Mimesis * For An Architect

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

* Mimesis, or mimesis, (ancient Greek ΜίΜησις - similarity, reproduction, imitation) -

one of the basic principles of aesthetics, in the most general sense -

imitation of the art of reality.

Wikipedia

The results of the architectural drawing competition held by the Archplatforma.ru project with the support of the SMA and the Fund of the Museum of Architectural Graphics of Sergei Tchoban have been announced. The competition was attended by 271 authors; Before getting to the jury, the works passed a two-stage selection: first, the moderators chose 435 drawings from the total submitted for the competition, published at the electronic exhibition, after which the expert advice expressed their preferences, and only then the jury began to work, which had the right to propose any work, rejected by the experts. As a result of such a complex filtering, there were three winners, one in each category: drawing from nature, drawing for the project and architectural fantasy. The winners received 50 thousand rubles each. The judges, however, could not resist and awarded another 19 special mentions, honorary diplomas without prizes.

There is no doubt that the competition on a topic that worries architects a long time ago (I think I will not be mistaken if I say that since the 70s for sure) was carried out efficiently and professionally, the cut turned out to be representative chronologically and genre, but what is there - the simple artisan quality of most of the drawings makes the examination electronic exhibition is very exciting. A lot of drawings are wonderfully good - after such a competition it is obvious that architectural graphics did not even think of dying. Meanwhile, without dying, she mutates a little. The entries show well how.

First of all, the difference between the opinions of the jury and the people who voted for the drawings on the site is striking. Even if we take in parentheses the probability of some friendly counter markups (if there are any, then they are small - the program part of the exhibition, apparently, was done well, or the stakes were low - the jury did not take into account the Internet voting), - and so, even in addition to the numbers and tone of comments, it is obvious that the public appreciates one thing, and the experts another. Viewers (most of whom are, quite obviously, professional architects and designers) like the classic, drawn to the smallest detail, mimetic conservative graphics. The jury chooses a flight of fantasy and non-figurative expression. Which still needs to be searched among the entries.

Drawing from nature

It was especially difficult to detect the flight of abstraction in the nomination drawing from life: that is why it is from nature, in order to be mimetic. It is logical that here the vast majority of works are scrupulous, some are up to photorealism, the transfer of volume here and there approaches a still life from an art school, but this is rare, mostly - a confident touch, a firm hand, a subtle sense of chiaroscuro, a light romantic flair of watercolor shades - you will be surprised. Academic impressionism is definitely in the lead with a more or less strong romantic touch. Main themes: European cathedrals and streets, masterpieces of architecture, Old Russian churches, less often village huts. The genre - "portrait of a monument", less often landscape, plot "Airplane over the city" by Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf (almost "the ball flew away") looks like an exception. But the main thing is that this gentleman's set of a tourist is very carefully drawn; a lot of work and skill has been invested in the schedule, while emotions, on the contrary, are restrained. Delight for an object is expressed in the very fact of drawing it.

The jury, however, managed to find something unlike everyone else in this feast of monuments and the award was given to the series "Light / Shadow" by architect Ruben Arakelyan, dedicated to Kond, a slum district of Yerevan. The series is ingeniously executed on the verge of abstraction and photorealism: Arakelyan takes a shadow - a hollow of random outlines and carefully draws everything that turned out to be there inside - boards, steps, diligently ignoring what is outside, which motivated the appearance of the shadow. Scraps of strange life in random contours - a blot on a white sheet, in which the eye gradually reads out the details - the hidden plot gives meaning to the drawings, so the jury's choice is not surprising.

It's amazing how these watercolors manage to balance on the brink of figurativeness: this is the only series in the nomination where at first glance it is impossible to understand what exactly is drawn. Viewers' votes - 57, in the Internet rating Arakelyan's series is somewhere in the middle, closer to the end. The maximum number of votes in this nomination - 170, was collected by a series of watercolors of Gothic cathedrals by Inna Dianova-Klokova (furor, delight, special mention of the jury; a really beautiful series). If we consider the audience voting as a whole, then at the end of the rating there are drawings, the hand of the authors of which is not firm, where the student's uncertainty of the lines is still felt. It becomes clear that the audience is voting primarily for craftmanship.

Drawing for the project

With the nomination, the drawing for the project turned out to be more difficult, it was incorrectly invented from the very beginning, including several different genres there. Now the drawing for the project can be of two types: representative, for presentation - nowadays it serves as an optional decorative addition to three-dimensional visualizations, hinting to the customer that his architect is also an artist, artist, and not just a design organization. The second type is sketches to help the architect think. There is also a third type, hand drawings - a laborious task and now very rare; the architect Vladislav Platonov at Oleg Karlson's bureau works in this way.

So, if we take the two main types of design graphics that are alive in our time - drawings-filings and drawings-sketches - it is easy to see that one of them happens at the beginning of the design, and the other at the end, as the last stage of polishing. Sketch graphics are the most interesting of all: it is there that you can see how a thought is born; but it is rarely subject to exposure: like any working material, sketches are “chewed and digested,” they are crushed, thrown away and torn apart. They are rarely beautiful. Hence, a mixed genre of drawings “on the theme of the project” was born, that is, in fact, drawings made for presentation, but not neat and beautiful, but free and imitating sketches. I have seen many times how architects draw these miniatures after the completion of the project - illustrations that extract the icon of meaning from the work already done. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this fashion was introduced by Le Corbusier. So, combining the genres of drawing-presentation and drawing-sketch, the organizers were not that wrong. But, having pitted two genres of unequal weight category, they got a quick and unconditional victory of the first: a beautiful wash, a drawing-for-presentation-project, which everyone misses so much since the end of Stalin's architecture.

Science fiction

The audience voted for the thorough: Ilnar and Reseda Akhtyamovs, "Platform", the town-planning concept of the "Tank Ring" district in Kazan. 140 voices, still-life pencil drawing, fantastic perforated towers that would do credit for a computer toy, though not quite the same as Hollywood space cinema. Zaha Hadid's curves, Norman Foster's rhombuses. Time consuming. Lots of shading. We find a similar thing in the architectural fantasy nomination: Aisylu Valiullina, "Canyon" series, 130 votes. Returning to the projects: next to them, although lower in rating, is the town-planning hub, Almaz Valiullin, 62 votes, the same fantastic distortions, but less shading, more line. This is some kind of oriental conspiracy to materialize the ornament … However, pencil shading gives a lot of bends conservative simplicity, returning to the seventies, where two megabytes of disk were available only to academics, and then not architecture, and the rest worked in pencil. But it comes out more saturated and naturalistic, voluminous and active than in the 1970s, where there was more generalization and self-criticism, or something. I wonder why.

Restorers

At the other extreme of the graphics for restorations and reconstructions, it looks more organic than others, and its prototypes are even clearer than those of the "youths" -fantastic. The memorial chapel in honor of the Church of the Assumption on Pokrovka by Alexandra Savenkova is in the spirit of washes, which, oh, there are so many in the funds of the Museum of Architecture. Ink drawing by Maria Utkina, daughter of Ilya Utkin, in the style of her father's early etchings. A beautiful sheet was made for the project of reconstruction of the wooden bell tower from the Malye Korely Museum within the framework of the project for the revival of wooden churches"

Common cause”- this fills it with meaning better than any other plot. But the restoration graphics stands apart, keeps on strong ~ 50 voices, the audience noticed it in moderation, but the jury did not notice it at all. Wrong genre.

Winner

The series that won in the nomination drawing for the project in the popular vote is even lower - 37 votes. The drawings “Space of the Museum of Geology” by Roman Faerstein were made in 1990 based on the architectural concept that the author worked on in the late 1980s. In other words, they are over 20 years old. Roman Faerstein was born in 1926, he is now 87 years old, he is an Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, and a representative of a by no means young generation; he is a true architect-artist of the 1960s – 1970s, a bearer of their style (as native speakers are). Its graphics are different. She is an example of the genre of "post facto sketch", an expressive drawing, whose task is to catch the main idea of an already happened project and explain its essence by means of graphics; such a drawing is a sign, an iconic layer, either helping in deciphering the author's intention, or confusing with additional meanings (just like the text of the description can explain, or can deliberately confuse). The theme of the sign is also supported by Faerstein's love for letters, in which he often inscribes his compositions. In the award-winning series, you can also find, although not entirely obvious, the outlines of massive letters-drop caps.

Such fake sketches, as a hand-drawn accompaniment-explanation of their projects, were invented, as already mentioned, by the early modernists, who appreciated the liveliness of free lines and spots, the intuitiveness of a random stroke by a master's hand. Many modern stars use a similar stroke graphics, but in Russia it is not common in our time; here even the first, auxiliary sketch is often tortured with chiaroscuro. It is difficult to say whether the jury wanted to revive the genre, turn the figurative-focused contemporary draftsmen to fresh expression, or honor the famous master. But the fact is that the jury found a job, which are few; more precisely, it even chose a series that should not have been in the competition as a winner - it has a place in a museum, it is amazing to compete for recent graduates and students with things made 20 years ago.

Modernists

Another example is even more revealing: the real, before design, sketch of the Red Hill Bridge, drawn by the living classic of paper architecture Yuri Avvakumov in 1997 on the packaging of chopsticks in a Japanese restaurant, the audience honored with only 11 votes - and the jury, perpendicularly, consoling special mention. Another, also a real sketch of the same classic for the pavilion project in Abu Dhabi, was noted by the audience with only five (!) Votes. Sergei Minenko's Aeroclub - three, and he also received a special mention from the jury.

Among the nearly five hundred works of the competition, there were only three “real” sketches-reflections, drawings on napkins: less than a percent. But such a drawing is the soul of architecture, the moment of personal creativity, its starting point. Theoretically, there should have been about a hundred preliminary handwritings, if not more. But either the architects were ashamed to exhibit them (which is likely), or the moderators cut them off as hack, but mostly finished, self-valuable graphics, graphics as a work of art, got into the competition. The architectural drawing itself, auxiliary, fast and not always beautiful, turned out to be in an absolute minority, and although the jury found it and noted it, the spectator's contempt for such things must be admitted as very indicative. The sketch, a trace of the author's first inspiration, turned out to be of no use to anyone, was supplanted by landscape painting, - graphics, strictly speaking, not entirely of an architectural nature, an architectural hobby.

It can be said differently. Croquis, as a trace of the author's inspiration, was the king of modernist design, obsessed with personality. Until the 20th century, architects, of course, made sketches, but did not show them. Then the main point of architectural drawing "before design" was the drawing of ruins and antiques, helping to assimilate, pour into oneself the plastic language and knowledge about the form. I dare to note that this competition, even by the scheme of its nominations, is focused specifically on classical architecture, where at the beginning of the work there is a drawing of a sample (nomination drawing from life), at the end - a drawing, a facade (nomination drawing for a project). It is not surprising that there are almost no "brilliant handwritings". Both spectators and participants happily picked up the classic scheme of architectural drawing, turning away from modernist individualism. At the very last moment, the jury found, lifted, shook off the dust and honored its mention a couple of architectural croquis lingering in the corner.

Jury

There is an effect of opposite currents, or rather even islands, small coastal cliffs of sketchy, laconic, expressive modernism, and the waves of conservative diligent painting overwhelming them, rising by the tide and appreciated by the people. A remarkable international (Fuksas, Berkel, Atayants, Filippov, Chernikhov) jury struggling to concede, retreat in front of the wave, fixing the “peaks” with prizes - the rare remaining pieces of modernist graphics close to them.

However, we note that the own graphics of the chairman of the jury, Sergei Tchoban, is quite mimetic (like that of Sergei Kuznetsov, who also entered the jury); as well as the sheets of other Russian jury members Fillipov and Atayants (the latter, with his drawing of antiques, directly inherit the classicist tradition of drawing ruins). Fuchsas and Ben van Berkel, on the contrary, paint like Niemeyer; they are also foreigners. Of the Russian draftsmen in the same modernist spirit - Levon Airapetov, he entered the expert council, which worked before the jury. It’s even interesting to imagine how the votes of the jury members were divided. We don't know that.

Architectural fantasy

The nomination architectural fantasy unexpectedly became a point of reconciliation between the jury and the people: the prize was received by Sergei Mishin for a metaphysical city made of boxes on thin legs, cut by rectangular holes with stairs leading to nowhere, he also scored a record number of Internet votes for the winner - 148. However, it must be admitted that that the jury managed to select one of the most abstract works in the sea of convincingly voluminous serpentine futurology, inlaid with interventions of arches with columns. From persistently variegated and from energetically voluminous illusory constructions, the eyes rests in the Venetian fog of Andrei Noarov (special mention), slowly deciding for himself where the fantasy is. The jury, even for its own special mentions, selects things more metaphysically, from the bottom of the audience rating, correct, meaningful; the arch accepts only from Arthur Skizhali-Weiss and Anatoly Belov.

However, it must be admitted that in architectural fantasy (the peak of which in the Russian XX century was "paper architecture") everything is arranged somewhat differently than in architectural design: there is no contradiction between sketch and presentation, which is in the second nomination. Architectural fantasy lives inside the sheet, it is its own design and embodiment. For a more organic and natural desire to be convincing, building their own space and the desire to lure the viewer inside, leading to some aggressiveness of space and form (space falls into three-dimensionality, like Alice into a well, and the form, on the contrary, turns out to be deliberately convex, hyperreal).

Around the restrained, "metaphysical" choice of the jury professionals, a feast of figurativeness flourishes: forms, details, ornaments that have missed being a crime and escaped free. Neo-modern phantasmagorias, arches with columns, houses of old cities and log cabins a la rusa - they all crowd, heap and overwhelm the space with the same vigor. The joy of mimetic drawing is like the joy of recognition, it is slightly naive, but strong and it seems that the jury, with their searches, vainly wants to stop time, like a school teacher with a volume of Pasternak in front of a class that reads Pelevin and Sorokin.

The richness of naturalistic drawing is similar to the impression from a baroque temple or a painting of an academic school: "The Last Day of Pompeii", "The Crowning of Josephine", hundreds of them were written in the 19th century at the highest point of the draftsman's skill: any angle is convincing, the number of accurately drawn bodies can be endless. Soon the splendor got tired, and the XX century set off in search of new sensations, themes, images, individual handwriting.

Now we seem to be observing the same picture from the other side: academic busyness is gaining ground; a dashing flourish, free and imprecise, becomes history. In itself, this is not news, but over the past 10 years, with the development of computer graphics for games and movies, academic drawing has suddenly become in demand again: people who can depict an orc with an ax or a spaceship with all the details in a completely naturalistic way, for digitization to make it more real. than in life. Drawing convincingly is back in vogue, and selfish individualists are increasingly seen as hack. A wave of figurativeness, supported by the audience's enthusiasm for the skill of the draftsman, for the large amount of work done, overwhelms rare examples of subtlety and self-expression. Well, let. The joy of finding a multitude of good, passionate and skillful draftsmen is important, as is the full range of techniques you have mastered. It remains to be seen what will grow on this dense, saturated soil.