Bart Goldhorn, curator of the first Moscow Biennale in general and the lecture program of foreign architects on housing in particular, prefaced the first lecture with an explanation of his choice of guest lecturers. The curator invited architects from 15 countries, those who build housing and develop the theme of residential architecture. He also selected workshops "with different character", so that the items displayed were varied and showed the widest possible palette of solutions. The first in the Arch of Moscow lecture program was the Swiss architect Christian Sumi, one of the two partners of the Burkhalter and Sumi bureau.
Bart Goldhorn characterized Swiss residential architecture as tending to 2-3-storey apartment buildings in free space, which was soon confirmed - at least by the example of Christian Sumi's projects.
The architect showed projects that could be described as very restrained and very simple, combining them into eight blocks according to typology. All eight sound like this: houses with verandas, houses with galleries, lofts, towers, mixed typology, 'as found' (reconstruction is hidden under this phrase), large, square. The naked eye can see that this typology is not very clear - how can you compare square houses and houses with galleries? Why can't there be square with galleries? They can! In a word, there is some confusion with the distribution of the posterior by type, but on the other hand, it is clear that if the author is more comfortable this way, it will be clearer. It is curious that there are as many as eight types of housing in various characteristics, but outwardly they are quite similar. Very, very simple and small, but attractive at the same time.
The charm of Sumi apartment buildings is largely due to the abundance of deep loggias and courtyards in these houses, literally "cut" into the body of the house. No wonder he put two very close concepts in the first place in his list - verandas and galleries. Veranda is a large balcony entirely owned by the owners of the apartment. Gallery - walk-through veranda; outwardly, they look almost the same. But Sumi tries even in houses with galleries, where it is possible for neighbors to walk past the windows to and fro to fence off at least a small veranda - for privacy, which he values very much in his many apartment, but usually small houses. All these verandas and galleries, says the architect, allow you to create an intermediate space between the outside world and the house. You can't argue with what exactly was noticed. We add that the houses lined with verandas look more voluminous, plastic, and provide incomparable opportunities for tea drinking.
The architect illustrated the “loft” type with his New York project, in which the former factory building is cut through narrow courtyards in such a way that in the plan it resembles an angular snake, an unfinished meander. The courtyards are entwined with climbing plants and, like the verandas, "belong" to one or two apartments, multiply the sensations, enhance the coziness of the interior space through its connection with the semi-enclosed courtyard.
The type of towers - which, as Sumi said, “I know that a lot is being built here” - was highly disapproved by the architect. The tower, he said, is a problem and in Switzerland we consider even a 7-storey building to be a problem.
He then showed a mixed typology, combining apartments with separate entrances at the bottom and block-out apartments at the top. Outwardly, they are a conglomerate of colored cubes in places, which protrude forward at the bottom, and at the top form a common coarse-checkered mass.
The same mixed typology includes buildings that Burkhalter and Sumi decorated with large translucent panels with photographs of flowers - according to the architect, a large picture not only decorates and reminds of nature, but also “eats up” the scale.
Christian Sumi also showed several options for the reconstruction of buildings of the 1960s, commenting that this is probably the path that we in Russia can be especially interested in. In one case, he attached a flattened volume on one side to a rather large, kurguzom and seemingly almost native house, expanding it and gaining new meters without building on top. And inside he distributed the stairs in a checkerboard pattern, using the principle of the "Marseilles unit" again to win additional meters. In another case, he removed the old small balconies and replaced them with new large ones, decorated with wood. From this not too expensive procedure, the houses have acquired a completely fresh look.
The only “large” (this definition is conditional) building, besides lofts, is spreading along the ground and it would be like a horizontal skyscraper if it were not broken in two places at a slight angle. Each of the segments has its own layout of apartments and entrance halls, conditioned by the context - somewhere the living quarters face one side, because on the other hand, it is uncomfortable, and communications are collected there. The entrance at one of the ends of the house is tripled so that a spectacular landscape of the surroundings opens up in front of the entrance.
By the way, Christian Sumi uses the word context very often and considers the connection with the environment, taking into account its features, almost the main thing in the construction of residential buildings. The context often merges with the concept of natural surroundings and small houses made of factory-made wooden panels, but with a lot of modifications and layouts, literally drown in abundant greenery, reminding a Swiss architect of a dacha near Moscow.
