Many people look forward to the Arch Moscow festival every year not to see the exposition, but to see firsthand the “star” architects invited to lecture in Moscow. This has already become a tradition for Arch Moscow. Tom Main, Zaha Hadid, Dominique Perrault, Honey Rashid, William Alsop - this is an incomplete list of celebrities that the Moscow architectural public has seen over the past few years. The organization of many "star" lectures "Arch Moscow" is obliged to the AD (Architectural Digest) magazine. As a rule, among many lectures there is one celebrity, and AD brings her. It happened this time too.
True, we must admit that although the name of Moshe Safdie is known to professionals, he is usually not listed among the "stars". He's not one of that kind. So to the question, “What did Moshe Safdie build?”, Some people, even some architects answered with a frightened look: “Who is who?” … Probably that is why, and not just because of the long-awaited warm weather, at the lecture of Moshe Safdie there was no usual crush and excitement in the CHA. However, it was still full.
The editor-in-chief of AD magazine Evgenia Mikulina, in her short introduction to the lecture, called Moshe Safdi a legend of world architecture. This is true, and it was very much felt in the lecture. Calm old man, almost without humor, without outrageousness, except perhaps with a touch of pride, showed his buildings. Mostly new, but somehow it was hard to believe that forty years had passed since his first works. Time has no power over him, after almost half a century he continues to preach simple truths: that a car is bad, that there should be a lot of greenery, that an architect must take into account the cultural context of the country in which he is building. True, for the 1960s, these values were very fresh, but now they have passed into the category of eternal ones (although no less popular). Eternal values, eternal forms - the modern buildings of Moshe Safdie can unknowingly be attributed to the seventies. The architect is really true to himself - as Yevgenia Mikulina rightly said.
Generally speaking, Moshe Safdie is famous for one building, an experimental project called Habitat'67. It was the first residential building assembled from prefabricated blocks (prefabricated is one of the modern construction technologies, which is still considered economical and advanced). The house looks like a mountain (especially from a distance it resembles cave cities), assembled from small houses, many of which are equipped with their own "hanging" gardens.
It turned out that Habitat, the most famous building of Safdi, was the first building of the architect and embodied the main theses of his master's thesis. Habitat was built in 1967 and was originally the pavilion of the Montreal World's Fair; at the same time guests of the exhibition lived in it. Now this residential complex is protected by the state as an architectural monument. Although not all of Safdie's projects were as lucky - in Singapore, residential buildings built according to the Habitat principle were dismantled in 2006 for unprofitability. Then the architect said that he was "completely killed" by this news. However, at the exhibition he did not talk about it.
Safdie, on the other hand, showed off his modern version of Habitat, much larger than the first. This is also a heap, assembled from houses (modules) and kindergartens, but if the first Habitat looked like a chaotic mountain, then the new one is subordinated to a fractal geometric scheme. Here, apparently, when magnified, the principle of an anthill is activated: a small anthill is just a heap of needles, and a large anthill is a system in which one can see the ideal geometry.
According to Moshe Safdie himself, the new version of Habitat differs from the old one, firstly, by its focus on cheap housing, and secondly, it should have even more nature. The new version of Habitat still exists in the form of a project and an exhibition that runs around the world, updating old-new values. Values resonate: those attending the Venice Biennale could see the abundance of Habitat-like green projects - giant mountain houses lined with grass, trees and vines.
So Safdie continues to develop and successfully promote the ideas of his youth. And these ideas are now so popular that it is hard to believe that they are forty years old or more. The architect's passion for theory does not end there. In 1998, he published a book entitled "The City After the Car". Safdie believes that a car is inhumane, but at the same time it makes a reservation - you have to somehow move from place to place - apparently, you need some kind of public car that could be called to take you to the right place …
According to Safdi, all major steps in architecture took place with the emergence of a new type of transport. Now we must rethink the relationship between different modes of transport. If this concept is adopted, it will be possible to reduce the city's car park by two-thirds and the parking area by two-thirds, freeing it up for public parks. Moshe Safdie foresees that in 50 years his concept will work and has no doubts about it.
As a theoretical architect, Safdie has structured the display of his work around a general outline. And he began his lecture with an exposition of the paradoxes of modern architecture. In his opinion, architecture now feels good as never before. Everything is determined by the right to freedom of creativity: you can use any technique, any method to achieve maximum self-expression. This - says Safdie - is because architecture adopted the brand's market concept 25 years ago. The market - says the architect, now determines everything and self-expression is also sold. But Safdie is convinced that this is wrong. To illustrate his position, Safdie quoted a Mexican philosopher: “The market is blind and deaf. He does not know literature, he does not know how to make the right choice. He has no ideology, he has no idea, he knows the prices well, but he does not know the value."
Showing photographs of Beijing and Shanghai, Safdie commented on them as follows: thirty years ago there was not a single high-rise building in them - and now there is nothing left of those cities, they are destroyed … What provoked a question from the audience - what, in that case, he thinking about what is happening with Moscow? The answer was twofold: you here, of course, ruined a lot, but it's never too late to change everything, since the population is growing and the cities are constantly growing. And then, Safdie added, Moscow is a problem city, but there is not one such problem city!
So architecture, according to Safdie, should be 'sustainable' and 'green'. Who would disagree with this now? Everyone is just talking about sustainability. In short, it should be environmentally friendly and economical. On the other hand, says Safdie, architecture is material and resource dependent, so it must be 'buildable'. That is, it should be possible to build it. Safdie is categorically against the "whims" in architecture - here he quoted his teacher Louis Kahn that architecture should fulfill its function. After all, people will live there. So the form should not be "capricious".
It is easy to see that this position is against the ideology of "stars", whose architecture is built on an attraction, whims and is aimed at manipulating the market through the brand.
The famous position of the stars Safdie opposes ecology and anti-globalism, trying in each country to build something adequate to its culture. True, here another paradox awaits us - the antiglobalist Safdie is building all over the world, the ecologist Safdie is fascinated by the mega-scale and does not hide it (according to the architect's own words, his main task is to humanize the mega-scale projects), and the buildings of the contextualist Safdie in different countries, on one the sides are in some places really saturated with a historical and cultural message, but nevertheless they are very similar to each other. Although it is possible that this is another principle - do not change either yourself or the context.
The successful practicing architect Safdie, showing his work to the audience, united them with large theses. The first thesis was ubranism. Here Safdie invented two principles - we have already mentioned one of them, the Habitat principle. The second was embodied in the Marina Bay Sands project for Singapore. This is a cyclopean complex on the ocean embankment. According to Safdie, in this project, he tried to create a new area of the city, without repeating the mistakes of European and American urban planning, formulating the principle of "truly modern urban development."
To implement this ambitious task, the architect turned … to the plan of medieval Jerusalem, or rather, to its main artery cargo maximus - a shopping street (such were not only in Jerusalem, but in many ancient cities), around which, like around an artery, urban life is gathered … Along the artery - the embankment, there are three huge and identical hotels. In the upper part, they are united by an equally gigantic cake, which can hardly even be called an exploited roof - this is so large-scale, a real hanging garden at a cyclopean height. To be honest, it is somewhat similar to Dubai. But it should be planted everywhere with plants - all sorts: trees, vines. In the perspective of the three twins - the sculptural building of the Museum of Art, the shape of which is carved from various parts of the sphere, similar to watermelon rinds, placed in a bowl on top of each other. In the center is an open occulus through which water pours in the rain. Safdie said that this was not the first time he used such a technique, which, according to him, allows opening a building to nature - in Jerusalem's Ben Gurion airport, built by the architect, there is a similar hole, 8 gallons of water are poured through it in good rain.
The Singapore project, Safdie said, is being built despite the crisis. Now the buildings have been brought up to 41 floors.
Safdie stated another theme as "Public Space in the City" and showed the library in Salt Lake City. This is a library of the XXI century - there are some events day and night, climbers climb the walls, the building is full of cafes, shops, indoor and outdoor concert spaces, and a giant curved ramp leads to the roof. When customers asked Safdie to show who would want to climb such a long road and when, he showed them tourists on the Great Wall of China. Thus, a hint of the Chinese context appeared in the American city.
For economical use of electricity, the transparency of the walls of the building is thought out in such a way as to facilitate the penetration of the sun in winter and keep warm, and in summer to shade the premises and make them cooler. The library has been operating for three years and thanks to its appearance, social life in the city center has completely changed. Festivals, holidays, exhibitions are constantly held here.
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas is located in a natural setting on the banks of the river. Moshe Safdie suggested making two small lakes with the help of dams, which would be adjacent to the museum building. According to the architect, it was important to completely open the premises to daylight and create a sense of organic perception and exposure of the museum and nature.
The third theme - memory and symbolism, seems to be one of the strongest for Safdie.
One of the architect's most famous projects is the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, which includes the Memorial Museum for the Lost Children and the rebuilding of the old museum building from the 1950s. The Holocaust Memorial Museum was originally supposed to show objects, but Moshe Safdie suggested a different reading. The main room of the museum is a dark hall, where only one candle burns, and the names of the dead children are continuously heard. The candle goes out and lights up again as a symbol of the reincarnation of souls. At the beginning, in 1974, this idea, as the architect said, was not accepted for fear that the lights would look like a disco and set visitors in the wrong mood. However, ten years after that, a wealthy Holocaust survivor simply gave him a building check. This is how this museum appeared, one of the most famous museums of the victims of the Holocaust in the world.
After visiting this museum, the Prime Minister of the Indian province of Punjab invited Moshe Safdi to build a Sikh Memorial Museum. The site for the memorial was chosen next to the main shrine of the Sikhs - the Golden Palace - and not far from Chandigarh Le Corbusier. The architect took the ancient city of Rajasthan as an idea. In the valley, the architect built a pond, on one side of which a museum was built, on the other - a library, and they are connected to each other by a bridge. All buildings of very simple geometric shapes, all of the local yellowish sandstone, almost without windows and similar to local rocks, literally "grow" out of them. The complex will open in November 2009, but now - says the architect, the Sikhs perceive it as a monument to their people. According to Safdie, the highest award for him was the case of New York, when a Sikh taxi driver recognized him and did not take money from him.
Returning to the Yad Vashem Museum, Moshe Safdi talked about the concept of rebuilding the building from the 1950s. Safdie did not order it directly, although he had built a memorial for children earlier, but invited the architect to a competition, which he won against many famous architects. A hill was set aside for the new museum. The architect did not begin to tear it down, and did not begin to build not a hill, but arranged a tunnel inside the hill, thus not destroying the natural landscape. The entrance to the museum is on one side of the hill and the exit is on the other. The body of the museum is cut into the hill itself - a long triangular tunnel with an overhead light that gradually fades away and reappears. According to Moshe Safdie, conceptually going underground is associated with immersion in history, and visiting this museum is a process of purification and transformation. When the visitor comes to the surface, he has a symbolic feeling of returning to light.
Towards the end of the lecture, Safdie showed another of his buildings - the Institute for Peace, conceived in Washington as an antithesis to the Pentagon, the construction of which began in 2008. The main body of the building is a large grid of white cells with a rounded projection in the middle, probably intended to resemble the White House. But the author's main pride is the sail-like roof, assembled from fragments of a sphere.
The architect ended his lecture with a lyrical digression. He showed a bone from a pigeon shoulder, a cobweb and a nautilus shell in a section - perfectly beautiful, according to Safdie, natural forms. I immediately remembered books about architectural bionics, which were published in our country in the eighties, and "with them" - even earlier. For modern architecture, this is a very familiar technique, which has spread throughout all textbooks - in search of a form, turn not to history, but to nature. Only in the last ten years have architects been looking for random, arbitrary shapes, bends of worms in nature, and twenty years ago and earlier they were looking for ideal, geometric shapes. The closest relatives of the circle, spiral, sphere - everything that Moshe Safli actively uses in his projects. It is easy to see that his choice of natural ideals - a shell, a cobweb - is more in terms of strict geometry, when we find it in natural conditions, we usually gasp - wow, a simple bee, but how exactly does it build! These are forms that were actual 20-30 years ago, and not those that many "stars" are looking for in nature. Parts of spheres, arcs, circles - in a word, simple and laconic forms, reminiscent of Oscar Niemeyer. They don't look like the recently fashionable curvature. However, non-linear architecture, which is obvious, began to bore everyone - and simple "eternal" truths of ecology, ethics, economy, perhaps, will become the way out of the crisis. In any case, for the last six months, everyone has been talking about this only. But you believe everyone who speaks - and Moshe Safdi brought these truths as a real aksakal and the primary source of his ideas. Perhaps the lecture of the architect, who carried his principles of forty years ago through post- and neo-modernism, will now be more than timely. Because he is true to himself and extremely stable.
