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Reflections on the demolition of the Intourist hotel
The article was first published in the journal "Academy" No. 4-2003.
Whoever raises his hand against his father will not spare his great-grandfather *
Demolition of the Intourist tower. Someone has fun, someone is sad. And I look at this action with a smile and sadness. Isn't it funny that those who have just committed a city-planning sin of much greater gravity at the foot of the same tower are fiercely fighting the mistake of 30 years ago? And isn't it sad to look at the ruins of a building that recently departed colleagues erected as an innovation?
Each building is the fruit of its time, the creative efforts of the masters who created it. Time makes mistakes, and architects don't always create masterpieces. It has been said that the city develops as a sum of contradictory efforts, as a result of which something is obtained that no one wanted. But everything that is being built is an architectural history, as well as the demolition can become a historical event.
Houses are being demolished because they are dilapidated, because they stand in the way of new achievements. And it is no coincidence that Karel Čapek, while advocating for old Prague, wrote: “The city should serve modern life. We cannot save what stands in her way. " But in this case, the motives are completely different. Time has drastically changed tastes, judgments, assessments. And also not for the first time. Was it not for the same reason that ancient buildings in Moscow were demolished during the years of Stalin's reconstruction? And it must not be in vain that even at the time of my student life they said with a bitter smile: "Man is an architect for man." We are truly unkind to our predecessors and to each other. I don't like the buildings by Dmitry Chechulin. In 1969, the MOS Board discussed the design of the building, which is now called the "White House". I was among his fierce opponents. Joseph Loveiko defended the author just as passionately. Zholtovsky was a hater of modernity. Tchaikovsky hated Mussorgsky. Prokofiev did not like the works of Tchaikovsky. Well, and so on - for writers, artists, actors. And how can a modern city in each of its fragments please the taste of each of us?
There is no limit to professional ambition. I noticed that each successive generation of architects is not averse to exterminating or redesigning the legacy of the previous one. I will clarify - Russian architects. I call this phenomenon “Bazhenov's syndrome”.
He dismantled part of the Kremlin wall in order to erect his gigantic palace. And he was punished for that. A vain dream did not come true. The authors of the Palace of Soviets also witnessed the collapse of their ambitious venture. And something succeeded. On the site of the Simonov Monastery, a car factory club arose, as if there was no empty space nearby. There are many examples of this in Russia. And after that something similar happened, and now the architectural community, not without passion, is engaged in fratricidal activity.
Of course, we can say that the authors of Intourist also sinned with the same syndrome. The point is not that here, too, some inglorious building was demolished. This is not their fault. Not them, so someone else would have put the hotel building there. The trouble is that the Kremlin was not reckoned with. We looked aside, at foreign "beacons". But then everyone looked there. It could not be otherwise. It was then the time of context, and then it was the time of contrast. The contrast has been achieved - sharp and impressive. Someone called this tower - "Moscow Sigram". It sounded like praise. And now she is demolished. Maybe also in redemption? Is it too hasty?
They say that Intourist does not meet the current "star standards". The rooms are cramped. I agree. Make two of three, one of two, and the proper standard will be achieved. They say that this is an obvious urban planning mistake. But is Moscow today being built faultlessly? Where is there! There are no less errors. Only they are, as they say now, more abruptly. And it's harder to fix.
The wall of the same Kremlin "collapsed" behind the retaining walls of the underground pier, and if you look at Tverskaya because of them, you will only see that "Intourist". Even the huge layout of the center did not save the fighters with the urban planning mistakes of their predecessors from this "failure", although it was possible to see it in the project with the naked eye. And is this the only mistake?
I remember how Intourist was built. Its main author Vsevolod Voskresensky - in my opinion, the brightest personality in the galaxy of students of the workshop - the Zholtovsky school - was completely absorbed in his brainchild. At that time of universal enthusiasm for modernism, he, like a dream, built a "golden" staircase, taking a liking to every fragment of the interior, earnestly "pushing" the bright monumental work of Polishchuk and Shchetinina. And when the Moscow party leader Grishin opposed high-rise construction in the city center, he found a way to accelerate the achievement of his cherished dream. I met an older colleague walking down Gorky Street in a state of light intoxication. He said: “Now I was upstairs. I gave the workers a box of vodka so that they could finish the installation of the frame as soon as possible.
I also remember an abstract sculptural composition that stood on the stylobate against the background of the facade glass. Then a letter came to the city party committee. A group of employees of the central telegraph asked what this sculpture represents? Grishin ordered to remove it. I did not find any other answer to the "tricky" question.
The demolition of Intourist is a landmark event. After all, this tower is a kind of symbol of the sixties architecture. Not the only one, of course, but important. Classics of the 1960s. And it’s curious that some of the sixties who have now betrayed the ideals of their creative youth are actively advocating for its demolition. Perhaps someone initially harbored a dislike for this object. However, it is not the first time that some of the oldest are changing their professional appearance.
It is, of course, understandable. Time passes - a different life, a different customer, different customs, a different fashion. And if so, it is necessary to demolish the traces of the past. What is next in line now? Hotel "Russia"? Towers of Novy Arbat? These are all fruits of the same syndrome. But how ugly are the weddings of the residential towers of the avenue! Of course, you can decorate them with "pretzels". There is someone. But to be honest, back then, in 1967, when the avenue opened, it seemed to many to be the bearer of the spirit of the “thaw”. There is a story behind this image.
They will object to me - obsolete structures are being demolished all over the world. For different reasons. Mostly social or economic. For example, you can extract more income from the same site. There is a modern blasting technique that ensures the safe and quick demolition of huge structures. Each such action is shown on American TV. And how spectacular was the "domino effect" in the explosion of the stadium in Atlanta! If the Luzhniki stadium were in the United States, they would have been "put down" too - they would not have been reconstructed.
Moscow today is demolishing a five-story panel dwelling and building a new one in the same areas. The second time in the memory of one generation. This is, albeit an annoying, but understandable matter. Minoru Yamasaki - the creator of the New York Twin Towers - built a residential area in St. Louis for people with low incomes. It was soon demolished as a kind of symbol of social infringement. Something similar is happening in Russia today. It will be a complex process (how many such houses are there in the country!) - with relocations, etc.
But do not forget to leave at least one house! As a museum piece. Indeed, in the sixties millions of Muscovites dreamed of such a dwelling. And what a pilgrimage it was when the construction of the 9th experimental quarter in Novye Cheryomushki was completed, and an exhibition of newfangled furniture opened in the demonstration apartments!
I will say more - a typical five-story panel house K-7, faced with ceramic "toffee" is also a classic, a classic of Khrushchev's "perestroika". After all, there was a time when these houses - fresh on a green lawn - were the embodiment of a new aesthetics. And I will also say that for me it is much more noble than some of the Moscow novelties.
In the forties, we were taught to follow the classical heritage. We, like our teachers, patronized by Zholtovsky, while fulfilling our projects, looked back at great examples. And although in some modern works one can see a genuine interest in the classics, searches and finds, in the overwhelming majority of cases it is done at the request of the customer, the money-bag. Classics for sale. Mies van der Rohe said: "Architecture is a battlefield for the spirit." Nowadays, a different definition is in use - commercial architecture.
Demolished typical five-storey buildings are impersonal, but the Intourist tower is a work of authorship, a true monument of its time. Though not the best in our architectural history. But for all that, this structure even now looks more worthy than the daring "Nautilus" or the phenomenon that arose in front of the Kursk railway station, or the "Triumph-Palace" extracted from naphthalene.
What it is? An architectural carnival? A special way? It is a well-known thing - an uncommon yardstick. Therefore, the rest of the world is “out of step”.
By the way, I do not remember a case when foreign architects advocated the demolition of buildings created by their recently departed colleagues. No one is proposing to replace New York's Lever House with a semblance of a neighbor on the left, with its rustic patterns, sandrids, arched openings and balusters. And the Montparnasse tower, not devoid of similarities with the Intourist and also not very harmonious with the surroundings, still rises in the silhouette of Paris. And the recent demolition of the building by Richard Neutr on the orders of the new owner, who paid $ 2.5 million for it, caused shock among the architects. This case was an exception against the background of a respectful attitude to the heritage of modernism established in society. But then in America.
Only one can be comforted. The next generation of Russian architects will soon grow up. Young, talented, they will begin to demolish the current novelties with fresh strength, and then there will be no stone unturned from the same arena mall. Not only from him. And rightly so! Do you like this perspective? I am not asking the Moscow authorities - from my fellow architects. And I appeal to my fellow descendants - please do not touch the "Patriarch", "Triumph-Palace" and all other "context". Moscow now boasts of kitsch. After all, this is also history - a Russian "classic" of the first decade of the 21st century. And although I still do not like the "White House", even if it stands for a century, since it survived the shelling. And the façade of Intourist, if it is not to your taste, could have been glazed differently. So that the bindings are not visible, and the polished glass surface would reflect the Moscow sky in itself. The late authors must have dreamed of this, but how could such a thing have been done then?
No, we do not know how to preserve the paternal heritage. What kind of "love for fatherly coffins!" No, we'd rather “build a new world”. This reproach was deserved by the authors of the "Intourist" and those who took it down. Here, the well-known truth is once again confirmed - the one who has shot into the past will inevitably receive his bullet from the future. And the point is not at all whether the new hotel will be lower than the demolished one and whether its facade will become more beautiful than the previous one. By his appearance, he will once again confirm the architect's right to "fratricide".
I am aware that this text will not be able to stop the demolition, but I feel sorry for this building of the 1960s, and I feel insulted by the neglect of the creative heritage of Vsevolod Voskresensky and his co-authors Yuri Sheverdyaev and Alexander Boltinov.
Let this text be an obituary for the untimely perished Moscow tower. After all, she was still young. Only 32.
Incidentally, this is my second architectural obituary in the last six months. The first one was ordered to me by the New York magazine "Word / Word" on the occasion of the death of the aforementioned "Gemini" and opened the 33rd issue of the almanac with black pages. But only in New York, as you know, there was a completely different story.
* * *
Car conversation
It was in 2005, when the exhibition "Soviet modernism 1955-1985" initiated by me was being prepared, which was held in the MUAR next April. Andrei Meerson, who by that time cursed his modernist creativity and deserted to the camp of postmodernism, was an ardent opponent of this action. In Yuri Platonov's car, besides the driver, there were three of us - its owner, me and Andrey. The latter uttered an ardent tirade, denouncing all, without exception, the modernist heritage of our generation and, at the same time, the foreign idols of our creative youth. After patiently listening to her, Platonov responded with the following phrase: "Andrey, you are an asshole, and this is part of your charm."
After the completion of the construction of the hotel, which stood on the site of the Intourist tower, an epigram appeared dedicated to its author and not only to him. I will not name other names here, but many of my peers, clearly showing themselves in a new style, managed to significantly compromise their creative personality.
He was once a modernist
And stylistically clean
But he chased fashion earnestly, And he became a modernist.
In a Skype conversation on the occasion of Andrey's birthday, I read it to him. He laughed.
