Over the course of several days, students of the Nizhny Novgorod Architectural University erected structures of wood, plywood, threads and other things in the museum on the Shchelokovsky farm - a total of about fifteen structures. There are two goals - to express creatively and draw attention to the museum, which is also called the Museum of Wooden Architecture: this is the place where, forty years ago, enthusiastic researchers began to bring wooden huts and churches of the Nizhny Novgorod region. But the work turned out to be unfinished for a number of reasons, now the museum - a branch of the Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve, is located on the outskirts of the city, folklore holidays occasionally bring revival into its life. So the initiative of young architects and students, supported by the Department of Architectural Design, came to the right place, and is designed to raise the tone of the museum's life at least for the coming months of the summer.
At the same time, the participants of the festival set the task to fit into an unusual environment, shading the landscape filled with old architecture with their fantasies. As Sergey Shorokhov (Youth Studio of the regional organization of the SA) explained: “We wanted to give up as much as possible from claims to the importance of our own buildings, from ambitions for uniqueness or uniqueness”. It is no coincidence that the theme of many works is the frame - the framing of the existing beauty - man-made and natural. The "Tree" by Anastasia Tartmina and Sergey Lavrov has grown in the frame. The door-frame of the team of Stas Gorshunov and the window-frame of Grigory Kachemtsev and Vlad Vilyavin invite to meditation … And, besides, all the objects of the "Garden", as it should be, do not argue in scale with the monuments in the museum exposition. The “vegetable garden” consists of small architectural forms suitable for relaxation and contemplation, but their utilitarianism is conditional. These are mainly art objects designed for emotional interaction with the viewer.
Another success of the concept of the festival was its name: as you know, the May holidays are a kind of suffering, when a significant part of citizens go to cultivate a vegetable garden. The architects got their own suffering, parallel, so to speak, to the main one. In addition, this word, as a rule, fits well with the structures of youth festivals - a garden, fence, fenced in. So self-irony instead of aggressive ambitions is quite a sound and healthy approach of the organizers of the Nizhny Novgorod "Ogorod".
But the genre itself is quite recognizable, and already familiar. "Vegetable garden" obviously echoes the "Cities" of the union of architects wandering around the country (Nizhny Novgorod residents even played on this in writing: "O'gorod"). They have not yet come to Nizhny, although as an option, they planned, but in this city there is an architectural school, strong enough to not just wait for guests, but to organize their own festival. The event also echoes the Archstoyanie in Kaluga Nikolo-Lenivets, and the Shargorod that happened a few years ago. Which, however, is by no means a minus to the festival, but a plus. Obviously, the works of young Nizhny Novgorod architects and students turned out to be "on a level" and could do honor to both "Cities" (where mainly Moscow students perform) and "Arch-Stoyaniy" (where foreign students are sometimes invited, as well as well-known Russians architects). So one can only rejoice at the appearance of the youth festival in Nizhny, and wish it to grow and develop. The only pity is that the "Architectural Garden" was so quiet - information about it is rather difficult to find, at least on the Internet.
