The design of the exposition of the Russian pavilion was a secret until the day of its opening. In early August, curators Sergei Kuznetsov and Sergei Tchoban and the pavilion commissioner Grigory Revzin told reporters that they were planning to show the projects of the Skolkovo innovation city at the Biennale, but they mysteriously kept silent about how exactly this would be done, saying only that the exposition would be "very unexpected" … Now the secret is finally revealed and the result is available for inspection.
The main exposition of the pavilion is based on QR codes (quick-read, quick response, two-dimensional barcodes) - square graphic images that are now actively used to encrypt any information, from railway ticket numbers to information about the history of Moscow streets. However, in the pavilion's exposition, these QR codes are not used in the usual way: they are used to compose the walls and ceilings of the side halls, and even a dome with an occulus in the central hall. Similar codes are also applied to the mirrored floor. Behind the wall panels there are lamps that smoothly turn on and off, either denoting individual squares, then lighting up entirely - then the walls begin to glow with a soft light, and the lattice of codes looks especially delicate.
The rest of the halls are completely empty, but everyone who comes in is given tablets: they need to aim at any square of the wall, then press a button and look at the tablet information about one of the exhibitors. It shows: information about the competition for the master plan of the innovation city, the master plans of the districts made by their star curators, as well as the results of the recent competition for housing in the Technopark quarter.
The tablets perfectly distinguish the difference between the squares and each of them gives information about "its" project. But the human eye does not catch the difference between the code pictures, and therefore viewing the exhibition either turns out to be somewhat chaotic (which square you got, that project was looked at), or it requires remarkable stubbornness: you can, obeying machine logic, consistently look square by square. However, you can look from the other side: the search for information turns into an exciting game "find a project" (the architect Yuri Grigoryan at the opening was looking for his own for a long time, and it seems unsuccessful).
But the point of the exposition, of course, is not to get acquainted with the Skolkovo projects - they are known, besides, those who enter are presented with a badge with a QR code, in which it is encrypted
the address of a special website made especially for the exhibition. On the site, all projects are presented in a more familiar form. The essence of the exhibition is that it shows the future architecture of Skolkovo in an innovative digital way, while simultaneously immersing the viewer in a technological shell, forcing them to interact with it through technical devices. On the sidelines more than once they remembered about the "Lawnmower".
The image of the interior (the authors of the exposition: curator - Sergei Tchoban, co-curators - Sergei Kuznetsov, Valeria Kashirina (nps tchoban voss)) turned out to be strong - it is worth entering the pavilion just to feel the effect of the mesh domed space. It's like being inside a science fiction movie about a spaceship, but not a modern one (where ships are more often similar to the projects of Zaha Hadid), but some fantasy of the 1970s or even rather 1930s.
The decision must be recognized as characteristic of the SPEECH bureau, which is not alien to ornaments and classical motives. The architects turned a completely applied form of the QR code into a report of a geometric ornament, into openwork modules, and built from these modules a very rigid grid-scheme of a classic symmetrical interior with a dome in the center. Thus, being inside, a person is, on the one hand, surrounded by a working interactive network of codes, a kind of info-sphere. On the other hand, the constituent parts of the infosphere are treated as part of a decorative carpet, which could exist outside the information context as a simple decoration.
If the curator of the Biennale, David Chipperfield, urges to look for connections and roots in his manifesto, then we can say that in the pavilion of SPEECH architects a connection has been found between modern technologies and classical form. If we talk about the saturation of architecture with meaning, then here, just like in Chipperfield's manifestos, several layers are found in addition to the main and already named one (an innovative shell for showing the architecture of an innovation city). In particular, it is well known that in ancient societies, ornament was part of the ritual and was endowed with a magical meaning; then he became a decoration; then "crime." Now one of its varieties has been made a graphic code, that is, endowed with a well-defined digital meaning, although it continues to be beautiful.
I must say that the idea of using the beauty of the points of the QR code endowed with informational meaning is not new, they are found in architectural projects more and more since the time this technology became widespread. Codes have already been used as on facades (for example,
N Building in Tokyo, built by the TERADADESIGN bureau or the Teletek call center in Dijon by MVDRV) and in the interiors. So SPEECH in this case fit into the framework of a developing (and quite relevant due to its electronic and innovative nature) topic. But we went further: we did not just decorate the walls with coded ciphers, but turned the code itself into a shell, blinding this shell according to archetypal architectural laws - you cannot count the latter as a computer, but a person can feel them, being under the mesh pantheon-shaped dome of the pavilion, counting the cultural patterns of the historical tradition (which, by the way, is also often reminded of by curator David Chipperfield as an important variety of common ground-a).
The first floor of the Russian pavilion shows the symbolic prehistory of Skolkovo: Soviet science cities, 37 declassified cities out of 62 that existed in the 1990s. The two halls are built like a kind of black (from the inside) "box" cut through with luminous circular holes that glow like stars and are reflected in the mirrored floor. Through the larger holes at eye level, you can view images of old science cities enlarged with lenses and read explanations. According to the pavilion commissioner Grigory Revzin, the spectators in these halls are like foreign spies of the post-war period, spying on Soviet builders of nuclear submarines and missiles - science cities, as you know, were mainly engaged in weapons. However, monuments to rockets in greenish pictures behind convex lenses do not look scary at all, like old newspapers. And somehow you don't really feel like a spy, but rather, you start to empathize with Soviet scientists with their magnifiers, drawing boards and other prehistoric tools, forced to create their innovations literally on their knees. It is assumed that everything will be different in Skolkovo. Well, wait and see.
NB: The Russian Pavilion received a special mention (special prize) of the Venice Biennale with the wording “for a dialectical approach to the Russian past, present and future, which turns spectators into a kind of electronic spies. The jury plunged into his magical mystery and was carried away by its visual presentation."
