The jubilee turned out to be solemn and complex. For the release of the hundredth issue (and the figure certainly inspires respect), the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Dmitry Fesenko, has timed the publication of his book "Facade / Section", dedicated to the architecture of the last two decades and including many articles, interviews, reflections of a person who was closely watching the process of formation and the development of modern Russian architecture. The book concentrates in itself all those ideas that have been expressed on the pages of the magazine over the years and represents a certain extract of the entire tracked process. I must say that this book has turned out to be the most massive of all editions carried out in recent years in order to summarize the results of the past one and a half decades. The texts of Dmitry Fesenko's articles in it are interspersed with a catalog of selected buildings - those that the author considered the most significant - about 70 works from 1992 to 2007, which represent the "facade" of post-Soviet architectural history. Plus, more than 200 projects make up her background.
The selected buildings - there are relatively few of them, and the composition must apparently be understood as the final “choice of the“Architectural Bulletin”- made up about a third of the festive exhibition in the White Hall of the Central House of Artists (the exhibition is open until March 17), arranged with the help of Alexander Ermolaev's studio-taf. On the stands, the buildings are shown in pairs. The pairs appear to be chronologically structured and represent time slices, revealing the work of a journalist-historian engaged in annals. Combinations, however, tend to contrast: the house of Ilya Utkin in Levshinsky, for example, is adjacent to the "Stolnik" group "AB" - in the city they are really neighbors, but stylistically rather opposite. The restaurant "95 degrees" by Alexander Brodsky was paired with "Patriarch" Sergei Tkachenko - these are certainly not neighbors. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the version of Mikhail Posokhin went to the Nizhny Novgorod bank "Guarantee" A. Kharitonov and E. Pestov.
Another part of the exhibition is a detailed history of the magazine, which began in 1992, picking up the baton in the bose of the deceased "Architecture of the USSR", where the future editor-in-chief of "AV" Dmitry Fesenko in 1991 worked as a junior researcher. The first issue of "Architectural Bulletin" was issued in the form of a "third format" leaflet, similar to a newspaper, and was made almost entirely by Dmitry Fesenko himself. Soon Andrei Gozak, who was the chief artist of the same "Architecture of the USSR", came to "AV", and thus the "leaf" turned into a magazine, but inherited the style of its predecessor. Since its inception, the magazine has existed at the expense of architects who were once thrown off "the world on a string", and later entered the Board of Trustees.
The ceremonial part was preceded by a briefing, which was attended by: architect Alexander Asadov, founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine Dmitry Fesenko, vice-president of the Union of Moscow Architects Andrei Taranov, president of the Union of Architects of Russia Yuri Gnedovsky. Mikhail Posokhin came closer to the end.
Those present vividly discussed the history of the magazine's formation; Alexander Asadov recalled that the last issue of "Architecture of the USSR" was dedicated to the workshop where he then worked together with Mikhail Khazanov. Mikhail Posokhin noted that the magazine has always been distinguished by its independence and objectivity of judgments.
And Dmitry Fesenko stressed that the publication has no taste preferences, that is, the editor personally, of course, has them, and not in favor of the classics, but several issues in a row were devoted to neoclassicism, in particular, the works of Utkin and Filippov. Nowadays there are many architectural magazines, and these are not the same times as in the era of the monopoly of "Architecture of the USSR", one has to fight for the reader and keep the brand. Dmitry Fesenko defined the style of presenting the material that has developed under these conditions as research style.
The jubilee evening was brilliantly hosted by the journalist of the Kultura TV channel Vladislav Flyarkovsky, who, as it turned out, once did badly at the Moscow Architectural Institute. The ceremony was honored by the presence of many famous architects and even representatives of other professional publications.
During the evening, one more result was summed up - the winners of the Pro100 House contest, announced by the magazine on the eve of the jubilee issue, were awarded. Dmitry Fesenko admitted that many had serious concerns about holding such a purely conceptual competition for an idea, where the participants had to find an architectural and spatial solution of a certain speculative house 100. Setting a task from the field of pure architectural fantasy, the organizers had before their eyes the experience of "wallets" 1980- x, and what do the younger generation see today, apart from purely commercial benefits, designing specific houses for specific customers? In order to pull young people out of the vicious circle of commerce and provide a life-saving guideline, the authors of the competition threw in a linguistic bait - to use the number 100 in any associations, and maybe first come up with an original name, and only then dance from it to a conceptual project.
The results inspired the jury members Alexander Asadov, Sergey Skuratov, Vladimir Yudintsev, Dmitry Fesenko and Andrey Ivanov. In total, about 60 works were sent, 17 reached the final vote. The curators divided all projects into three groups - real houses or houses by themselves, environmental houses and everything else: anecdote houses, money, water, ice, vodka, historiosophical and mathematical houses, etc. As a result, the first place was unanimously given to the most humanistic project (E. Galaktionova, A. Leonov, G. Vitkov, S. Vasil'eva - Moscow) "Prostoreny house of an impertinent person", completely free from the usual partitions and furniture inside, a house that contains the whole world for a person with limited mobility. All items can be removed "to the ceiling", appearing in the area where they are needed, so as not to interfere with the freedom of movement of the owner.
The second prize went to the Shearim project, which bribed the jury with its subtle, mysterious, philosophical overtones (L. Lanzman - Moscow). The counter-relief symbolically depicts the house of 100 gates - this is how the name of the Jerusalem quarter “Mea Shearim” is translated. The third prize was given to “Pus100y Dom. Gallery of Contemporary Art (U. Purgin, Y. Arzamasova - Chelyabinsk) for the idea of filling the holes between the standard high-rise buildings of art spaces. Another third prize was given to the Sotka project as the leader of the “environment group” proposing a new type of “manor-skyscraper dachas” that fit within the traditional 6 ares.
As the organizers explained, at first they wanted to give only 4 prizes, but the new features of the AV site allowed for the last two weeks to choose the fifth project based on the results of Internet voting. The People's Choice Award was taken to Samara by representatives of Group 213, who came up with the Pro100dom Pro100 project in the form of 100 pictures of different authors, not devoid of wit, on the theme of how each of them imagines this Pro100 house.