– How did the idea of building a new museum "Defense and Siege of Leningrad" come about?
- This is a very long and tragic story. Immediately after the end of the Great Patriotic War, a museum was created in Leningrad on the territory of the Salt Town, perhaps the best one dedicated to this war. It collected original artifacts and documents, samples of equipment and so on. But in the course of the "Leningradskoe case" ("Leningradskoe case" - a series of trials in the late 1940s - early 1950s against the party and state leaders from Leningrad - editor's note), all the collected material was destroyed. The purpose of this action, which covered the entire information space of the country, was an attempt to change the perception of the history of the war and the role of Leningrad in it. If not hide, then veil this tragedy and the huge number of victims of the blockade. The consequences of this action were felt for many years to come.
During the second half of the 20th century, there was a process of giving publicity and attempts to comprehend the horrors of the blockade and the tragedy experienced by the city. The Piskarevsky memorial to the victims of the blockade was built. In the 1970s, the Broken Ring monument was erected on the Road of Life, and so on. Private blockade museums began to appear. People collected and showed documents, some surviving objects in order to pay their debt to the memory of those 700-800 thousand people who did not survive the blockade, and those surviving witnesses, who became less and less every year.
The approach has started to change dramatically over the past thirty years. And already now, two or three years ago, it has acquired the features of a concrete plan - it has become obvious that the city needs an architectural and memorial symbol of this, perhaps the most important, tragic event of the 20th century. During the year, the possibility of holding an architectural competition was discussed. And it should be noted that the initiative for the construction of the museum complex is completely St. Petersburg, without any participation of the federal authorities. Various sites were discussed where the museum complex could be located. Including in the building of the former blockade bakery, in the place where the blockade was broken, somewhere else … In total, thirty places were considered, but the choice of the St. Petersburg government was made in favor of the territory of the waterworks on the Neva spit, west of the Smolny Monastery. It is planned to remove the waterworks and in its place create a park zone with a museum complex in a ring of the currently designed transport interchange, which will connect the two banks of the river through a tunnel. This decision does not exclude the possibility of the appearance of other memorial sites, including at bakeries. blockade substation, etc. As for the complex on the arrow of the Neva, this is not only a museum, but also the Institute of Memory, which we urgently need, which will collect, analyze, and generalize all types of evidence of the blockade.
How was the competition organized? Who acted as its customer and operator?
- For the development and implementation of various museum and exhibition concepts, including the museum project "Defense and the Siege of Leningrad", a joint-stock company "Center for Exhibition and Museum Projects" was established with 100% capital of the city. Currently, this Center is engaged in the construction of the historical park "Russia - My History". The existing "Museum of Defense and Siege of Leningrad" was involved in the development of the Terms of Reference for the competition, and our Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture was directly involved in organizing the competition.
How was the Test Project formulated?
- I would say that the tender documentation was prepared with high quality and its main advantage was that the task was formulated quite flexibly. Without an ultimatum declaration of what and how should be organized and presented in the museum. The total area was determined - about 10 thousand square meters for the main exposition area and an approximate list of functional areas. At the discretion of the contestants, the spatial system and the formation of the exposition and memorial zones were left.
Why was the closed format of the competition chosen?
- I think that the main argument worked: the development of the concept of such a museum complex is a very difficult task that requires knowledge of certain technologies and the presence of a sufficient number of qualified specialists in the team. I can't imagine how a natural person, one author could cope with the task.
How did you choose the participants of the competition?
- In about four - three and a half months, a list of bureaus and companies was drawn up that could, due to their competence, apply for participation in this competition. There were, in my opinion, a dozen of St. Petersburg, about a dozen of Moscow and a dozen of foreign companies. All teams submitted their applications, which included experience in museum design. The jury evaluated these applications and a qualifying rating was drawn up, the leaders of which reached the final of the competition with the right to present their concepts. About two and a half months were allocated to develop the concepts.
What was the main difficulty for you? Competition program or a burden of moral responsibility?
- Of course, the second. As soon as I found out about the competition, I said that this is the main project of the year, we must not only win - we must do something for which we will not be ashamed in front of ourselves, our parents, all Petersburgers. When we started working, we realized that we should not avoid any personal, emotional manifestations and gestures. For most of us, this is a personal topic, moreover, it is a topic for which we will be responsible to our children. It was not a struggle with competitors, but with ourselves for the maximum professional return, for the quality of each solution.
How did you manage to express the emotional component in volumetric-spatial solutions?
“We took the risk deliberately. In order to achieve the necessary intensity of emotionality, we have built our exposition not as a system of spaces and volumes, but as a sequence of staged, almost stage-built sensations and dramatic effects. From the point of view of museum ethics, we have walked along the edge.
We have tried to materialize significant concepts and facts in the form of architectural forms. Find a concrete, very literal embodiment for them. For example, a breakthrough of the blockade looks like a physical breakthrough, a break in the architectural plane. “The Road of Life” is like a console, like a path to freedom, failed breakthroughs of the blockade are like dark breaks into nowhere, and the final breakthrough is like an exit at the end of a long tunnel, an exit to the Neva. As an expression of the idea that the city has survived, we go outside and see a real city living around. It is such a physical, even physiological, in such a rough, Bazarov reading, the materialization of events.
And at the same time, we were making a museum that is ultra-modern in its structure. We allowed ourselves to be radical, aggressively modern in the use of both design and technical effects inside the museum - with maximum restraint and laconicism in the external appearance of the complex.
The structure of the museum does not provide for a sequential tour of the exposition. On the contrary, it assumes behavioral multivariance, but with a very rigid hierarchy of events, as we imagine it. The first circle is a diorama, in which the main exposition load is performed by a huge IT-panel around the perimeter. Virtual images on it turn into reality due to a huge number of artifacts and material objects. This is how we tie together the memory of the blockade, our ideas about it and material evidence of the tragedy that took place.
Inside the diorama, like a museum in a museum, there are eight volumetric blocks: "Cold", "Hunger", "Fire", "Sorrow", "Life", "Culture", "Science", "Production".
They are intended to express the key, in our opinion, factors that determined the horror of the blockade and the greatness of the people who survived it. And in the very center we are placing another, very important space, a kind of crypt - a "museum of diaries", where audio recordings with memories of real people will sound.
It seems to me that today the topic of the blockade rather separates people, forcing them to argue and conflict with each other. Instead of combining them. Some say that this is a tragedy, horror, nightmare, this is the murder of many people, which is provoked by a totalitarian regime. Others see in it only our victory, military valor, unparalleled courage and resilience of the civilian population. But in our opinion, the blockade is all together. She is like a symbol of the 20th century that connects the non-united. And she's a reason, a reason to unite. This is what we were trying to express. We tried to methodically describe how it was - through physical sensations, through facts. Someone will come to the conclusion that this is a story of victory. Someone - that this is a story about death and life. Somewhere in the museum the head of Nefertiti is kept, and here we have a 125 gram piece of bread as an absolute value. In besieged Leningrad, people were dying, from hunger, from bombing, and nearby they were building tanks, writing music, scientists working. All nuclear science, our rocketry started from here. We tried to show all this in our project. So that everyone can measure themselves against what happened.
How will the work on the project proceed further?
- According to Russian legislation, a tender will be announced to select a designer who will develop our concept. Of course, we will participate in the tender and hope that we can continue working on the project.
