Urban Routines, everyday life of a person is a complex world of the ordinary, familiar, but still very little explored. Students were engaged in in-depth study of this topic all year round. The educational process included numerous lectures, seminars and workshops. Invited experts and teachers worked with the students. At the beginning of the second, spring semester, students were offered a competition assignment for the development of the territory in Moscow, on which they worked under the guidance of experienced instructors, divided into small teams of 3-4 people.
The last stage of the research was the preparation of the first independent project for the final open exhibition. The students were divided into four studios, each with its own theme: housing, offices, shops or cars. The Avtomobili studio was headed by the founder of the architectural bureau TD Architects, writer and designer Theo Deutinger, and Sergey Chernov, Deputy Director for Data at the Center for the Study of the Internet and Society at the Russian School of Economics, became the project manager. We asked him to tell in more detail about the work of the studio, the educational process and the results achieved at this stage. We also talked with students who presented their projects.
Sergei Chernov reports, project manager of the studio "Automobiles":
“This year, all studios are working on, in fact, one common project dedicated to urban routines. The themes of the studios are logically related, since for the vast majority of people life passes between an apartment, an office, shops and the road - either in a private car or in public transport.
Our studio is called "Cars". A car is a unique object, an element of modern society and a deeply personal thing that allows you to get a clear idea of its owner. For many people, the car has become an integral part of life, once starting to drive, they are not ready to give up this pleasure for any preferences. The car provides personal space that protects the owner from possible danger from the outside. There are a lot of angles at which the interaction between man and machine can be viewed. Even endless traffic jams have become part of the automotive culture.
The study of this topic in our studio takes place in a very busy mode. We closely interact with experts in the automotive industry, communicate with researchers and economists, for example, Alexei Belyanin and Rostislav Kononenko, who are engaged in modeling traffic flows and analyzing driver preferences. The institute held lectures and just informal conversations with representatives of public automobile movements - Vadim Korovin, Peter Shkumatov, Alexander Shumsky. Communication via Skype session with Vukan Vuchik via Skype session turned out to be very fruitful, who willingly advised students on projects. There is also active interaction with specialists from the Department of Transport, who provide us with background information for research. Also, the team of Roman Postnikov from Megafon Labs provided averaged data on the concentration of cellular subscribers, as a result, students have the opportunity to get accurate data and figures, say, on the number of pedestrians or cars crossing the city per day, on the priority directions of their movement.
Among other things, the institute regularly hosts three-hour workshops. For example, recently there were interesting meetings with sociologist Viktor Vakhstein and expert on geoinformation systems Maxim Dubinin, who is currently developing the Metro for Disabled people project, helping people with disabilities plan their trip to the metro.
In parallel with lectures, seminars and workshops, constant practical, "field" work is being carried out. At the very beginning of the study, in the first days of the studio's work, a trip around the city in cars was organized with visits to the largest shopping centers, the automobile museum and the Moscow Ring Road. For students who don't drive or are new to Moscow, this was especially helpful. The next massive outing was a trip to the capital's car services and spare parts stores. We made a big trip to Nizhny Novgorod to see what the life of a motorist looks like outside the capital. More recently, an excursion to a car assembly plant in Kaluga took place.
As a result of such active and multifaceted activity, the students had to understand what a car is like in modern Moscow. We offered them a variety of research areas: from economics and general rules of behavior and regulation to issues of interaction with pedestrians and cultural objects. Students had complete freedom of choice, everyone could turn to the topic that is closer to him. And my task with Theo Deutinger was to collect research into a common structure in such a way as to cover all aspects of the automotive culture. The studio is currently developing eight separate projects.
Typically, outdoor advertisements portray the car as a fast and luxurious rocket with a powerful engine, racing down an empty highway. Alexander Ayupov in his project "Freedom of Stopping" suggests looking at the movement of a car as a series of stops. The author reflects on how often and why the car has to stop, whether these stops are planned or they are forced. Alexander is trying to use this and other information in order to find ways to make the time of stops more enjoyable and interesting for the driver.
Some of the studio's projects are not exploring the car itself, but the space in which it exists. Thus, one of the projects depicts a concentric city for cars - the Moscow Ring Road, which has turned into a shopping street focused exclusively on motorists. The authors of the project are studying what the Moscow Ring Road is lacking in order to be considered a real city.
There are also studies on the metro or pedestrians. In addition, there is a rather interesting project by Elena Mazina called "Shanghai-Moscow".
*** Project "Shanghai-Moscow". Elena Mazina
Sergey Chernov about the project:
“The project examines a very popular and significant cultural artifact in the minds of a Russian person - a garage. Most of the time, cars are not on the road, but in parking lots or garages. In Russia, garage culture is represented especially vividly. Garages are a favorite place to hang out with friends on weekends, car enthusiasts spend all their free time in them, musicians create a whole layer of separate "garage" music, sometimes a garage becomes a platform for small businesses. And some people turn a garage into a home. So, such a unique phenomenon was discovered by Elena inside Moscow, on Vernadsky Avenue, where a large array of garages has existed for quite a long time - about 10-15 thousand - where a huge number of people of various nationalities live permanently. Real life is in full swing there, all kinds of activities can be found inside the array. The residents themselves call this place Shanghai. And a person who comes in from the outside immediately attracts attention, since inside there is a semi-closed community of its own, which is of great interest for research."
*** Project "City of Roads". Olena Grankina
Sergey Chernov, head:
“Olena Grankina in the City of Roads project perceives the car as a capsule that protects the driver from both real and psychological hazards. The hypothesis of the study is that the car became one of the reincarnations of the city walls. Many years ago, people defended themselves from external threats with the help of high fortifications. Now, most of the dangers that can be encountered in everyday life are directly next to us - they no longer come from outside invaders, but from the townspeople themselves. Threats range from aggressive driving to terrorism, and defenses start with information stickers and end with protest rallies. The walls become incapable of protecting a person, and therefore the car is transformed into some kind of armor around the driver."
Olena Grankina, author:
“The question that the road is not an instrument of mobility has been of interest to me for a long time. Why, for example, crossing the border, a person has to stand in line for six hours? Why can a person move only where the state has decided to build a road? And why does everything that is off the road remain beyond the boundaries of human knowledge? How can this be considered freedom of movement? Roads were never built to ensure human mobility, but only based on the needs of the state.
In addition, I could not ignore the events that are taking place today in my hometown, Kiev. In my project, I study the history of the state, the expansion of its borders, the construction of roads at certain periods of the development of society. For example, earlier the city was protected by high walls, but during the Cold War and the emergence of atomic weapons, the walls lost their meaning, and roads were built as escape routes in the event of a nuclear attack. The war has changed its face, and the city has changed along with it. So, I got the idea to consider a car, which is part of a modern city, as an element of a defense or attack system.
I consider the car from three positions. First level: the car becomes a defensive structure directly for the person in it. The second level: the car acts as a state instrument of control over society, because thanks to the system of registration, insurance, etc. you can easily track all movements of car owners. Third level: people use the car to control the state, because the driver has more rights than the pedestrian, and the car is his inviolable property. In this sense, such a phenomenon of the 21st century as protests on wheels is very interesting."
Night mobility project. Vitaly Avdeev
Sergey Chernov, head:
“The night city has become another important research topic. Moscow, which is not inferior in size to London, Paris or New York, lags far behind other megacities in terms of the number of night public transport routes. Vitaly Avdeev, studying this side of the capital, drew attention to the fact that the lack of public transport is completely replaced by a fairly well-developed system of night taxis - legal and semi-legal. It is a kind of separate subculture with its own long tradition of private carriage. Vitaly questions the need to develop public transport at night, and in return suggests taking a fresh look at the already existing way of moving around Moscow at night."
Vitaly Avdeev, author:
“My project is called“Night Mobility”and it is connected with the fact that it is almost impossible to move around the city, living in a frenzied and round-the-clock rhythm of a metropolis, by public transport at night. There are only a few routes, but they are not particularly popular due to their small number and very insignificant coverage of the territory. Whereas, for example, in London or Paris there are about a hundred such routes, and in New York there is a night subway.
In the process of all these reflections, I turned to the study of such a phenomenon as the Moscow taxi, in particular I was attracted by private and illegal drivers. It turned out that in Moscow it is very easy to move around at night - you just have to go out on the road and wave your hand to a passing car. As a result, I came to the conclusion that in Moscow there is no urgent need for public transport, since there is already such a huge potential in the form of a taxi, which just needs to be formalized, set certain rules for its operation and, in the end, turn this type of transport into an affordable, legal and to some extent a substitute for public transport at night”.
The final projects of the studio will be presented on May 15. And a month later, an exhibition under the guidance of an international curator will open in the courtyard of Strelka. It is possible that studio projects will appear at other venues in the city.
