It is easy to see that in recent years the professional awards of the Union of Moscow Architects have been reformed stubbornly and diligently, although not as purposefully as one would probably like. The most tangible consequence of these works was the emergence in 2006 of the youth award "Perspective", a spin off from the universally recognized "Golden Section". “Perspective” was going to be held alternately with “Section”, then at the same time, merging all the events into the annual holiday of the professional soul, and in the end they stopped at alternation. Now, on odd years, there will be an "adult" review, and on even-numbered years - a youth review, in which graduates of architectural universities who have been working in their specialty for less than five years can participate. Thus, the new review is a picture of the formation of professional architects, adapting to their profession. And, of course, his main task is to discover new names. Newly discovered people are rewarded with joining the union of architects "without examinations", ie. without certification.
The purpose of the award - the search for new names - is certainly good. 2006 laureate Alexander Kuptsov, for example, himself last year received the first prize in an open competition at the palace in Strelna. Yesterday, together with the chairman of the jury, Sergei Kiselev, he presented diplomas to the new laureates.
However, the youth competition has enough problems. Nowadays, students of the Moscow Architectural Institute, already in their third year, are designing something for sale. In these conditions, there is no time for conceptual design, it is not surprising that students are not particularly interested in it (as we wrote about recently). Instead of sending their fantasies to magazines, graduates are actively developing practice. Many of them are employees of renowned architectural workshops.
An important task of "Perspective" at the moment is the need to separate the young architect from the master who runs the workshop. To avoid controversial situations, this year the jury accepted letters from design organizations, confirming who exactly and what exactly did in the submitted projects. According to Sergei Kiselev, this year the members of the jury argued for a long time and heatedly over who should award them.
The second problem is the list of nominations. This year, the organizers have changed in relation to 2006 - in particular, the nomination "thesis" has been removed. However, as Sergei Kiselev said, the jury proposes to change the list of nominations once again, bringing everything in 2 years to a single item "portfolio". If this happens, there will be no division into buildings and projects at the review, but portfolios of young architects will compete. Moreover, Sergei Kiselev noted, "everything should be strictly regulated, only three tablets, but a high-quality font, an exposition, in general, a laborious work …".
In the same year, only one prize was awarded for the realized interior, which, willy-nilly, became the main award of the award. Presenting the diploma, Sergei Kiselev noted with some sadness that “the jury was able to name only one project here. Although this work is not very brightly presented, for some reason the members of the jury "began to put crosses" from it, and in the end they unanimously voted for it. This is the project "Light Point Laboratory" by Lyubov Zorina, awarded "for the correct understanding of the organization of the tasks of space." Moreover, the author herself has not been engaged in architecture as such for a long time, but works in the field of lighting design. This project, as the only completed object out of all the awarded, also received a special prize from the magazine "Construction Technologies" in the form of a certificate for publication in the annual catalog "Quality Architecture".
Moving on to the "Project" nomination, Sergey Kiselev, on behalf of the jury, noted that they dared to transfer this "generally intellectual work" of Karim Vafin - the project of the television center of the NTV company - from the "Portfolio" nomination to the "Project". "The theme of the sphere in architecture is not new, but it seemed to us that in terms of the totality of how it was invented and in content, the project is worth celebrating." According to the author himself, the main source of the idea for him was the work of Ivan Leonidov.
The jury found the next project in this nomination "the most architectural". This is Oleg Konovaltsev's College of Artistic Crafts. According to Sergei Kiselev, "the project is discreet, but so functional that the jury did not have any doubts - this is really the work of a professional."
Finally, there was a lot of doubt about the third nominee - Mikhail Dombrovsky with his project of the 11-club settlement. Sergei Kiselev noted that "if someone once had to compose a village that never existed, to organize houses in the space, to invent these houses, then he understands how difficult it is." However, the jury considered the three tablets professional enough to win the award. Alexander Kuptsov added on his own that he was attracted to this project by the integrity of the concept, developed down to the details of the infrastructure - benches and fences.
The first portfolio of three awardees, according to Kiselev, caused a lot of discussions among the jury. The fact is that its author, Alexander Ryabsky, managed to exhibit in all three nominations - “Implementation”, and “Project”, and “Porftolio”, so they argued for a long time about what to give. In the end, it was decided that since the project, although very interesting, had already been awarded a prize at the competition, and the implementation "obviously did not pull", they were awarded for the portfolio. Kiselev praised the winner for his special ability to "think graphically and depict in an interesting way."
But two other projects were carried out by girls, in connection with which Sergey Kiselev noted "the general priority of the weaker sex at the current show." Ksenia Kanunnikova and Anna Vartapetova work in the Alexandrov & Partners bureau, and although they are quite young, they are actually heads, which Dmitry Alexandrov himself assured everyone present, so the girls submitted the work to the competition absolutely independently. Sergei Kiselev, in turn, praised the young architects for their work with "large and complex places in the city of Moscow."
The most surprising, according to Alexander Kuptsov, of the projects presented in this nomination was made by Olga Rokal and Marina Yarmarkina. Surprising, because it is "at least non-trivial, has a captivating quality, and in addition to the graphic performance, these are also the thoughts inherent in this project." “This is a small tablet,” Sergei Kiselev noted from himself, “made in not very graphic graphics, but in terms of the number of thoughts per square centimeter of the tablet, it really is ahead of all others … In general, there were heated debates on this nomination, and if only there were a couple of awards, we would definitely give them to a couple of other nominees."
All seven winners of "Perspective-2008" received diplomas and membership in the union. Now, within two months, an Internet voting will be held for seven laureates of the award. Its results will be announced in May at Arch-Moscow.
The evening ended with a photo and video report on the "Goroda" festival, which this year has chosen Yaroslavl as its creative base. Andrey Asadov presented the winners of the last festival, and also presented the prize to the winners of the recently launched ironically - ambitious project "City in Orbit", which invited the participants to experiment with objects in zero gravity.
UPD:
Initially, this article said that the reduction of the list of nominations for the "Perspective" award to one "portfolio", announced at the award ceremony by the chairman of the jury, Sergei Kiselev, is the decision of the organizers of the award. Later it became known to us that the opinions of the jury and the organizing committee of the award on this matter do not quite coincide. We have corrected this inaccuracy in the text and we apologize to both the organizing committee members and the jury.
