A new version of the "Office Building on Mozhaiskoye Shosse" adorns the cover of the third issue of the "Architectural Bulletin" magazine; the magazine published an interview with Alexey Bavykin, in which the architect tells the story of the transformation of his project. This story turned out to be quite sonorous - in any case, the project as a result has changed almost beyond recognition.
Let us remind you that the project of the office center appeared in 2006. The gigantic, 11-story arch seemed to be both a projection of the Arc de Triomphe of Beauvais and a memory of the ruins of Roman aqueducts, which are similarly woven into the building. The glass nose intruding into its opening resembled a steam locomotive flying out of the tunnel, while the arch looked like a barrier to the “locomotive of modernity”, a remnant of the city's defensive wall, overcome and, as a result, dilapidated. This theme is well-known, but the house-arch has become one of its most capacious and precise architectural incarnations. I wanted to think, talk, write and argue about the arch on the Mozhaisk highway, and this is not something that often happens with architectural projects. It is not surprising that the house-arch was noticed by critics and fellow architects, a number of publications followed, and in the fall of 2008 the project was included in the exposition of the Russian pavilion of the Venice Biennale.
Then the following happened. For some time the project existed and developed, we even described its second version. On which creative searches were completed and, in fact, history began. In October 2008 (the model of the arch house was still exhibited in Venice) at the Public Council, the mayor expressed his dissatisfaction with the project, saying that the building “looks unfinished”, and Yuri Roslyak and Yuri Grigoriev spoke out against the “deliberate ruin” of the building. The project was recommended to be redone and the arch removed. Immediately after the advice, an article by the architect and critic Kirill Ass appeared on the OpenSpace portal - the author rather harshly criticized the project for “simplifying the architectural ideology” and suggested “finding a more precise and complex idea”; in his opinion, it was the “simple concept of the building” that the mayor did not like.
At the risk of being reputed to be a simpleton, I will nevertheless note that in this way everyone who wrote about this project was divided into two obvious parts (not to say into two camps): historians and art critics rather liked the plot laid down in it, and the only architect who wrote about this story criticized this plot to the fluff. By the way, I would like to note that in this way almost a discussion took place in our press. And discussions about architectural projects - not scandals, as around the Mariinsky or the Okhta Center, but precisely arguments that are not alien to opinions about the artistic design - so rarely arise in our post-Soviet space that this fact alone makes Bavykin's project more likely to be recognized more interesting than ordinary.
After the council rejected the arch, Yuri Grigoriev was included in the design team of the building on Mozhaisk highway, and the project was changed. The revised version was approved by the Public Council in June 2009; the mayor, however, also expressed dissatisfaction with the new version, calling it "an ugly" and comparing, for some reason, with the ski slope of Mikhail Khazanov in Krasnogorsk. In May 2010, Alexey Bavykin showed a new version of the house at an exhibition in the building of the Union of Architects of Russia; the exhibition was called “Metamorphoses” and the transformation of the arch was one of the main subjects on it.
It seems to me that there are some oddities and inconsistencies in the history of the rework of this project. Firstly, when the project was "flunked", then all those who opposed it criticized the ruin, not the arch. And they removed the arch. Then it immediately seemed strange to me that the mayor did not like the arch, because he usually liked the arches. On the second council, where the project was accepted, but called a freak, the offensive epithet was associated with the Krasnogorsk ski slope. What part of the building project on Mozhaisk highway is similar to Krasnogorsk descent? That's right, a horizontal beam that cut through the arch. This means that Yuri Luzhkov didn’t like the glass volume - it’s quite logical, he never liked them. But they removed the arch! If we talk about Yuri Luzhkov's tastes, one should have expected that the glass case would be removed, and the arch would be left, but it turned out the other way around. In my opinion, this is illogical.
Further, secondly, Yuri Grigoriev - who was then included in the team of authors - and who consequently, logically, initiated the removal of the arch - also, it would seem, was always an opponent of the "sticks" and prismatic American skyscrapers of the Cold War period. There are even known cases when, on the initiative of this architect, such arches appeared in projects that were through and through geometrically-modernist. Although it must be admitted that those arches that appeared on the initiative of this architect were somewhat smaller than the Bavykin's arch. But still, it is illogical that a person adds arches to some projects, and removes an arch in others. Consider me a simpleton, but I do not understand why this is happening. And I even suspect that this is basically impossible to explain - why all of a sudden everyone who seemed to previously loved arched forms in different incarnations (excluding Kirill Ass, I do not know anything about his relationship with arches) - in this case turned out to be against the Bavykin arch and exhausted -So at the root. I think this will be the mystery of history.
But let's continue. In the summer in the magazine "Architectural Bulletin" there was an interview in which Alexey Bavykin told the story of the project in the first person. From this story it becomes clear why the author, after his artistic decision was, frankly, for completely arbitrary reasons, rejected by the council, did not abandon the project and did not refuse to continue working. The reason is simple - the ill-fated advice came exactly at the beginning of the crisis, at the moment when Russian architects and customers began to feel its pressure in full force. And for the building on Mozhaisk highway, according to Alexei Bavykin, "… our kind, gullible customer paid most of the money for the" design "stage and part of the money for the working documentation" - the crisis did not allow the money to be returned, and the architects were forced, willy-nilly finish the work based on the prevailing conditions. However, now that the new project is ready, Alexey Bavykin does not blame anyone - neither the mayor, whose arbitrariness destroyed the original plan, nor the customer, who could not or did not want to defend this plan in front of the authorities. The architect slightly nods only towards the exhibition at the Biennale - they say, the fate of many other "neighbors" in the pavilion also turned out to be unsuccessful. And all why? At the opening, the roof leaked … Well, let's return from superstitions back to reality and take a look at what happened as a result, at the third edition of the building on Mozhaisk highway.
The intersection of two volumes, conceived from the very beginning: a long one directed along the highway and a short one, standing across, has been preserved. The arch has turned into a cubic glass pylon with flat opaque rods on the ribs-corners and cornices. This theme is close to the architecture of the early 1930s and late 1970s, the resulting pylon resembles a link in the portico of the Lenin Shchuko-Gelfreich library and at the same time - the portico of the museum (also of Lenin), built by Leonid Pavlov in Gorki. Perhaps there are other, closer analogies, somewhere in the architecture of museums and theaters of the seventies, but the meaning is the same - Bavykin's stitched volume retained the features of the classics (in its very light version of late modernism); the piercing "nose" remained a rocket-locomotive. That is, the plastic plot, strictly speaking, has not gone anywhere, but the whole has acquired distinct features of similarity with the architecture of the 70s-80s - this is exactly how, by the way, the author himself defines it, adding that he likes the new version, that this option may be even better than the previous one. Few people believe this statement, considering it a coquetry and an attempt to faire la bonne mine au mauvais jeu; but in vain, because the architect is, in fact, right.
According to Alexei Bavykin, the architects initially calculated the volume of the building based on the parameters of insolation; Simply put, the architects drew it so as not to obscure the sunlight to the residents of nearby panel houses. A little later, in an effort to make the house more visible and establish a dialogue with the city center, one part of it was turned into an arch, "seeing" it in an already defined volume. Michelangelo said that any sculpture is hidden in a piece of stone, the task of the sculptor is only to free it; the architects did something similar, "freed" the arch from the volume. What happened next (after Yuri Grigoriev was included in the team of authors) may seem like a reverse process: if at first the architects "saw" the arch inside the prism and allowed it to crystallize, then they "wrapped" it back into the volume.
Of course, there is no arch inside; there is glass that shines at night, a very modern and contemporary image, there are beautiful panoramic elevators that will shine up and down over the highway. But knowing the history of the project, one might think that, having found himself in an unfavorable environment, he put on a glass case and hid from his eyes. Figuratively speaking, the arch "froze" into a square glass iceberg, like a mammoth into its Siberian ice floe … Probably, now there will be enough difficulties in the architectural design (which Kirill Ass asked in his article). However, Bavykin himself in an interview says the exact opposite - the plan is simplified.
But comparisons are comparisons, and this whole story with the removal of the arch from the project is tempting to comment on. Collegiality is good, but the author's intention is leveled. Having passed through the millstones of approvals, Moscow projects become, to some extent, the result of collective creativity, acquire a connotation of a kind of collegiality. This is no longer an architectural workshop, but some kind of Kostroma artel turns out: Antip suggested, Lavrenty corrected it. The workshop has different tasks: to protect the market, for example, so that all its (workshop) participants have enough orders. And make sure that the craftsmen inside the workshop do not offend each other … But what can I say, ice age.
Maybe with the departure of Yuri Mikhailovich there will be a thaw? Maybe the arch will be returned? Or will the ecological niche remain with the mammoths?
