Archi.ru:
How and when did your project appear?
Alexey Komov:
- He was born in my head a long time ago, about ten years ago, when I was designing and building in Yalta. For the last five years I have been accumulating information about the Soviet architectural tradition of the Crimea. And more than two years ago, together with my colleagues Nikolai Vasiliev and Andrei Yagubsky, they managed to combine love for the Soviet architectural tradition and the stunning Crimean city of Evpatoria in the art project Kurortograd (in the fall of 2013 we talked with the authors about this project - ed.) … The exposition was a success and will continue to be exhibited during this year in the halls of large Russian cities such as Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, etc.
Ancient Evpatoria, all of its tradition was created by human hands, this steppe "flat" coast, here you cannot hide behind the delights of the natural Crimean landscape, as on the southern coast of the peninsula. Our project is a study of the western part of the Crimean city, as a unique architectural environment that has arisen thanks to the status of an all-Union health resort, which still undeservedly remains in the public consciousness in the shadow of “dusty stereotypes”. The architecture of Kurortograd exemplarily represents the entire path of the Soviet architectural school in the purity of its resort typology and the continuation of a living architectural urban tradition. Kurortograd is viewed at the exhibition as a model of continuous interaction - of time, concepts and authors - to create a holistic flat urban environment of the Crimean resort. The photographs and drawings show local post-constructivism, post-war buildings consecrated with the names of Zholtovsky, Turchaninov, reinforced concrete, plastically rich modernism. Each layer of material culture helps to understand the meaning and value of the history of this monotown - the all-Union children's health resort. This diversity is the “genetic code” for the survival of the tradition, the potential for its transformation. Kurortograd more than vividly confirms and illustrates the motto of the Zodchestvo 2014 festival: Actual Identical.
Crimea now seems to be some kind of sad topic, loaded politically in such a way that it is difficult to think about the sea, Karaites, the smell of sage or Soviet sanatoriums. More and more turns out about "little green men", queues, prices and passports for local residents - this is at least. How do you manage to think about architecture separately from connotations?
- Everyone is a blacksmith of his own connotations. There is no dissonance. I just sincerely love Crimea, I love its people, nature, its traditions. Crimea has always been a joyful source of renewal for me. Some “Crimea is ours”, someone “Crimea is theirs”, but for me “Crimea is mine”. That's the whole secret. We have to do business, not think about ourselves against the background of connotations, but help people, which we have been doing for a long time with our colleagues from the Union of Young Architects of Crimea and other wonderful Crimean enthusiasts. We jointly organize lectures, competitions, research forums for young architects of the peninsula. And "Crimean sage", one might say, has been in my blood since the nineteenth century on my paternal side, from my great-grandfathers from the Simferopol district. Hence, I suspect, my energy, which is sometimes even shocking, but, nevertheless, does not allow me to be distracted from the main thing (laughs).
In addition to the Crimean pavilion at Zodchestvo itself, it is very important for me to bring children from the Evpatoria Children's Art School so that they can participate in the work of the children's architectural sector of the festival. They will take part in the competition in all three nominations! And in the new year we plan to open an architectural department in Evpatoria on the basis of the school. There is a program, people, and most importantly, desire and will.
What connects the Crimean architecture that you are planning to show? What is special about it, or, in the words of the curators, identical? How does it differ from the neighboring Caucasian one?
- The paradigm of the Crimean architecture is amazing, where the medical postulate: "Do no harm!" really defining. The thousand-year tradition of the peninsula grew not on the opposition of personality and environment, the will of the architect and the landscape, but in their creative union. Architecture should certainly play second and even third roles here, the prima here is the unique nature of Crimea: fine organic matter and scale, without the brutal natural monumentality inherent in the Caucasian coast. “How is architecture not the main thing ?!” - sounds wild for our jaded public, where the environment is a global real estate supermarket, and new buildings are bright artifacts on its shelves, vying with each other to shout: “I'm here! Buy me!". Dignity and modesty are incompatible with pride, and this is worth learning from the Crimean School of Architecture, which we are revealing in our project. The exposition of the pavilion was compiled with Nikolai Vasiliev from three interconnected parts dedicated to the formation of the Crimean architectural school in the last century.
The first part of the pavilion's exposition: Master dedicated to the creative heritage of the pioneer of pre-war Soviet architecture of Crimea Boris Belozersky.
Second part of the exposition: Wednesday presents a retrospective of resort typology in Soviet architecture of the 1920s-1980s in the format of an originally separate exhibition "Kurortograd: Evpatoria and the Heritage of Soviet Architecture".
The third part of the exposition: Panorama "Crimean Architectural School" is conceived as a cross-section of the most representative buildings and projects in the Republic over the past five years, corresponding to the concept of the Festival. Moreover, the emphasis is placed on the new young wave, and here is a separate gratitude to Kirill Babeev and Dmitry Degtyarev, curators of the Union of Young Architects of Crimea, real architectural patriots of Crimea, who made up this section. By the way, Dmitry Degtyarev's young architectural bureau 8D from Simferopol won this summer the prestigious Moscow competition from the Morton company with the Suprematism residential complex in the Krasnokazarmennaya street area, and this once again confirms the unconditional power of the talents of the peninsula's architectural school without any connotations.
Who is your audience, who are you addressing?
- There are always a lot of young people at the exhibitions of Kurortograd, we turn to them even now with the exposition of the entire Crimean pavilion. It is quite difficult for the current generations to understand "all inclusive", but for the inhabitants of a giant closed country for a long time in the words "we are going to the sea!" sounded, first of all, the Crimean note. Nikolai Vasiliev and I are rediscovering for them a layer of culture known to us from childhood, and often unknown to them, rich in traditions. This is our educational message. It is important, of course, for the Crimeans themselves - to see themselves, their heritage and their creativity from the outside. You can't see a face face to face. By the way, at the beginning of December, before the Architecture, we show Kurortograd in his homeland in Evpatoria, at the Biennale of Contemporary Art.
– Do you think it is right to seek identity and uniqueness now, or would it be more logical to focus on the quality of life? Or, on the contrary, on common human problems, forgetting about the originality?
- Crimea is a single resort region. The search for identity, in fact, is directly related to well-being. Uniqueness factors are the components of both fashion branding and the notorious tourist attraction, etc. The main thing is to put them together with intelligence and love, not forgetting about people, heritage and unique nature.
