An unprepared person in the gigantic hangar space of Crocus Expo is simply obliged to fall into a delighted stupor, looking at the abundance of what can be used to create a country house (and, most importantly, what to fill it with). True, this has about the same relation to the construction of a dacha in the national sense, as the medical manipulations from Tatyana Malysheva's TV show "Living is Healthy" - to the district clinic: it is unlikely to undergo medical treatment, but it is fascinating to watch. Beams, stone, screw piles, stairs, windows, ceilings, floors, heating and water supply systems, Venetian plaster, English brick, Italian fabrics. As a bonus - Iranian carpets, paintings with views of Venice, a wrought-iron hanger with a wrought-iron coat and a hat (adorns the booth of the art forging company), artificial sakura and friendly (as it is written for the doubters - Friendly Footstools) footrests in the form of fur bears.
At the entrance, visitors are greeted by the largest and most expensive stands that instantly reveal the stylistic contrast of the exposition: on the one hand, a gothic gazebo and rocaille sofas, and on the other, fabrics and ottomans from Karim Rashid. And I must say that historicism and the avant-garde get along well within the concept of "luxury"; do not contradict each other at all.
The architectural part of the exhibition itself is called the "Russian Architectural Salon", is located in the central part of the hall, and consists of three to four dozen pavilions of architectural bureaus. Having passed the large-scale propylae of commercial stands, the visitor discovers the first three, status architectural stands. Among them there is only one architect - Oleg Karlson, who placed his works on a light, diagonally oriented structure in the spirit of Melnikov. And two public organizations: the Russian and Moscow unions of architects. And nearby, in the second row of the architectural exposition, is the stand of the Moscow Architectural Institute. These three stands are fully fulfilling their task - to raise the status of the exhibition due to the effect of the presence of respected institutions. Although the feeling leaves a strange, as if their architectural idea soars prohibitively far from the mundane theme of building country houses. For example, on the website of the Union of Moscow Architects, projects of a competition for a floating fort hotel for the complex of forts of Kronstadt, the Volokolamskaya metro station and the restoration of the Lobanov-Rostovsky estate (Myasnitskaya, 43, p. 1) are presented. The laconic stand-bar of the Union of Architects of Russia is decorated on one long side with projects by the DNA bureau, and on the other - by Designus. These are good works, but it remains unclear why the Union exhibited them, and no explanations can be found. Moscow Architectural Institute showed a selection of the best term papers of sophomore students on the theme "House of Superior Comfort", some of them touchingly drawn by hand.
Moving on, you can discover a lot of interesting things. I must say that the number of commercial stands bought out by architectural workshops at this exhibition is greater than at Zodchestvo, and it seems even more than at the last spring Arch Moscow. This is quite understandable: for the heroes of "big" architecture, the designers of the so-called "boxes", participation in any exhibition is a purely image-building step, more important for self-esteem than for business. And at such exhibitions as "Beautiful Houses", architects may well find customers. Some of them even hand out brochures of their workshops to visitors passing by. Consequently, the cut is also representative - it demonstrates both market trends and style trends.
It must be said that taste preferences in private architecture were divided approximately in half between romantic historicism (from classics and gothic to modern) and modernism. There are workshops that show only modernist houses close to the European mainstream (these are the already mentioned DNA, Designus, A + A or Archduet), there are those who show good modernism along with equally high-quality stylizations (for example, projects by Ilya Economov, bureau Knowhouse or Oleg Karlson's workshop). Finally, there are architects who are wholly and completely specialized in the classic historicized embodiment of luxury. The architectural studio "Attache" showed, for example, the Novo-Istrinsky Peterhof, which bypassed the entire Internet (until it was erased from Google maps). Even social buildings sometimes look like castles: for example, a huge render of a red-brick house in a pseudo-Gothic style (with arches, towers and a fountain in the courtyard) turned out to be a project of a house for the Sorokin family with many children from the village of Aksai, Rostov Region (architect - Tamara Bolshakova), raising 52 foster children child.
Separately, it must be said about wooden houses. The fact that many bureaus specialize in their design warms the soul, but most of the projects are similar as twins and are somewhere between the Ropetov tower and the Alpine chalet. On the other hand, the commercial stands surrounding the architecture demonstrate an ardent commitment to wood: house suppliers from cylindrical log cabins and glued beams are building two-story pavilions, wooden tables and benches. All of this is at first shocking in scale, and then disappointing with technogenic monotony - too cylindrical, too smooth, although, probably, of high quality. Something warmer and more soulful (and wood is a very warm material that requires proper handling) is rare, and above all where the authors are inspired by Art Nouveau and Abramtsev: for example, among the works of the company "Traditional Carpentry Technologies". Amid the abundance of commercial wood, the stand of the Common Deal Foundation, a charitable project for the restoration of wooden churches in the Russian North, suddenly appears.
The architectural part of the exposition continues with a viewing competition, the stands of which, like the stands of most competitions at most exhibitions, are nestled in a dark corner on the right. Participants of the competition are awarded the Russian National Prize in the field of low-rise cottage construction, its laureates were announced on the opening day of the exhibition.
This time, the jury awarded the first prize for the construction ("house archproject") to the architect Goltsev for the estate he built in the south-west of Moscow. Alexandra Fyodorova's bureau received the first prize ("house of the architectural object") for the project of a villa in Sochi. The main prize for the realized interior ("interior archobject") went to the St. Petersburg bureau "A-Len" for the project of a private house in Sestroretsk, for the interior project ("interior archproject") Tamara Nikitina was awarded with the idea of "studio apartment for a bachelor".
