This year the award marks 5 years, but the anniversary, as one not buried politician bequeathed, is not a holiday, but a reason to think about the shortcomings.
For example, we are scolded for increasing the number of nominations. And this year, four more were added to the five permanent ones: "Interior", "Wood in decoration", "Restoration", "Object design". They say that we are now like "Zodchestvo": all the sisters have earrings, no one is offended. Yes, there is a risk of erosion of the message, but we suffered terribly every year, realizing how dishonest it is to combine big and small, cheap and expensive in one nomination. Therefore, this time we tried to build the most complete and clear structure, although even here not without costs: for example, a sports palace in Kazan and a modest hostel in Nikola-Lenivets came together in one nomination …
A lot of criticism was also caused by the appearance of the Subject Design nomination: they say, you have architecture, why this cheap attempt to expand the audience? But its appearance was dictated by the logic of the development of the award: beautiful interior objects often appeared on the long list, which had to compete with urban furniture. But we not only added the nomination, but also invited her curator Julia Peshkova, one of the leading experts in this field. And immediately assembled 62 design objects made of wood! Of course, controversy flared up at the Expert Council about the extent to which many of their ideas were borrowed; nevertheless, it is pleasant that not only Milan and Cologne will now recognize the new names of Russian design. Of those who relied on wood, the most active is the Moscow bureau "ARKHPOLE", and it is logical that their FOOLMOON chair was on the shortlist of the award. Here are also two works by the young St. Petersburg designer Yaroslav Misonzhnikov.
The expert council could not fail to evaluate the most "architectural" of the design objects, so the brutal furniture of Ivan Ovchinnikov, assembled without a single nail, made it to the final. But its author is also known as the creator of the Goroda festival - three objects from the last festival, held in Moscow in 2013, graced the Urban Environment Design nomination: these are Microloft, Egg and Microstudio. Vologda "Modular Fair" by Mikhail Priemyshev and Yaroslavl "Library on the Boulevard" compete with them in this nomination. Folded from Euro pallets for the free exchange of books, it was supposed to be the headliner of the Social Revolution festival, but on the night before the opening, it was half burned by intruders. That, however, did not prevent it from becoming an even more relevant place and center of festival events, and now a nominee for the All-Russian award.
In addition to Yaroslavl and Vologda (which, by the way, became an absolute winner of the award last year), city festivals were held in Kazan, and the shortlist included "Cube-Ka'bah-Cube", located directly in the Kazan Kremlin and declaring the European values of contemporary art … Kazan was shortlisted for the first time, but in three nominations at once! This is the restoration of the Trinity Church in Sviyazhsk and the Water Sports Palace, built, however, by Moscow stars - Sergei Choban and Sergei Kuznetsov.
True, from the outside, this ultra-modern object is difficult to suspect of using a super-ancient material, but it is worth being inside to admire how glued-wood structures can spiritualize the space. Another gym - from the Atrium bureau - is much smaller in size, but its wooden constructive base is more vividly revealed on the facades. In the same nomination ("Public Space") - a multifunctional pavilion in Sochi, demonstrating how a skillfully painted painting can go on a tree; an elegant snow-white cafe in beloved Kiev and the most unusual object in the entire short-list - the showroom of the NLK-Domostroenie company at Art-Play. Its wavy walls are made of the most ordinary timber, which perfectly demonstrates the inexhaustible possibilities of such a seemingly hopelessly familiar material.
The beauty of a different color, black, is affirmed by the stylish "Kazarma" in Nikola-Lenivets (Sergey Syrenov), there are also the guest houses "Klever", the trick of which is the possibility of their different layout (Bureau MEL). Archfarm, the usual competitor of Archstoyania, prematurely fell asleep, which did not prevent its founder, Ivan Ovchinnikov, from creating the BIO-Architects bureau and loudly declaring itself as Double-Dom. This is perhaps the most relevant object in the short-list of the award: a serial house with pre-arranged communications. High-quality manufactured in the factory, it is transported by car and installed in one day at any suburban area, easily connecting to networks.
In the Country House nomination, Totan Kuzembaev's Firefly, the ironic neoampiric estate of Nikolai Belousov and the house of the Le Atelier bureau, which cleverly uses all the resources of a tiny plot and vaguely resembles Alvar Aalto, will compete with him in the Country House nomination. By the way, Aalto's branded vases will be awarded to the winners this year, symbolizing the connection between nature, wood, architecture and, of course, the Finnish tradition, for which the Rossa Rakenne SPb (HONKA) company is responsible - the constant general partner and organizer of the award.
Deco Pattern House by Pyotr Kostelov looks extremely extravagant. The two-time ARCHIWOOD laureate is experimenting with decoration again, transforming the facades of a simple residential parallelepiped into a solid pattern, recalling carved platbands, but clearly passed through the computer. Suddenly, a representative of a very "Russian style" - the bathhouse of Yegor Solovyov - made his way to the short list. It seems to be traditional technologies, knots and details, but the proportions and arrangement of the windows make it unambiguous that it was made in the modernist age.
The theme is continued by the aesthetic house of Fyodor Oparin near St. Petersburg (this is already the nomination "Wood in decoration"): the familiar image of a cottage is broken by an aged unplaned board and sliding shutters. A much more modest role is played by the tree in the spectacular gazebo of Totan Kuzembaev, but without it the monumentality of architecture would be redundant in a small summer cottage. In the same nomination - gazebos for barbecues of Maxim Stepanenko in Vladimir: this old Russian city appears for the first time on the map of the award, and even with such a "libeskindovshchinka".
In the nomination "Art Object" the team "Bublya" lights up (the Irkutsk festival "Bukhart" is again on the shortlist of the award!), Kirill Bair touches ("Bear Gerard" was collected from blocks by Sochi children), spiral "). An exhibition at the Nizhny Novgorod Center for Contemporary Art is changing the usual register of conversation about the passing legacy. The wooden buildings of the city that are melting before our eyes are represented by magical photographs of Vladislav Efimov and fragments of original buildings. Curator Alisa Savitskaya arranged the exhibition with indoor flowers, subtly hinting at the purely homely beauty of this architecture.
This project logically anticipates another new nomination for the award - "Restoration". In fact, the objects of restoration have already been included in the short-list of the award twice: the church in Tsypino and the church from the village of Borodava (both works by the best Russian restorer Alexander Popov). But they remained nominees, since they simply had no one to compete with. But the dire state of the industry forced the Organizing Committee to get down to business with tripled energy and collect six nominees on the long list of the award. True, not all of them are marked in 2013, but for the sake of such a topic it was decided to make an exception and present a mini-retrospective of restoration successes over the past five years.
True, it is difficult to call them “successes”. The experts involved by the Organizing Committee (Alexander Popov, Igor Shurgin, Andrey Bode, Olga Sevan, Andrey Batalov, Anton Maltsev, Alexander Bokarev, etc.) disagreed decisively in their assessments of these works. This was especially acute in the assessment of the restoration of the St. Nicholas Church in Vorzogory. Made without a project and without an authentic tool, not with the most skillful hands - this is, of course, a compromise of the professional component of the word "restoration". But, on the other hand, if it were not for the public movement "Common Cause", which for six years has been repairing and preserving the northern churches with the efforts of volunteers, then these churches would most likely no longer exist.
However, no less fierce controversy was caused by the approaches and methods that took place at other sites, which speaks of the tragic absence of any professional consent, but at the same time - and the urgent need for this conversation. What the award, we hope, can contribute to. Relying on the assessments of experts, the Expert Council nevertheless took the risk of presenting three objects on the shortlist: the St. George Church, transported to Kolomenskoye from the Northern Dvina, the Kizhi chapel from the village of Kavgora and the Trinity Church in Sviyazhsk.
And a completely different side of wooden architecture - sunny, modern, self-confident - can be seen on the third floor of the Central House of Artists, where an exhibition of the partner of the ARCHIWOOD project, the Austrian architectural community SEEWOOD, will take place. Its protagonist will be the modern wooden architecture of Styria. In this Austrian region, not only private houses are built from wood, but also a variety of public buildings: schools, kindergartens, offices and even prisons. The exhibition will be accompanied by a discussion with Austrian craftsmen, scheduled for 23 May.
The location of the exhibition of the nominees for the award remains unchanged: the Peripter pavilion at the entrance to the Central House of Artists. The catalog of the award will also be published by the permanent partner of the project - the publishing house TATLIN. The professional jury of the award this year included architects Alexander Skokan and Karl-Heinz Boyger (Austria), award winners of different years Grigory Dainov and Stepan Lipgart, designer Stas Zhitsky, head of TDV-Trust Vasily Nosov and critic Yulia Tarabarina. The "People's Vote" will take place from May 12 to May 22 on the website of the award www.arhiwood.com. The award ceremony will take place on May 23 in the conference hall of the Central House of Artists.
