At the end of January, the presentation of the final works of the masters of the first year of study took place at MARSH. The head of the studio, Totan Kuzembaev, who once came to Moscow from the Kazakh steppe and is known for his reflections on nomadic architecture, called the studio “Nomads”. Two other teachers also worked with the group: Natalia Kuzmina and Sergey Shoshin. As part of the course program, students were offered to create mobile or transportable architectural objects of various sizes and types. There were no functional restrictions: these could be mobile multifunctional complexes, mobile medical centers, houses for refugees and natural disaster areas, housing, hotels and any other typology of the author's choice.
Totan Kuzembaev
head of the architectural workshop Totan Kuzembayev, MARSH teacher:
“The theme of the studio is“Nomads”and nomadic architecture in general. One could understand it in different ways: either architecture wanders, or people, or they wander together. The task of the work was divided into three stages - it was necessary to study the history of the issue, then how the phenomenon exists and develops today, and then to understand whether there are nomads at all and what they need. I was able to formulate these problems in the form of questions: are there nomads in modern cities? How do they look, how do they differ from others, who do they consider themselves to be? What place do they occupy in society? Who are the people who go to Moscow in search of a better life, and then, having become rich, wander around the world to see beauty? Aren't they nomads? How many of these people are there in percentage terms? What is their culture, values?
I was born in the steppe in the family of a shepherd. My parents wandered, that is, they moved from Jailau to Jailau, so that there was food for the sheep. The parents had only the most necessary things, nothing more. Such is the rationality. All took from nature, exactly as much as was required, lived without harming the environment. It seems to me that in the modern world of consumption there is something to learn from them.
We conducted research together with the guys, and they came up with completely different, unexpected ideas. For example, the idea of a stopover for nomads is a static, anti-nomadic object that gives an opportunity to reflect on life. But really - nomads often sit, watch how life goes on - this idea seemed to me very interesting.
The experience I got working with the students was extremely rewarding. I’m not a teacher at all and I don’t like to talk, I like to do it with my hands, but here I had to talk, help and explain”.
We show the best studio projects: ***
Maze
Alexandra Polidovets
The place for the installation of the labyrinth was chosen in one of the sleeping areas of Moscow on the way from the metro station to the residential areas, so its development can be combined with the path to work or home, which is done by thousands of people daily. A walk through the labyrinth allows a resident of a metropolis to spend 40 minutes in the open air, the minimum necessary to maintain health. The labyrinth is compiled as an encyclopedia of spatial experiences that activate our senses by changing shade and light, textures, temperature and humidity. A passer-by in the labyrinth can try on the lifestyle of a nomad who is constantly on the move.
*** The Nomad's Cookbook
Alena Katkasova
A nomad's dwelling, as a rule, is prefabricated, collapsible, lightweight, made of simple and affordable materials (chum, yurt). The modern nomad, refugee, migrant, vagabond, traveler, and even a city dweller who simply needs to quickly organize a subsidiary farm has a different set of easily accessible elements: products from construction markets, hardware stores and city dumps. The author of the project, in the form of a book with instructions, offers a simple constructor made of cheap materials, analyzing the typology of nomadic dwellings. The book will also help completely sedentary people - a farmer, a summer resident, an entrepreneur - to strengthen the autonomy of their economy, maintaining the distinctive feature of a nomadic life.