This year the jubilee “Zodchestvo” looks a little richer than in the previous one - it has grown significantly, the stands and pictures have become larger, the corridors between them are more spacious, the “ventures” entertaining visitors are evenly distributed throughout the Manege space. There is a bright red carpet underfoot, and balloons soar above - each has the name of the section written on it, so that the lost visitor can, raising his head, orient himself in the intricacies of the All-Russian festival.
Directly at the entrance, there are two foreign exhibitions - one dedicated to the Italian Daedalus + Minos Prize, a one-of-a-kind architectural award that is awarded for the successful collaboration of a client and an architect. It is hidden on the left behind a giant stand of the Union of Architects of Russia, in front of which our Russian Daedalus is proudly exhibited, which is without Minos, but crystal. It is curious that both awards with such overlapping names were instituted almost simultaneously - in the early 2000s. The founders of the Russian Daedalus, the main award of the Zodchestvo festival, argue that at that time they did not know about their Italian counterpart, so the two awards were probably the result of the organizers' "parallel" thinking. True, the Italian prize is an international one, and well-known "star" buildings often become its laureates.
Next to the "Italian Daedalus", in a dark space under the balcony, modern architecture of China is exhibited - modest square tablets with hieroglyphic comments show buildings made at a strong international level, among which there are many prismatic skyscrapers and many fashionable curved shapes, but almost no color can be traced, neither "oriental", nor any other. It is easy to see that Chinese architecture in assimilating Western standards has gone much further than the Russian one presented below, full of variegated experiments. True, in a dark corner, the Chinese are almost invisible and it is very easy to pass by.
On the other side of the entrance, opening the stands of the regions, there is a very diligently made exhibition of St. Petersburg, which in recent years has gained the dubious glory of the capital of scandalous architectural competitions and offended foreign "stars". The city presented many of its major projects - the new stage of the Marinka and the project for the reconstruction of New Holland, the Pulkovo airport and others - in the form of models placed on a translucent hardboard map. A soft carpet on the floor depicts a map of the Gulf of Finland - everything is very sophisticated, and most importantly expensive - this stand eclipses all other "geographical" expositions, including the exposition of the Moscow Region, which was in the lead last year, with a large map illuminated from the inside - the latter was simply repeated this time …
In the center of the Manege space is crossed by the exhibition "New Moscow", organized by the CSA in honor of the release of the English-language version of the catalog of modern architecture. The exhibition consists of eight silk pavilions-wagons, the distant ancestor of which, probably, must be considered street advertising stands. Pictures of textbook buildings and projects from 1917 to the present are printed on the surface of the wagons, and holes for monitors are cut in the fabric, continuously alternating interviews with famous architects of modern Moscow and videos with the masterpieces of Russian modernism. All together merge into inarticulate muttering, but if you get close to one of the monitors, you can listen to what is being said there.
The CSA exhibition (designed by Evgeny Korneev) becomes a successful spatial pause in the middle of Zodchestvo and allows a little rest in mind and body from the “shapkozidatelstvt” of regional stands, at the same time marking the beginning of the architectural part of the exhibition itself. It successfully precedes the competitive exposition - stands of buildings and projects claiming the "crystal Daedalus" and other awards.
There have been tangible changes in the buildings this year. If last year the well-known Moscow architects almost completely ignored the Zodchestvo competition, so that besides the restorers, the jury did not find any other worthy applicants for Daedalus, this time the situation has changed. There are a lot of famous names and familiar buildings among the realizations. The two houses of Alexei Bavykin - the house with poplars in Bryusov Lane, which has bypassed all professional magazines, and the no less famous VDNKh house on Selskokhozyaistvennaya, a new urban planning accent of Moscow Prospekt Mira. Two houses of Sergei Kiselev, which have collected almost a record number of different awards over the past year: the colorful Avangard tower and the multifaceted stylish Hermitage Plaza. Here are also the elegant glass "noses" of Andrei Vorontsov's houses, the giant ensembles of Andrei Bokov's workshop, the modest and beautiful brick-and-glass house "Stella maris" by Evgeny Gerasimov on Krestovsky Island. After a relatively long break, "Zodchestvo" was honored by the main most convinced classicist of Moscow, Mikhail Filippov, by exhibiting the "Roman House", also already described in all possible architectural magazines. In a word, although not all, but many celebrities remembered the festival and honored it with their participation - which must be recognized as an absolute success of the organizers. Even Alexander Skokan, who was not participating in the competition, found it necessary to arrange his own stand in the Workshops section.
In addition to celebrities, it is fashionable to find small, but interesting things at the exhibition - for example, the surprisingly calm and "western" office building of Olga Dobrotina standing in the middle of a field on the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod, or the deliberately colorful and artisanal (maybe even a little too much) "Pskov House ".
But “Zodchestvo” would not have been “Zodchestvo” if the “star” company had not been diluted with various other architectures. This time they decided to show us, for example, the suitcase library of Moscow State University - news from almost two years ago. The exhibition is generously diluted with average residential complexes, from the rows of which, for some reason, some kind of wooden baths and even cottages, dramatically knocking down the scale of the exposition.
Two completely separate genres for which it is high time to create separate nominations are temple architecture and restoration. The architecture of most of the temples, alas, still claims to be only a "golden raspberry", probably, their authors are firmly convinced that adherence to tradition relieves them of the annoying need to show artistic taste. Although in this group more or less noticeable structures appear from time to time - for example, the Church of Elizabeth in Khabarovsk - a diligent and detailed compilation of elements of the 16th and 17th centuries; the eclecticism of the 19th century is, of course, still a long way off, but a certain degree of approximation has already been achieved.
Scientific restorations are a really noteworthy section of the exhibition. I must say that they participate in Zodchestvo all the time, but only last year one of the restoration works won the main prize. Inspired, the restorers brought in many projects of the "first" magnitude, and this also applies to the level of monuments and the quality of restoration. Among the realizations exhibited: the recently celebrated in the press "Pashkov House", and the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat (better known as the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed), and among the projects - one, but very interesting, if not unique, object - research and restoration project of Faceted chambers of the Novgorod Kremlin,the only truly Gothic monument in the history of Russian architecture.
The Projects section differs from buildings in much the same way as the future differs from the past. The past is well known, replete (this time) with famous names, with it everything is more or less clear. The projects shown at Zodchestvo are apparently intended to show what awaits us in the near future. If this assumption is correct, then in the past we have buildings, and in the future - continuous urban planning. The plan of the center of Moscow is being updated, as well as of Obninsk, Gelendzhik, Nizhny Novgorod Gorodets and some other places.
The projects of individual buildings are also distinguished by their variegation and scope, they sometimes break, then bend, then, again, spread over the whole block. Comparing "buildings" and "projects" you understand that in the near future architects and builders are going to develop on a significantly larger scale than before - there is a tangible, even emotionally progressive scale. Nikita Yavein, in particular, proposes to build up the Ladozhsky railway station square with five towers about 30 floors high, claiming that they will not spoil the silhouette of the city, since their own silhouettes narrow upwards. Mikhail Khazanov plans to build another building, three times higher than the first, next to his own building of the Administrative and Public Center of the Moscow Region. And in the Kremlin of Nizhny Novgorod, among the old classicist buildings, it is proposed to sharpen a large round courtyard with columns - the house of the regional government. Among the projects of buildings, however, sometimes small and elegant ones also come across. Several of them belong to A. Ginzburg's workshop, several to A'Len's workshop from St. Petersburg.
The last accent of "Architecture", placed this time at the end of the hall closer to the stage, is the exhibition of children's projects, which from year to year "pulled out" the past expositions of the festival. The models made by children are no worse, if not better than "adults", and the degree of fantasy of the architecture shown in them from time to time echoes what is exhibited at the "serious" exposition of projects, however, children's projects are in places more historical, and their concept is more complicated … In a word, children's creativity is again on top - both figuratively and literally - the models were placed on terraces covered with red cloth, rising from the central alley to the walls of the Manege.
This year the exhibition was certainly a better success than the previous one - the space is clearer and the participation of eminent people is worth a lot. True, Zodchestvo will probably never get rid of the variegatedness and redundancy of its material, which seeks to cover all aspects of our diverse homeland. In addition, the all-Russian architectural exhibition reflects the processes taking place in the country: this time Sochi and the resorts of the Krasnodar Territory like it were the undisputed leader - they "seeped" everywhere - from the increased regional stands of the southern lands, and ending with competitive projects, among which, inevitably a lot of things turned out to be devoted to the south - one has to prepare for the Olympic investments.
