The main theme of the exhibition and biennale this year was architectural competitions and neighborhoods. And, indeed, it is difficult to find other trends that are equally relevant for modern Moscow: the quarterly principle of organizing development and the selection of the best projects through architectural competitions - subjects that, thanks to the efforts of the new Moskomarkhitektura team, do not leave the pages of the professional press.
Of course, the curator of the Biennale, Bart Goldhoorn, could not ignore this, however, wholly approving the new course of city policy, the Dutchman considers his main task to be the immersion of Moscow in the global context. Now that the Russian capital, so to speak, has turned to face the best methods of shaping the urban environment, it is especially important, according to Goldhoorn, to give it the best guidelines. That is why this year's exposition contains so many foreign examples of the same quarter development: individual exhibitions are devoted to the experience of Holland and New York, a large hall is occupied by the Nordic block project, which shows how the theme of quarters is understood in the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, and, finally, a whole "City of Quarters" has also developed on the first floor of the Central House of Artists, where the Institute of Open Urbanism has collected a collection of the world's best solutions on this topic.
The exposition “Quarters. Russian Experience”, which occupies a central place on the third floor, looks modest but dignified against this background. It is gratifying that along with highly publicized projects (for example, multi-colored social housing on Bazovskaya Street or Wellton Park of the Krost concern), many others, no less attractive, were found for her - the Vesna and Aquarelle residential complexes of the Ostozhenka bureau, "Forest floors" of the "Architectural group DNA", LCD "Literator" ("Sergey Kiselev and Partners"), "City Park" in Novosibirsk (KCAP Architects), "City of Embankments" (Maxim Atayants). Moreover, both the geography and the scale of these projects speak eloquently: the quarterly principle of development, attentive to the needs of an individual, is now becoming in demand not only in Moscow, gradually spreading farther and farther from the capital, covering its satellite cities and other millionaires.
The contests that are so actively promoted by Moscow today also turned out to be not a purely metropolitan business. The curator of the section of the exposition dedicated to them, Elena Gonzalez, showed the whole range of competitions held in Russia today. It is very wide: from large-scale urban planning studies, which allow collecting not specific projects, but rather banks of ideas, to individual environmental ones, from state and city orders to social initiatives. Among the latter, the curator herself is pleased to consider the recently held blitz competition for the improvement of Triumfalnaya Square: its super-tight deadlines, of course, amaze the imagination, but if it were not for the active position of the public, it might not have existed at all. Another public initiative is the "Inhabited Island" project, which was initiated by residents of the Troparevo-Nikulino district, having learned that their favorite pedestrian boulevard was going to be landscaped "according to the order."
The Moskomarkhitektura, which has prepared its own exposition, also approached the issue creatively: one could easily expect from the committee some kind of report on the competitions held and the successes achieved, but instead, its employees conducted a study on the history of the competitions. The chronology of the most famous architectural competitions of the past (starting from 448 BC!) Occupied the entire wall of the central space on the second floor of the Central House of Artists, becoming an epigraph to the entire exhibition.
Opening ARCH Moscow, both the chief architect of the city Sergey Kuznetsov and the curator Elena Gonzalez said that a few years ago we actually had two different architectures: one, modern and delicately feeling, became the heroine of professional exhibitions and reviews, and the second was simply implemented in the city, claiming not to fame, but rather, on the contrary, to anonymity. And it is largely thanks to the competitions that these "layers" finally began to mix, and the gap between them - to narrow.
In total, projects from 16 countries are presented at ARCH Moscow 2014 and the biennale that joined it. “Architectural as never before,” said Vasily Bychkov, director of the Central House of Artists, at a press conference. The variety of exhibitions is also supported by an interesting framework program, the central event of which promises to be the Moscow Architectural Forum. It starts tomorrow, May 22, and will be devoted mainly to the same issues - competition practice, design and construction of neighborhoods. In a separate session, its organizers presented a range of issues related to the role of the Moscow River in the structure of modern Moscow and the reorganization of its many embankments.
In their own way, the theme of contests will be revealed by the shows that have already become traditional: within the framework of the ARCH of Moscow, the ARCHIWOOD prize will be awarded, the “Architect of the Year” will be named, and the nominees for the next “House of the Year” will be presented. And one of the most interesting debutants of 2014, without a doubt, was the architectural drawing competition "ArchiGraphics", the works of the winners of which are shown on the second floor of the Central House of Artists in the chamber corner hall No. 15. The winner of the competition and the author of the exposition, architect Ruben Arakelyan, came up with a stylish snow-white space that perfectly emphasizes the fragile beauty of the architectural design. The genre from which any architecture begins, including the one that is then honed in competitions and serves the townspeople, taking on the appearance of neighborhoods.
