Moscow has been celebrating the 125th anniversary of Le Corbusier for two weeks already: an exhibition has been opened at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, a catalog has been published, and the book of the curator of this exhibition, the historian of avant-garde architecture Jean-Louis Cohen, "Le Corbusier and the mystic of the USSR" has been republished in Russian. The apotheosis of the celebration was the display of the interiors of the Tsentrosoyuz house (the only building designed by Le Corbusier in Russia), which took place on October 6, on the master's birthday.
The tour was led in Russian by critic Elena Gonzalez, in French by Jean-Louis Cohen. Later, there, in the auditorium of the club hall of Tsentrosoyuz, he gave a lecture in good Russian about the building - captivatingly telling about the customer of the project Isidor Lyubimov, whom Corbusier called "a man who loves architecture", who started this house as chairman of Tsentrosoyuz, and completed the construction 1936 already for the People's Commissariat of Light Industry. And about a unique letter from Russian architects, colleagues and competitors who, after the third competition, called upon, to the detriment of their own competitive proposals, to support Corbusier's project: “We welcome the idea of entrusting the final design of the House of Tsentrosoyuz to the architect Le Corbusier, since we believe that the building he built will brightly and adequately represent the latest architectural ideas. " A few days later, Ginzburg and Vesnin joined the call - a rare if not unique example of supporting a rival architect to develop his innovative ideas.
The building of the Tsentrosoyuz really turned out to be important in Corbusier's career: for him it was the first house of this magnitude. Here the idea of a “house on legs” was developed and became the key idea, opening the basement for parking or public space; pedestrian ramps instead of stairs; giant glass walls enclosing the internal structures of the building, almost without touching the floor ceilings. Here Corbusier came up with the idea of the so-called "precise breathing": to heat and cool giant stained-glass windows in the Russian climate, the architect planned to make double glass: outside there are metal frames, inside they are wooden - so that hot air circulates between the glasses in winter and cold in summer. The idea was immediately criticized by American engineers, to whom Corbusier turned for help (his letter to them says: "… we need to win the game in Moscow"). Americans recognized the idea as costly, requiring four times as much steam as a conventional heating system, and perhaps unable to quickly remove unpleasant odors from a building.
But the history of the house of Tsentrosoyuz is known not only for these classic things for the history of the avant-garde. She, as Elena Gonzalez rightly noted at the very beginning of her story, reflects the modern realities of our architecture in a mirror. Three stages of the competition with a muddy organization, voluntaristic decisions and constant (but not heard) calls from architects to make the selection process transparent, and the jury's decision must be implemented. Foreign "star" Corbusier, warmly and enthusiastically received, lecturing, extremely influential - and expelled shortly after the start of construction. The money for Corbusier's work was paid in 1938 - and then thanks to the mediation of his ideological opponent and rival in the competition for the Palace of Soviets Boris Iofan. Corbusier last saw the construction site in 1930, when the foundations were barely laid in the building of the Tsentrosoyuz. Then Nikolai Kolli and Pavel Nakhman from the architectural workshop of the Tsentrosoyuz proper were engaged in architectural supervision.
And therefore, when looking at the interior, in general, it is difficult to say what we are looking at - at the work of Corbusier, Collie or Nachman. The master's ideas are bizarrely superimposed on the capabilities of the builders of the early 1930s (concrete, cast by hand, unevenly, and probably with great difficulty), as well as on the results of subsequent restructuring of the "office building" (as Jean-Louis Cohen calls it in the NEP style).
In addition, the examination of these interiors turns into a process of isolating genuine historical elements from the mass of alterations, a retrospective process and therefore paradoxical for the avant-garde, obsessed with progress and novelty. Frankly speaking, our joy at the discovery of genuine wooden railings or preserved "30 percent" of the planking of the ramps has little to do with a futuristic impulse into the future. This feeling of the historian, who discovered a genuine fragment of an old building among the mass of layers, equates the avant-garde with any other period, even the 19th century, even the 14th. You can also look at it with different eyes: a convinced follower who finds in the building the grains of modernity. Cohen looks more like a historian - he shows the surviving drawings of glass stained-glass windows and, right from the pulpit, scolds the modern owners of the building as idiots for installing double-glazed windows (however, this was not the first replacement of stained glass windows, after the war the glazing was made according to the project of Leonid Pavlov; Cohen had no complaints).
You can look at this building with the eyes of the enemy, see in it a terrible flat box, built, moreover, extremely sloppy and after the war multiplied in many Soviet institutions and hotels, similar to twins and equally uncomfortable. Before the start of the exhibition, Grigory Revzin wrote: "We live at the Corbusier exhibition," and this article touched off - the local historian Sergei Nikitin immediately after Cohen's speech said "he threw it to us like a bone, we will discuss it." And Cohen, in turn, began the preface to the Russian edition of the book with a remark about "neo-traditionalists." It is noticeable that passions have not subsided and Corbusier remains a stumbling block, while Melnikov, for example, has for some time turned into a beloved good grandfather.
So, if from the outside the building, especially from the Myasnitskaya side, looks somewhat frightening and does not at all resemble shiny glass in a precious violet frame, as Corbusier imagined it, then a slightly different Corbusier is found in the interiors. In contrast to the rigid simplicity of the plate bodies, there is a subtly orchestrated, albeit malfunctioning, spatial intrigue. Those entering from the side of Sakharov Avenue (now there is the main entrance, although according to the design the main entrance was with Myasnitskaya), they are greeted by a spacious and very high lobby, filled with thin round pillars (Corbusier did not like when his pillars were called columns, although they are certainly similar). The theme was then developed in Chandigarh - says Cohen.
The impression produced by these thin columns of arbitrary height brings to mind the Constantinople underground cisterns in Istanbul. With one difference - the hall is illuminated from two sides by giant stained-glass windows (for the beginning of the 1930s in Russia - supernaturally large, our constructivists were much more modest in their spending), and its ceiling, lined with wide caissons, smoothly rises up - a form that makes you remember about Montreal Pavilion 1967. Above the lobby is the auditorium of the club part and the rise of the ceiling is justified by the fact that the tiers of the amphitheater also rise on the second floor.
According to Corbusier's idea, those who entered were supposed to climb the ramp, but there was not enough space and the first fragment was replaced with a staircase (now modern lifts for the disabled are attached to these stairs). Then, during the construction, the drawings did not agree and I had to insert another piece of the staircase - to the left and right of it, like large folded ears, two ramps move to the sides, which then return and close above the stairs, forming a strange stylized letter "Ж"."For Corbusier, the ramps were very important, firstly, he considered walking along them more economical, and besides, the perception of space when walking on a ramp is completely different, according to Corbusier, the ramps should organize a kind of" architectural walk "inside the building" - says Jean-Louis Cohen.
Now the thin ramps hanging over the lobby, touchingly clinging to the supports, look more like an architectural toy than a means of optimal transportation for employees "in galoshes and fur coats covered with snow." A business man will hurry up the stairs and only an architectural historian will stroll along the inclined paths, touching in awe the curved railing of light oak and enjoying the ever-changing perspective.
In contrast to the straightness of the three main plates, the protagonists of the interior are spiral curvilinear shapes: starting from a small genuine staircase in the corner of the lobby and ending with the main spatial attraction - two “ramp towers”: the inclined paths are twisted in a horseshoe-like manner and placed inside rounded volumes attached to flat facades from the outside and many of them animate. The ramps are well preserved: wood paneling, black rubber floor, beautiful polished handrails from the same light oak. From below, the stucco spiral is mesmerizing, the daylight of a large stained-glass window is mixed with electric from the corridors, it turns out enchanting, and sculptural, and picturesque. It is impossible to believe, all this is only for the sake of optimal movement of employees, there is some kind of slyness in this explanation.
The image of the interior, as far as it can be composed from the surviving fragments, does not go well with its role as a proclamation of new architecture. That is, he, of course, was and remains, being not even fully realized and subsequently spoiled. But this is obvious from books, but the feeling that arises when in contact with the remnants of a grandiose plan is completely different. From the inside, the building looks like an expensive and complicated toy (by the way, all late additions seem to be cheaper).
It is difficult to imagine a commissar in a leather jacket here; the house is more suitable for a co-worker in heels and in a fashionable hat, cautiously jumping into a German paternoster-type elevator, so nicknamed for the non-stop movement between floors. Remnants of the building's material culture speak of it as expensive and meticulously finished - perhaps somewhere even against the wishes of Corbusier. He seriously wanted to build a new building of the new world (his colleagues, Russian architects who signed a letter in defense of the project thought about the same), and People's Commissar Lyubimov dreamed of a penthouse on the roof (like Nikolai Milyutin's in the Narkomfin house), insisted on expensive marble cladding and proposed such a coloring of the interiors, which Corbusier indignantly called "boudoir".
But on the other hand, in addition to the philistine predilections of the lover of architecture Lyubimov, Corbusier was against too laconic architecture. In this he is a real French: he did not tolerate functionalism, but preached "lyricism" and aesthetics, "sublime intention." He criticized Nikolaev's house-commune: “many hundreds of people are deprived of all the joys of architecture here”. In the house of Tsentrosoyuz, even judging by the surviving fragments, there are many "joys of architecture". Perhaps the People's Commissar Lyubimov just felt in Corbusier not so much a breaker of the foundations, as a foreign maestro, who was able to give him an expensive beautiful toy, better than that of other people's commissars. And the fate of the building turned out like that of other, modern "toys" for us, starting with the Mariinsky Theater and ending with the plan of Perm.
* all quotes in this text are from the book: Jean-Louis Cohen. Le Corbusier and the mysticism of the USSR. Theories and projects for Moscow. 1928-1936. M., "Art Volkhonka", 2012.
