We recently talked about the project of an exhibition and business center on Sakhalin, developed by Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya for the competition held in 2011 (it became possible to publish the competition works only now, almost a year later). The architects of TOTEMENT / PAPER proposed two very different concepts, each of which is fascinating in its own way, so we talk about them separately: you can read about the first version of the project here.
In the second version, the building is not limited either by the unity of the geometric module, or by a rectangular frame that cuts out the bubble "honeycomb" formed by it from the space. It sprouts, at first glance, completely free and even very energetically, transforming - strengthening the irregular contours given by the landscape. Here we observe a phenomenon of a rather geological nature: this could be the result of weathering of a rock of a complex composition in some ancient mountain. If at first the rock flowed, then weathered, leaving bizarre broken outlines of bridges, caves and consoles and then, finally, was hewn with a neat cutter with wide planes - something like this process could create a branching structure that somewhere echoes the lines of the landscape, but more often - exaggerates them, sharpens, cuts, overhangs, stretching long "necks" towards the sea.
However, despite the first "geological" impression, the meaning of form creation here is not in imitation of nature ("we do not like it when our architecture is defined as" bionic "- says Levon Airapetov). The point is in the interaction of the architect with the landscape. But this interaction is of a special kind: a person adopts the language of geological formations, learns it and builds his form according to his laws, but, what is important, he manifests his will quite clearly in this dialogue. Which, however, half consists of following, according to the Far Eastern (and therefore more than appropriate in this case) teaching of Zen Buddhism, the natural course of things, perhaps even casting this course of things in an architectural form.
“The main idea is not to draw the image of the house“from the head”, but to get it using the necessary conditions, - says Levon Airapetov. - There is a technical task, area, restrictions; there is a surrounding landscape, a river, a plant, a mountain - this is also part of the technical task. There is a need to separate the flows of people so that they do not intersect with each other: showrooms should be accessible to visitors, offices for employees. The shape is obtained based on how the entire body of the building is arranged. It's like giving birth to children - children come out on their own, this is a natural process, subject to genetic codes. " "However, this is by no means" parametric design "- the architect immediately stipulates - the author must participate in the process, it is completely wrong to build an architecture through a computer, entering data into it and getting some kind of impersonal calculations."
Indeed, the project was drawn by the hand of Levon Airapetov, and this drawing, in turn, played a significant role in the image of the TOTEMENT bureau's stand at the Complexity / Complexity exhibition at the last Arch Moscow; it was almost a manifesto there. “It is necessary to obey the movement of the hand and draw the line as it behaves itself” - this is how the architect describes this process. And he also clarifies: "The line runs away, but there is an invisible center and it cannot go far away, you twist it inward all the time, make sure that it does not run too far."
In this story about the struggle against the line, which must be given freedom, but still not allowed to run too far, there is a thing very important for understanding the project (and in general the method of designing TOTEMENT architects). The fact is that in addition to landscape and order, the composition of the "natural course of things" and "necessary conditions" necessarily includes the aesthetic sense of the architect. It becomes one of the important terms (or rather even factors or denominators) of a fascinating equation called "the formation of the genetic code of a building." Indeed, what is the genocode of the project without the author's view? It should occupy more than half of the nucleic acid chains there - he is the author. Therefore, the exquisite graphics of the lines only in the rarest cases really repeats the bend of the relief, and basically it becomes the result of the author's rethinking of many things: from the arbitrary contours of the coast to the beauty of the drawing as such, charged with kinetic energy. The author brings energy, charges the lines and volumes with movement, only starting from the landscape: the slope and the mountains. "On a flat field, there is nothing to even catch on," says the architect, but here it is easier: there is a hole, a hill, a stream. " The key word here is “catch on”, it will go further by itself, grow, spread out, the lines will only have to be caught and twisted, not to let them run away from the center.
The lines, indeed, stretched far: the architects focused on the covered passage to the territory of the plant - this is the farthest of the “escaped” lines, it penetrates the center of the building, passing by the atrium in the center and, turning with multiple bends, goes out to the sea through the eyepiece of a two-tier “observation deck »With a panoramic window below and a summer terrace on the second floor. From here to the south-west under the hill it was planned to dig a tunnel to the sea - thus, an ornate axis would pierce the complex from north to south, from the plant to the sea. Moreover, this movement first goes on the ground, then above the ground, and finally - underground, in a hill. I must say that in the first version of the project, the transition and even the tunnel were also present, being part of the terms of reference, but there they were not the main ones and looked like additions to the relatively strict rectangle of the building, here they turned into one of the main elements of shaping.
The volumes of classrooms, offices and meeting rooms are scattered along the slope with a large three-fingered "paw", these are three energetic "noses" and even heads: one looks to the east, the other to the southeast and the third to the southwest. Equally active is the attitude to relief and space: the hulls grow out of the ground and immediately scatter deep consoles around, are connected by air passages, leaving open paths below. The building "grows" into the surrounding airspace, penetrates into it, not blocking, but opening many air corridors.
Since movement in this project is the main thing, moreover, both a conditional, metaphorical movement of forms and planes, and the most common one - a person's movement along transitions, penetration inside, exit, transition, ascent and descent. It would probably be exciting to wander around the building, since it largely consists of passages (they also help to separate the flows of visitors, which were mentioned above). In most transitions, either one wall, or both are glass, which allows you to illuminate them and at the same time make the boundaries more ephemeral, make the difference between "inside" and "outside" thinner.
The labyrinthine spaces inside are similar from the outside, and thanks to the glass walls, the difference becomes even less noticeable: this building is a single organism, consisting of many different, open, semi-open and closed spaces. The fact that the main facade is absent is not even worth talking about here - it cannot be here in any way, this building, according to the exact expression of the architects, is the sum of freeze frames taken from a mobile, almost living organism.
The main part of the building is surrounded by the steps of a kind of amphitheater, for the creation of which it was planned to slightly cut the slope. (In the first version, the building rose on that part of the slope, which is deepened in the second, so that the hulls could go down). The broken lines of the amphitheater imitate natural outlines, although they are quite perceptibly faceted and turned into large, grassy steps (however, one can doubt that there is a long period in Sakhalin when someone wants to sit on the grass). One of the three "heads" of the building is placed directly on the steps, which makes it look like a tired dragon lying down to rest by the sea (the similarity, of course, is distant and schematic).
But still. The frozen stone dragon is a perceptibly local, Far Eastern creature, just like the resulting image: deliberately unfinished, with complex graphics of a hieroglyph or ornament, but special - one that will never reproduce by repeated reports. And it must be admitted that if in the first version of the project, somewhere exaggerated, rethought, but still recognizable features of Corbusianism are noticeably read, then the second version is inspired by another direction of art of the 20th century - one that has been fond of the art of the East for more than a century, its peculiar, somewhat alien, but free harmony of forms.
