Kamsvikus Districts - a public organization created by the architect and architectural historian Dmitry Sukhin to preserve the architectural heritage of the Kaliningrad region; Among the Okrugi projects - the well-known insterGOD, about which Archi.ru already wrote, “The City of Wonderful People” - we hope to tell you about it soon. We give the floor to D. B. Sukhin.
The architecture of modernism, they say, for technology has forgotten how to build "comfort" and "home" - and in the world, in Russia - especially: they have, at best, "high-tech", we have - "high-tech" … In Venice, at the recent Biennale, even Germany, having set itself the task of building a “new homeland,” was unable to master the topic. There is an urge, they wanted to say, both universities and unions participated, the projects were quite technical - but it did not work out. So, maybe the very words are missing? And which ones? - are silent. Significantly, so did the professional press. But before, it was somehow possible to combine the “native” and supranational mood, technique with meaning and poetics. They are not exclusive, mutually enriching! The Finns, they say, still succeed, they also talk about the Dutch, others are looking - where is the point where different branches have not yet parted? We could find her too. And she just hid with us.
It is and only in Russia that a full-scale example has been preserved of how accounting and competent changes in traditions, budget and zeal, and even the very absence of the right personnel can crown success - that very Motherland, that very modernity! It works far from only along the blood-linking line, but also perfectly picked up “our” post-war settlers. It's about East Prussia. It, lying in the ruins of the First World War, was restored by architects from all over the country, who quickly and carefully grasped the tradition, did not miss the delusions of recent grunders, and taught themselves to help the latest construction technologies - our great-grandfathers. Many began here, from Sharun's nebals to Neufert's patterns. They were nourished - in word, contribution, deed - by numerous "chefs". And it was in such a raft that East Prussia from the backward backyards became the land of exemplary, modern, truly connected with its history and the rest of Germany. The birthplace of Germanism from many languages [more about this amazing historical episode can be read
here and here] - including architectural ones! Indeed, Mies, Haring, Behrens and Tessenov took part in the famous "Ring" (the association of architects Der Ring, 1926-1933 - note from Archi.ru).
Today the Kaliningrad region has also gathered people from different regions, but the position of architecture here is no better, and even in some respects worse than in other parts of the country. Here are the commercial interests of the new "grundership", and the deficit of budgetary funds, and the demand for a new, truly modern architecture, and for the old one too, and its own fear. And the chefs, ties to the "mainland", no. There are experts in the capitals, but the region is bypassed in transit; There is already a “critical mass” of stakeholders in the field, the relevance, valuable experience of the old fund, outside of any connotations, we have already learned to see - and there are much, many orders of magnitude less specialists to combine the new with the old.
So let's repeat the experiment! Combining the boring technical German practice and the lofty lopsided Russian flight, it is the legacy of the 20th century that we will help to understand ourselves and others, to grow above ourselves - and "sail further into the revolution." Improve Russian, German, and even Polish architecture. Unless we first lose our “not-our heritage”. If projects such as the reconstruction of the Konigsberg castle supported by the rector of the Moscow Architectural Institute do not turn the announced opening in the area of the university branch into a farce.
Our “Second Patronage” project is a way to naturally involve people in protecting heritage, so that as a result, history and monuments become from “aliens” their own. Even a small amount of participation is important. Everyone can be a "chef" and "sponsored", in combinations or at the same time: we have Kaliningraders, we have Russians and us Germans, architects and ordinary residents, each has something to share - and there is, it would seem, no one to fill. But there is! Although not necessarily in pairs. Everyone can help everyone and receive the same help from the other. This can be moral support for the very idea of the value of heritage, growth on the heritage here, so that whenever someone from the sponsors needs it, it would be possible to rely on many voices at once; there can be expert support, on a specific object or topic, in which to declare yourself, answer questions, write articles, participate in projects; there may be school programs … You can also propose your ideas! And hardly anyone will refuse financial support.
Not to edify about value, but to allow it to grow, to grow in circles, to combine personal benefit with the public, combining the past with the present - in recent years, such concepts of heritage revalorization have shown and proved themselves. It is all the stranger that there are only a dozen or two who have signed up for our new chefs. Among them, of course, are such masters as Volkvin Marg, co-founder of the gmp bureau - von Gerkan, Marg und Partner, or the former head of the German Gosstroy Mausbach - but few, few of them! Hans Stimmann dismisses "political consequences", others with something else. Perhaps Werkbund, who deserved a lot of fame just when organizing that first patronage, still did not refuse - but how to explain the hesitations of the Kaliningrad regional public figures? Aren't they the first to complain about the lack of support when someone begins to destroy their dear pavement, ruin or square, failing to understand them? When is it senseless to pack in cotton wool, for lingering mold, meter walls? So, the chefs could both support, and explain, and combine; those - others, and these - you!
You can sign up for a chef
here.
The Baltic waters are said to hide the ancient city of Vinetu. Nowhere was there better than goldsmiths, mechanics, astrologers; their merchants went to the distant seas, carried their wonders home. But they became proud, shut up, sharing nothing with anyone - and overthrown. And their skill goes along with them. They lie awake, under water - but once in a hundred years they surface for a couple of hours: what if someone looks into the now wide-open gates? Take it, buy a million for a penny, and the forgiven Vineta will return to the sublunary world.
Selma Lagerlöf didn’t have a penny for Niels, he lost it while playing on the moonlit path. Today Vineta has become an “island” of the Kaliningrad region. Year after year, the sand of their watch runs out: burnt shinkels, broken tiles, avenues for firewood … Let us forget - will Vineta come to anyone else after us?
Just before the New Year in the region, a catastrophic "repair" is good if the roofs of the Motley Ryad residential area in Chernyakhovsk, the first building of Hans Scharun, the author of the famous Berlin Philharmonic, were slightly underdestructed. Federal monument, “a monument of European importance under threat of destruction” (Europa Nostra 2014). It is to him that Kamsvikus District devotes itself. And how many of them in the same region do not have such a sonorous name for protection?
