In mid-March it became known that the project "Studio 44", which won the competition for the concept of the Museum of Science and Technology in Tomsk, was approved by the Governor and there is reason to hope that it will become one of the rare, if not the only project in Russia that is being implemented as a winner. architectural competition. We analyzed the project once again, and in the coming days we plan to talk about other proposals of the second stage of the competition: the project of A. Asadov's bureau, and three other finalists. ***
Nikita Yavein's project that won the competition is radically different from all other proposals in the final round. Summarizing, one could say that in other projects the theme of futuristic hi-tech, technopark and advanced technologies is stronger. Their keywords and context are fantastic, linear progress.
The Studio 44 project is also no stranger to technogenic imagery, but here it is read differently, its key word is museum, context is history. In the upper tiers, about two-thirds of the museum is wooden, which is surprising in itself; concrete and brick appear only in the lower "basement" floor. Secondly, and this is more important, the author's description carefully lists many possible historical and contextual connotations, so you don't need to guess anything, you can read and find, or not find, parallels to the text in the project. The oldest layer of analogies: plows - ships with archers and Cossacks, which Boris Godunov sent in 1604 to protect the local Eushta Tatars from the neighboring Yenisei Kirghiz - in exchange for joining the structure, of course - and a fortress-fort, built immediately upon arrival and serving at first and indeed for defense, and then for the placement of exiles, after all, Siberia. Here, to the ships and the prison, in their meaning are also gulbishcha galleries - wooden balconies that were supposed to be in towers and churches in the 17th century, architects mention them specially and separately. The next Tomsk is a provincial town, built up according to a regular plan with houses with wooden chambers on stone basements, an important, rich city, albeit a thief so much that the clever Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky thought to "hang everyone" here. Further chronologically, among the "architectural prototypes of the museum" are listed the triumphal arch and pavilion built for the arrival of the Tsarevich, the future Nicholas II, to the city, and the last step of the prehistory is the Handicraft Exhibition of 1923 in Moscow, on the site of Gorky Park.
More than three hundred years fall into the range of parallels, and this historical layer, enviable for its depth and meticulousness, immediately becomes one of the main features of the project. I want to interpret it on its own, it is some kind of new level of attitude to the context, deeply penetrating, pulling, collecting in its basket all possible, cultural and not so much, values. A kind of semantic archeology: this is how a restorer makes clearing, removing layer by layer and fixing everything. But here it is also important that the layers are not completely removed, no one goes directly to the "prison", the very fact of layering, the multiplicity of allusions, is much more important. The presence of an active parallel text, which somewhere explains, and somewhere deliberately confuses, but in any case serves as a full-fledged, necessary part of the work, resembles conceptualism of the eighties and its favorite variety - "paper architecture", just as the whole complex of associations resembles many crippled, translucent drawings superimposed on each other. Everything somehow shines through, grows through one another, both speculatively and visually, forming two "tag clouds": one conceptual, where the plowshares, galleries, gulbis, the emperor, the governor, and the other visual, and they behave approximately the same - namely, they do not give answers, but only draw into thought, provoke searches, pose riddles - and what could be more interesting for a scientist than solving riddles; here the architects also added a rebus. And two more "clouds", conceptual and visual, somehow interact with each other.
In terms of plasticity, the last of the analogies named by the authors of the project, with the handicraft exhibition of 1923, is the main one, the similarity is obvious, you can consider and compare the details. The similarity with the ensemble of the famous exhibition is obvious, direct quotations are quickly recognized: faceted towers with an external diagonal lathing are related
the pavilion of the Moscow City Bank, long wooden peripters with a permeable frame zigzag filling of shallow pediments are found in the same place; a large faceted volume growing behind the back of the portico can be seen nearby, in the building of the main pavilion designed by Zholtovsky - the same technique becomes the main one in the solution of the end of the museum building. In addition to these basic quotes, there are beacon quotes that sharpen the similarities: a windmill, a lattice tower. The exhibition consisted of pavilions and occupied a much larger area, and the museum is a single building, strung on a strict suite of halls, and yet their silhouettes clearly overlap. The museum is like an exhibition in the same way as the Jerusalem wall of the Nikolo-Ugreshsky monastery near Moscow resembles a medieval city, without being it - it can be understood as an architectural performance or a theatrical scenery on a theme. Even the location is surprisingly the same - the museum, as in the past and the territory of the exhibition, stretches between the ponds and the river.
So, the citation is emphasized in every possible way by the authors and is definitely noticeable. It creates an additional plot structure in the project, which gives rise to thought. Why this particular exhibition?
The architecture of large industrial exhibitions in general is a special thing, due to some temporality and freedom of exhibition structures, it was on it that many experiments were worked out. The language of the architecture of the pavilions allows a lot, moreover, the similarity of the exposition function makes it quite logical for the museum. In a word, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the exhibition was chosen as a prototype.
In addition, the Handicraft and Industrial Exhibition of 1923 is deservedly considered a catalyst for the formation of the Russian avant-garde. The first Soviet exhibition of achievements, an attempt at self-identification of the workers 'and peasants' state and an instrument of mass propaganda - but not yet pretentious-frozen, unlike the subsequent All-Union Agricultural Exhibitions and VDNKh, but full of sincere searches for forms and themes in an attempt to realize oneself. Shchusev called the exhibition architectural and said that generations of architects would learn from it. But the Nepman exhibition turned out to be half-forgotten for a long time, and a couple of years ago Garage in the Park of Culture, opening its pavilion by Shigeru Bana, reminded the park of its roots. So, the pavilions of the 1923 exhibition were extremely diverse: from the passive oriental Azerbaijan and Turkestan to the progressive "Makhorka" by Melnikov, from engineering structures made of wood, such as the pedestrian bridge over the Garden Ring, to Zholtovsky's free reflections on the themes of the classics - he built the core of the exhibition: double arch of the entrance, "Main House", Mechanical Engineering Pavilion.
Colleagues scolded Zholtovsky for his attachment to classical forms, their insufficient dissolution in constructions, as it may now be Nikita Yavein will be condemned for too precise quotation. However, neither before nor after the classic Zholtovsky received such a free interpretation. Either succumbing to the charm of the first Soviet tractor, or following the long-established specifics of light temporary structures, he boldly weaves classic arches and pediments into a light frame, enhancing the effect of permeable lattices, not particularly exchanging for decorative details. Frame structures flaunt intricate structures, turning them inside out like a Christmas coat. The shadows of recognizable forms, due to some fairness, interact more easily with each other, forming a new, flexible and, which is especially important, alloy tolerant to impregnations.
It is this language that Nikita Yavein uses for his museum, and in my opinion here we are not talking about the reproduction of fragments, but about the adoption, and perhaps even about the revival of the architectural language, which at one time played an important role, but was relatively quickly forgotten, replaced by propaganda of a more monumental nature and from this it was not "worked out" to the end. The authors of the Tomsk project propose to revive this language, emphasizing and carefully working out its valuable properties and capabilities.
Its main advantage is its high adaptability, the ability to absorb very different topics without much damage to the whole. Transparent, layering structures are akin to Meyerhold's stage constructions, they are generally similar to theatrical scenery, they are capable of carrying different meanings, and architects use this tolerance, injecting many of the stories listed at the beginning into the image. The gangways leading over the road to the river remind of the ships that landed on the banks of the Tom River four hundred years ago - now the imaginary "ship" of the museum has appeared on land like a biblical ark after the flood.
And if with the ship theme, if I am not mistaken, it was not very good at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, then the second medieval theme declared by Nikita Yavein - the fortress-fortress, we find there completely. Drawn by Zholtovsky, Kokorin, Collie, the central part of the 1923 exhibition was stylized with Art Nouveau means like a wooden fortress. A "Russian town" was built near the Garden Ring - towers in the corners, in front of the entrance and at
bridge - it would be quite suitable for a decoration for some film about the Serpent-Gorynych, although it did not literally look like a wooden Russian fortress, as we imagine it now thanks to the historian Anatoly Kirpichnikov. One way or another, it was an integral image that Zholtovsky took directly from the previous era, using its "nationality" and somewhat reviving it with the freedom of open structures, and placed it on the exhibition. All this is used in his project by Nikita Yavein, only the towers of the decorative "prison" are lined up, forming a museum suite.
The plastic art of the handicraft exhibition is also interesting in that it took a lot from the wooden architecture of Art Nouveau: external frames, ornamental rows of diagonal planks and even the transparency of the structures, well worked out in the pseudo-Russian and simply romantic chambers and verandas of summer cottages of the period of the destruction of the cherry garden. Having cleared of the decor, but without losing its ephemerality, this version of wooden architecture was able to combine the classic pediment and peripter with industrial associations - and the towers, of course, most of all, resemble something of a factory, a monument-memory of the river industry. The grilles, of which the building is made almost in the same way as the Pompidou Museum - made of pipes, seem to be a kind of retro wooden hi-tech, and all together leads us to the popular movie genre of steam-punk, only here instead of nuts, bolts and rivets there are wooden beams and filling.
However, the neo-Russian theme in the wooden chambers was one of the main - and here it is native, the authors especially emphasize that the prototype of the glazed corridors that stretch along the long walls outside and form an alternative path for visitors inside the suite were "gulbische galleries" from Russian churches XVII-XVIII centuries. Meanwhile, gulbisches may have been an important part of ancient Russian life, and galleries are an Italian, southern innovation. Therefore, the medieval resource in the galleries is not very felt - although the author's idea is interesting in itself - but the similarity of the galleries to the summer cottage of the Silver Age is charming, and adds a lot of warmth to the museum, which can balance the factory notes.
Wooden Art Nouveau is present at the reception level, but the image of an 18th century town house with the first stone floor seems to be suspended on the frame of shaped "lines of force": large blocks of Cyclopean brick rustic, where the joints are filled with glass and glow at night, turning into narrow windows, almost loopholes. reminiscent of both the city and the fortress. And here again it is necessary to return to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition of Zholtovsky: it was he who showed how easily the avant-garde freelancer is able to combine the arches-pediments of the new era with medieval towers and gulbisches.
Interestingly, relying on the plasticity invented by Zholtovsky and using a peripter with pediments for the base volume, Nikita Yavein deliberately - as if for balance - reinforces the constructivist theme, putting it in a series of semantic associations, namely, likening the tower-halls to simple geometric figures of Malevich: from a square to a characteristic equal-pointed cross. This cross also has a lot of interesting things, perhaps this is one of the keys to unraveling the project. We remember that the avant-garde masters were not constantly engaged in only denying the past, they still strove, having cleansed it, like icons from darkened varnish, to find certain truths muddied by interpreters. Malevich's cross is an attempt to stretch a thread past the 19th century right into the fifteenth, to find there something real or even worthwhile. There is a feeling that the authors of the museum in Tomsk made an attempt to use the key, invented by the avant-garde, but not fully used, to open their own version of the historical context. They chose the very avant-garde that did not deny the classics and was interested in ancient Russian roots.
In addition, wood itself is an interesting, but complex material, in the 20th century - with a painful history, because it was actually banned for fire safety reasons, rebuilding Russian cities with concrete boxes so that they completely or almost completely ceased to be wooden. To offer to build a museum out of wood, albeit on a concrete ground floor, is bold. But finding the correct image of a tree is difficult, because now there are about five ways, and all are too hackneyed. Even if we start from the wooden Tomsk of a hundred or two hundred years ago, then neither a log hut, nor a wooden room can be a prototype. In the modern tree, several directions reign (if you do not take the huts as frankly retrograde): the simplicity of the Scandinavian house; shingle-scaled bionic snakes; bold ribbed frames for gyms and airports, in which wood successfully competes with metal, are direct heirs to the large-span frame arches of the early 20th century.
Of course, the techniques of the 1923 exhibition were used in the Moscow neoanangard of the 2000s, but infrequently, rather sporadically; much less common than corner balconies and tape windows. Nikita Yavein in the Tomsk museum acts more boldly, almost declaratively: he attempts to revive the stylistics of the time of the formation of the architectural avant-garde, to use its happy, partly theatrical ability to absorb meaning. It really turned out - an amazing design, akin to a wooden mechanism, some kind of airplane-steamer, a memory of an era when dreams of technological progress, which now seem so slightly naive, truly inspired many people. This is a very appropriate position for a museum of technology.
