Wood in our country, which possesses a quarter of the world's timber reserves, has always been a traditional material. It is no secret that until the 20th century, most of not only rural, but also urban buildings were wooden; then this theme took root in the bardic mythology of the "wooden city", cozy, homely and very Russian. In historical science, over the past fifty years, a whole cult of wooden architecture has developed, and while the cities were being built up with panel high-rise buildings, books sang folk wooden architecture in different voices.
In modern architecture, wood has taken on a different meaning - a "sustainable" material associated with the popular concept of "sustainability" and rational resource planning. Many well-known Russian architects design wooden buildings, most often private houses, preferring wood to other modern materials for its environmental friendliness, durability, natural "warmth" and the already mentioned tradition. But it must be admitted that for a country that was made of wood a hundred years ago, now this material is used very little. It seems that the interest in wood, which is weakly smoldering in the capitals, should be revived and supported, which is what the new award, invented by the curator and famous architectural critic Nikolai Malinin, is doing. By the way, we note that this is the second prize awarded by Malinin, and its theme is just as beautiful and relevant - a few years ago Nikolai suggested to the Internet to “count” new Moscow buildings by leading architects for a year, now - the same for wooden architecture.
In October 2009 at the Museum of Architecture. Shchusev hosted the exhibition “New Wooden. Russian Architecture in Search of Identity”, which showed wooden buildings over the past 10 years. The exhibition was the prologue for the establishment of the ARCHIWOOD prize for the best architectural structures made of wood.
According to the terms of the competition, any projects and buildings of Russian architects using wood could be nominated for the ARCHIWOOD prize - a private house, a public building, a bathhouse, a gazebo, a pavilion, an art object, an interior, an object of reconstruction or restoration, as well as a village built or designed during the year - from March 2009 to March 2010. All works submitted to the competition made up a long list, from which the expert council selected a short list of the best, published on the award website. In May, everyone could, by going to the site www.archiwood.ru, vote for their favorite work; the interactive continued at the exhibition in the Central House of Artists - visitors were handed out five stickers that could be glued to the tablets and thus support the project they liked by choosing one favorite in each nomination. So the opinion of the visitors gradually manifested itself right at the exhibition, it was clear that somewhere there were a lot of circles glued, somewhere less. I must admit that this attraction is fascinating and, in the end, informative. In parallel with the "popular" voting, the winners were also chosen by the jury of the award, which included Yuri Grigoryan, Svetlana Golovina, Alexander Lvovsky, Grigory Revzin, Vladislav Savinkin, Ilya Utkin and Nikolai Malinin.
The final finishing touches were the exhibition at Arch Moscow of the winning projects and the awarding ceremony. We must pay tribute to this exposition, made by architects-designers Savinkin and Kuzmin - it was impossible to pass by, despite the abundance of exhibitions of Arch of Moscow. The ARCHIWOOD exhibition is located right in front of the main entrance to the Central House of Artists and greets its visitors with a weaving of wooden structures, on which are fixed tablets with the buildings of the shortlist of the award in five nominations.
By the way, about the nominations. While there was a collection of applications for participation, and the material was incomprehensible, the list of nominations was not announced. It was identified later, during the selection process of the shortlist, when it became clear which buildings and projects are nominated for the award. The curator of ARCHIWOOD Nikolay Malinin himself spoke about this in detail in our news feed. The shortlist consisted of five nominations - "function", "constructive", "wood in decoration", "art object" and "project". For the final award, two works were selected in each nomination - one was chosen by the jury, and the second was determined by "popular" voting on the Internet.
The awarding of the laureates of the "first wooden" prize took place the day before yesterday, on May 28, in the conference hall of the Central House of Artists.
The best wooden building in the "function" nomination by the unanimous decision of the jury was a dwelling house in the Konakovsky district of the Tver region of the AKANT company. While rewarding its authors, Grigory Revzin noted that this house, in fact, is an ancient Greek peripter, only with a cello displaced to the side. According to the results of the Internet voting in the “function” nomination, the pavilion of the summer kitchen “White steamer” by Sergei Gikalo and Alexander Kuptsov became the undoubted leader.
For the nomination "constructive" projects were selected where complex wooden structures are used. The jury decided the best object in this nomination was the Children's entertainment center with a water park and a skating rink in St. V. A. Kucherenko. The "people's" choice in the "constructive" nomination fell on a restaurant in the village of Zhukovka of the Karlson and K architectural bureau. The ceilings of this restaurant are reminiscent of coffered cylindrical vaults.
According to the jury of the award, they doubted for a long time whether to establish the nomination "wood in decoration" or not. On the one hand, few people work with wood in decoration, and, on the other hand, those architects who work understand all its charm as a finishing material. As a result, the nomination nevertheless appeared, and the best work in the opinion of the jury was the house on the Volga of the architect Peter Kostelov. This house is the record holder among wooden buildings in terms of the number of awards, but the jury considered it necessary to add another prize to the list of its diplomas. According to the results of voting on the Internet, the best building in the nomination "wood in decoration" was a villa in the village of Vasilyevo - a joint Russian-German project of the architectural bureaus "nps tchoban voss" and "Planungsgesellschaft mbH".
All small and non-functional wood objects were included in the Art Object nomination. The best among them, by the decision of the jury, was the "Rotunda" by Alexander Brodsky, and according to the results of voting on the Internet - a park bench in the form of a Mobius strip by the bureau "INN GROUP". As the authors of the bench admitted, when creating it, they did not think about functionality - it is in its pure form an art object, and it is not very comfortable to sit on it.
The last fifth nomination of the award is “project”, and it was awarded by the decision of the jury of the “KD” bureau for the project of the multifunctional tourist complex “Metropolia”. The project of an educational center in the village of Pokrovskoye of the ELIS architectural bureau won in the "popular" vote in this nomination.
According to Nikolai Malinin, there were more good works than prizes, so it was decided to additionally reward them on behalf of information partners. Each of the partners came up with their own nomination, trying to see important topics in the submitted works that were not noted in the main nominations of the award. Thus, the magazine "Mir and Dom" established the nomination "Tradition" and presented it to the Tula workshop "Architecton-3" for the project of the Annunciation Church in the Sergiev Posad region. Lara Kopylova from the Ecological Architecture magazine awarded the architect Nikolai Belousov for her great contribution to wooden architecture. Natalya Timasheva, editor-in-chief of Interior + Design magazine, named Totan Kuzembaev the best architect in the field of wooden architecture, one of whose objects, a smoking room in the Pirogovo resort, was noted by the Architectural Bulletin magazine in the nomination for a sense of humor.
Another media partner of the ARCHIWOOD Prize, TATLIN Publishing House, has prepared two full-fledged publications on wooden architecture for the award - “New Wooden”, dedicated to last year's exhibition in the MUAR, and the catalog of the ARCHIWOOD-2010 Prize, which presents fifty objects of wooden architecture in the competition.
During the award ceremony, the organizers of the award showed exceptional modesty, repeating from time to time that everything is just beginning, that the first pancake is lumpy and the like. Nevertheless, despite some confusion from the double (and even triple, if we take into account the stickers of visitors to the exhibition) voting and from the abundance of laureates - however, few awards can avoid such an abundance … nevertheless, the award took place and declared itself loudly from the very started. Decent works, a representative jury, a beautiful exposition, a topical topic. And what else is needed for a good start.
