The winner was a project of a joint Russian-French team: the Arch Group bureau on the Russian side, and the Manuel Yanovsky Society of Architects and Developers on the French side. This project drew criticism from two sides at once. On the one hand, supporters of the construction of a real Russian church (that is, conservative and traditional) in the center of Paris have already called it a "dubiously new" representative of an "anonymous and spiritless high-tech", criticizing the novelty and abundance of glass. On the other hand, the best Russian architectural critic Grigory Revzin, as always subtly and accurately analyzing both the style and the situation, defined this project as postmodern, that is, strongly (30 years) outdated; and wittily interpreted it as another exhibit for the nearby Parisian Ethnographic Museum, built a few years ago by Jean Nouvel.
Both definitions must be recognized as correct. The temple, covered with a "high-tech" glass wave, looks very modernist, dashing and frighteningly modern in comparison with the temple buildings erected in Russia over the past 10-15 years, and representing more or less successful compilations on the themes of traditional architecture … And the typical for postmodernism "combination of the incongruous", the glass sea and the five-domed temple, is really terribly outdated: after postmodernism was in vogue, "neo-modernism" has already happened with its architecture of the attraction. Which after the crisis was replaced by the architecture of sustainability - so far it is poorly understood how it looks externally, but it is quite clear that it loves nature and economy. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that two more recent trends in the project are also present: the glass wave, according to the fair observation of the editor of the ECA magazine Larisa Kopylova, resembles a reduced fragment of the Milan fair, Maximilian Fuksas. A wave covers the garden (obviously, denoting a love of nature), and its glass is planned to be self-washable and some thermal technologies applied in it - the water will warm up and wash the roof (this, apparently, denotes a love of economy).
That is, the project is both defiantly new for adherents of the pure tradition of Orthodox church building - and too old, compromise, provincial from the point of view of modern architecture.
It is really possible to scold this project for a long time and with taste. This, frankly, is not difficult. First, for adherence to postmodernism. At first, Moscow was flooded with bad and inept imitations of the work of Riccardo Bofill, now Bofill himself is building an important presidential congress center in Strelna (seemingly, to admit, terrifying), and his student Manuel Yanovsky (this information was announced by Grigory Revzin) is designing a future Orthodox center in Paris. Both buildings are representative, one is supposed to represent the state, the other is the church, and both projects are connected, one directly, the other indirectly, with Bofill's workshop. As if Russian architecture, groaning and with difficulty, took a step, broke away from the "Luzhkov style" and finally reached its origins thirty years later and fell to them.
The second weak point of the project, which is actually intended to be whipping, is, of course, symbolism. The symbolism of an Orthodox church, frankly, is not an easy matter. Here, little is truly canonized (that is, little is determined by church rules recorded in the decisions of councils), and for the most part, the form is determined by the tradition and preferences of those who build. However, when conversations about this symbolism begin, one might think that absolutely everything is canonized. A simple example: the five-headed. You can often hear this interpretation: the main dome symbolizes Christ, and the four corner evangalists. But it was very late and was invented, most likely in the 19th century (this was proved by the famous art critic Irina Buseva-Davydova). It is not written in any rules that a real Orthodox church must necessarily have five domes. In fact, the five domes in the history of Russian church building appeared historically almost by accident: at the end of the 12th century, Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest built the one-domed Assumption Cathedral in the city of Vladimir with a large and high gallery. In order to illuminate the princely choirs in the second tier of this gallery, two domes were erected over its vaults; and two more were added above the eastern compartments (these two domes added light to the enlarged temple space as a whole), making five together. Earlier, in the Assumption Cathedral of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the princely choirs were small and modest, but now they have become large and bright, as it should be for a grand duke, in the end. Then, when the Moscow principality became the main one and finally gathered the reins of government in its hands, and this happened at the end of the 15th century under Ivan III, the Grand Duke, having married the heiress of the Byzantine Empire conquered by the Turks, Zoya Palaeologus, started the restructuring of the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow, the main temple of the Moscow state, and built his temple on the model of the Vladimir Assumption Cathedral. He became the model for all subsequent five-domed temples. Perhaps that is why the five domes often appear where it is necessary to show the unity of church and state: in the churches of Elizabeth Petrovna, the Orthodox empress, in contrast to her father who is indifferent to religion; in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and standard designs of churches by the court architect Nicholas I Konstantin Ton. The state meaning in the five-chapter is historically the main one. And in the winning project, it is very adequate to the situation - when the project is chosen by the patriarch, and the affairs are handled by the president's manager.
Generally speaking, the winning project should not be scolded, but praised. For the exact correspondence to the essence of the task, accurately and succinctly voiced in several statements of people involved in organizing the competition. The essence of the task is in its duality: the complex should be traditional, but modern. Traditional because it is a temple; modern because in Paris ("combed in the French manner" - the words of Archbishop Mark, who is responsible in the Moscow Patriarchate for foreign institutions).
In this situation, it is strange that the project was not torn to pieces in the best traditions of deconstructivism. Because the Orthodox architecture that has been developing in Russia since the early 1990s and what people now usually associate with the concept of “modern architecture” are incompatible, like water and oil. They are practically antagonists. And suddenly there appears, by all indications, a state order for a church, combining both: "a synthesis of the national tradition and the ideas of modern Western architecture" (also the words of Archbishop Mark).
Yes, this is impossible, because there is not the slightest experience of such a synthesis. The last twenty years of construction have been so conservative that they are the exact opposite of modern architecture. The only, first and last, feeble attempt to design a modern Orthodox church was the St. George Chapel on Poklonnaya Hill. And, of course, it is impossible to create an image of a modern temple in 40 days allotted for design. Whether it is necessary to create such an image is also a question, because there is no customer for it in Russia (which, in fact, was shown to us by these 20 years of conservatism in church architecture).
So we must admit that the winning project perfectly embodies the meaning of the ordered object. It consists of two parts: a five-domed church, which historically denotes the unity of the Russian state and the church, and a glass cover, denoting the third force: modern Europe, or simply "modern architecture", whatever you like. To enhance the Russianness of the temple, the architects propose to bring a real white stone to Paris; to enhance Europeanness, they planted around it not just a garden, but Claude Monet's garden in Giverny (a good garden, but what does Monet have to do with it?). One feels that the opposites are uncomfortable together. The fact that in the area of the five-domed they grow together - one covers, the other pierces - denotes their union. Well, the fact that the union turned out to be outwardly artificial and strange in appearance - so what a union, such is architecture. There are no reasons or prerequisites for the appearance of a real synthesis.
