The genre of "progress report" seems to be becoming relevant again today. The recent crisis froze most of the projects, an effective manager Sobyanin took the place of Luzhkov, a lover of architecture, and the happy decade, during which, as Mikhail Khazanov put it, “architects slept on construction sites,” is over, which means now is the time to talk about how it was. About what the architects wanted and what came of it in the end.
Instead of humanism, Khazanov suggested talking about the role of chance, which plays a very important role in the history of architecture as well. By a case, an architect means the sum of some specific circumstances that made it possible to implement a particular project. The Russian 2000s, in his opinion, were rich in such circumstances, but "rationality was clearly inferior to the local flavor." If we apply Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase “medium is the message” to architectural discourse, it turns out that everything built during this period represents, rather, the social structure of our state and, possibly, its power, but not architecture. And it is all the more surprising, Khazanov believes, that against this background in Russia there are some striking works of architecture.
Mikhail Khazanova considers the complex of buildings of the Government of the Moscow Region to be one of the main projects implemented by his studio - the architect dwelled on the history of the creation of this object in as much detail as possible, sharing with the audience a lot of funny episodes. In particular, this project began with the fact that the developer company very diligently and hastily dug a foundation pit for the future complex, and later it turned out that this zeal had a very specific economic justification: the sand extracted from the bowels of the Moscow Region turned out to be very valuable and sold well. When the regional government found out about the additional income, the developer was replaced - it was "Kurortproekt", i.e. institute, within which there is a workshop of Khazanov. In Russian practice, a designer and a developer is rarely represented by one company, which ultimately significantly affects the result. The building turned out to be as close as possible to the project of the architects, in fact, because of the sand, the architect summed up.
But the project of a skyscraper for the Moscow government was not implemented - the situation changed, and then the Moscow City International Business Center was recognized as a town-planning mistake at all, and the project was abandoned, despite the fact that the foundation had already been filled. However, even here Khazanov had something to tell the audience. It all started with an international competition - as you know, foreigners usually win in competitions for such important objects, so Khazanova's workshop completed its project in English, and a driver was sent to represent him. The disguise was successful - the studio was shortlisted. And when the project won, it had to be approved by the main "architect" of the capital - an important urban planning decision was made by Mayor Luzhkov alone, which, in general, was then very characteristic of the urban planning situation.
The project of the cottage community "Gorki-11" was implemented in its original form, again due to subjective circumstances. This time thanks to geography. The village is located in Sochi and in order to make changes to the original project, the developer would have to travel to Moscow.“It was simply cheaper not to retreat from the project,” Khazanov throws up his hands.
But the village in Serebryany Bor was so unlucky. The original idea of the architects was that the cottages are combined into blocks, and their roofs form a single space that can be used for all kinds of social and sports functions. But, as it turned out, such humane collectivism is deeply alien to the inhabitants of the village: the roofs were instantly overgrown with gratings, built-on floors, glazed loggias. "Shanghai instead of modernism" is one of Mikhail Khazanov's favorite expressions, and, alas, it fits perfectly here.
These episodes are enough to understand why Mikhail Khazanov refused to talk about humanism. The real practice of architects in Russia is very far from this concept, and in such conditions, few people succeeded in making not shameful architecture. Khazanov's studio succeeded, but it is rather a happy exception to the rule, the architect himself believes.
