Studying at the Moscow Architectural Institute of the 1950s with the masters of constructivism V. Barshch and G. Movchan, apparently, forever united Vladislav Loktev with the 1920s, which are truly inexhaustible for him. His graduation project - Airport in Moscow - is one of the first exhibits of the Moscow Architectural Institute, surprisingly freely melts recognizable forms and techniques of the avant-garde - light masts with cable ties - from the Vesnins, powerful sculptural supports of the outer visor - from Melnikov, recalling, for example, his garage project - taxi ranks in Paris with an atlas-like pillar.
Loktev, in general, is somewhat reminiscent of Konstantin Melnikov in his disposition, in relation to architectural creativity. The famous phrase of Melnikov - "… creativity where you can say - it's mine" - characterizes it in the best possible way. One of Loktev's longtime friends, Ilya Lezhava, recalled a remarkable episode of their life at the opening. About 40 years ago, at the Institute of Theory and History of Architecture, it was decided to create a group that would deal with futurology, which included Lezhava as part of the NER and Loktev, among others. All were sitting in different rooms, preparing a futurological exhibition. NER worked as a brigade, “and in a separate room there was absolutely disheveled Slava, a monad who was full of unconsciousness. He alone was preparing a gigantic exhibition of his works."
Such a personal attitude, the desire to work always on his own, not trusting anyone, always knowing what exactly he will do, will design it correctly - a trait of character, and to this day Vyacheslav Loktev alone leads the course of architectural composition he himself developed to the Moscow Architectural Institute, with no one. sharing. Even from Melnikov, he has - free, unrestrained fantasy, playing with forms, sudden and bizarre, which he always fuses into a kind of harmonious whole. Like Melnikov, and also Leonidov, Corbusier and other true innovators, he never repeated after someone else, but invented himself. Loktev, in his own words, "an experimenter by nature." And this invention he got, probably, because of the innate sense of composition, harmony, which was possessed by the masters of the avant-garde and the masters of the baroque, beloved by Loktev.
After a successful diploma, Loktev was invited for an internship in the United States, but it did not work out for reasons outside the architecture. And then there were contests - for the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin, for the Palace of Soviets in the group of Y. Belopolsky, for the Tsiolkovsky Museum in Kaluga, etc. The models of his competition projects attract, as well as graphic compositions, with a precisely verified balance, built according to some super-laws, known only to him, the composition of volumes. His model of the Tsiolkovsky Museum in Kaluga bears an undisguised resemblance to the famous Leonidov Institute of Library Science. The same sphere, the same vertical of the mast, the airship - in the 1920s, a symbol of the torn off, extraterrestrial architecture, and for Loktev, the symbol of the first steps in the development of the sky, weightlessness. Simple geometric clarity, even the presentation of the layout is very reminiscent of Leonid's style.
The project of the monument to the builders of the BAM - refers again to Melnikov (again, to the project of a parking garage for Paris), because it masterly connects non-architectural fragments - a giant stylized figure of a worker with architecture, the forms of which grow out of architecton. The project of the monument to the launch of the first satellite is built in the form of a spiral twisted around an inclined axis, as Tatlin made his tower. It is also repeated in the project of the city-theater (1967). Loktev's drawings, for example, the city-sculpture (1967-2001), bring to mind the architectural fantasies of Chernikhov. And geometric applications, collages, reliefs - by Malevich and Lissitzky.
Repeating the motives, pointing to the origins of his architecture, Vyacheslav Loktev directly names the 1920s - and at the same time somehow fuses them with his own ideas, in which there is a place for the classics. He did not immediately become interested in classical architecture, but then for a long time he was engaged in the problem of changing styles. Loktev spent years on the development of the theme of architectural and pictorial polyphonism - at the international biennale in Sofia his work was appreciated, in Moscow he was not given a doctorate. Nevertheless, today his works on Brunelleschi and Palladio are recognized as his best colleagues, and this was noted at the opening by Yuri Patonov, Irina Dobritsina, Alexander Kudryavtsev. This is strange, looking at Loktev's true commitment to the avant-garde.
But as it turned out, for him there is no such gap between the avant-garde and the classics, which the architects of the 1920s have always positioned. The expulsion of the classical tradition was, according to Loktev, the only omission of the avant-garde, so he sees his task in restoring that unnoticed bridge between two eras, two fundamental architectural systems. From the classics, Loktev distinguishes the Baroque style, which, in his opinion, turned out to be the only "polyphonic" style, which differs from others in its non-constructiveness, disregard for the logic of tectonics, and this, in turn, is associated with weightlessness.
The origins of space architecture in the 1920s are easier to find - these are the well-known flying cities, for example, in the projects of students of Ladovsky's workshop. But Loktev's futurology differs from the avant-gardists - they believed in the exploration of the sky, space, Krutikov, in all seriousness, considered it possible to lift buildings and entire cities into the air, so strong was the pathos of scientific progress. Vyacheslav Loktev is a man of a different era, for whom it is more important to explore the artistic possibilities of architecture in zero gravity, without, of course, planning to launch cities into space in the foreseeable future. His "architecture of outer space" was officially born at the 1983 exhibition at the Museum of Architecture (then GNIMA, now MUARE).
The forms of the cosmic city are born from a very bold premise - an attempt to get out of the forces of gravity, to imagine the environment as it would be if it were not for gravity. What would the aesthetics be? Harmony concepts? Architectonics? Such fundamental things as strength, vertical and horizontal lines, heaviness and lightness would disappear. The settlements designed by Loktev evoke the dwellings of Khlebnikov's will-men and Malevich's planets in memory, but it seems that none of the predecessors set themselves the task of designing in zero gravity conditions - they made architecture just for the future. And Loktev analyzes gravity and designs "space hailstones" for tomorrow's astronauts who need earthly architecture instead of the technical devices in which they are forced to live. So he creates the space module "Counter Spirals", recalling, probably, about spaceships from science fiction films with controlled gravity and keeping in mind the image of the Tatlin tower, which is repeated by the volumes of the module.
Vyacheslav Loktev denies all sorts of "stylistic" and other definitions that are trying to hang on him - "wallet", "futurist", "connoisseur of the classics" … He can be neither one nor the other and at the same time can be everything, because constructivism for him lined up with the classics, more precisely with the baroque, and led to futurology in his own performance. They are all united by the line of polyphonism, weightlessness. Futurology, to which Vyacheslav Loktev devoted his creative life, always speaks in the language of new forms, but in his opinion, there should not be destructive pathos, as the avant-garde was distinguished, and he connects, connects, builds a bridge … And he does it invariably with high quality - his drawings, collages, layouts - these are works made exclusively by hand, and by the hand of a professional, which today, unfortunately, is immeasurably far from the architectural practice in which, according to Yuri Platonov, they refuse to accept man-made. But Loktev is not embarrassed by this, he continues to believe in his futurology and continues to teach students the subtleties of the secrets of compositional mastery he found.
