The Moscow Architecture Biennale is the result of the consistent expansion of Arch of Moscow, which has been going on for two years under the supervision of curator Bart Goldhorn, founder of the Project Russia magazine, well-known among professionals. Last year, the exhibition went beyond the Central House of Artists and turned into a festival dedicated to urban space. This is where the festival grew into a biennale. The theme of the Biennale is housing.
Several pages in the booklet with the program of the Biennale are occupied by various schemes of the arrangement of exhibitions, and it is not in vain, because it is rather difficult to understand the structure of exhibitions. The Biennale has, for example, three pavilions - the international, the Russian and the Moscow pavilion - but the Russian one is scattered across two sites (three exhibitions in the Central House of Artists and three in the Museum of Architecture), the international one is generally located on the street under the colonnade of the Central House of Artists, and the Moscow one is next door, in hall of the Tretyakov Gallery. It is rather difficult to imagine this program in the form of pavilions - therefore, the structure of the Biennale, carefully painted point by point, seems to be a scheme forcibly superimposed on top of the real sequence of real exhibitions and their organizers. And therefore it is easier to tell who shows what and where.
The core of the Biennale is, of course, Arch Moscow, which is taking place in the Central House of Artists. This exhibition is familiar, familiar and looks like a continuation of last year's. On the ground floor, like last year, there is the Archcatalogue, which this year has become even more integral, logical and consistent, but has decreased in volume. In this case, this means a stricter selection - this time the exhibition of the "catalog" is easier and more convenient to look at. Each of the participating architects shows one project of one city block (there are about 20 of them and they were selected by the curator as a result of a competition). There are Sergey Choban and Sergey Skuratov, Project Meganom and Vladimir Plotkin … There are foreigners - Eric Van Egeraat and Marie O'Lira. It is curious that Meganom and Skuratov, for example, showed projects that participated in one closed competition, and therefore interpret the same territory - a quarter in Kiev, next to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
The main second floor of the Central House of Artists is given over to commercial expositions, that is, paid stands and is divided approximately in half between the stands of architects and firms offering different types of decor. The architects are represented mainly by videos on monitors and models of four main types - from illuminated plastic, from wood, from bronze and from rust. Less often - pictures. Everything looks respectable and impressive. I must say that the composition of the participants is very familiar, and repeats last year's one with minor amendments. Moreover, many exhibit in the same places - for example, at the central "crossroads" meet Sergei Skuratov, Boris Uborevich-Borovsky and Timur Bashkaev. A little further away, and also in the same place - Vlad Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin and, as always, with an impressive object, this time in the form of a white "wing" hanging over the audience. True, the object shown by the same architects at the same place last year was cheaper (foam), but more solid. Now they are involved: an impressive bronze model, a large monitor, a graceful rusty sculpture - but the stand splits into four different parts.
Bureau "Atrium" performed a delicate and complex work at its stand to match a static picture on the wall with an animated picture on the monitor - creating the impression of the project graphics "coming to life" before our eyes. Directly opposite, the ADM studio has built an impressive "street" of four wooden models. Nearby, Vissarionov's PTAM models are shining with edges of transparent plastic. In the next room, the most impressive is the stand of Hadi Tehrani, where luminous models are placed among the shining white macs - "Martian domes" for the Poklonnaya Gora area and the triangular tower for the Profsoyuznaya area.
Architectural stands inside a commercial exhibition no longer look lonely. There are many of them, they are spectacular and expensive. They are consistent and dedicated. Maybe this is a correct and logical replacement? At first, stands with design products were replaced by non-commercial ones, now architecture has again squeezed them out “from the inside”?
The third floor is again divided - between lighting design stands and exhibitions of the non-commercial part. Among them - an exhibition of "architects of the year", workshop "Sergei Kiselev and partners". It is quite difficult to find it, but this exposition has got a vast long hall. It is hung on all sides with black fabric, and on the end wall you can see a projection of the company's updated website.
Thus, Arch Moscow is very similar to last year and demonstrates healthy respectability and conservatism. Describing the non-commercial part is somewhat more difficult - here the usual format intersected with the theme of the biennale set by the curator. Somewhere they "got into the subject", somewhere they stayed on their own. Among the latter is the miniature exhibition Moskulprog (on the second floor opposite the windows), which was not even included in the program, although apart from the exhibition Moskulprog holds one closed seminar and one open walk at Arch Moscow. On the third floor, moss models of the winners of the House of Autonomous Competition are green with moss, and next to them are the projects of the Noah's Arks, which will float in the month of July along the Ugra River from the village of Nikolo-Lenivets. The arks are displayed very solidly and versatile - four different-colored houses are hung on a plastic paper that depicts a river, and the names of various water disasters - mini-floods - are suspended from the ceiling, and another, some indefinite flood is projected onto the wall. Nearby, in two halls of the City of Sound exhibition, young designers inspiredly painted different houses on the bellies and backs of living girls.
Shrinking Cities (also on the third floor) are the most serious of the CHA's non-commercial exhibitions. It shows the results of an international research project that started in 2002 in Germany. Maps and diagrams coexist with photographs of the half-abandoned workshops of the Puchezhsky Flax Mill, fragments of decaying urban fabric in Ivanovo and Kineshma, as well as with "illuminated meadows" - unfinished cities of the united Germany, which are abandoned at the infrastructure level.
The main, conditionally speaking "substantive" part of the Biennale was removed from the walls of the Central House of Artists. This year there is a lot of it, it is a powerful flow of information that justifies the difference between the Biennale and the festival. It can be undoubtedly divided into three different parts, which correspond to the same “pavilions”.
This - in the sense of the main - part of the Biennale responds to the set topic “How to live”. In Russian, the motto seems to sound ambiguous, but at the same time it is quite definitely compared with the national project of affordable housing. The English translation 'Ways of living' is paradoxically clearer, and most importantly, in tune with what is happening. Because exhibitions demonstrate different, almost opposite in spirit approaches-paths, seemingly aimed at solving one problem.
Bart Goldhorn brought in 15 international architects to the international part, selecting those who build affordable housing. All these are non-stars, and they are little known in our country. In fact, the curator organized at the Biennale a school of Western experience in the construction of residential buildings - both social housing and housing for the "middle class". That is, not luxurious, but pragmatic architecture.
This idea, worthy of all respect, resulted in an extensive exposition on the street, under the roof of the northern colonnade of the Central House of Artists. The exhibition is very similar to a library - those who were in the Parisian library of Dominique Perrault will probably notice the similarities between the interiors of his rooms and what is now located under the colonnade. Although you never know libraries. The similarity is definitely intentional - judging by the fact that the display-tables begin with a cast of the book on which the layout of the block is hoisted. Further - rows of tables, between which you can walk and look at many small pictures. Understanding requires effort, and even a lot of work. In other words, the desire to learn.
This exhibition is adjoined by a similarly designed stand of the social architecture of Madrid and a hard-to-reach slideshow of the City.
The second part of the same idea is a series of lectures by the same architects who are represented in the library. On Tuesday, on the opening day, two lectures have already taken place. Each of the architects invited by the curator will talk about how he builds housing. We hope to make written reports on these lectures, but in general terms - the idea looks very solid and pretentious. You can go to the “library” to “go to study” - and you can go to a lecture. Even necessary, as a rule, students are advised to do both. The only pity is that at the first lecture, two-thirds of the hall was empty. Frankly speaking, it is even a pity, because it will be very difficult to repeat such a cut of professional experience. So, the curator Bart Goldhorn stubbornly develops his theme - in the "archcatalogue" he acquaints the audience with projects of residential quarters designed for Russia, and in the lecture program and "library" he introduces Western experience.
This year, for the first time, the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val participates in the exhibition. This part of the exposition must be recognized as the most controversial. It does not, well, absolutely do not fit into the rhythm of the usual exhibition, although attempts have been made to "cheer up" the exposition of the 2025 Actualized Gradplan. As a result of these attempts, the lobby of the State Tretyakov Gallery was adorned with four, if I may say so, installations, apparently designed to influence the minds of children who came to the exhibition with their parents. Garbage cans are placed on bright green plastic grass, in which something is smoking and at the same time - plastic flowers with bulbs at the ends grow from there, and then many toy cars "run over" large (life-size) traffic lights. Traffic lights are defeated, and are lit with all three colors at once, which suggests that they are not completely broken. These wonderful installations are surrounded by numerous very serious schemes, which have already been exhibited several times during the discussion, and are designed to demonstrate the social orientation of adjusting the city plan. Various models are hidden behind the schemes, although the main one (from the house on Brestskaya) is not here, but in the corner there is a model of the reconstructed Tsaritsyn. Who would have thought that somewhere near Arch Moscow they would show a new Tsaritsyno? That's the same.
In a word, running between, relatively speaking, the northern and southern parts of the building on the Crimean shaft, you can fall into a stupor - they are so different that they are downright East-West. Although it seems to be clear why. The topic of affordable housing is relevant not only for architects, it is relevant for many. And we need to somehow solve this eternal problem, it's time already, and there is Western experience in the construction of decent houses of normal (not crazy) cost. And there is a national project where people are promised affordable housing, and there is a city plan, which is also for the people. Moreover, they had just finished finishing it and needed an exhibition, they were going to hold it in the Manege, but it turned out to be done in the State Tretyakov Gallery as part of the Biennale. But how strange it all looks together. These are truly ways of living. After seeing how five-story buildings of the 1960s are being reconstructed in Switzerland and how they are assembled here - even purely outwardly, you immediately feel the difference. And you see two paths, or even many paths, but they diverge somewhere. However, maybe they do not diverge, maybe now everyone will live in harmony.
And one more detail. All are very serious (kooky traffic lights do not count). This includes a respectable commercial and commercial / architectural exhibit, Bart Goldhorn's clever "library", a bureaucratic (albeit very good) city plan. Everyone thinks, works, everyone is focused. Not enough installations. Perhaps their absence on Krymsky Val compensates for "Persimfans" in the Museum of Architecture - an exhibition of twelve Russian architects, where only the name remained from the curator? We will soon tell you more about the exhibitions in the Museum of Architecture (there are only three of them, two are already open, the third will open on June 5).
