Press / Lessons by Massimiliano Fuksas
Massimiliano Fuksas visited Moscow with a lecture "Architecture in Details", which he gave as part of the "Polytech on Strelka" program. A number of publications took advantage of this opportunity and spoke with the architect.
Fuksas told the Afisha Gorodu about his understanding of the profession. According to him, “architecture is first of all a help”, it “should help to live better, see better, exist in beauty, experience fantastic emotions”. Also, the master drew such parallels as architecture / cinema (created by script) and architectural project / child (uniqueness).
Interview Russia turned the conversation into a political channel. Although Fuksas does not deny that power is always a part of architecture, he has a negative attitude towards the use of architecture for politics. He criticizes the last Venice Biennale (“postmodernism is the usual talk in my grandmother’s kitchen”) and talks about more important tasks of an architect, in his opinion: to be curious, think about social problems, and change the world a little. In the meantime, it turned out that the Fuksas bureau took part in the competition "Land of Olonkho", organized by the authorities of Yakutia
A little material has also appeared on Strelka's own blog. Here the master explained what, in his understanding, means friendly architecture and what position an architect should now take in relation to the world and his profession. Our portal paid more attention to the project of the Museum and Educational Center of the Polytechnic Museum and Moscow State University on Vorobyovy Gory.
Evgeny Gerasimov on neoclassicism
Evgeny Gerasimov, in an interview with Kommersant and the Portal of the Moscow Archives Council, spoke about traditional architecture as one of the modern trends to which popularity is returning both in our country and in the West. According to the architect, he is interested in "seeking and developing the principles of both traditional and modern architecture in the context of modern technologies." He also considers it necessary to return to the principles of quarterly development, improve the quality of education and architectural criticism, and also that competitions are not a panacea, and in the sleeping areas of St. Petersburg there is no demand for cutting-edge architecture.
Macro, meso, micro scale
Big City writes about the creation of a super-city in China, in which 80 million people will soon live. In fact, it is an agglomeration of 11 cities located in the Pearl River Delta. It is envisaged that it will be possible to get from any point of this megastructure to another point in no more than an hour. At the same time, the portal writes about the great vulnerability of such giant cities - the life support systems (transport, electricity, water, communications) in them are too closely interconnected and dependent on natural disasters and other disasters.
"City-Afisha" tells about the appearance in Moscow of perhaps the best park - "Gardeners" near the metro station "Kashirskaya". In December 2013, the architectural bureau LDA Design and the Russian studio Alphabet City came up with a renovation project for it, and since May 2014, improvements have been carried out. During this time, new flower beds have appeared (by Anna Andreeva, who is also responsible for the Crimean embankment), pavilions, a navigation system (Zoloto Group), good lighting, three excellent playgrounds, a dry fountain, and a large skate park. The city also wants to add a church, which, however, was not envisaged in the project.
An article about the curiosity of Russian Orthodox church building appeared in the "Architectural Bulletin". Nikita Shangin writes with regret that, despite the "tradition of powerful evolutionary dynamics of form-creation" and even the avant-garde nature of Russian temple architecture throughout its thousand-year history, today it "does not want to speak otherwise than in the language of the Lay of Igor's Host."In most of the works there is not even a hint of a "modern architectural solution of the image of an Orthodox church", only painfully familiar "historicized kitsch". The author finds reasons for this, and also gives a positive example - a project by architects D. and K. Veretennikovs and P. Frolenok.
Another material of the "Big City" is devoted to modular houses, which were invented by Maxim Kurennoy. As it turned out, beautiful, eco-friendly and cheap houses do not take root in our market - consumers need "more design", and large customers need more profitability.
Sochi and Kaliningrad
Sochi is gradually preparing itself for post-Olympic life. Kommersant announced the forthcoming reconstruction of the Fisht stadium for the World Cup, and the Sochi Architecture portal tells about the next project for the reconstruction of the central embankment presented at the XIII International Investment Forum Sochi-2014. Also on this portal there was an interesting material on the results of the Spot Camp Sochi 2014 workshop, during which the participants studied Computational Design. The lecturers and moderators were employees of Zaha Hadid Architects, Enric Ruiz-Geli, IAAC, UNStudio, etc.
The results of the final stage of the international competition "Heart of the City" are being discussed in Kaliningrad. On the portal "Real Estate of Novy Kaliningrad. Ru" all the winning projects are analyzed in detail, and not without criticism.
Blogs
The editorial staff of the Strelka Institute blog summarizes the eventful summer. Three big digests are expected - "Architecture", "Internet and Technology" and "Cultural Studies", which will include the most interesting interviews and selections. The first issue contains interviews with Santiago Calatrava, Mikel Rohkind, Giovanna Carnevali, Kengo Kuma, Massimiliano Fuksas, Charlie Koolhaas. Instead of lectures and workshops, the blog offers five interesting books for architects and urbanists.
The Urbanurban portal publishes a video story by Christopher Herwig about his photo project on the Soviet bus stops, which he has been looking for and photographing since 2002. In the blog of Alexander Rappaport, you can also read about the similarity between photography and architecture.
Architect-restorer Tatiana Belyaeva writes about visits to the Workshops of Andrey Anisimov by delegations from Italy and China. The Piacenti Restoration Center is known for its participation in works on the Uffizi Gallery, the Basilica of San Gaudenzio, the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem. With us, he took part in the restoration of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, acted as a consultant in the restoration of monuments in Kizhi. The head of the center, Jammarco Piacenti, is the author of the project of a tent made of glued wood for the rotunda of the Resurrection Cathedral of the New Jerusalem Monastery. Representatives of the regional branch of the protection of the cultural heritage of Hubei province spoke about the progress of work on the development of the "Great Tea Route" tourism program.
User donna_anna wrote in the ru_woodarch community about an exhibition of photographs and watercolor plans of amazing structures - wooden synagogues of Galicia, built in the 17th-18th centuries.
Finally - Yegor Kotov's story about studying at the University of Aberdeen and education in the specialty "urbanism" in Scotland.
