The festival, which managed to become an integral attribute of the architectural summer, this year was held from July 23 to August 7 at ArchFarm - a new creative site located 100 km from Moscow along Simferopol highway and intended for everyone who is ready to live and create outside the metropolis. The number of festival participants this year has reached 180 people, and the total number of guests has exceeded a thousand.
At ArchFarm, the festival participants went through the entire cycle of creating an object from design to construction. The program of the festival opened with a lecture day, during which distinguished architects from Russia talked about wooden architecture, constructive techniques and personal experience of working with this material.
Then the topics and situations for design were announced (among them "Floating bath", "Tower of rescuers", "Mobile studio", "Teleport" and others - only 20-30 objects on the one hand are practical, and on the other, they have indisputable potential for architectural fantasy), and for each of them the organizers prepared a situational and general plans, a description of the area and a technical assignment.
The project seminar under the direction of the architect Nikolai Belousov lasted two days, and on the evening of July 25, its results were presented at the exhibition. Each participant defended his project in front of the jury, and experts selected 32 best from them for further implementation. The main selection criteria were not only the spectacularity of the works, but also their functionality and reliability: all created baths, houses on the water, towers, gazebos and benches had to pass the endurance test by numerous festival visitors.
And if earlier all the blanks for art objects were made almost by hand or even in advance (for example, at Archpriyut in February of this year, architects in very difficult climatic conditions assembled objects from pre-made elements), now all the details were made in the ArchFarm workshop with professional tools and machines. The authors put the blanks on construction sites on trucks or a tractor with a trailer and started assembling their creations.
The jury, headed by Nikolai Belousov, included such famous architects as Sergei Skuratov, Andrei Gnezdilov, Totan Kuzembaev and Nikolai Lyzlov, and others.
On August 6, experts attended the presentations of each completed project and determined the winners. They almost unanimously awarded the first place to the spectacular tower of rescuers made of long wooden slats "PILLARS OF OS WATER", designed by Stepan Lipgart from the team "Children of Iofan".
The second place was awarded to the “mouthpiece of culture” of the “BUDU” team (Moscow). In terms of its function, it is a staircase leading to the gallery, but outwardly it most resembles a sharp wedge cutting into a brick building at the level of the second floor. And, finally, the "bronze" went to "Astanovka" from FartArt from Moscow: the bus stop is made in the form of a giant letter A, under the crossbar of which you can hide from the scorching sun while waiting for the bus, and climb the crossbar if you want to admire the picturesque surroundings or sunbathe.
In the nomination "Small architectural form" the best work was recognized as "Mobile flowerbed" - the soil for plants is enclosed in a ball of metal mesh, from which "grow" wooden "needles" - supports that allow you to place the flowerbed in any place and in any position.
