The Days of Architecture festival is a joint project of the Rostov Lectorium and the Moscow agency P-Arch. The lectorium is not an official organization, but a private educational project that conducts open lectures at various venues in Rostov-on-Don. Among the guests of the Lectorium are artists and playwrights, architects and builders, psychologists and doctors, and the organizers formulate the main criterion for the success of their events simply: "lectures should not be boring." And it was definitely not boring at the "Days of Architecture". The commercial partners necessary for carrying out such actions were attracted by the P-Arch agency - the company CSoft Rostov-on-Don and ZAO Patriot, a subsidiary of ZAO INTECO, which is building the Zapadnye goal".
The festival program easily got along with an excursion to the Five Seas business center and the large-panel housing construction plant, a bike ride through Soviet-era buildings and a walking tour with reflections on the semantics of Teatralnaya Square, as well as several master classes and round tables.
The first meeting with modern architecture for the festival participants was the construction site of the Five Seas business center, which is being built according to the project of Sergei Tchoban. The excursion to the object was conducted by the author of the working project Sergey Alekseev The whole volume of the building seems to disintegrate into light waves, without losing the overall scale and discipline, and is perceived as an element of overall harmony, to which the city should strive.
One of the most interesting for young people was the excursion to the microdistrict under construction and to the plant working for the "Western Gate". Future architects watched with curiosity the taming of fittings and argued about the color scheme of the facades. If these are symptoms that they are not so much languishing with the glory of Zaha Hadid, but are also ready for everyday practice, one can rejoice for Rostov. The healthy mood was also supported by the special guest of the festival Nikita Tokarev, director of the PANACOM architectural bureau, associate professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute. His lecture entitled "DesignArtarchitecture" was devoted to the fact that in the work of a designer, the most important role is played by how you think, what you are doing to achieve a result. As a confirmation of the idea that high-quality design and architectural products will always find their customers, Nikita Tokarev told a story about a door handle designed by PANACOM. This work did not become the winner of the competition, but after distributing the laurel wreaths, the customer first examined the prototypes of the winning pens, then all the others, and then it turned out that the PANACOM project was the optimal one for launching into production.
However, the concept of experiment is not at all alien to Rostov. As in many other cities of Russia, here various architectural and construction experiments are concentrated in the hands of private initiative, and it must be admitted that its South Russian version sometimes looks especially unbridled, akin to the rooted Rostov names for parts of the city, for example, Nakhalovka and Levberdon (left bank of the Don). The combination of materials, volumes, techniques amazes both in low-rise buildings and in the newest buildings. The anecdote about the Rostov "Twins" is very indicative in this regard - the "two-headed" office and residential complex, turning blue in the market area, was built by the developer by changing architects "horizontally", that is, inviting a new designer, adherent of a new style, to each new floor. And looking at this object, as a joke, you involuntarily begin to believe: the podium of the new building is yellow with stucco molding, above it there are glass high-rise buildings with an intricate finish. However, it must be admitted that this product of Rostov banter has become a good urban landmark.
The theme of connection, the creation of distinct landmarks for Rostov is generally very important. The landscape introduces a lot of confusion into the perception of the city, the slopes of the hills seem to repeat each other, and in the central part the relief seems almost smoothed if, while checking yourself, you do not look into the perspective of the street. "Where is the great Don?" - it is still necessary to ask around from passers-by. But on the other hand, there are really enough storage objects. Therefore, I was almost not surprised when, carried away by photography, I saw some kind of oriental stove in blue plaster, without a roof, without cornices. It turned out to be the workshop of an architect who was waiting for the participants of The Days to pay a visit. Hayk Guliyants builds a lot and very actively designs the most incredible things - from high-rise buildings to furniture. We were visiting with Austrian architects who compared the energy of their Russian colleague with the enthusiasm of the famous Hundertwasser.
Of course, Rostov is not as carelessly simple as it seems at first glance. In the city, for example, there are many examples of high-quality architecture of the Soviet period. Clear compositional solutions and "quiet" materials allowed these buildings to organically grow into the fabric of the buildings on the hills and become significant accents. I would especially like to highlight the building of the Gorky Theater, designed by Shchuko and Gelfreich in a volume that is extremely commensurate with the space and purpose of Rostov. Architect and researcher Artur Tokarev and culturologist Daniil Alekseev conducted a tour of this object and its “contemporaries” within the framework of the “days”, who spoke about the “Semantics of the area of three axes”, about how buildings of different styles were assembled into an ensemble. It was no coincidence that another festival excursion dedicated to the architecture of this period took place on bicycles (it was conducted by the young architect Anton Gorbatykh), because then the city was accessible for such movement. No, Rostov is still very attractive for pedestrians and cyclists, but the number of traffic jams, accidents at intersections and the length of queues at public transport stops are already quite metropolitan level. It is no coincidence that the chief architect of the city, Alexei Polyansky, devoted most of his performance at the festival to the transport problems of Big Rostov. Airplanes fly directly over the center, the metro must be built, as well as thinking about the communications of the entire metropolitan area. However, if you think about it, the Days of Architecture are also about communications. A variety of communications that become possible thanks to architecture.
