructure there - as unnecessary), formed by the River road and Renwick road, which have everything two lanes.
The first street goes along the embankment and, turning to the north, smoothly turns into the second - Maxwan decided to extend the River road to the intersection with Choats road, which bends around the industrial zone in the northeast. Thanks to this, the River road will, as it were, "permeate" the area, connecting its western and eastern parts. In the south, the perspective of Renwick road will be closed by a T-shaped pier, one of the walkways of which is crowned with a mysterious spherical glass structure, partially resembling, you know, a New Year's souvenir with some plastic or tin toy inside, which, if shaken, will be a funny imitation of a snow blizzards, and partly the audience of the Institute of Library Science. Lenin I. Leonidov. However, the most curious thing about this urban planning project is how the transport connection with the center of London is solved: right above the River road, it is planned to build the so-called. Dockland Light Railway is a railroad overpass, raised above the ground to a height of about three stories and stretching straight from the City.
All this, of course, is great and ultra-modern. But imagine the picture: in the morning, people living in houses lined up along the River road, stretching and yawning, will go out onto the beautiful terraces so carefully provided for each Maxwan apartment, and contemplate the carriages painted by London punks as they sweep past them with disgusting clangs. quiet abode. It's kind of inconvenient, isn't it? The beginning of the film "Annie Hall" by V. Allen, when he describes his childhood: "As a little boy, I lived in a house under the roller coaster - no one still believes me when I talk - but I swear it was. I guess that's why I'm so nervous." …
Well, okay, if you forget about those poor fellows who will have to coexist with the rail overpass, and look at Maxwan's venture more broadly, without trifling details, then the picture is very attractive. The entire River road is covered with public buildings and parks - like in a summer cottage, in the summertime, sticky tape with flies (Europeans, as I have already noticed, are very fond of when a public zone is not "one big", but when it is disintegrated, that is, it is interspersed) … And this is undoubtedly very good.
The district itself is divided into eight zones, which practically do not differ from each other - except for the color designation (there is pink, yellow, orange, etc.) and the layout of the houses (almost all of them are like a shredded sausage - only here and there are pieces of this "wieners" form a square pattern on the plan, somewhere algae, etc.).
Such a specific arrangement of houses Maxwan explains by their desire to somehow "revive" the type of the average British townhouse, which is characterized by gloom and monotony. At the same time, paradoxically, the architecture is still expected to be exactly the same - the space itself will be of different types … Maxwan wants to bend the streets as much as possible and cut through such "gaps" between houses that would visually connect the roadway and the green area of the inner-quarter courtyards … No, drivers from such innovations, no doubt, will be much more comfortable to steer than before - the streets will be decorated with a variety of turns, often unexpected and therefore a little dangerous, but why shouldn't the rules be observed in Europe; through the aforementioned "gaps" it will be possible to contemplate the children at play - it is true, and the children will be forced to look through these "gaps" at the traffic jam and listen to beeping and swearing … But this is nothing, if we take Brasilia O. Niemeyer as the standard, it turns out - "drivers are all, pedestrians are nothing. " And it's hard to argue with such an ace as O. Niemeyer …
Nevertheless, as always, housing is simply buried in greenery - and this, we must pay tribute to Maxwan, partly saves the situation with the "gaps" (partly because some quarters are not so often planted with vegetation): trees are quite effectively fenced off in places courtyards from carriageways.
It's strange, in Italy, where everything is crooked - Maxwan is trying to straighten it as much as possible, and in England, where everything is straightforward, on the contrary - to bend … Architecture by contradiction? Although, if people will live better from these innovations - why not.
One of the latest projects demonstrated by Mr. Matsura was a garage building (if I'm not mistaken) with the playful name Nuilding (instead of Building): this is such a contraption with battlements on the facades, about which, if I had not been warned in time that this was a house, I would decided it was a vase or a vacuum cleaner attachment … here's an example of what Leon Krier wrote about. Classics can be blamed for formalism as much as you like, but modernism is even worse - it sometimes stylistically reproduces some attributes of everyday life so literally that it ceases to resemble architecture.
In general, I am gradually beginning to come to the conclusion that I really like Western urban planning, and Western architecture is completely on the drum - not that I do not like it … it does not touch me. And architecture should touch, like any art. More and more often I remember the phrase of one of my teachers, who, upon returning from Switzerland, said the following: "I was there for a week, I traveled around almost everything - living in these cities is amazingly comfortable, the space is organized with a bang, but there is absolutely nothing to see in them. Everything is completely glass and trees." … True, my acquaintance replied to this: "That's right, that's why everyone wants to live in Europe and come to see us."
