Evgeny Ass prepared for Arch Moscow more thoroughly than others, having organized at his stand a presentation of student projects for the development of the Central House of Artists charged with civil polemics. Evgeny Ass did not hide this charge, since the "Territory of Arts" project itself was born as a response to the immoral, according to the teacher, proposal of the Moscow Architectural Institute management: for 5th year students to make a concept of building a new Tretyakov Gallery on the site of the existing one. Thus, the initial theme for the design was the pathos of preserving the building of the Central House of Artists, which, according to Evgeny Ass, has enormous potential and the right to be preserved on its own as an object of history and culture. In addition, the students were faced with the task of preserving the cultural function of the place and the open urban space of the park.
The students were divided into three groups, each of which made its own concept, and then, within each group, four of its participants were engaged in detailing individual fragments - someone got the building, and someone got the landscape of the embankment or park. Part of the assignment was the formulation of the problem, and here, apparently, Evgeny Ass was able to direct the thought of each group to the solution of a certain set of problems. As a result, in each project, which one side was worked out more thoroughly than the others. In the concept of "Polygon" in this role was the underground space, in the "Platform" - the connection with the river, in the project "Notrdom" - the building itself is well thought out. However, as the director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture Severi Blomsted, invited by Assom to the jury, noted that none of the projects completely solved the town planning problems of the place - it requires a stronger solution. Therefore, it is not surprising that the jury members (Oscar Mamleev, Yuri Grigoryan, Narine Tyutcheva, Alexander Konstantinov) repeatedly had a desire to combine all three works, complementing them with each other.
In the small space of the hall, beautifully executed projects looked very impressive, and each also had a detailed layout. In the project "01/09 Polygon", the area around the Central House of Artists is considered as a place for testing new objects in art, a space for experiment. The project consists of four parts - the building of the Central House of Artists, the new building of the Cinema Museum along the embankment, the relief of the park and the Central House of Artists (Artists Center). The building of the Central House of Artists is itself one of the exhibits of the "polygon". It completely passes into the possession of the Tretyakov Gallery, while contemporary art receives a new space underground - the Expo (Exposition Fall). It has a two-level entrance, dividing the streams along ramps into two main zones. The Central House of Artists is being reconstructed, two new atriums, a cinema and a media library appear. The new building of the Artists' Center along Morozovsky Lane is intended for exhibitions and communication of young artists. The building of the Museum of Cinema is a new formation on the embankment in the form of a meteorite, the surface of which is cut with "craters", and the edges "react" to the embankment, the end of the Central House of Artists, etc. With the appearance of this object, according to the authors, the composition of the Crimean Wall acquires integrity: line, Cinema Museum - point.
The 02/09 Platform version focuses on the development of the embankment and the inclusion of the Moscow River space in a large recreational area. The pedestrian Crimean embankment, by the way, has not yet revealed its potential, as, indeed, most similar places in the city, is divided into a static, form-building part - a system of terraces with stairs, ramps, amphitheaters, and a dynamic - many floating and land pavilions … The movement along the water is marked by many events - there are screens in the river, cafes, and even a dance floor. The river turns from a barrier into an active, habitable space.
The concept "03/09 by Notrdom" aims to "throw out" art out, to turn the facades of the CHA itself into objects for art installations, for example, Alexander Konstantinov, who did something similar to the Tretyakov Gallery. Another great proposal is the use of the roof of the Central House of Artists, where, among the recreational objects, the Artist's House appears, in which the one who decorates the facades will live. The structure of the building is the main advantage of this version: on the first floor, objects of a media library, a children's museum, a cafe, etc. “float freely”. The entire second floor is an exhibition hall of the Central House of Artists, the third is given to the Tretyakov Gallery. And over the main courtyard hangs the "belly" of the art hall of the future, a space for media installations. The building also features an extraordinary “experimental hall for performing arts”, in the center of which, under the dome, atmospheric installations - fog, rain, snow - take place.
According to the jury, each of the presented projects contains a huge potential for development. Yuri Grigoryan especially noted the first project with its idea “to leave the old building as it is, and put a big new one under it, in which there is a hole for greenery”. According to Grigoryan, the idea of a total park mixed with underground space removes the most important question, for the sake of which the Central House of Artists are ready to demolish - the question of commercial benefits. The idea of dividing two exhibition spaces - the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Central House of Artists - by levels, presented in versions 01 and 03, was recognized as successful. Alexander Konstantinov recognized the embankment as the strong point of version 02, and version 03 - the idea of inviting artists. Vasily Bychkov, who was present at the presentation, admitted that the double perception of the building in Notrd, on the one hand, as an object of art, the surface of a giant easel, and on the other, as a kind of center of the town-planning situation, is close to his own thoughts about the future of the CHA.
These promising projects are, of course, the merit of Yevgeny Ass himself, for which he was even praised by Yuri Grigoryan, from whom Ass himself, by his own admission, had never heard such a thing. By the way, recently the most valuable teaching materials developed by Evgeny Ass over twenty years of the workshop's existence (these days it is just celebrating its anniversary) can now be found on the Internet - the workshop has its own website www.archclass.ru. In addition to the archive of methodological principles, programs, specific assignments and student projects, this resource will, as Evgeny Ass hopes, become the first open platform for discussing issues of architectural education, provoking a discussion for this, first of all, among teachers.
In this article, an unpleasant typo was made yesterday in the address of a new Internet project for the workshop of experimental educational design at the Moscow Architectural Institute. We have corrected a typo, the correct spelling of the address: www.archclass.ru
