The exhibition of nominees for the "Golden Section" 2017 award is located on the third floor of the Central House of Artists. Previously, it was placed in the second corridor, but then Grigory Revzin wrote an article "Billions in the corridors" - he was not quite right, billions go mostly not to architects, but the exhibition was moved upstairs, into a large, bright hall. Around the same time, "Section" turned from an award into a festival with many discussions. This year the curator of the festival is Nikita Asadov, the topic is “Space of quality” (the Zodchestvo festival will have the topic “Quality” in the fall); on the opening day, they discussed the quality of making urban planning decisions.
This time the prize brought together 138 projects, the previous time, in
2015 was 188, now it turned out to be about a third less, and some caesuras formed between the tablets placed on the old metal structure. However, there is nothing surprising in this: perhaps only in the first years of the existence of the "Golden Section", and maybe a couple of times in the 2000s, the cut was really representative in its entirety. In this case, we see at the exhibition not all at all - rather, very different representatives of very different directions, and maybe even a little bit of layers of modern Moscow architecture. Those who received the highest awards of the All-Russian Architecture last fall did not show up at the All-Moscow Prize, apparently not wanting to repeat themselves. But it is too apophatic to list those who are absent, consider those present.
Of the newly built, two residential complexes immediately draw attention to themselves: Alexei Medvedev's Literator / SKiP on Lev Tolstoy Street, the Re-Form bureau BADR5 apart-complex near Preobrazhenskaya Square. The credo of these houses is clear: brick, not too high number of storeys, imagery, revealing the theme "the city center or what strives to be." These houses are usually expensive, but pleasant even for a passer-by: they form the very comfortable city that is being talked about so much now. And the very high-quality urban space to which the festival is dedicated. It is characteristic that there are only two of them for the entire exhibition: more were built and designed, but not many. Such houses are an elite bone, a cherry on the cake; but they are very cherry, very few of them and they are very expensive.
LCD"
Astra by Anton Barklyansky in Perm is already somewhat outgrowing the scale, it is not for nothing that his courtyard has turned into a glass gorge, but it is still within the framework of the central-urban typology.
In general, it is clear that the main trend and the main issue of the architecture of modern housing is a matter of scale. In recent years, it has been terribly outgrowing itself, directly overflowing its banks - although, of course, this is not an architecture problem, but a development problem, there is only one question for the architect: to design - not to design. It is not for nothing that curator Nikita Asadov said in his manifesto like this: "… whether architects can become the driver of this process and offer their own methodology, or continue to fulfill someone else's will, depends primarily on the professional community" - sounds proudly, but for me it sounds more like a rhetorical question: "can they?" - yet they are not very capable. But it is difficult to blame them for this, it is simply impossible. Imagine a strike by architects. Does it work?
On a large scale, attention is drawn to the "urban planning complex" PIK at Varshavskoe shosse, 141. There are much more, here a 13-storey square, I would call it a quarter-world district, and 25-storey towers; even moderately for Moscow, and yet large, very large. But well decorated
buromoscow, familiar to the scale of Moscow construction projects. Or here's another on the same scale, but not buildings, but projects: a town complex in the Nagatinskaya floodplain by Yuri Vissarionov's bureau, with oval towers and arched houses. The leader of the genre among projects is, probably, the first stage of the Residential Complex "Symbol" by Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy, part of the complex, which is already being built on the site of the "Hammer and Sickle" plant, primarily due to its reality in it of bent-form architecture. The PTU from GlavAPU on the neighboring tablet looks like a cloud in comparison with it.
And here is another example of scale, here is a whole topic: Mosproekt-4 shows projects of houses for resettlement from a dilapidated housing stock. Customer - OJSC "UEZ", KP UGS. They are already being built with might and main and have addresses, but are they not intended, among other things, to replace the Moscow five-story buildings? Although one must think, everything is more complicated. But this is some very particular example, it is not known how leaked. The authors of the kilometer-long multi-storey buildings, which appeared in abundance at the 2015 exhibition, have now hid, presumably, inside the Mosinzhproekt and other large structures. In general, the time has come for secret caution. More and more often you hear that customers have banned-closed-ordered-to-remove-from-the-site any project, or even several. About five years ago, we received a letter from the developer: remove the project from the site, the company is now not interested in its PR; and the project was considered at the arch council, at a public event. Now it seems that the spread of information is increasingly being prevented in advance. But not always, not always. Returning to the scale, the same GlavAPU, one of the rare organizations of those times, which exhibited quite abundantly at this time, shows low-rise areas; however, these are not even projects, but pre-project studies. There are more and more such "bases" for future development of the territory.
It is noticeable that the scale of the "new urbanists" is possible in the distant suburbs and generally farther from Moscow. Projects of three to five-storey city districts flourish here. Arseny Leonovich shows the competition project “
Dreams of the City for the area near the village of Palkino on the border of Tver - 3-7 floors, clean beautiful project, it's a pity that it was competitive. In principle, if everything works out and outsiders will be allowed in, and such a village will be a high-quality urban space, only it is created “from scratch” and there are not many examples yet, with the whole space.
A separate topic of "Section", both this and the previous time, is transport. Last time there was a lot of metro, this time less, but more interesting: three stations of the "light green" Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya line: Butyrskaya, Fonvizinskaya, Petrovsko-Razumovskaya. They are deeply buried and solved classically, in the spirit of "Serpukhovskaya" by Leonid Pavlov (1950), with emphasis on the tunnel rounding in the contours of the supports; however, and not without irony - the dancing columns at Butyrskaya are especially good. The second major transport project is 23 pragmatically laconic ground terminals of Timur Bashkaev's MCC (Mosproekt-3).
Sport. The big one is completed, 147 200 m2, the stadium "Arena CSKA" on the 3rd Peschanaya street, which Mosproekt-4 began to design in 2007; he looks like an alien from that time, although at the same time he reminds of the Olympics: a large square, the corners of which are raised, hinting at the "Mobius strip", seems to be a stand for a torch tower.
There are not many offices being built now - this is common knowledge, but what happens is sometimes quite curious. Rustam Kerimov managed to build a small headquarters in Krasnodar, which, according to architects, is engaged in innovative research of the urban environment. In this regard, on the perforated mesh of the facade, there is a plan of the city's quarter mesh, which shines during the day and glows at night, complemented by inserts of milky glass windows.
Another nice office - a joint project of the Fourth Dimension bureau and Oskar Mamleev for Nagatinskaya Street in Moscow, is covered with regular ripples of glass flutes.
Next, we open from the typology and turn to interesting discoveries. Project
Museum of Archeology of Zaryadye Yuri Avvakumov and Georgy Solopov, according to unconfirmed rumors, will not be realized. But in vain, a nice museum - it seems to be a continuation of that fragment of the Kitaygorodskaya wall, which everyone leaving the metro can see at the beginning of Varvarka. Only here there would be many glazed white stone walls, and many more illuminated and also glazed open piles as an opportunity to look underground. Needless to say, such archaeological attractions are popular in European museums, for example, in the Louvre or the Florence Cathedral.
The second opening is the reconstruction project of the TASS building, built in 1971 according to the project of Viktor Yegerev. And I didn't think to hide. It provides for the complete replacement of facades with new ones from "prefabricated elements, made exactly to the original geometry." This unexpectedly announced reconstruction of one of the brightest examples of classical modernism, even if it does not have the status of a monument, promises to be more than controversial.
There are also few private houses, but their sphere has long established a quality bar - a private customer is demanding. All the houses shown are mostly of laconic architecture, but there are also reflections on the Dutch city. A house with a wooden truss, invented by Totan Kuzembaev, has been completed.
Liberties, on the other hand, thrive in the extensively presented projects and buildings of schools and kindergartens - either so many of them are being built because of the state program, or the authors are counting on the popularity of this genre in the eyes of the jury and experts, and they are chosen for exhibiting. Pixel color predominates, because, as Arkady Raikin used to say, children tend to strive for bright; but there are also amazing things, for example, a teremok house. Could paint the whole thing.
The number of temples is also not decreasing, both real and conceptual. Moreover, as in any empire of the period of decline, along with the pompous official ones at the "Section" there are various esoteric temples, for example, of the Universal Truth.
The volume of forms, to put it mildly, somewhat redundant, has not diminished, which, pleasing to the eye, knock the landmarks in the exposition of almost any premium, and you never know whether this is good or bad. More likely not, rather interesting. In this case, for example, the authors inspired by the success of a relatively small snail and raised from it, while in the project, a giant creature for the Caucasian slope.
"Russian Industrial Houses" by Peter Vinogradov are separately and extensively represented. Several tablets are dedicated to them, and a new house has appeared - a pipe with a propeller on two legs, which seem to be standing somewhere in the ocean, like an oil platform. A lot of welded iron models - we have seen them already at many exhibitions - are also on the stairs of the Central House of Artists; so to speak, they envelop the exposition from all sides. I heard a child about six years old ask my mother - what is it? - house, house … - no, mom, it doesn't look at all, it looks more like a factory.
Of the still unnamed projects, well-known projects are nominated for the prize: the reconstruction of the Outbuilding-Ruins of the Museum of Architecture by Narine Tyutcheva, the pavilion of Ruben Arakelyan and Hayk Navasardyan at VDNKh. The restoration of New Jerusalem, about which I have heard not too flattering reviews, also claims, but is shown on a very laconic tablet, from which it is impossible to understand the quality of the work, one can only trace the difficult fate of the monument.
We will not draw conclusions, they turn out to be very dotted. It is as if the fish jump out of the water, show themselves for a minute and plunge back into the abyss of practice, while other schools, invisible here, swim in warm currents. The exhibition seems to be a kaleidoscope of fragments of architectural reality, sometimes very interesting, sometimes … well, when how. Let the jury take care of the summary of the mosaic, it’s already working.
