The competition was announced in the spring of this year, and even then caused a lot of controversy (see, in particular, the article by Grigory Revzin). All projects of the monument can be seen on the Novaya Gazeta website. On October 16, ten finalists were announced, yesterday the projects were named, which took the first three places (there you can also get acquainted with the extensive composition of the jury of the competition). Yuliy Borisov's project was not included in the top three; we publish it as an example of a spatial rather than sculptural solution to the problem posed in the competition.
The site for the installation of the monument was chosen at the intersection of Sadovaya-Spasskaya and Sakharov Avenue, on the site of a park with blue Christmas trees in front of the former building of the computing building of the Minaviaprom, now owned by banks and insurance companies. If we exclude the proximity of Sakharov Avenue, the place is otherwise random. During the aforementioned discussions, it was said more than once that it would be better to erect the monument at least at the Lubyanka, instead of Felix. But the participants of the competition, of course, worked with what was offered to them: with the space at the corner of two multi-lane highways; cars rushing past, then standing in a traffic jam. And walking here is not very convenient.
Yuliy Borisov suggested filling the square with a dense "forest" of corroded metal steles with a list of the names of the repressed. The steles are two, if not three times higher than human height, 4-5 meters; their right edge is torn off. A symbolic cemetery made up of steles is intended to indicate the scale of the tragedy. The site is paved with large metal plates with engraved, luminous contours of the USSR. If you look from above, it turns out that the steles are not randomly placed, but in places where the camps are concentrated. A person walking between the monuments, in this way, in a symbolic sense, will fall into the space of a prison country.
In order to see the outline drawing and assess the validity of the location of the steles, Yuliy Borisov suggests climbing a bypass bridge-gallery made of the same corroded metal, symbolizing the stage - the prisoners' way to the camp. The site of the monument is not raised, but deepened, carved into the ground of the park. Descending from the bridge, the visitor finds himself in the lowered southern part and finds himself in a space secluded from the bustle of the city and noise, where you can read the engraved names, plunge into the atmosphere of sorrow. Along the contour, the architect proposed to preserve the blue spruce, and to process the inner section with brutal concrete with traces of formwork boards. The combination of rough concrete and aged metal is designed to create a special atmosphere of mourning, in addition - "mainly with these materials and technologies and prisoners faced" - says the author in the description of the project. The dates are carved into the concrete: 1930-1956 - the years of the existence of the GULAG (Main Directorate of Forced Labor Camps).
“Participation in the competition for the creation of the project of the monument is a rather new story for us, since we work more with commercial projects,” says Yuliy Borisov. "The fact that we got into the top ten finalists indicates that we understood the problem correctly and found an adequate answer."
