An architectural competition is being held these days to develop a concept for the reconstruction of the INION RAS building. It was organized by the winner of the tender for the design and survey work for the restoration of this building - LLC "Design Organization" GIPROKON ". The seven competitive projects that passed to the final can be viewed until August 15 at exhibitions in the Museum of Architecture (Vozdvizhenka St., 5/25), in the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Leninsky Prospekt, 32 a), in the building of the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering and in the building of the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations of Russia (Solyanka st., 14). The winner will be announced on August 16th.
In January 2015, the remarkable building of modernism - the building of the Institute for Scientific Information for Social Sciences - was badly damaged by fire, and its further fate raises great concerns. To remind why this building is so important for the history of Russian architecture, we present a chapter about it from the book by Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolai Malinin “Moscow: Architecture of Soviet Modernism. 1955-1991”, which will be published by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in October 2016.
Institute for Scientific Information for Social Sciences
1960–1974
Architects J. Belopolsky, E. Vulykh, L. Misozhnikov
Engineer A. Sudakov
Nakhimovsky Prospect, 51/21 M. Profsoyuznaya
An ideal library, a citadel of "lyricists" -humanitarians, surrounded by institutes of exact sciences
At the final stage of the construction of communism, humanitarians were assigned no less important role than natural scientists: it was necessary to think in detail about the structure of the future society. The fundamental library of the department of social sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR required a significant expansion and renewal. In 1960, the design of a critical facility was entrusted to Yakov Belopolsky, whose workshop developed the layout of the South-West district of Moscow.
Belopolsky began with the general layout of the site: placing the low and extended library building closer to the intersection, he flanked it with two multi-storey plates of scientific institutes visible from afar. In the architectural jargon of that time, this method of creating an ensemble was called "add a die with sticks". These three volumes, according to the precepts of Corbusier, were to be in the park. The park was separated from the carriageway of Krasikova Street (Nakhimovsky Prospect) by a long rectangular pool. This pool performed three functions at once. First, it neutralized the level difference between the street and the lowered construction site. Secondly, his water was used in the air conditioning system. And thirdly, this is a very effective compositional element: the smooth surface of the water reflected the architecture, and when the fountains turned on, the upper part of the building seemed to be floating.
According to the original design, the building of the library was square in plan, had a courtyard and stood on a wide platform thrown over the reservoir and the lowland of the park. In reality, the platform turned into a bridge leading to the main entrance, the pool became shorter, not reaching the foot of the neighboring TsEMI, and most importantly, only two sides of the square were built, embracing the courtyard at an angle. They were going to close the square "in the second place", which never happened.
Nevertheless, the authors managed to implement the main provisions of their concept. The book depository and all services are distributed over the two lower floors, and the upper, third is entirely occupied by reading rooms. The architect, who had visited several new libraries abroad before designing, hoped in this way to provide readers with convenient access to shelves with books: from the reading room zoned by themes, it would be possible, without straying, to go down the stairs immediately to the desired department. Alas, Soviet librarianship rules prohibited the admission of outsiders into the vault. On the other hand, a high-speed system for issuing books was organized, which were delivered to lifts near the issuing department on roller conveyors. Electromagnetic mail accelerated the process even more. Completed - of course, by hand - the requirements were rolled up into a tube, enclosed in a cylindrical container and placed in the nest of the corresponding department. The current was turned on, and under the influence of the electromagnetic field, the container instantly fell into the desired department, where the employee could only remove the books from the shelf and put them on the conveyor. A miracle of technology!
The main place in the country where the literature on social sciences was collected, systematized and abstracted should have been an ideal library with architecture at the level of world standards. In the logic of 1960, this meant very extensive borrowing. And if in the general plan and external architecture Belopolsky, obviously, turned to the post-war works of Corbusier (the project of the UN headquarters in New York, 1947, the plan for the reconstruction of the town of Saint-Dieu, 1945, the Monastery of La Turret, 1953-1960), then in interior he was inspired by the example of Alvar Aalto. As in the Vyborg library (1935), the reading rooms are illuminated by an overhead light through circular skylights. With the difference that Aalto has 57 of them, and Belopolsky has 264, the scale of the Moscow library is still much larger!
The architects managed to make completely glass both the outer walls of the third floor and the partitions between the halls, thereby creating a visually unified space. All the furniture in the reading rooms was low so that nothing could obstruct the spectacular view of the ceiling, which was covered with rows of circular lucarnes. Life, however, immediately made adjustments: librarians stubbornly placed display cases with book novelties along the glass walls, trying to form a more familiar closed environment.
The authorities' hopes were not justified either. The Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences, created on the basis of the library in 1968, has become not so much the center of work on the approach of the final victory of communism as a breeding ground for free-thinking. True, only a select few were allowed to access fresh foreign literature and the coveted "Notes of the University of Tartu": INION served exclusively the staff of the Academy of Sciences. But this only strengthened the attractive aura of the institute as a refuge for high humanitarian knowledge.
The sad situation in which the Academy of Sciences found itself, which did not manage to adapt to the post-Soviet reality, led, in the case of INION, to a tragic result. Worn out wiring, faulty alarm and fire extinguishing systems caused a fire that destroyed a significant part of the unique book fund in February 2015 and severely damaged the building. It was decided to restore it, but who, when and with what funds will do it, has not yet been determined.
