On February 17, the organizers of the Arch of Moscow announced the 2009 exhibition program. The famous architectural exhibition, popular among professionals and not only, has been actively changing its format in recent years - the year before last it became a festival, and in the past it turned into a biennale. Since the Biennale is supposed to be held once every two years, even at its opening, the organizers announced that the remaining exhibitions from the alternation will be devoted to the architecture of the young. Now this idea has finally taken shape and the new format has been announced to journalists - the biennale will alternate with the "Next program" dedicated to the future - novice architects. Who are invited to participate first in the qualifying competition (submit applications before March 17 - hurry up), and then - to the winners of the competition - in Arch Moscow Next. "Adult" and "youth" exhibitions will alternate - which is not new, recently the union of Moscow architects has been doing the same, alternating between the "Golden Section" and "Perspective".
Tellingly, all the transformations of Arch of Moscow, which has expanded over the past three years, are associated with the activities of Bart Goldhorn (founder of the professional publication Project Russia) - he owns the program of the 2007 festival, he was also the curator of the first Moscow Biennale of Architecture. This year Goldhorn also remained the curator, but he was joined by two experts - well-known and traditionally actively participating in Arch Moscow, architects and designers Vladislav Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin. By the way, in 2006 they were the curators of the exhibition (then not the festival yet) and proposed the theme "Stars". Now they have formulated the theme "Next".
The non-commercial part of the exhibition will be based mainly on the work of graduates of the last ten years. The main intrigue promises to be the "New Names" competition, which will accept works by those who graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute before 2006 and not older than 33 (applications are accepted until March 17). The 24 best authors - who will be determined by the jury of the competition - will be exhibited at ARCH Moscow and will replace the traditional Arch Catalog. The nominees will also be able to be published in a special issue of the Project Russia magazine, but the main thing is that they will compete in the architectural “tournament” for the new Avangard Prize, which is financed by the Russian Avant-garde Foundation. By the way, it was somewhat surprising to hear that the fund is alive after the press published last fall about its closure due to the crisis. This makes me happy.
The tournament system, drawn from history by Bart Goldhorn, curator of the Arch of Moscow, seemed to him very effective in identifying talents who, in a short time, are able to give birth to an idea, a concept and deliver it on paper. Participants, like two hundred years ago in one of the Parisian schools in the 18th century, will be asked to perform two clauses, i.e. two sketch presentations of their ideas. Each task is given 24 hours, i.e. They work for a day, rest for a day - the jury sits during the breaks, and so on during 4 days of the exhibition. By the way, the jury sessions promise to be open. Subsequently, on the basis of the tournament, 4 finalists will be selected. Further, for several months, the finalists will work on a certain competition task. Bart Goldhorn, who is also the curator of the Rotterdam Biennale, will invite the winners to participate in this event as well. And finally, the only winner of the creative lists will make his own personal picture within the framework of the second biennial of architecture at Arch Moscow in 2010 - after the model of the Architect of the Year it will be called the Debut of the Year.
Arch Moscow will also present one more interesting project - a competition of diploma works completed in 2006-2008, which will be selected for the exhibition among 12 pieces by Bart Goldhorn and Oscar Mamleev. This material rarely leaves the walls of universities, except for participation in the review held every year by the association of architectural institutes, and even then not all of it. Meanwhile, student diplomas are sometimes non-standard, non-trivial ideas, unfettered futurology.
And one more project that seems important from the point of view of the theoretical and methodological foundations of modern design is an exhibition of three teachers, three teaching methods, which brings us closer to what our foreign colleagues are thinking and showing. The choice of the curators is quite understandable - this is the teacher of Savinkin and Kuzmin, Alexander Ermolaev; the person whom they "always listened to with interest" - Evgeny Ass, as well as the Samara team Sergey Malakhov and Evgenia Repina, one of the most original phenomena, according to Vladimir Kuzmin, in the educational process.
As before, foreign guest performers are expected at Arch Moscow. Thus, the exhibition invited expositions of two pavilions of the Venice Biennale of the past (2008) - Sweden and Denmark. According to Vasily Bychkov, in these pavilions such tasks were set that are not considered in our architecture, bogged down in practice. A piece of the Biennale should become an example for the experiments of the younger generation of Russians.
So, the non-commercial program "Arch of Moscow" is mastering its one relatively non-trivial direction. About 10 years ago, we observed how a popular exhibition groped for ways to show the architecture that is - in parallel with the development of the construction boom and the emergence of real architectural practice. About 5 years ago, the architectural and construction boom began to bore - then Boris Bernasconi and Kirill Ass proposed to define the state of architecture as a "dead end" (this was the motto of the 2004 exhibition), then the already mentioned "stars" followed, but some doubts (isn't it a dead end?) have survived.
With the beginning of the festival and biennial activities, doubts acquired (thanks to Bart Goldhorn) a positive connotation - the organizers of the substantial part of the exposition began to look for the truth-womb, not entirely outside the blooming architectural practice, but somewhere in the border areas. First, the curator turned to urban planning (2007), and invited bright minds to think about the state of the city (for example, Moscow). This was the first time that Arch Moscow stepped outside the Central House of Artists and the adjacent territory - into that very city. The second topic, designed to expand the framework of ideas about architecture, was the practical one last year - cheap housing. This series is continued by Next - in this case, we are invited to stop thinking about established professionals and give way to the young. As before, it was suggested not to think about "boxes", but to think about urban space, or not to think about elite architecture, but to think about cheap.
Speaking at the press conference, Vasily Bychkov demonstrated an unexpectedly critical approach to the realities of contemporary architecture, which Arch Moscow had been promoting and highlighting over the past decade. The period of the last 20 years was defined by the director of Expo-Park as “extensive”, architecture - as “one-dimensional … packaging of square meters”. He noted the "degradation of urban planning science", and expressed the hope that the cleansing crisis will open up opportunities for new growth. Thus, the organizer of the "Arch of Moscow" substantiated the need for a fresh stream, some kind of "next", which will be better than yesterday. Our architecture, according to Vasily Bychkov, has become a destructive force. These words surprisingly - and unfortunately - fall into unison with the events around the Central House of Artists, which in February escalated again (on February 24, public hearings that should decide the fate of the Central House of Artists). It turns out that the "star" has designed a provocative orange, and city planners are dividing the museum territory alive.
Frankly, it is very bad that the current exhibition is being held in such a sad and tense atmosphere, which inevitably reflects on the mood. Arch Moscow has rightfully become the most famous and intelligible exhibition, not to mention the fact that many other projects of Expo-Park are quite worthy - one might even say that from a boring and deserted place in the 1980s, the Central House of Artists has turned into a permanent a working center of attraction for all arts. There are many visitors, the exhibitions are relevant, although not ideal, of course. Not to mention the building - the phenomenon that has taken root in it is good, it is developing, as we see, progressively, and we would like to preserve it.
Last year, the most surprising result of the topic "How to live" was a sudden friendship with the Moscow Committee for Architecture, exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery. This year it is clear that the friendship did not take place - now there is an official exhibition in the Central House of Artists about how to demolish it, people go out to pickets against the demolition of the building, in a word, the situation is completely different. In addition, there is a crisis, a clear minus for real practice, a kind of flood. Against this background, the concept of "Next" looks more than logical, as well as its rationale, expressed by the main organizer of the "Arch of Moscow" Vasily Bychkov. Who, in the midst of financial (crisis) and town-planning (planned demolition of the CHA) storms looks like Noah, striving on his ark to save "each creature a couple" of creative architects and raise new ones at the same time. Moreover, it is storming around in earnest.
I must say that the new program of Arch of Moscow is more than a topic. This is a reason to change the circle of participants, abandoning the architectural "establishment". Moreover, this is the rationale for alternating exhibitions with the Biennale. But the topic, it turns out, no. More precisely, it has merged with the definition of an exhibition, and has become, as it were, more global than usual. After all, Arch Moscow has always selected the participants of the non-commercial catalog, but age has never been this criterion. The exhibition seemed to have abandoned its usual heroes and set out in search of new ones.
However, if we recall the last two exhibitions - one of the main criticisms of them was a certain dryness - that urban planning and social housing, both do not dispose to the flight of creative imagination. And here - a breakaway, futurism, ideas, in a word, a fresh wind. There is one more observation: again, the Venice Biennale - or so, at least, it may seem - determines Moscow's preferences. The organizers, in their own words, start from the Russian pavilion dedicated to real major projects of the "construction boom" period (the pavilion's designers were, by the way, experts of the current "Arch of Moscow"). And they are attracted - so it turns out - to the main theme set in the fall by Betsky. Becki also gave a large Italian pavilion to the young. And at the "Arch Moscow" it is conceived - as it seems - something like a pavilion of experiments. In addition, the call to be creatively liberated and to create something different in relation to today (oh, sorry, already yesterday) also looks related. Only the wind of change is blowing over the architectural world - and a cyclone has reached us, and very quickly. There would be no flood - otherwise Venice was flooded with rain …
