The name of the exhibition “forge of great architecture” just wants to conjecture to “forge of great style”. Indeed, the exposition clearly presents the entire range of styles, later fused into the notorious Stalinist neoclassicism (or Empire style - as you like). In the halls of the Enfilade of the main building of the museum, there are avant-gardists (Konstantin Melnikov, the Vesnin brothers), and a direction close to Western Art Deco (workshop of Daniil Fridman), and a retrospective eclectic school (Alexei Shchusev), and Leningrad neoclassicists-traditionalists (Noy Trotsky, Vladimir Shchuko). The variety of currents that existed almost at one historical moment is really impressive.
But the exhibition is not only about the genesis of the “grand style”.
We must pay tribute to the curators Sergei Tchoban (SPEECH) and Irina Chepkunova (MA): the exposition does not simply consist of a list of individual competitive projects of the 1920s – 1950s, which are rich in the collection of the Museum of Architecture. The curators preferred to select only seven competitive stories, but tell each of them in detail - from concept to implementation. Here are the objects around which the narrative is centered: the Palace of Labor (in the place intended for it, the Mossovet hotel ("Moscow") was eventually built), the Moscow branch of the editorial office of the newspaper "Leningradskaya Pravda" (publishing house of the newspaper "Izvestia"), Central Telegraph, the State Library USSR them. IN AND. Lenin, the Military Academy of the Red Army named after V. I. M. V. Frunze, State Theater named after V. S. Meyerhold (Tchaikovsky Concert Hall), USSR Academy of Sciences (its site was occupied by the Central House of Artists).
The final "shortlist" includes iconic buildings in Moscow, created during the dramatic period of the formation of Soviet architecture. As a rule, they were built in the environment of a historical city, transforming it, sometimes - entering into contradiction, setting a new, enlarged scale and forming new urban centers. The exposition allows us to trace how the idea of buildings-symbols that exist not outside, but inside the prevailing urban-planning fabric, was born and transformed.
This exhibition is also about how relatively quickly, due to point inclusions in city nodes and viewpoints, Moscow was reborn into a new city. Here inevitably (and this is clearly what the curators wanted) an analogy with today arises. It is unlikely that truly iconic public facilities have emerged in the capital over the past twenty years. However, I would like to ponder: is it possible today, at a new historical stage, for examples of large architecture to appear here, say, on the embankments (this is precisely the task that the competition taking place now sets)?
But back to the topic of the exhibition. Large competitions were chosen for exhibiting, crowned with the implementation of the best project, and numerous "paper" competitions of the 1920s – 1930s. - left behind the scenes. Thus, the main idea of the exhibition organizers is obvious: the competition is important for them precisely as a mechanism for selecting the best ideas for creating real architecture.
Thus, six out of seven contests ultimately received “material embodiment”. The only exception is the competition for the project of the Palace of Labor (1922–1923) - a milestone event, although it did not lead to the implementation of the winning project, but predetermined the direction of development of domestic architecture.
The history of this competition can also serve as a valuable lesson for today's architects. In the process of working on competitive projects, the rationalist architects ASNOVA, headed by Nikolai Ladovsky, refused to participate because of the too conservative, in their opinion, jury, thereby giving way to their competitors - the constructivist brothers Vesnin, who eventually received the third prize. As history has shown, this self-elimination of the rationalists became fatal for them: they were forever removed from the architectural scene, and the Vesnins were given the opportunity to shape the face of modern architecture.
The history of the creation of iconic buildings in Moscow becomes clearer precisely in the process of comparing various bids. Thus, the realized architectural concept of the P. I. Tchaikovsky's authorship by Dmitry Chechulin can be viewed as a rudimentary initial version of Alexei Shchusev's project with a tower, from which in the final version only a pergola completion remained for a restaurant that had never been in operation.
It is important to understand that the most progressive and architecturally interesting option was not always implemented: the project was implemented that best suited the taste of the customer, which was the state, the main organizer of the competitions.
Some of the works presented are truly unique and will be of interest to lovers of the history of architecture. For example, the exhibition presents a competition project for the building of the Academy of Sciences of the French classic of the international style André Lurs, who worked for some time in the USSR in the mid-1930s. This project was last shown to the public in France 30 years ago. Also, for the first time, the project of the ASNOVA brigade was shown for the competition of the Military Academy of the RKKA named after V. I. M. V. Frunze and a number of other works.
Many exhibits, for example, the project of the House of Artists on Krymsky Val, lay rolled up for several decades and suffered greatly from this. Therefore, they were restored before exhibiting, which is a common practice during the preparation of the exhibition, as curator Irina Chepkunova emphasized.
The design project of the exhibition required a limitation of the number of demonstrated projects, so some of them were not included in the exposition. However, these works can be found in the exhibition catalog, where all the works planned by the curators to be shown are published.
