Recent exhibitions of projects of modern church architecture, organized by the SA in 2011 (in St. Petersburg, April-May, and in Moscow, September), produce a contradictory, but generally rather sad impression. It is gratifying that over the past quarter of a century, the ideological taboo of church architecture has disappeared in Russia. It got the opportunity to freely join both the millennial national past and the world experience of Orthodox architecture, including the most modern foreign projects. But it seems strange that since the time of the first modest exhibition dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus (Moscow, 1988), little has changed in modern church architecture. Spontaneously and quite justifiably, the fashion for the Orthodox "retro-architecture" that arose in it in the first post-Soviet years has remained unwavering to this day. Exceptions are very rare; searches for new aesthetic solutions seem timid or unconvincing, since they are devoid of the organic nature of a traditional Russian temple. Before our eyes, in an atmosphere of blissful stagnation of thought and general satisfaction of authors and customers from among the clergy, this fashion for "Orthodox antiquity" has become a kind of mainstream.
The question arises: what's wrong with that? Perhaps this is the architectural credo of today's Orthodoxy? If so, you need to decide. Or modern church architecture lives in Russia according to its own special laws and no longer presupposes development, as it was during almost the entire previous millennium, but in this way it inevitably turns into a kind of ethno-religious appendix of modern architecture, becomes a marginal phenomenon. Or he is not satisfied with such a fate, and it must consciously accept the challenge of our time.
The results of the recent International competition of projects of the Russian Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris, which are sad for the church architects of Russia, put before them the need for such a choice and the main problem of these days: the problem of the novelty of the architectural language and technologies of temple building.
Over the past two decades, the search for the modern appearance of the Russian church has been carried on in Russia sluggishly and, rather, by touch. Other, more important tasks faced domestic architects: the development of the once semi-forbidden and, as a result, half-forgotten richest national heritage in this area. But at the turn of 2010-2011, in just a few months, this situation has drastically changed. And now we have to look for something new not so much by relying on “ours” as by starting from the “alien” and clearly “hostile”.
As has already happened in Russian culture, the wind of change, this time almost a hurricane, blew from the West …
The international competition for projects of the Russian Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris (2010-2011) was conceived solidly, on a grand scale, as a true showcase of modern architectural thought. It was preceded by serious diplomatic efforts at the highest level and a noisy press campaign. Many in Russia expected the emergence of new, bright, breakthrough ideas in the field of church architecture from the competition. In recent years, the need for them has been felt by the most sensitive church hierarchs and almost all seeking, talented Russian architects.
However, everything happened differently: "new ideas" in all ten final projects were either absent, or were full of postmodern aggression and arrogant ignorance in relation to the very foundations of Orthodox architecture. It would be worth stopping here, announcing an additional round for such an important competition, inviting other participants to participate in it. Instead, despite public protests and persistent recommendations from the Union of Architects of Russia, the Russian Academy of Architecture, cultural figures and believers, the competition ended in cold blood with the election of, according to one of the international jury members, the “least scandalous” of the candidate projects. True, this “favorite project” was semi-officially singled out from among the others much earlier than the final, about which the Parisian “Russian Thought” and the authors of numerous Internet publications wrote with indignation. But which of the high-ranking people cares about public opinion these days?
Only thanks to harsh criticism in the press, the Internet and professional communities of this predetermined winner, Manuel Janowski abandoned his initial idea to erect a kind of "wave church" on the Seine embankment, replaced its transparent dome-lamps with densely gilded ones, and the glass sarcophagus covering the complex The center above and on the main facades, casually and blasphemously renamed the "Protection of the Mother of God". The architect and his high-ranking supporters did not at all think about the main thing, about the symbolic image of the future structure: the Orthodox church, like a straitjacket, is covered with a cellular glass roof, through which church domes can hardly break through. From the churchyard, the sky seems to be barred, it seems to be a prison …
The woeful and, in a sense, catastrophic results of such an important, from the best intentions of the conceived competition will torment the consciousness of the Russian church intelligentsia for a long time to come. How to fill the gap between modern secular architecture, torn after technical progress, very concerned about the "media impact" of the structure and catchy "architectural gestures", but indifferent to spiritual meanings, and Orthodox architecture, stubbornly holding on to ancient traditions and desperately looking for a certain "temple-building canon" "?
The past competition has brought undoubted benefits. The protective retro-utopia that has spontaneously developed over the last quarter of a century in the work of Russian church architects has begun to give way to another creative paradigm - the paradigm of renewal. The growing interest in truly modern church architecture requires a rethinking of all professional tools - from the choice of materials and building technologies, to the development of a new plastic language and the creation of an updated image of the church. It should attract with the beauty and energy of living religious creativity, and not become another tombstone of the ossified "old woman's faith."
The issue of novelty in church architecture, inextricably linked with the problem of determining its spiritual and aesthetic criteria, is becoming more and more acute and topical. Theological and ecclesiastical definitions of a Christian church as “the house of God,” “the image of heaven on earth,” etc., are well known, but they do not carry any specific aesthetic prescriptions. That is why over the centuries, none of the most outstanding church buildings became a model for mandatory imitation, not a single, even a very perfect type of temple was and could not be canonized. What, then, determined the development of Orthodox architecture? What both supported and renewed his traditions?
The modern researcher Nikolai Pavlov believes that the evolution of cult architecture is based on the vertical and horizontal “unfolding of the temple” from the ancient sanctuary, and this pattern is typical for a variety of religious traditions (“Altar. Stupa. Temple”, Moscow, 2001). Nikolai Brunov and other historians of Russian architecture partly confirm this idea in relation to the ancient Russian churches of the early era, which were often erected on the site of Slavic sanctuaries (History of Russian Architecture, Moscow, 1956). But it should be noted that in Byzantium, a Christian altar could simply be brought into a former pagan temple or secular basilica.
Unlike historical and cultural, there are also theological and mystical interpretations of the origin of Orthodox architecture. In the 6th century, Procopius of Caesarea wrote about the famous Constantinople Cathedral of St. Sophia: its dome seems to "descend from heaven, suspended on golden chains." This description is evidence not only of emotional perception, but also of the mystical idea of the Byzantines about the creation of a church temple by divine energies flowing down from heaven along the cross, dome and walls. Procopius noted that this temple was erected: "not by human power or art, but by God's will." ("About buildings. Book one. I, 46") Other Byzantine churches were perceived in the same way. The mysticism of the "Sophian", divine-human, architecture largely determined the appearance of the ancient cross-domed temples, the smooth forms of which seem to pour from the sky. In Russia, this idea was even more emphasized by keeled zakomars, window frames and entrance arches.
Thus, the upward movement associated with the beginning of culture and the downward movement associated with the beginning of religion are combined in the religious structure of the temple. To this can be added the lateral movement, explained by invisible "projections" of spiritual entities from the altar into the interior of the temple, about which the priest Pavel Florensky wrote ("Iconostasis", 1922). This movement is not strictly perpendicular, but rather diagonal, fan-like, with its help, all the energies flowing out from the iconostasis (and the associated structural lines of force) from the domed vault to the floor and from one side wall of the building to the other are distributed.
In the most general form, it can be recognized that the archetype of an Orthodox church is formed by a combination of descending (from the top of the church) and ascending (from the most ancient altar-altar) movements, with multiple vectors of development of architectural forms emanating from the church altar. In each individual temple, these movements can be of different strength, interacting, they determine its structure, its spiritual architectonics.
The temple is a visible image of faith rooted in heaven and not at all in earth. And this common Christian temple archetype cannot be distorted.
Let's go back to Yanovsky's project. It has well thought out many minor details related to the increased comfort of the inhabitants of the Center, up to the use of expensive eco-technology for heating the roof. However, under its continuous "glass sheet" all buildings are banally equalized: a church, a hotel, a seminary, a winter garden … The appearance of a temple, the archetype of which has been preserved, at the same time completely loses its sacredness and sacred topic. Why is this happening? For the first time in the history of the construction of temples - in line with the most different religions! - the architect rejected the original, universal idea of the temple, which expresses the dignity and freedom of faith. This desire has always been expressed in the self-sufficiency, self-sufficiency of the temple structure, in its free standing before God and direct connection with heaven, from which the temple cannot be fenced off. Yanovsky, on the other hand, proposes to build an Orthodox church, cutting it off from the endless vertical line of the heavens up to the domes and thereby destroying the fundamental idea of any temple. In his inconceivable project, the cult building loses the main thing - religious dignity, sacred image. This is not at all a long-awaited "step forward" in Orthodox architecture, but an eccentric leap to the side, into an aesthetic and spiritual dead end.
It must be admitted that any, even the most innovative, image of a temple should be based on its mystical prototype, that the search for a new one must be conducted on the basis of some unshakable architectural principles. In the Orthodox culture, they have existed for one and a half millennia, and, formulated in their most general form, are as follows:
- The temple building is self-sufficient and in no way (structurally or visually) can be separated from the sky.
- The “sacred structure” of the temple should be preserved: the traditional arrangement of the cross and the dome (or other pommel), the entrance gates, the east-oriented altar, the pulpit, the iconostasis.
- The proportions and volumes of the temple should remain harmonious in any decision, the internal and external spaces should complement each other, the details cannot contradict the whole, the internal space should be hierarchically organized from top to bottom: from the dome area to the floor.
- The architecture of the church building, its acoustics, construction technology, materials used, their texture, color, etc. must correspond to the liturgical purpose of the temple, create an “aura” of authenticity and uniqueness (in accordance with the meaning that the critic of the avant-garde and popular culture Walter Benjamin put into this concept).
- The temple image must organically (even if by the principle of aesthetic contrast) correspond to the entire totality of church arts - from icon painting, frescoes and temple decoration to chants, priesthood vestments and plastic drawing of divine services.
Undoubtedly, a powerful potential for renewal was and still remains in Russian church architecture. Over the centuries, ideas of amazing aesthetic novelty have repeatedly appeared in it. In modern terms, they can be called "explosive", "avant-garde". This was the case with the appearance in Kievan Rus of the multi-domed and hip-roof style, which was far from Byzantine architectural samples, the Russian "wooden Gothic" style. This was the case with the creation of pillar temples, Nikon's five, Moscow baroque basilicas, temples-palaces of the era of classicism, and finally, a bright "temple synthesis" - plastic arts, artistic techniques, materials - in the mainstream of Russian modernity. Over the centuries, stylistic canons have changed in church architecture more than once, a natural, and before the revolution, a very rapid renewal of construction technologies took place, until this movement was forcibly stopped and torn off for a long time from the development of world and domestic architecture. Of course, for an Orthodox architect, the experience of the past century is highly unequal. It is much more difficult to adapt the aesthetics of constructivism to the architecture of the temple than the techniques of "soft" expressionism of the 1910-1920s, the style of Art Deco or Stalin's Empire style.
But does the current church architecture need novelty? Maybe all the best in him have long been created? As in literature, painting, music of the past brilliant centuries? Is it worth it now, on the smoking postmodern ruins of Russian culture, to try to create something equally beautiful and spiritual? Maybe we should honestly abandon the search for a new look for a Russian temple and only faithfully reproduce existing ancient, "eternal" samples, as the Japanese do, periodically in statu quo ante reconstructing their traditional religious buildings? Such a position, of course, may exist, but to what extent is it characteristic of Russian culture? That culture, which, like other great Christian cultures, has always been characterized by illumination, the creators of which, in search of true, divine beauty, lived according to the gospel covenant “seek and find”.
It is quite obvious that modern temple architecture cannot be separated from architecture as a whole, from its rapid development both in Russia and in the world. The new can also be sought in the past, as it happened in all organic, creative epochs. Nowadays, domestic architecture needs a new temple synthesis - an artistic concept associated with the creative assimilation of the past and a breakthrough to the latest technologies, materials, to a new expressiveness of architecture. It is necessary to reasonably use the experience of the domestic and world avant-garde, but at the same time to abandon its dry functionalism, mechanical combinatorics, hypertrophy of forms and, most importantly, from its conscious or unconscious desacralization of the cult building.
Postmodern architectural "games" around the temple are rapidly becoming obsolete, although they remain invariably in vogue. They have nothing to do with the creative search for a true avant-garde. Only authenticity and organicness belongs to the future. But the opposite path - the thoughtless replication of the past - does not lead to it either. Nowadays, it is technically possible to create an almost exact copy of any famous temple of the past. But let's think about whether we need another Pokrov-on-Nerl somewhere in well-fed Tyumen or a new Nikola-in-Khamovniki near St. Petersburg?
The other extreme also has nothing to do with the future: serial, typical "projects of religious buildings", in which architecture, divorced from the environment, is reduced to soulless mass construction. The image of a modern Russian church is already too often lacking in uniqueness, warm sincerity, lyrical beauty of ancient churches, inextricably merged with the exalted face of the "peace of God" - the surrounding nature. The architecture of the temple is both a call to faith and a "sermon in stone", which is always hindered by wretched facelessness, as well as excessive austerity or dryness. The architect is obliged to rely not only on narrowly professional approaches to architecture, but also on the popular, heartfelt perception of the temple as “splendid”, “warm”, “cozy”, “prayerful”. In the church there should not be an alienation of the believer from the architectural embodiment of his faith, there should not be a "cold of eternity" that is indifferent to earthly life and to the human person.
In recent years, attempts have already been made to renew the appearance of the Russian church. They boiled down to more or less successful searches for a different geometry of the structure (most often, simplified, constructivist rigid), to partial glazing of facades, the introduction of mirrored windows, or to a "neo-Baroque" heap of heterogeneous magnificent forms, overloaded with stucco, paintings, numerous gilded details, etc. Of course, all extremes in the search for something new must be rejected. Everything beautiful is simple and human!
One of the still underestimated trends in modern church architecture can be "ecological architecture". Its spiritual essence is a reminder of the "Edenic origin" of living nature, of the reverent connection with it of a believer, for whom the word "ecology" is only a metaphor of love for the surrounding world and its Creator. This direction involves the most complex modern "environmental engineering", various "green technologies" and carries a number of traditionally close to religious consciousness, and some time ago professionally formulated in foreign architecture ideas: purity, harmony of forms, organic materials used, fusion of architecture with nature, the symbolic crown of which has always been the temple.
Traditional church architecture in Russia was environmentally friendly in its essence, it used durable, renewable and natural materials such as copper (often gilded), lead, stone, mica, wood, lime whitewash, clay plinth and brick, it assumed maximum energy savings and recycling of most building materials. Unconscious approaches to this direction have been outlined for a long time. So in 1900 Europe saw one of the first "eco-temples" - cut down according to the project of Ilya Bondarenko in the neo-Russian "northern style" from rough logs and the shingle-covered church of the Russian Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris. Semi-conscious "environmental premonitions" can be seen in some of the Old Believer churches of the Art Nouveau era and church buildings of Alexei Shchusev, a supporter of the ideas of Ebenezer Howard. To our great regret, all artistic searches in the mainstream of the ecclesiastical eco-architecture were interrupted by the revolution, before they could really begin. For decades, any development of Orthodox architecture could only take place in emigration, and some of the seemingly inconspicuous achievements of this period are of interest.
One of the favorite churches of Orthodox Parisians is the modest wooden church of St. Seraphim of Sarov on Lokurb Street, partially rebuilt in 1974 by architect Andrey Fedorov. Before that, he was a small church huddled in a former barrack in the courtyard of the dormitory of Russian students. This amazing temple was built in 1933 under the direction of Archpriest Demetrius Troitsky. Then, not having enough funds, in search of the simplest solution, unknown builders dared to take an unusual step, involuntarily ahead of the most daring ideas in modern eco-architecture. Decades earlier than Jean Nouvel and his colleagues, they incorporated elements of the biotic environment into the architecture, leaving two large living trees in the interior of the temple. One of them dried up over time, but its trunk was preserved during the rebuilding and looks like a magnificent sculptural column, the other is still growing, piercing the roof of the temple and blending perfectly with the unpainted plank walls and ceiling. Icon of St. Seraphima, fortified on the trunk, explains a lot, it points to the medieval Russian tradition of worshiping God - in the fusion of a man-made temple with a God-created temple, with nature. Flowers and tree branches look into the church windows from a small garden, fresh air flows through them and birdsong can be heard.
Of course, the leaves and flowers are not icons at all, with which windows were often laid in ancient monasteries, urging the brethren to contemplate the “spiritual sky”. But why give up these living stained glass windows? And is it worth it in a parish church to fence off the firmament, from dawn or dusk on the horizon, in which there is nothing earthly and sinful? People who are strong in faith will not be distracted by the sight of heavenly heights from prayer, but will help those who are weak or novice to concentrate, think about life and return their gaze to the altar again.
The construction of an ecological temple presupposes the widespread use of local, which means cheaper materials: wood, wild stone, earth concrete, etc. In it, “green” walls and a roof, covered with climbing plants for almost six months (in the climate of the middle zone) will be appropriate. The side facades of the church, designed in the form of a gulbishcha, can be partially or completely glazed, open to the surrounding nature or its “images” created in the churchyard: trees and bushes, flowers and grass, stones and water sources. All together they will make up a landscape architecture near the temple or interchangeable meditative compositions (winter, snow-ice, and others) in the spirit of "church-going land art", the idea of which is already in the air. As a starting point, we can take, say, the work of the Nikola-Lenivetsky Crafts artel and the “ecological installations” of the 2006-2009 Archstoyanie festivals (Nikolai Polissky, Vasily Shchetinin, Adrian Gese, etc.), but at the same time the game aesthetics should be replaced by a meaningful, "spiritual-ecological" one. A winter garden or a whole greenhouse can either adjoin the temple in the gulbische, or be located in its internal space, separated from the liturgical space: in the vestibule, in the side chapels. This inner “temple garden” with benches and fresh air will be a space of peace, inner prayer and relaxation for children, expectant mothers and elderly parishioners. Plants, bouquets of fresh or dried flowers, herbs, leaves should be selected throughout the year. The walls around this "green space" do not have to be completely covered with icons or traditional church frescoes. They can be decorated in the style of eco-design, they can be decorated with paintings or paintings depicting the "creations of the first days": heavenly forces, earth, water elements, plants and the most expensive earthly creatures dear to man - animals, birds, fish, butterflies … "Let every breath praise the Lord."
Without a doubt, in addition to the ecological, there are other, already well-established trends in modern church architecture, associated with the social service of the Church, national history, the memory of the saints and martyrs of the faith, with the creative development of the best world traditions of Orthodox church building. Their coexistence inevitably gives rise to architectural polystylistics, which at this stage can enrich Russian ecclesiastical architecture, help it find a new image of the temple and thereby take the long-awaited step forward: from a rather boring and internally powerless "retro-architecture" to a living and creative architecture.
Valery Baidin, culturologist, Doctor of Russian Philology (Normandy)
September 1-7, 2011, Moscow
