In recent days, architects from all over the world have been sharing the sad news - the legendary Oscar Niemeyer, the great modernist of the 20th century, has passed away. They remember the futuristic capital of Brazil built by him and the general enthusiasm of the architects of that time for its undoubted masterpieces of concrete and glass. Architect Andrei Chernikhov writes in the Opinion.ru blog: "As soon as the materials with Niemeyer's designs and his stunningly beautifully drawn curved canopies appeared, all Soviet architects folded the canopies on their buildings." Based on the ideas of Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, as noted in the same blog by the architectural historian Elizaveta Likhacheva, turned out to be much more poetic, although "he went not far from him."
Architect Mikhail Belov also wrote about Niemeyer on his Facebook blog. Recalling a recent lecture by Alexander Rappaport, who declared all modern architecture "dead", Mikhail Belov noted that the buildings of the great Brazilian were always fresh and it is difficult to call them "carrion". However, and use for its intended purpose too, adds the author of the blog, for example, as a capital. While agreeing with Rappaport, Mikhail Belov, meanwhile, comes to the conclusion that even a fresh thought in architecture today may be dead. Continuing the curious discussion around his lecture, Alexander Rappaport explained in his blog that by "carrion" he means not at all that which seemingly rotting, but "a convenient design, clean, sometimes even modest (more often pompous), created on white sheet or blue screen and inserted into our life and environment like a graceful denture."
Meanwhile, another interesting article has appeared on the Tower and Labyrinth blog, in which Alexander Rappaport compares the metaphysical nature of architecture and cinema. Recently, architecture for the philosopher, as he confessed, has ceased to be the "organization of space". Like cinema, she, according to Rappaport, operates with the category of time; however, these times for both arts do not coincide, having "their own measure and scope of freedom." No matter how much cinema depicts architecture, writes Rappaport, it will never convey the main thing - "the experience of our real body and real will to move", which only architecture is able to communicate to us.
Mikhail Belov also remembered about cinema the other day, complaining that the project sometimes takes longer than making a film: “Projects are done quickly, they take a long time to build, they are not built at all, or the devil knows what is being built instead of a project. Almost all realizations are 3-7 years of life”. So, seven years later, "after all the crises, change of customers and contractors, hopeless long-term construction", Mikhail Belov has matured a new object - an openwork residential tower in the depths of the block between Lyusinovskaya and Mytnaya streets, which the architect himself affectionately called "Moscow's thin Kutafya."
The hardships of architects living in the words of Mikhail Belov in anticipation of the implementation of their project "in a pan of identity boiling on the fire of pride," meanwhile, should end with the transition to parametric design. The A4 architecture + news blog published an interview about the most advanced architectural method with its researcher Eduard Hayman. Strictly speaking, it is difficult to call the creator of such buildings an architect: rather, it is an operator who models not specific forms, but certain processes in response to environmental demands. Eduard Hayman, in turn, told whether there is a place in parametric architecture for the categories of aesthetics, style, spirituality and whether it is capable of being reproduced without the intervention of the human mind.
In the meantime, the parametric method remains a field of futurology, modern architecture continues to produce the most inexplicable solutions to the demands of the environment. The community "Ivanovskaya Gorka", created in defense of the unique historical corner of Moscow, continues to discuss the project for the development of Khokhlovskaya Square, which is at the beginning of Pokrovsky Boulevard. The builders of the underground garage five years ago stumbled upon the foundations of the walls of the White City here and, frightened by the high costs of museumification, abandoned the idea. However, there is information that the developer agrees to complete the business in three years if he is allowed to supplement the project with an above-ground commercial component. Bloggers are perplexed about what can be built on a tiny area, and offer to limit themselves to landscaping with the construction of an underground parking and a pedestrian crossing.
In the meantime, Alexander Mozhaev recalled the inevitability of the renovation of the Central Administrative District with the construction of new housing on the site of the "dilapidated development". The city activist referred to the statements of the developers and officials of the new team of the mayor, including the chief architect of the capital, Sergei Kuznetsov, that it is correct to reconstruct the center in this way from the point of view of the development of the city's economy. Indigenous people are explicitly invited to leave their homes, to which the bloggers suggested that the officials themselves move to "New Moscow" and build there.
And on the Facebook page of Project Russia magazine, they discussed the round table held on December 8 on the issues of urban planning standards for the Moscow region, which caused a heated discussion the day before. Users agreed with one of the main contradictions of the current urban planning policy, which was outlined by Alexander Lozhkin: regional officials still prefer to build housing in an open field and report on the number of square meters. If you build it with infrastructure and environment, it turns out to be smaller, more expensive and inaccessible, Lozhkin notes, but if you leave everything as it is, Moscow and the region will soon cease to be livable.
Heritage protection policy is also full of contradictions. The Society for the Study of the Russian Estate (OIRU), which celebrated the 20th anniversary of its reconstruction on the eve of its reconstruction, publishes in the arch_heritage group detailed reports on the state of the monuments they studied. The tendency, according to Andrei Chekmarev, a member of the OIRU, is depressing - the manor culture can be lost in front of the already living generation. However, as bloggers note, something is still being restored, especially if there is a large city-forming plant or a philanthropist nearby.
The case of the Novgorod Church of Peter and Paul on Sinichya Gora has not yet been included in this lucky list, although the age of the unique monument dates back to the last third of the 12th century. Blogs are spreading a request for help to the temple, which has been without a roof for ten years. On the eve, the participants of the conference “Novgorod and Novgorod Land. Art and restoration . True, according to some bloggers, this is hardly enough; we need an initiative from above, as, for example, in the case of two ancient monasteries in neighboring Staraya Ladoga, seven billion for the restoration of which the government of St. Petersburg has prescribed as a separate line in the budget.
