Not Munich, but Vyksa
Vyksa is a large metallurgical center in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Supplied pipes for the "North", now - for the "South Stream". But these and other production flows, the money associated with them, did not distinguish this regional center from many others in Russia: archaeological finds and dried fauna in local history, crippled local architectural monuments, renovated churches, City Days with folk ensembles and pies on the square … Now - with a barbecue … There is, of course, a local flavor: the history of industrialists Batashevs and three large ponds - they dive into the water right from the baths in their gardens, spend all their summer holidays, in recent years they also go sailing. In all this, the fantastic development of the engineer Shukhov, who built amazing structures at the plant and a water tower in Vyksa, seemed to drown for decades. Experts know about this, but the mesh hyperboloid and the world's first sail-shaped steel mesh shells of double curvature - behind the factory entrance - just don't look like that.
In the 90s, Professor Tatyana Vinogradova (Nizhny Novgorod University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, UNESCO Chair) invited Professor Rainer Greffe (Institute of Theory and History of Architecture, Innsbruck) to Vyksa. The foreign visitor, seeing the Shukhov shell of the sheet-rolling shop, fell to his knees and raised his hands to the sky in delight. He was convinced that the engineering and construction revolution was made in 1972 with the construction of the Munich Olympic Stadium with giant hanging shell ceilings designed by Fry Otto. But it turned out that this happened in Vyksa back in 1897. And in Vyksa, a year later, they ordered Shukhov a water tower - the first, after showing the latest design at the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod.
It seems that Vyksa, together with the guests, felt sincere regret about the state of the monuments of genius Russian thought. In 2008, the management of the metallurgical plant ("United Metallurgical Company") supported the international project "Shukhov's heritage". The city administration, together with colleagues of Professor Greffe, began work on including the Shukhov sites in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Nizhny Novgorod research enterprise "Ethnos" proposed the concept of a historical and cultural reserve on the territory of Vyksa - with the creation of a museum-reserve of industrial heritage. There is a museum in the workshop, a tower in a recreational area with an observation deck and a restaurant. What else? But this is the main question: how will all this live together with the city?
Visitors from the future
For the first time in 4 years, as part of the preparation of the "Art-ravine" in April, the "Architectural workshop" was held. Students from Vologda, Samara, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, under the guidance of the Moscow Architectural Institute professor Oskar Mamleev, came up with functional objects for different areas of Vyksa. They were trying to figure out what was good and what was not very good for this city. It is natural that among the main places of pre-design analysis, along with the park, pond and courtyards, there was also a factory workshop with Shukhov's structures. The reconstruction was proposed to be carried out by analogy with the well-known Moscow clusters - Art-Play, Winzavod, Krasny Oktyabr, Flacon plant.
The works of the participants of the workshop during the festival were exhibited at the Palace of Culture of Metallurgists. The townspeople studied the tablets and layouts, sometimes sighing: "This is unrealistic."But could they have imagined even five years ago, for example, that Vyksa would collect an excellent collection of street art to the envy of many, even the same regional Nizhny Novgorod? In Nizhny Novgorod, the authorities support advertising and propaganda murals, they are seriously talking about painting houses like in Albania, and developers are replicating the same technique of working with color. Even the symbol of the city - a deer - appeared on the embankment of the regional center a year after the Hungarian sculptor Gabor Seke put a unicorn in Vyksa Park. Art-Ravine is based on curators - the composition of the festival participants depends on their professional choice, so you can be guided by Vyksa … The festival has significantly expanded the boundaries of the real in Vyksa. This is especially noticeable in four years.
As for student projects, this was only the first stage of a long work. The same as the long bench on the Upper Pond is the first milestone in the creation of the embankment. The bench was built by Vlad Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin ("Field-design"), the object is called "Vyksun up!" (Vyksun is the river that fed the city). This is precisely a multifunctional object, utilitarian and symbolic at the same time. The bench looks like a rook or a giant skate. Cladding ceramics are like rusty metal. By function - tribune, screen, presidium, game simulator. Absolutely new and not just pertinent, but dear to Vyksa. As if she herself grew up, and the designers arrived in time and helped.
Oleg Shapiro (Moscow bureau Wowhaus) has been supervising Art-Ovrag since this year and hopes to turn the festival into not just an event, but a process. Actively include the townspeople in it, so that in addition to the summer culmination, there are several more events that affect the life of the city. It is not the scale that is important here, but the creative impulse. As it happened, for example, with the Yards project: the residents participated in the selection of the site, and then in the improvement, together with the team of the architect Kirill Bair.
About communication
Until the early 90s, it was possible to land in Vyksa on a corn plant of local airlines. Now only guests from the capital, invited by the OMK Foundation, fly to Art-Ovrag. The railway station is in Navashino, the main intercity communication is buses. And, of course, cars. In Vyksa itself there are a lot of expensive foreign cars, in the plots of local television there are appeals of Vyksa car owners to the governor with a request to build new city roads … In general, comfortable external communications are still a private matter, but intracity communications are developing. "Art-ravine" offered city bicycles for rent. The Central Library has agreed with the car company - now, until November, the “Reading Bus” runs around the city - with book exchange. This is great, no doubt, but the guests of the city still lack intelligible navigation, even while driving, not everything can be avoided.
And I haven’t come across a complete catalog of graffiti, even on the net. It's a pity … For the first three years the festival was curated by Konstantin Grouss' Art Residence, and this team filled Vyksa with completely new images for the city. New arts that help develop perception, feel harmony, admire angles, shades, light, play in associations. Of course, all this is difficult to format, link to social programs, but - thanks! - has already made Vyksa more interesting, more modern. The next team will systematize, structure and create a complete piece of the new urban environment, and the Vyksa residents will certainly appreciate and understand everything.
Understanding them is very important. This is how one of them took a dislike to the intellectual composition "Big Ginny" by the American sculptor John Powers - so, in the end, he burned it. In memory of Powers' work, there is now another composition, called "Nowhere," from the People's Architect bureau, and in front of it there are information plaques with the history of "Big Ginny". Annotation - the epitaph reads: “Local residents voluntarily and deliberately abandoned the art object, creating an emptiness in its place. We materialize this loss by taking away the space where the sculpture stood and thereby creating a symbolic emptiness."
By the way, Vyksa residents collected signatures under an appeal to the local administration about the need to install additional video surveillance cameras in the city park of culture and recreation. Judging by the polls at the city forum, the majority of respondents also do not sympathize with the "Tower at the traffic police" - an iron tree from the team "Pro. Dvizhenie" architect Peter Vinogradov. Almost 60% would like to “unsee” it, and almost 30% are glad that it exists. What do these numbers say? In my opinion, they only remind that for decades the city was almost indifferent to the fate of even what appeared near Vyksa, the first in the world, and it is not surprising that in a relatively short time the optics of an ordinary citizen did not have time to change.
The architects built the Christmas tree in June, its lighting should be switched on along with the city lighting. “The construction of the Christmas tree tower is Shukhov's,” says Pyotr. "We did the calculations." Corrugated reinforcement - branches, the tower itself - from a corner of 32x32 mm. Symbolically, Shukhov left the closed area and went into the city. And his tower began to grow, came to life. It is possible that Vyksa will start counting new years from this tree.
