First of all, ARCHIWOOD must apologize to all connoisseurs of wooden architecture who did not find the usual exhibition of nominees for the award at the entrance to the Central House of Artists, and the usual award ceremony for the winners in the ArchMoscow program. The Peripter pavilion, where the works of the nominees were housed for 5 years, no longer exists, so the exhibition could not be expanded. But the summing up of the award only had to be postponed (about why this happened and how we compensate for the virtualization of the project - see below). Nevertheless, with all the costs, the process is underway: the Internet voting will end on June 20, in parallel, a professional jury will make its choice. This year it includes the winners of the ARCHIWOOD 2016 award Ksenia Kharitonova and Alexander Ryabsky (bureau FAS (t)), Olga Aleksakova and Yulia Burdova (BUROMOSCOW), General Director of the Association of Wooden Housing Construction Oleg Panitkov, curator of the ArchStoyanie festival Anton Kochurkin and architect Roman Leonidov. The results will be announced on 6 July.
Continuing to make a good face, we recall that this year ARCHIWOOD again broke the record for the number of applications: this year the long-list of the award collected 177 objects. Tatarstan has become the leader not only in the number of applications, but also in the number of finalists, where for the third year under the strict guidance of Natalia Fishman, assistant to the President of the Republic, a program is being implemented to renew the urban (and not only urban) environment. Starting from modest shops, the project (with the assistance of MARSH-Lab) has grown into a beautiful history, developing new territories and striking a variety of architectural genres. There is a new wooden embankment, an amphitheater, an eco-center, and art objects: there are as many as 6 works on the shortlist! Almost all of them were made by the "Architectural Landing Force" team, headed by Daria Tolovenkova, not only in Kazan, but also in regional centers, which, of course, is especially gratifying.
Vladivostok was only 1 object behind, which was modest for a long time and hid its achievements - although there the urban environment is actively being transformed by wood (albeit without such powerful state support). Moreover, all these 5 finalist objects were also made in one workshop ("Concrete Jungle"), and here we also see a whole heap of typologies and a variety of solutions. Cafe: Japanese-style exquisite wavy facade of white rivers. Restaurant: terrace in the form of a plywood arcade. Exhibition pavilion: a spectacular dome with a shimmering surface. Library: tables go under the podium, a screen pops up in the middle of the shelves - the reading room becomes a lecture hall. Improvement of the territory of the factory: some benches shoot out of wooden podiums, others spread in zigzags, the backs of others turn into walls. In general, remember the new name: Felix Mashkov.
Every time we publish a long-list, we are sincerely happy about how many young architects are in it - but already they reach the final not in terms of age, but in terms of quality. Therefore, it is especially pleasant when new names appear precisely on the shortlist: today they are Elena Makarova ("Duck Venice" at BolotovDacha), Ivan and Dmitry Kozhin (a mysterious cylinder-shaped facility), Nikolai Novichkov and Grigory Solomin ("Light"). But newcomers will have to compete with headliners who confidently keep the quality bar: Sergey Choban (sales office), Grigory Dainov (an elegant extension to a house near Yaroslavl), Sergey Kolchin (a stylish suburban complex in Shatura, where wood is ingeniously combined with stone), Stas Gorshunov (forest complex near Nizhny Novgorod), Ivan Ovchinnikov (it turns out that "Double-house" can be not only housing). And besides Totan Kuzembaev, who never tires of surprising with his imagination (a black bath is not like a black one), Olzhas Kuzembaev's "Kuboed" was also shortlisted: a spectacular gazebo made of timber and air, full of metaphysical meanings.
"Cuboid" was built within the framework of the "Eco_tektonika" festival in the "Yasno-Pole" eco-park near Tarusa. This is another important new location - and, judging by the latest news, it will be the main supplier of nominees for the 2018 award. However, the whole flotilla of rafts faces the Art-Ovrag festival in Vyksa, and ArchStoyanie promises a lot of different answers to the question “How to live further” - including from such tree enthusiasts as the bureau A-GA and Khvoya. Many expectations are also associated with the Drevolyutsiya festival. The first one, which took place in St. Petersburg in 2015, was a real triumph. The sensitive and inspiring leadership of Nikolai Belousov, the support of the Association of Wooden Housing Construction, a magical place (Tavrichesky Garden) and the excitement of neophytes - all this gave an excellent result, and two objects became ARCHIWOOD winners. However, this time the “drevolutionaries” made their way to the shortlist with only 2 objects: “Tatami” and “Reverse Perspective” (the last object was made just by last year's champions, the authors of the magic “Ruins” - team “A”). However, young architects have everything ahead: the third "Drevolution" is very soon - this time in "Sukhanovo" near Moscow.
The capital of Kazakhstan was shortlisted with a cafe designed by Gikalo Kuptsov Architects - and this is perhaps the best architecture that can be found on Astana's pretentious esplanade. The wonderful Magnezit Museum has opened in Satka, where the KONTORA bureau develops the moves made in the Moscow Gulag Museum: plywood exposition modules are transformed into chairs, benches and exhibition stands. For the first time in the ARCHIWOOD shortlist - Yoshkar-Ola ("Stairway to Heaven" by Oleg Ermakov) and New York (Peter Kostelov's transforming apartment). But Guatemala became the most exotic address on the award's map: Mikhail and Elizaveta Shishin decorated a clinic in Momostenango with multi-colored wooden planks symbolizing the main fruit of the country - corn.
In this nomination ("Public building") there is a powerful leader: "City farm" at VDNKh by the WOWHAUS bureau. Its architecture refers to the predecessor of VDNKh - the agricultural exhibition of 1923 (VSKhV), which was the first triumph of the avant-garde. Its heroes in a revolutionary way moved away from the archetype of a wooden structure: instead of a log, they used a frame, changed the usual proportions, in every possible way took themselves off the ground - and pulled the architecture into the future. But they did not have the technical capabilities that are today - using them, the authors of the Farm introduce a large amount of glass (it allows you to observe the animals outside). Keeping the usual image of a gable roof, they cover the "Stable" with two skids of different height (modern engineering allows not to be afraid of the "snow pocket" that appears). Like the architects of 1923, they are not embarrassed by pictoriality, imposing a diamond-shaped grid on the glass facade of the Orangery, which echoes the constructive, but at the same time hints at pineapples (which are inside). Finally, the “Workshops” pavilion is being resolved as three double-height spaces of a parabolic shape - following the designers of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, who paved the way for the use of glued timber. And with the same homage to the Zholtovsky Arch from the same exhibition in 1923, the Arch of them. Sergei Kuryokhin, staged by Alexei Komov at the Zodchestvo festival.
Another nice Moscow story - in the Troparevo park: Roman Kovensky and Valeria Pestereva had to develop a wooden constructor (40 x 100 bars), from which benches, information stands, and sun loungers were assembled. But a single style solution immediately became the hallmark of the park. Another Moscow object is the PARKA bar on Pyatnitskaya (Archpoint bureau), amusingly styled as a sauna. This is already the interior, of which there were a lot in the long list of this year (30), and more reached the final than in other nominations - 9. Here is the absolute champion of the award Alexey Rosenberg (NagatinSky apartment) and with three strong objects at once - the RueTemple bureau, which for a long time has been composing fascinating spaces for children, but has not been able to part with youthful enthusiasm in the interiors for adults.
But the most serious struggle is unfolding in the most important nomination of the award - “Country House”. This year there are 5 objects in the final - and all these are very different houses, both in size and budget, and in style. The winter house with a bathhouse (Denis Chernov and Tatiana Panchenko) unexpectedly looks like a Protestant chapel, towards F. L. Wright looks at the house of Joseph Belman and Vladimir Shorokhov (Ross Rakenne SPb (HONKA)), originally works with the archetype of the House of Artists hut (Nikolai Kaloshin and Vladimir Kuzmin). An unusual object by Dmitry Ovcharov (nefa architects) stands apart (or rather, a "residential pavilion").
And in the House by the Sea of the Khvoya bureau, of course, everyone immediately saw the prototype - the world's first example of postmodernism: the house that Robert Venturi built for his own mother (1964). Georgy Snezhkin also built this house for his parents - but this is not the only thing that unites them. There is also a “facade as a cut”, the absence of overhangs and ramps, the semblance of two square windows, panoramic glazing elements, sliding shutters … At the same time, it is obvious that these “quotes” do not define anything in the Khvoya bureau's object: the images of houses are too different … One is open, another is closed, one is "torn", the other is solid, one is flattened, this one is sublime, in Venturi it is intentional complexity, in Needles it is just as declarative simplicity (which is especially obvious in the plans: in the latter it is a cross 10 x 10 with even squares of rooms). At the same time, Venturi in every possible way rejects the title of "father of postmodernism", saying that he was misunderstood: he fought against the depersonalizing industry of "boxes" of modernism, and his followers began to stick arches and columns wherever they got. Snezhkin also assures that “at first the house looked completely different - a long stick across the plot overlooking the sea. But when the project was ready, the author was visited by the image of a house-tower-lighthouse with a workshop lantern”. That is, he also fought against modernism (in himself), but overcame all the "difficulties and contradictions" and built a very solid, clear and harmonious house-beacon. Which gleams joyfully in the panorama of not only the coastal village, but of all Russian architecture. But at the same time, he is unlikely to point her on the wrong course.
Finally, in the "Restoration" nomination, two very different objects will compete for the victory, which have in common the fact that a high result is the result of private initiative (and private budgets). At the same time, both of them are, rather, public: that the house of Chernoglazov standing on the street of Vologda, that the Astashov tower lost in the Kostroma outback (which, nevertheless, has become the most recognizable wooden object in modern Russia). Both cases are unique in their own way: both the rare, in principle, restoration of a town house at the beginning of the 20th century (customer - German Yakimov, architect - Vladimir Lukin), and the heroic struggle not only against off-road conditions by Andrey Pavlichenkov. His Chukhloma tower was restored by the best architects of Russia (Alexander Popov, Anton Maltsev), the whole country followed the work, and now, finally, they are completed, and in the summer the tower is waiting for the grand opening.
And finally, why ARCHIWOOD was so late. We have long dreamed of summing up the results of the award not in one year, but for the entire period of its existence - especially since no annual catalogs have been published for the last two years. And finally, it happened: the book “Modern Wooden. ARCHIWOOD: the best. 2009-2017 "(work on which delayed the awarding ceremony). The book includes 130 objects that have been presented for the award for 8 years - and these are not only the winners. After all, as you know, there can be only two winners in each nomination, and there are always much more interesting works. That is, the book is not a mechanical summation of the laureates - objects were selected based on the opinions of the members of the Expert Council of the Prize and the jury. As a result, not all the winners got into it - especially, of course, this concerns the winners "according to the people's version." The costs of this procedure are obvious, but we stubbornly insist on keeping this part of the award. And not only because it successfully serves to popularize wooden architecture among new generations and to attract the attention of non-professionals. But also because the short-list includes works that have passed the strict selection of the Expert Council: that is, whoever is the winner as a result of the “popular vote” is, in any case, a quality object. However, the selection is inevitably even stricter for a book that claims to be a "history of wooden architecture".
Opens the book "A Brief History of Contemporary Russian Wooden Architecture" - an attempt to systematize the main trends and styles over the past 20 years. "Lyrical Expressionism", "Dacha Passionism", "Olonets Brutalism" - their names are rather arbitrary and refer to both art history canons and PR-practice of current realtors. But the attempt to build these trends to ancient archetypes looks even more challenging: a hut, a barn, a barn, a mill. Perhaps Nikolai Belousov is really trying to modernize the hut, and Alexei Rosenberg is inspired by sheds, but to believe the barn is a harbinger of minimalism is, of course, outrageous. However, the modernism of the twentieth century influenced the modern Russian wooden architecture much more - it is not for nothing that its "Genealogical Tree" presented in the book tries to dash out those lines that, despite the almost complete absence of wood in Soviet architecture, still existed. Therefore, there is Melnikov's "Makhorka", and the clubs of the 1930s, and the circus in Ivanovo, and the pioneer camp "Prometheus" in 1976 …
The review includes not only the objects included in the book, but also those built in the previous decade - that is, it covers the entire history of the latest wooden architecture in Russia. And the book is actually the second volume of the collection "New Wooden" (publishing house TATLIN, 2010), which was the catalog of the exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Architecture (2009), organized by ARCHIWOOD on the eve of the award. But what at that time seemed “new” has turned into a powerful full-blooded phenomenon, which should have been given a new definition - the word “modern” was logical.
Rossa Rakenne SPb (HONKA) remains the permanent general sponsor and organizer of the award.
