Exhibition
In the second half of May, an exhibition of church projects by St. Petersburg architects was shown in St. Petersburg, organized by the commission of the union of city architects on church architecture with the participation of the SRO NP GAIP, the diocesan commission on architectural and artistic issues and the St. Petersburg branch of MAAM.
Unlike the first exhibition of church projects in the spring of 2011, the current exhibition was built on material from the past five years. Accordingly, there were fewer works: thirty tablets, including student projects. We managed to collect not everything that is relevant and noticeable, and nevertheless, a fairly objective cut was obtained, by which one can judge the state of affairs in our church building.
As before, the spectrum of the author's searches ranged from strict historical stylizations to experiments, however, without radicalism. I confess that I was most sympathetic to the delicate historical remarks, although theoretically one cannot but agree that church architecture should naturally develop, as it has been at all times. I liked the wooden church of Anton Golovin in the tradition characteristic of the Karelian Isthmus at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The elegant improvisation of Gennady Fomichev on the theme of early classicism, as well as the elegant project of Georgy Boyko, inspired by the Peter the Great, also looked convincing. In addition to individual qualities, these works are attracted by the departure of their authors from the average tone template and thoughtless replication of the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl.
Somehow it happened that the named samples pressed all the inexhaustible wealth of the Russian tradition from the pre-Mongol antiquity and the Russian north to the white-stone Moscow and St. Petersburg Art Nouveau. Reproduced in concrete, without regard to context, with loud titanium-nitride gold-glory and eye-cutting lines and angles, they have become a collective image of a surrogate tradition and an easy path leading to a dead end. Fortunately, these accusations do not apply to the exhibitors.
The projects of Kirill Yakovlev (AM "Tektonika") adjoin the named group, although his church in Nagovo demonstrates b about greater freedom in orientation to samples than the classicist temple in Tsvylyovo.
The temples of Maxim Atayants for Armenia stood apart: built in the local tradition from tuff, travertine, basalt, they seemed to have grown together with the natural environment and in fifty years, it seems, will be difficult to distinguish from historical prototypes.
Mikhail Mamoshin showed the multidirectional search for ways to renew the tradition. The draft solution for the south of St. Petersburg combines the techniques of different Russian schools - Vladimir-Suzdal, Pskov-Novgorod and Moscow-Yaroslavl, offering its own version of the collective image of a Russian temple, while the project in Kolpino cautiously appeals to the avant-garde with its geometric linearity.
Refined geometrism, bringing a modern breath into traditional forms, is also inherent in the grandiose temple complex of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in the Leningrad region, the project of which in a beautiful technique of hand washing was presented by a graduate student of the Institute. I. E. Repin Ilya Pushkin.
The striving for noble simplicity at the junction of archaism and "austere style" characterizes the monumental works of Ivan Uralov and the workshop "Northern Bee". The volume of the church in Zelenogorsk, in general, is traditional, has an unusual line of the cornice, which on the side facades draws a "wave" in the direction of the altar. In my opinion, there is a certain contradiction here, since horizontal movement, in principle, is not characteristic of the image of a temple. By definition, it is static, stable, since movement is a property of time, and the temple appeals to eternity. Therefore, his natural striving is upward.
This statics and vertical aspiration, on the contrary, is possessed by the project of the church complex in Malinovka with the wonderful idea of a “paradise garden” - an orange garden.
Despite the initially declared conservative sympathies, the experimental concept of Roman Muravyov, which is a search for an image of a modern temple dominant among large-scale urban development, seemed interesting and reasonable to me, is a more than urgent task. The project of a temple with an educational center proposed by the author is an eleven-story complex (without a technical floor), the central part of which is occupied by a church, while the rest of the space is given to classrooms, a library, refectory and other auxiliary premises.
Svyatoslav Gaykovich, who spoke at the conference with polemical theses, created, nevertheless, a completely canonical composition from a quadrangle with a bell tower. At the same time, the language of his temple is sharpened in a modern way; the expressive properties of concrete are played up, which honestly declares itself, without disguising itself as a stone. The result is a strong statement that favorably differs from the amorphous Tone replicas mentioned at the beginning. At the same time, this linear laconicism of concrete walls seems to me too harsh for a temple as an image of paradise on earth.
Without aiming to dwell on each project, I would like to express my collective gratitude to the students (first of all, SPbGASU) for their active participation and the high level of the projects presented.
Also, I cannot fail to mention the works that, from my point of view, reflected the negative tendencies of our temple building.
Thus, the design solution of the Snegiri workshop, in my understanding, distorts the anthropomorphism of the sacred symbolism of the temple. In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul calls the Church the Body of Christ, and Christ the head of the Church (Col. 7:13). In this case, the body of the temple, instead of the usual slender and "broad-shouldered" quadrangle, is a triangular pyramid with concave concrete walls, leaving the impression of an unnatural deformation. Meanwhile, the studio has a completely traditional, and, in my opinion, a successful project of the Church of the Archangel Michael for the village of Lyaskel in Karelia.
An example of pompous officialdom seemed to be the Studio-55 project for the park of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg …
Conference
The scientific and practical conference "Contemporary Church Architecture: Trends, Problems, Opportunities" took place on May 23-24. In addition to the partners mentioned at the beginning, the Kapitel magazine was the co-organizer and main information sponsor of the event. Within the framework of the conference, a two-day exhibition of works by the Polish Orthodox architect Jerzy Ustinovich took place.
One of my main curatorial tasks, I considered the creation of a common platform for the meeting of architects, representatives of the Church, city planners, as well as theorists who could systematize and comprehend the accumulated material. After all, it is obvious that only a general well-coordinated dialogue can create the preconditions for the full development of temple architecture. It is equally obvious that today these areas are practically isolated from each other.
Each of the proposed questions seems important and worthy of a separate conference, but since at the moment church problems have been generally taken out of the brackets of a large architectural discussion, it was important at least to outline the most important areas in order to attract the attention of specialists. In a very generalized way, these directions can be reduced to two global themes: the first is the theme of the style and language of a modern temple, the second is its urban planning role. In accordance with this, in addition to the sessions, two round tables were organized at the conference.
The most important problem in the field of St. Petersburg church architecture today, without a doubt, is the urban planning aspect. The functional uniqueness of the temples, their important cultural and social role can attract life to depressed areas and accumulate the activity of their inhabitants in the adjacent space. In other words, the temple can become one of the prerequisites for the emergence of local centers and an active tool for streamlining the loose development of new areas. Of course, for this, it must have a proper town-planning sound, that is, it must not be located on a random site and have a significant adjacent space. This is how the backbone of any city was historically formed, but today the urban planning potential of churches is absolutely not used. From this, both the city and the temples lose. The participation in the "urban planning" round table of the chief architect of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Grigoriev, allows us to hope that the KGA will finally pay due attention to this spontaneously developing sector of architecture.
The second theme - language and style - is also associated with the exceptional tasks that the temple poses for the architect. Historically, this has provided sacred architecture with a leading role in the architectural hierarchy. It seems that today temple building can become a unique stimulus for the development of our architecture.
Of course, this question is not only artistic, and formal analysis of the relationship between "tradition and innovation" is indispensable here. Our Polish guest Jerzy Ustinovich recalled this in his profound speech, dwelling in detail on the theological substantiation of church symbols. Striving for about about Genesis, active spiritual work should precede the formal search for an architect who is called to be a conductor and witness of living Truth, and not a dreamer and not a copyist. Both falsely understood freedom and formal slavery are equally far from the tasks of temple architecture.
I consider the organizers' great achievement to be the participation in the conference and the interest in the dialogue of the representatives of the clergy. Due to the attitude towards dialogue, the reports turned out to be somewhat multidirectional: each representative of these groups spoke his own language, and all together, discovering new things for themselves, learned to listen and understand each other. For me personally, the chosen format seems to be the only correct one and has great potential.
I want to say a huge thank you to all our speakers, including guests from Moscow, Belarus, Latvia and Poland. The organizers hope that this kind of event will become a tradition.
