The organizers call the PermMuseumXXI competition the most ambitious in New Russia, and there is every reason for this. This is the first open architectural competition organized for Russia, in which Russian and foreign architects, including "stars", participated equally. The first round of the competition was held in the summer - then the experts reviewed more than 300 portfolios of architects from 50 countries, and selected 25 workshops from them, which participated in the second round - in fact, they designed the museum. For these architects, they arranged a trip to Perm, showed the collection for which they would design.
The museum should become a landmark object, transform a dull part of the city, and attract tourists. In a word, to become “Perm Bilbao”. However, the chairman of the jury, Peter Zumthor, complicated the task: according to his conviction, such a competition should not only create a landmark object, but also open up new names - to promote the promotion of young talents. Thus, ideally, a landmark object should have emerged according to the project of a non-star, more precisely, a future star.
So, on March 24, the envelopes with the voting results were opened, and it turned out that the two objects scored the same number of points. Therefore, instead of the first ($ 100,000) and the second ($ 70,000) prizes, one common prize was awarded for two, adding up and dividing the prize in half - $ 85,000 each. Boris Bernasconi and Valerio Oljati became equal winners. It is not known which of the two winners will design and build further. According to the director of C: SA Irina Korobyina, the customer, the Ministry of Culture of the Perm Territory, took a time-out and was thinking about how to proceed.
The project of the Swiss architect Valerio Olgati is a tower, the bizarre silhouette of which is made up of seven or eight rectangular tiers of various widths strung on a common rod. All facades are lined with the same semi-oval, similar to a giant flattened fringe. This shape also resembles the palace of Alvorad Oscar Niemeyer, and even more - something Soviet. You might think that here the collective image of the Brezhnev museum was taken as a basis, multiplied on a different scale, and then these clones were put on top of each other in an arbitrary order - a kind of irregular pyramid turned out. But the building is quite tall (many other projects are pressed to the ground), and large windows offer views of the Permian surroundings, the city and the Kama River.
Speaking about this project, Peter Zumthor immediately admitted that all the Russian jury members hated him at first sight. Then, answering the question of journalist Sergei Khachaturov - by what principles did you choose this pagoda? “Zumthor said the building“grows like a tree”and offers views around it. Probably, the chairman of the jury of the competition noted, the Russians saw in him something from the Soviet past. The Russian jury members, he said, called him kitsch, while Peter Zumthor himself considers it a kind of provocation.
“I thought the Russians would like it…” - said the chairman of the jury, and added: this is probably how the difference in thinking between Europeans and Russians affects. Let us note on our own that the Europeans' idea of Russia as something Soviet, serious, but ornamental was more evident here. Ornamental-serious and growing like a tree, that is, without special rules, in a sort of oriental way. The 19th century French restorer Viollet-le-Duc, for example, directly erected Russian domes and "kokoshnik hills" to Indian architecture. Well, here - if the "pagoda" - something Soviet-Chinese turns out. Someone in the audience said - a hint for the near future …
This view of Siberia does not seem to be the result of a very subtle immersion in context. Rather, it is at the level of confidence that "there is a lot of snow there."
Peter Zumthor, however, in the course of discussions about the context, expressed an interesting idea - to build a separate small and chamber building for the Perm collection of wooden sculpture, which is the main treasure of the museum. The idea seems to be very beautiful, but only it was not announced in the conditions of the competition. If you take its main treasure from the Perm collection to another building, then what will remain? CHA?
Equal winner - Boris Bernasconi - is well known in Moscow, mainly for conceptual gags. At last year's Arch-Moscow, he showed the Tsereteli Museum in the form of a monument to Peter I, taken into a glass parallelepiped, a year earlier a matryoshka house. Now he is engaged in the design of the exposition of the first Moscow Biennale of Architecture. The architect definitely has a name, but no prominent buildings. In this sense, the victory (even half a victory) at the Perm competition C: SA is an important event for Bernasconi, and it fits well with Zumthor's program of promoting new names. Of the Russian participants, in any case, Boris Bernasconi is the youngest (now he is 37).
The Perm Museum in Boris Bernasconi's interpretation is a parallelepiped glowing at night. One of its ends faces the river - the project includes a comprehensive arrangement of the coastal zone, turning it into a full-fledged embankment (which was named one of the important advantages). Along the "long" sides, there are wide and long symmetrical ramps that lead visitors to the roof. A distinctive feature of the project is that it includes railway tracks in the interior of the museum, arranging a station inside, from which visitors, apparently, will get directly to the museum. This airport-like approach raised doubts from journalist Grigory Revzin, who was present at the press conference, who tried to find out if such an experiment was prohibited by Russian design standards. To which Irina Korobyina quoted Peter Zumthor “laws are written for people, and they must be corrected if required”.
The third prize ($ 50,000) was awarded to Zaha Hadid, showing a preference for young people to the detriment of recognized "stars". Her project, as always, is very plastic, but somehow more restrained and calm than usual: the recognizable flexible shape is rolled into a strict oval ring. Such "modesty" seems to be a reaction to the position of Peter Zumthor, who - and he repeated it again at a press conference - against the impersonal "star" architecture, for the local flavor and context. Which, by the way, was one of the selection criteria voiced by the jury.
Hadid's example is telling. The results of the second round show an interesting tendency - the jury reacted very coolly to the curvilinearity. Asymptote's beautifully, flexibly drawn project was limited to an honorable mention, the brilliant Zaha curled up into a ball and earned the third place, the first prize was shared by desperately rectangular projects. Downright declaratively rectangular. What is this - a change in style priorities? Or the opinion of foreigners about the Russian context, and Russians about themselves? Longing for the avant-garde that Yuri Gnedovsky spoke about? It's hard to say why, but fashionable digitality suddenly found itself in a pen. Perhaps she represents the very international style that Peter Zumthor warned against.
Another criterion was mentioned by Alexander Kudryavtsev - preference, among other things, was given to "ongoing" projects. This is probably why Totan Kuzembaev's project in the form of a rainbow bridge thrown from the coast to an island in the middle of the Kama River received only an encouraging award. Although, in my opinion, it could just turn out to be significant: a clear image is saturated with emotions and meaning - a rainbow, as you know, symbolizes hope, in this case it could be interpreted as a hope for the revival of the city. The symbol, however, is very well known, which, apparently, also prevented the project from winning.
The second foreign member of the jury, director of the IAC Museum Peter Noever, commented on his work as follows: "It's good that I stayed alive" and hinted at an extremely tense discussion, as well as the fact that it was difficult to gain a quorum, as several announced judges refused. It turned out that the jury did not include the director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, who referred to the illness of Arata Isozaki, who sent his opinion by e-mail - the jury, however, refused to take into account the vote by mail, focusing on the face-to-face discussion of the works. The Minister of Culture of the Perm Territory, Oleg Oshchepkov, who was removed from office during this period, did not take part in the work. Instead of Piotrovsky, the director of the Perm Picture Gallery, Nadezhda Belyaeva, voted, and instead of Oleg Oshchepkov, Senator Sergei Gordeev, founder of the Russian Avant-garde Foundation, voted. The architect from the Netherlands, Ben Van Berkel, refused three weeks before the start and was not replaced by anyone. According to the director of C: SA Irina Korobyina, all replacements were carried out in accordance with the law and, therefore, there was a quorum.
Peter Noever also said: “I am sad that we were not able to give a clear recommendation,” and this is really sad. One can rejoice for both finalists of the second round, but the third round inevitably looms behind him. The projects are incompatible, this was somehow recognized by both Noever and Zumthor. There is no question of making a museum together either. As if the rising stars did not remain on paper. Something else will be decided by the customer, the regional ministry and the administration, the composition of which was renewed just approximately when the jury of the competition was working.
