The website of the Moscow Architecture Biennale has published a curatorial manifesto preceding the exhibition, which will be held at the Central House of Artists from May 23 to June 7, 2012. Bart Goldhoorn formulated the theme of the Biennale this year as “Identities”. “Compared to the past, the possibilities for choosing one's own identity have become much greater, especially in recent decades with their revolutionary changes. In their works, architects and designers have established a certain identity for themselves. And now, perhaps, it's time to take a step back, look from the outside and compare these works with each other, compare them with the works of architects from other countries and other times. And it is possible to draw some lessons from this,”explains the curator. In the hall of the Central House of Artists, Goldhoorn promises to deploy a program exhibition that meets the theme at the level of individual architectural creativity, it will be called "Identification". However, the list of personalities-participants is still in the process of approval, as well as the program of the Biennale itself, the portal "Archplatform" reports.
Aleksey Muratov, editor-in-chief of Project Russia magazine, meanwhile, gave his forecast for 2012, compiling for Afisha a list of 10 phenomena in the field of architecture and urbanism, which it makes sense to follow over the next year. Among the projects named are "Big Moscow", Skolkovo, park and public spaces of the capital, new educational programs in the field of architecture and urbanism, the Venice and Moscow Architecture Biennale.
The situation around the reconstruction of the capital's "Children's World" is gaining momentum every day. On January 12, Hals-Development OJSC officially announced that the state of the building's building structures "poses a danger to the stay of people." On January 16, the fate of Detsky Mir was discussed at a special meeting of the Commission for the Preservation and Development of National Culture of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation. It was attended by representatives of Hals-Development, experts, coordinators of Arkhnadzor and VOOPIK activists. After the meeting, coordinator Natalya Samover told the press that the expert engineers had denied the allegations of the building's accident rate. The result of the discussion on January 16 was an appeal by the Commission of the Public Chamber for Culture to Mayor Sobyanin with a call to suspend construction work and correct the subject of protection of the "Children's World" (the idea to change the subject of protection of the building was put forward in December by Professor Andrei Batalov; now the subject of protection adopted by Mayor Luzhkov is in effect, according to which not a single genuine element of the Detsky Mir building is protected by law - only the architectural design of the facades, dimensions, etc. are subject to protection (see the full list here) On January 18, Arhnadzor appealed to Prime Minister Putin, urging him to intervene in the situation and "to give instructions on the immediate suspension of work on the dismantling of the Detsky Mir building and on the creation of a conciliation commission."
In turn, the developer stepped up the activities of the Parents' Committee, which he created back in the fall, which included directors, poets, writers and only one local historian Mikhail Korobko. The next day after the meeting in the Public Chamber, the developer held a meeting of the Parents' Committee at the RIA Novosti press center, the heads of which, director Boris Grachevsky and actress Tatyana Vedeneeva, called for an end to the disputes over Detsky Mir and turn it into an "ultramodern building."However, two days after this meeting, the editor of the Novaya Yunost magazine, Gleb Shulpyakov, announced his resignation from the Parents' Committee, calling it in his LiveJournal "a banal screen" for the actions of a developer destroying a historic building in the center of Moscow. Later, Gleb Shulpyakov explained his position in more detail to Moskovskiye Novosti. He proposed to completely recreate the old atrium of a department store with a carousel, entrusting this business (including the choice between reconstruction and restoration) to expert specialists, and to make a banal shopping mall on the upper floors. On the same day and in the same publication, the well-known journalist Tatyana Malkina wrote a heartfelt, albeit hopeless, requiem farewell to Children's World, calling it hopelessly lost. It got to the city rights defenders (in the sense that it was necessary to make noise earlier - although for the sake of fairness we will note that they made noise before, and for a very long time, from the very beginning), and developers.
The fate of the famous museum-estate "Arkhangelskoye", which lost 21 hectares of its territory in the course of a dubious transaction, was to be decided on January 19 in the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region. However, the hearing was postponed for a week. According to the Vesti-Moscow TV channel, the judge took a week-long break at the request of the new owner of the site, Gradostroy LLC, who is ready to conduct an additional examination of the documentation at his own expense. Another long-suffering cultural object is the House of Stage Veterans named after M. G. Savina - in the near future should be transferred to the balance of the city, reports Fontanka. Ru.
The last important event of the week was a press report that Prime Minister Putin invited Mayor Sobyanin to consider creating a park on the site of the demolished Rossiya hotel. On the same day, the idea was supported by Mikhail Posokhin, and the chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, promised to announce an open competition next week for the development of a project for the location of a park zone in Zaryadye. The idea of the park was supported by Arkhnadzor, and the Afisha magazine learned the opinion of the architect and teacher of the Moscow Architectural Institute Nikita Tokarev, and the young architect Victoria Kudryavtseva, last year's student at the Strelka Institute, whose graduation project was devoted to possible options for the development of Moscow Zaryadye. And Grigory Revzin commented on the idea of creating a park for Forbes magazine. A well-known architectural critic supported the idea of creating a park, but noted that the park may be a temporary solution, since you can always build something in its place.
At the end of the review - a story about the essays "Objects of leisure and recreation of the era of stagnation", published on the pages of the magazine "Afisha" and dedicated to the most notable buildings of Soviet modernism. The first collection of articles tells about the Gorky Moscow Art Theater, the Natalya Sats Musical Theater, Durov's Corner and the former AZLK House of Culture. Employees of these institutions and metropolitan designers express their opinion about the pros and cons of these buildings, their convenience and architectural solution. "A chaotic accumulation of defenseless round boxes" - this is how, for example, the architect Ilya Mukosey described the building of "Durov's corner". In the second part: the Lenin Museum in Gorki, the ZIL Palace of Culture, the Glinka Museum and the Baku cinema.