In the Museum of Architecture. A. V. Shchusev opened the exhibition "Moscow Metro - an underground monument of architecture." As the director of MA Irina Korobyina explained, it was originally planned to associate the exhibition with the 80th anniversary of the Moscow Metro, which was celebrated last year. However, the metro theme turned out to be so popular, not only among Muscovites and residents of the country, but also among foreign tourists, that it became obvious that the exhibition does not need to be linked to dates, but can become a separate event. And so it happened. There was excitement at the opening, the halls of the museum were very quickly filled with people, almost every exhibit had a lively discussion. And this is not surprising: after all, the exposition covered an entire era.
“This is a unique phenomenon when a transport infrastructure facility was designed as a grandiose architectural project that plays an important role in the cultural and political life of the country,” Irina Korobyina said at the opening ceremony. - The oldest London subway, Berlin or Paris, originally striking the imagination with technical achievements, today has become a familiar and inexpensive form of urban transport. The Moscow metro was designed as the eighth wonder of the world. It remains so to this day. The metro model was compared with an ideal city, and the very fact of the development of the underground space, complicated by economic difficulties, imperfect technical equipment and the difficult geology of Moscow (construction was accompanied by frequent collapses, floods, breakthroughs of mud flows), was perceived as a feat, one of the main achievements of the Soviet people and a symbol bright communist future.
The entire exposition, the project of which was developed by the Narodny Architect bureau under the leadership of Anton Ladygin, is divided into four main zones, sequentially telling about the first, second, third and fourth stages of the metro construction. Photos from different years, original graphic sheets of station projects - unique materials from the funds of the Museum of Architecture, from the archives and museum of the Moscow Metro, as well as from Metrogiprotrans allow you to plunge into history. In addition to graphic materials, one of the halls continuously broadcasts an hour and a half film about the Moscow metro, edited by director Elena Lysakova.
Each section presents both completed and competitive projects of the best architects of the country. Alexey Dushkin, Dmitry Chechulin, Alexey Shchusev, Boris Iofan and many others took part in the large construction project. One of the first, in 1935, was the Komsomolskaya station designed by Dmitry Chechulin as part of the first metro section from Sokolniki to Park Kultury. The station, originally designed for a large passenger traffic, differed from the others in its unusual design: along the entire hall above the tracks, the architect provided for pedestrian galleries hidden behind a row of slender columns. Such a construction visually expanded the space, trimmed with pink marble and decorated with majolica panels. Much later, in 1952, the ground pavilion and the station "Komsomolskaya" of the Circle Line, which became a continuation of the ensemble of the Kazan station, were built according to the project of Alexei Shchusev.
Another station on the Sokolnicheskaya line is the Krasnye Vorota by Ivan Fomin and Nikolai Ladovsky. The well-known rationalist Ladovsky took part in the competition for the reconstruction of Moscow, within the framework of which he developed the general plan of the city, called the "Parabola of Ladovsky". The idea of this project consisted in an aspiration to "cut" the radial-ring system of Moscow, and to turn the liberated "energy" of the city towards Leningrad. In this case, the general plan of Moscow would become like a parabola. Ladovsky brilliantly transferred his unrealized grandiose plan to the tiny ground-level pavilion of the Krasnye Vorota metro station. He created a three-dimensional parabolic object, a funnel that draws people inward. The architect Fomin has already worked on the formation of the interior space. In contrast to the pavilion, the interiors of the ground-based lobbies in the Art Deco style turned out to be solemn and somewhat ponderous, which, however, met the ideological task set before the architects. In the train movement zone, the author tried to preserve the memory of the place - the lost Red Gate, a monument of the 18th century, symbolizes the arches on the pylons.
One of the central themes of the exhibition, undoubtedly, should be called the projects of Alexei Dushkin - "Mayakovskaya", "Revolution Square", "Kropotkinskaya". For the latter, he designed a lightweight ground pavilion, which was not implemented. But the project of the station itself was carried out exactly: with high columns opening at the vaults, like giant flowers. This solution creates an amazing play of light and shadow, thanks to which the laconic space turns into a solemn palace hall.
Constructivists also tried to make their contribution to the construction of the Moscow metro, despite the fact that by the beginning of the construction of the metro, constructivism in the country was in disgrace. Thus, the Vesnin brothers, having won the competition, developed several versions of the Paveletskaya metro station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line at once. The construction of this station was planned even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, then it was supposed to be called "Donbass". The architects saw it as laconic, light, with a high ceiling decorated with smalt mosaics, a minimum of decor and, of course, without a hint of constructivism. The Vesnins developed three design options: the station could be a column, a pylon, or a single-vaulted station. The war did not allow the implementation of any of the proposed options. The construction of the central hall in conditions of economy had to be abandoned, only the track tunnels were built. And the mosaics already created by the artist Alexander Deineka (he is also the author of mosaics at Mayakovskaya) were decided to be transferred to the ceiling of Novokuznetskaya. Paveletskaya acquired its modern look only in the 1950s.
The exhibition will run at the Museum of Architecture until July 17. During the entire time of its work, a rich event program is planned: lectures, discussions, film screenings. One of the central events will be the presentation of the book "Moscow Metro - an Underground Architectural Monument" published by the Kuchkovo Pole publishing house.
In addition to preserving and studying the graphic and documentary heritage of the Moscow metro, the organizers of the exhibition see it as a key task to draw attention to metro stations and pavilions as monuments of architecture and art. As a result, the ensemble of the main stations of the Moscow Metro was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
