“… When Alexander Tamanyan turned his eyes from the two-headed Mount Ararat to the city, he felt sad. … Tamanyan thought that an unfortunate combination of bad Asia and bad Europe happened here."
Semyon Hecht. 1934
Already in the first years of the formation of modern Armenian architecture, active controversy was conducted on the pages of the daily press.
I mean the articles and letters of the late 1920s - early 1930s with attacks on Tamanyan by the opponents of Yerevan under construction - young, daring, talented architects - members of the Society of Proletarian Architects of Armenia. It was no coincidence that I recalled these old stories, since Andrei Ivanov's text contains, again, criticism of Tamanyan (but from the opposite flank - the constructivists accused Tamanyan of excessive attention to the old "bourgeois" architecture, Ivanov accuses Tamanyan of lack of attention to it). Tamanyan, as they say, is no stranger. Tamanyan's great legacy does not fade. But. Both then and now it is a question of the position of those who inherited this legacy and who, alas, having or not having the right to do so, disposes of it. Will not such a reassessment of values finally untie their hands?
Last year, the “Voice of Armenia” published my article entitled “The content and form of Yerevan. According to Tamanyan or against”, where I analyzed the urban history of modern Yerevan. The conclusion was that Tamanyan's national plan at various stages of the city's development (there were six stages of development in total) was repeatedly rebuilt, but at the last, current stage, all of Tamanyan's ideas were finally consigned to oblivion and distorted.
Andrei Ivanov, it seems, agrees with this, although he does not explicitly state this. He puts the question from a different angle - it is Tamanyan who is to blame for the current failures. Guilty, because he was indifferent to the buildings of old Erivan that existed before him, he laid the code for the destruction of its historical layers in the city, and the current city planners used this code. That is why such an unfortunate Northern Avenue (one of the two components of Ivanov's culturological research pair; the second component is Kond).
Tamanyan did not hide the fact that he would build a new city. An ideal city - both in form and in content. He appreciated the place: "… my opinion is that the current place of the city is very good and convenient …", but not the existing urban fabric: "… these parts (territories of the period of Persian rule - KB) are devoid of the appearance of a city, streets cannot be called streets in the European sense …”(A. Tamanyan. Report to the general plan of Yerevan, 1924).
The palimpsest principle (a term that means erasing text from old parchments and applying a new one, is used by Ivanov in relation to an urban environment) is a tradition of Christian modeling of spaces. In the history of Armenia, the only case of preservation of an ancient building is known, based on the value of architecture - an ancient temple in Garni; the rest of the pre-Christian cultural layers were destroyed (modern archaeologists are excavating them). Tamanyan used the “palimpsest principle” where the “inscriptions” (buildings) were completely erased and could not be read.
Tamanyan combined the new street grid with the existing regular system of the 19th century. Preserved on the plan of the church. His attitude to antiquities is based on the Renaissance tradition: excavations of Roman hills have revealed examples of ancient architecture, which formed the basis of the architecture of the Renaissance. Ani is an Armenian Rome. Tamanyan was at Ani's excavations and used the samples of her architecture by the same analogy.
It is strange for me to think that Tamanyan can seem provincial. That he grew up in a small Yekaterinodar, practically a new city, and he was not familiar with the concept of the historical environment, its values (when he found himself in Erivan in 1919, he did not see the charm of the city). Pardon me, but this turns out to be a kind of Freudianism - did he want to destroy the old Erivan, as it reminded him of his provincial homeland? (Tamanyan certainly did not suffer from the Bolshevik syndrome of breaking the old world). In this case, what in the work of, for example, Saryan is a consequence of his origin from the neighboring Nakhichevan-on-Don, also devoid of a great history? Innovation?
Tamanyan was a metropolitan man. He began his career as an architect on Nevsky Prospect. In the second Russian capital, for the educated oligarch, Prince S. A. Shcherbatov, he built a tenement house with the owner's apartment (first penthouse) (First Prize and Gold Medal of the Moscow City Council in 1914).
He, they were building a new Armenia. New in essence and in form. On the empty place. With a minimal surviving population, in the absence of specialists, in a state of war. And it was necessary to create a city that would connect 3000 years of the previous national history with the subsequent ones. As an architect, he was looking for a solution. “The academician experienced the feeling of a man who found his homeland and saw that it was rising from the dust. He liked to talk about this feeling always and everywhere … . (S. Hecht).
No one will argue that this or that phenomenon should be evaluated in the context of time. In urban planning at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were no modern concepts of environmental design, postmodernism. The so-called garden-cities (the invention of the Englishman E. Howard, which became widespread in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century) were the most environmental urban model of that time.
The development of large cities took place according to the principles that were laid down in the Baroque era in Rome and classicism in Paris. The metropolitan city planning of St. Petersburg was also based on these principles. Tamanyan combined both principles - very different in essence - in the general plan of Yerevan. He did it masterly, and was able to answer many questions (or, as we now say, challenges).
Planning, connecting the city with a certain part of the existing, old city, but most importantly - with the relief, with the natural environment. Ideological, having managed to create an attractive spatial model for the entire nation, into which the national symbol - Mount Ararat is an integral part. Finally, he brilliantly solved the artistic task of the new city, in which two of his masterpieces are inscribed in perfectly planned spaces, which have become tuning forks of architectural skill.
Tamanyan's urban planning is ambivalent, since he himself was ambivalent (just like any outstanding person is ambivalent).
Creating the architecture of Armenia, he combined the classical with the national. He is a reformer and a traditionalist at the same time. Constantly combining two different, sometimes contradictory concepts, he invariably sought something new.
Is there a lot or a little Tamanyan in Yerevan? Tamanyan and Yerevan are synonyms. And therefore, everything that happens in the city happens "according to Tamanyan, or against." But it is always not too late to understand and return to Tamanyan. And there is absolutely nothing tragic in this. National urban planning, which he created on the example of Yerevan, is outstanding that has value for the entire development of the profession. World architecture has not yet appreciated this at its true worth. Undoubtedly he was a great man.
I repeat myself: “Tamanyan is the main hero of the nation in the 20th century. The plan of Yerevan and the people of Yerevan (the intellect of Yerevan) are the main achievements of the Armenians in the twentieth century."
It would hardly be fair to reduce the dictates of one planning system over another to national hypocrisy. Although the reproach for the lack of dialogue seems to be fair.
The presence of two oppositions has always been central to the culture of Armenia. "Two forces, two opposing principles, crossing, intertwining and merging into something new, united, guided the life of Armenia and created the character of its people for millennia: the beginning of the West and the beginning of the East, the spirit of Europe and the spirit of Asia." (V. Brusov. Poetry of Armenia. 1916). The best example is the capital of Ani, where a new international architectural language of the European Middle Ages was also formed (I. Strzhigovsky, 1918).
Tamanyan categorically rejected the international style of the constructivists. Nevertheless, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the confrontation between the two styles, which took the form of a tough but dialogue, led to the culmination of the mid-1930s - the creation of a new architectural language (I call it the rational and decorative language of modern Armenian architecture). The obvious features of the new style are captured on the facades of a cinema, a department store, the NKVD building, the Sevan hotel, wine cellars and, finally, the Opera.
However, this was the latest manifestation of the model of ambivalence and creative dialogue. The destruction of the mechanism of duality (ambivalence) and the gradual replacement by mono-ethnic uniformity, became one of the consequences of genocide, and then Stalinism. Accordingly, dialogism began to disappear in culture. And even if there were two oppositions - the national city - the totalitarian city, they coexisted, but opposed to each other. Reverse ambivalence.
By the end of the 30s, the situation finally straightened out - they were accused of nationalism - Tamanyan (before his death), Buniatyan (arrested). Constructivists Kochar, Mazmanyan and Yerkanyan were repressed. Baev and Chisliev were thrown to the periphery of the creative process. Khalpakhchian, Yaralov, Tokarsky left Armenia. (All these architects received professional education in Russia).
The main positions were in the hands of graduates of the local faculty of architecture, who called themselves "Tamanyan's school" (the only exception was R. Israelyan, who was educated in Leningrad, but he was tightly "hidden" in an industrial institute).
I am ready to assert that the Second Republic - the Armenian SSR - represents two separate political concepts, the Rubicon for which was 1937. The period before 1937 is socialist Armenia, which in its national priorities largely inherits the ideas of the independent First Republic.
Tamanyan's master plan is one of the most important among these ideas. The period after 1937 was Stalin's Armenia, in which all the national ideas and forms that had formed were uprooted. The general plan of Yerevan of the post-Tamanyan two decades is evidence of this. Resistance to Stalinism began in the 60s, which led to the consolidation of national identity in 1965 and 1988. So, with a certain degree of admissibility, we can assume that the current republic is the Fourth.
The breakthrough of the 60s was based on the opposition global (modernism) - national. But there was no internal dialogue - the leaders of the "school" who had retreated for a while took revenge. Armenian modernism was stifled and today is practically destroyed physically. The trend of like-mindedness, lack of dialogue exists even now; this led to a truly profound crisis in the profession.
Attempts to establish a dialogue between profession and power emerged in the early 1980s. The emerging issues of the ecology of the natural and cultural environment provoked alternative actions.
We managed to “evaluate” the 19th century (“black houses”) by the piece (M. Gasparyan, L. Vardanyan) and extend the security function to them. To carry out zoning of the historical layers (Artem Grigoryan) and try to split the “hardened nut … of big-mouthed Babylonian curves …” (O. Mandelstam) of this place in some competitive projects of Northern Avenue; or to play out the plot proposed by Ivanov using the example of the Sari-tag enclave (L. Davtyan), the same Kond (A. Azatyan (Nunuparov), O. Gurdzhinyan). To create a theoretical and applied model of the organization of the city landscape (Artsvin Grigoryan). On the basis of individual design solutions, mainly developed in the workshop of Spartak Kntekhtsyan, your humble servant has written a concept of coexistence of old and new urban planning ("Old Yerevan in new Yerevan"). Everything was crossed out.
I think that few people now remember these facts of recent history, most likely there is no such information on the Internet. I am not citing them in order to find gaps in A. Ivanov's awareness. He managed to learn a lot and, most importantly, to see a lot in the real situation in Yerevan. His movement to Kond is understandable. There is more authenticity there than in the hordes of multi-storey buildings that surrounded the city. There are so many of them, they are not large-scale, but for some reason they seem small. Awkward, mediocre, devoid of architecture. A similar plot has long existed in Cond.
A Dvina bookcase climbed onto Kond. Kond and Dvin are examples of reverse ambivalence. "Dvin" bulldozer is trying to demolish Kond. How the real bulldozer demolished the nearby house of Israelian (the appeal of the newspaper and residents to the mayor was postponed for a year and a half - until the arrival of the new mayor (previous) and the new chief architect (current).
The architecture is complex. "Dvin" is big, but not so big - and crushed the whole hill. And the Charles Aznavour Museum is small - and he also crushed the hill. Isn't that why Ivanov is so comfortable in the courtyard of the Parajanov Museum, where he could hide from the monsters of high-rise buildings? But this architecture is not a panacea either. The atmosphere of the museum is created not by the props of the never existing "old" houses of Dzoragyukh, but by the great Parajanov himself and the guardian of his heritage Zaven Sargsyan. Between them live connection and walls have nothing to do with it.
In the end, I will pose a question to which I myself do not know the answer.
What would be better - not to build the Northern Avenue at all, or to build it as it is now. I have no doubts about the intrinsic value of Tamanyan's idea, I have written a lot about this and will not repeat myself. But I have no doubts that Northern Avenue was designed in a hurry and in the worst way. But what would have happened in his place, what a multi-storey nonsense - I do not have enough imagination for this.
The situation is almost hopeless. And I would not have written this text if I had not felt an even greater threat that everything would not be "according to Tamanyan, but against."
In my own archive, I found an article that I wrote in 1987. It is related to the topic of our conversation. The article was titled “There is no need to destroy anything” (the topic of the conversation was precisely the problem of the organic inclusion of a genuine historical environment in a developing city). Today I say differently - there is no need to build anything.
I repeat my call - let's stop, let's wait, to lose the skill to create mediocrity, the skill of destruction.
We really need to get back to understanding the integrity of the environment. And modeling it from the standpoint of today's development of the profession in a civilized society. Go to a completely new design system. We need to turn ourselves around and turn the tide. Change the attitude towards the city as something valuable, but not as a mere opportunity to extract value. Let's try to start a dialogue?
Karen Balyan, Professor of MAAM
P. S. Over the past few days, important events have taken place related to the above problems. According to press reports, on behalf of the President of Armenia, the Prime Minister met with several architects. Among them were those who more than once expressed their concern about egregious mistakes in urban planning. The attention of the country's top leadership to the very difficult problems of urban planning has been expected for a long time, and it (the manifestation of this attention, the manifestation of political will) now gives hope that the situation will finally begin to improve.
Perhaps this is the beginning of a dialogue?
In this case, I hasten to express myself more specifically. Namely: taking on the analysis of the existing state of urban planning in the capital, restoring the list of its monuments, approach the issue not from well-known academic positions, but from the positions of the prevailing realities. Namely: the list of architectural values of Yerevan must contain at least three sections.
The first section - monuments that should be preserved and should not be damaged in the future (disfigured, destroyed, moved, etc.). I speak in general terms and deliberately avoid professional terms, without going into the details of the mechanisms of protection of monuments that are known to specialists.
The second section is the monuments to be restored. First of all, these are the most valuable buildings, which played an important role in shaping the image of the city. These include the summer hall of the Moskva cinema, the Sevan hotel, a tribune in the square, the Poplavok cafe, and the Youth House. The questions of “Old Yerevan” or, more precisely, “Erivan in Yerevan” are undoubtedly in the same context.
The third section - monuments of urban planning, such as Ring Boulevard, Abovyan Street, Main Avenue and spaces around monuments, like Opera, which must be cleared of architectural debris (by analogy with space). Those. the process that started on st. Abovyan, should be developed in other areas.
According to the complexity of the solution, the three sections are arranged in ascending order. Obviously, in solving each specific case, a contradiction arises between the interests of the city and individual owners (as in the example of the transfer of pavilions from Abovyan St.). This is the result of many years of connivance with the city and for the sake of private individuals. However, if “the process has begun,” then firm guarantees in the form of special decisions are needed for its implementation (ideally, this is a law for the capital, and it should also be developed). Decisions that reinforce the designated political will.
