The first days of the Venice Biennale were simply overflowing with events. National pavilions competed with each other to attract journalists, and in the hope of getting the best reviews, they filled them with wine and snacks. On the alleys of the Giardini, in the pavilions or just on the streets, interviews and photo sessions with star architects took place. The new Moscow institute Strelka, which we already wrote about in May of this year, managed to attract a large crowd of writing fraternity to its presentation at the Piccolo Theater, despite the stuffiness in the hall and without any use of alcohol. This interest in the institute is quite understandable, because the author of its educational program is AMO (research division of OMA), headed by its founder Rem Koolhaas. The owner of the Golden Lion of the Biennale, as you might have guessed, was among the speakers.
The presentation was organized according to the principle of a round table. Questions were asked by Shumon Basar, an architect, writer and curator from the London Architectural Association, and answered by Strelka President Ilya Oskolkov-Tentsiper, members of the Institute's Board of Trustees Dmitry Likin, Alexander Mamut and Oleg Shapiro, representatives of AMO Reinier de Graf (Reinier de Graaf) and Michael Schindhelm, and of course Rem Koolhaas himself.
Since Strelka was presented to the international public for the first time, the discussion began with the idea of the institute itself and with the professional and political background on which it arose. We recalled, on the one hand, the corruption of domestic officials, coupled with the formalistic approach of Russian architects, and on the other hand, private initiatives to create socially significant projects and the greedy interest of the young generation of professionals in everything new. The participants in the presentation drew particular attention to the media focus of Strelka. Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper, one of the most prominent Russian representatives of this industry, spoke especially a lot on this topic. According to him, the institute's ambitions lie not only in the production of new ideas, but also in bringing them to the general public, and not only professional. Ideally, Strelka should become - no less - a platform for public discussion and a step towards democratization of society.
Rem Koolhaas summarized five topics that the school will research on: Preservation, Design, Public Space, Energy and Thinning. Explaining why the choice fell on these particular problems, he noted that despite their global nature, they all extremely accurately correspond to various aspects of life in Russia and are the most relevant for our country. Answering one of Shumon Bazar's questions, Rainier de Graaf began by asserting that Russia is a democratic country, and ended his answer with the same sentence with an interrogative intonation. This uncertainty in relation to Russia, the mysteriousness of the processes taking place in it, most likely, became the reason for the enthusiasm with which AMO began to write the program.
It seemed to me that Western journalists had a rather positive impression of Strelka. In particular, the Financial Times, after the presentation, published a downright enthusiastic article about the new school.
Having joined this project a little over a month ago as an AMO employee, I myself observe the enthusiasm of all those who are preparing the program for Strelka and the interest in it from both the Dutch and international architectural community. I also see what kind of people are attracted to work at the institute - as initiators of research topics, visiting lecturers or members of the educational committee. As it seems to me, having gathered in one place people of this caliber, one can safely assume that enough critical mass will be formed on Strelka to give birth to all those new ideas and approaches that the speakers in Venice spoke about. In addition, as a person who recently left Russia and continues to actively communicate with his old colleagues, I know with what ardent desire our students-architects want to integrate into the world architectural community, “break through” in the profession and start changing their city. That is why I believe that everything should work out for Strelka.
