This time the main architectural festival of the country will last only two days - December 11 and 12, and the organizers hope that Zodchestvo-2012 will only benefit from this. As the saying goes, “brevity is the sister of talent”: reduced to two days, the festival program looks meaningful and rich. On Tuesday, the Manege will host the awarding ceremony for the winners of the Greater Moscow competition and the presentation of the Moscow agglomeration project itself, and there will be a public discussion “Melnikov's House. Scenarios of Fate”(moderated by Aleksey Muratov), and within the framework of the exhibition“20 Years: Still Together”a quadripartite agreement on cooperation in the field of construction and architecture will be signed between Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia. The Homeland Group company will also share its experience in the integrated development of territories using the example of the master plan of the city of Igarka, and the Colombian architect Juan Manuel Pilaes will be a special guest of the first day of the festival. On Wednesday, Zodchestvo's visitors will see the conference "New and old in a modern city", a master class by famous Dutch architects from the bureau "de Architekten Cie", a round table "State incentives for sustainable development" and the traditionally crowning ceremony of the Grand Prix Russian national award in the field of architecture "Crystal Daedalus" and the Vladimir Tatlin award.
As for the Zodchestvo-2012 exposition, this year curator Andrey Chernikhov and architects Vlad Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin are responsible for it. The latter came up with the design of pavilions and stands - sketches of structures wrapped in orange ribbons look promisingly optimistic, and Andrei Chernikhov, by his own admission, invested most of all his efforts in persuading the regions to go beyond traditional boring reports. “It seems to me that the regions should treat their expositions at Zodchestvo as countries participating in the Venice Biennale treat their national pavilions,” Chernikhov said in an interview with Archi.ru. - Each province is a self-sufficient unit, and it has something to show. The main thing is to abandon inertia in this matter. Of course, it is not necessary to count on cardinal changes in one year, but some regions responded vividly to our proposal and brought unexpected, very fresh expositions. I am sure that if the Union of Architects of Russia continues this line, in two or three years we will get a qualitatively different architecture festival”.
In total, 10 regions have come to Zodchestvo this year, including Kazan, Voronezh, Samara, St. Petersburg. In addition to Greater Moscow, Skolkovo and RHD will also have their own stands with its competition for the best affordable housing project; traditional prefabricated expositions will present the works of architectural workshops, young designers and students of art schools. Special projects this year are dedicated to Soviet modernism and Zodchestvo itself, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Well, and the main intrigue of the festival, which has swung at the "New", promises to be the exposition "Russian Identical", which is supervised by architects Andrei and Nikita Asadov.
A. M.
