Anna Martovitskaya, editor-in-chief
speech: / provided speech:
The new spring issue of speech, the sixteenth in a row, is dedicated to the theme of Local / Vernacular. By this term we mean both the totality of architectural and construction traditions that have developed in a particular region, and the materials in which they were embodied and continue to be embodied in reality. In its pure form, vernacular architecture, of course, remained in the past (and the historical review of Anna Bronovitskaya very convincingly proves this), but the recipes for technologies and materials that she found, unmistakable in their accuracy, are extremely relevant today again - in the context of the requirements for sustainable development. And although environmental friendliness of buildings is usually understood as a reduction in CO2 emissions, an equally significant "green" property of buildings is their durability and relevance in the context. The priority use of local materials is also of economic importance, and also fulfills an important cultural and educational mission, not only promoting the heritage of the region, but also making new buildings more intuitive and closer to their future users.
All this makes us consider “Local” one of the most significant trends in modern architecture, capable of making its development more harmonious and at the same time truly diverse. How it manifests itself in the architecture of the XXI century, we study, according to our good tradition, on the broadest example of objects - buildings in Spain, France, Switzerland, Iran, Africa, Scandinavia and, of course, Russia.
Starting from this issue, we have introduced a new format of the author's utterance - columns, which are essentially expanded remarks on a given topic, in this case, vernacular architecture in its modern incarnation. In this issue they were written for us by architects - from different countries (Denmark, Germany and Russia), but, nevertheless, representatives of the same profession, although the views expressed by them are sometimes diametrically opposed. In the future, we plan to give the floor to representatives of different professions involved in the implementation of architectural objects.
And, of course, we continue to do very in-depth conversations with the world's leading architects. The heroes of this issue, for example, were the famous Peter Eisenman, who told, using the example of his Galician city of culture in Santiago de Compostela, that the use of local materials does not yet make architecture vernacular, and the conditionality of architecture by a place does not guarantee its status of “local”, and Rainer Mahlamäki, perhaps the most famous and honored architect of today's Finland, gave speech16 a lecture on modern wooden architecture.
With special pride I would like to recall that within the framework of the XXI International Exhibition of Architecture and Design Arch Moscow, not only the speech: local presentation took place, but also two expositions were presented in the footsteps of this issue.
Firstly, this is the speech: norway project - together with the Norwegian Embassy in Russia, we showed the photo exhibition “National Tourist Roads of Norway”. This is the name of a unique state program that has been implemented in Norway over the past 15 years - it is aimed at developing tourism and creating convenient infrastructure along all the routes people travel around the country, and each of these facilities, be it a toilet, an observation deck or information pavilion, built according to an individual and original architectural project. The program updates the pool of architects it works with every few years, and those with whom it started at one time have long become international stars (for example, Snohatta or Reulf Ramstad). It seemed to us that this story itself is a very vivid example of how local architecture can develop at the state level (and that is why one of the objects of the program was put on the cover of speech: local). The exhibition captured the most striking buildings of the Routes, and for its display an equally spectacular installation, designed by architects Sergei Tchoban and Andrey Perlich, was invented, it seems to me, creating a kind of space in space.
And the second project is “The Environment of Coexistence” by photographer Dmitry Chebanenko, who investigated the modern urbanistic embodiment of Vernacular - how residents of modern Yerevan rebuild and complete their houses themselves, turning typical housing into completely atypical ones. In the magazine, a selection of Dmitry Chebanenko's works has been published in the "Gallery" section, which concludes the speech: local.
By the way, starting from last week, the electronic version of the new issue can be downloaded through the AppStore and GooglePlay applications.
