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Moscow region, Gorki Leninskie
Architects L. N. Pavlov, L. Yu. Potter.
Designers L. A. Muromtsev, N. Arkhangelsky.
Exposition design: the creative group of the Combine of Painting and Design Arts (Leningrad) under the leadership of V. I. Korotkov and V. L. Rivina.
Design: 1974-1980
Construction: 1980-1987
Leonid Pavlov is one of the few Soviet architects of the post-avant-garde era who developed his own holistic architectural theory. As a student of Ivan Leonidov, he sought harmony of form and content. His projects are distinguished by a characteristic author's vision and a bright formal interpretation, his style is laconic and somewhat close to the minimalism of our days. Throughout his entire career, Pavlov used simple geometric shapes in his buildings, and his favorite was the cube. This is evidenced by the project of a monument to the architects who died in the Great Patriotic War, and the unrealized administrative complex on Lesnaya Street in 1982, the tower of the computer center of the Council of Ministers in 1990 and projects of other computing centers, including those built on Novokirovsky Prospekt (now Academician Sakharov) and in Izmailovo.
But the theme of cubes was revealed most fully in Pavlov's "Leniniana". In fact, this topic began long before the start of his architectural career, a day after Lenin's death, on January 22, 1924, when decisions were made at emergency plenums to perpetuate the memory of Ilyich. The day before, Aleksey Shchusev received an order to design a temporary mausoleum, and a broad discussion about possible forms of monuments to the "Leader of the Russian Revolution" was unfolding in the country. Three main directions were outlined: portrait sculptural monuments, architectural compositions and public memorial buildings, which for many decades provided extensive material for the work of Soviet art workers. The first experience in this area for Leonid Pavlov was the competition project of the V. I. Lenin in Moscow.
The building project at the intersection of Volkhonka and Znamenka was a symmetrical composition of 19 cubes of different height, faced with white marble. Accordingly, the exhibition halls located in them had different areas and heights - depending on the content of Lenin's life stages, which they talked about. In the center there was a volume of the greatest height - with an introductory hall, and in the spaces between the halls-cubes there were supposed to be recreation areas for visitors. Pavlov tended to reflect the content of the building in its space-planning solution, and in the project of the Central Museum of V. I. Lenin, this technique is especially appropriate.
Architect Evgeny Rozanov wrote about the project in the book “Architecture of V. I. Lenin :
“Monumental forms reflect, according to the authors, the ideas of unity and collectivism. The cubes of different height are faced with white marble. Falling black granite plinths clearly cut them off from the stylobate. The first floor of the stylobate is also faced with black granite in order to visually tear the building away from the Earth.
Visitors climb the wide 18-meter staircase to the main exposition level and, moving clockwise, sequentially inspect the halls. The exposition is surrounded by walk-through rooms for visitors to rest. The system of projection screens transforms the exhibition halls into a cinema panorama, reproducing the environment in which Lenin's life and work proceeded.
Ancillary facilities are located on the lower floors, and storage facilities are located below ground level."
Pavlov participated in all three stages of the competition. As a result, a team was formed of the authors of three projects, and they separately worked on the building for another five years. The resulting "peripter", reminiscent of the project of Mikhail Posokhin and Leonid Pavlov from the third round, looked very boring against the background of a huge number of worthy entries. In the end, the project was not implemented in any of the options, but the story did not end there …
"At the end of my life I built the Parthenon"- Pavlov said about his memorial museum of V. I. Lenin in Gorki
In the Gorki estate, before the revolution, owned by Zinaida Grigorievna Morozova-Reinbot, the widow of Savva Morozov, Lenin lived for the last two years and died here in January 1924. The choice of this place was influenced by the excellent safety of the house, the presence of electricity and steam heating, and also the natural environment: forest, river, pond. In 1949, a museum was opened in the manor house, and in 1974, on the 50th anniversary of the leader's death, it was decided to build a Lenin Memorial Museum here instead of the failed one on Volkhonka. Even Lenin's office from the Kremlin was planned to be transported to Gorki.
At the same time, a full-scale reconstruction of the estate was unfolded in the form that it was under Morozova-Rainbot, and work was also underway to equip the park area.
Having started designing the museum in Gorki, Pavlov did not immediately come to a "cubic" solution. In one of the first versions, he proposed the image of "Lenin - the banner": a sculptural portrait against the background of a wavy wall. Above is a rectangular roof supported by sparsely spaced columns. The architect has already used this concept in the design of the monument on the Lenin Hills and in one of the rounds of the competition for the museum of the leader in the center of Moscow. Later, he nevertheless realized this idea in the "Funeral Train" pavilion near the Paveletsky railway station.
The work continued until 1980. The multi-cube concept from the first round of the competition for the projects of the Volkhonka museum was taken as a basis, but the number of cubes decreased from 19 to eleven, and their size became the same. The massive foundation has disappeared, so the building literally grows out of a mound in the middle of the field. Even greater monumentality was achieved due to the compaction of the volumes: the cubes faced with white marble are separated from each other only by thin curtain walls made of red tuff and narrow vertical stripes of glazing. Pavlov also worked on the version with red cubes, as evidenced by the surviving sketch.
In contrast to the project of the museum on Volkhonka, in Gorki Pavlov made the volume of the central hall in the form of a cylinder, not a cube. Although he originally intended to place it in the center, later the architect moved it to the edge, so that it protruded beyond the structure's boundary. In terms of the museum, it began to resemble a church with a dedicated altarpiece. If you look at it from the side of the estate, you can see how the cylinder of the memorial hall, faced with red tuff, seems to push the building apart, forming a semicircular apsid ledge. The cubes connected in pairs are devoid of walls and are completely glazed, in strong contrast with the rest of the facades.
The entrance to the museum is decorated with a portico, located from the front edge of the building of three marble cubes, but connected to them by a small visor. A structure reminiscent of the "kiosk" of Emperor Trajan of the 1st century AD. on the island of Philae in southern Egypt, also has a silhouette of a cube, but not deaf, but open, inviting you to go inside the museum. Entering the interior, the visitor plunges into the darkness of the hall with an oppressively low ceiling made of brass cubes. At the same time, the perspective of a staircase covered with a red carpet and illuminated by torch lamps opens up in front of him. As you ascend, the viewer opens a view of the round hall with the figure of Lenin in the center. A red banner hangs from the ceiling behind the statue: on holidays and for the arrival of delegations, a blower is turned on, making it flutter. On the semicircular marble wall behind the sculpture, the main milestones of the revolution are marked in gold: Lenin's quotes, his five main decrees on gold plates, a map of the "triumphal march of Soviet power."
The museum in Gorki was not supposed to become "another": it was assigned the role of the main memorial center in the country, so the artist Vladimir Korotkov worked out interactive and multimedia components that were supposed to truly capture the spirit of visitors. The main exhibition consists of five parts dedicated to different stages of Lenin's life, and in the center of each hall is a black glass cube. When the guide presses a button on the remote control inside the cube, the light turns on, movement begins, speech comes from the speakers … Very unusual solutions were used, so even after the collapse of the USSR, people continued to come to Gorki to see the technological "show". The multimedia system is controlled by a Macintosh computer. Apple introduced it in 1984, and in 1985 Steve Jobs came to the USSR to sell his computers to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which was later banned by the US government. The museum was opened in 1987.
The interior looks much more gloomy than the external appearance of the museum: a solemnly oppressive atmosphere, references to ancient Egyptian architecture, a black floor with red carpets - a combination of colors of a mourning shoulder band.
The exposition confirms the idea that this building is, first of all, not a museum, but a memorial church filled with sacred meanings. The theme of the "sanctuary" was confirmed by Pavlov himself: "At the end of my life I built the Parthenon." And if the building of the mausoleum on Red Square opened in architectural terms the era of the Soviet Union, then the museum in Gorki became a tombstone for this historical period.
Pavlov's buildings have always been distinguished by their own style, which does not depend much on the surrounding trends. Therefore, it happened so imperceptibly in the process of adapting the modernist project of the Central Museum of V. I. Lenin on Volkhonka to the context of the Gorki complex, the transition to postmodernism, marking the rise of this style to popularity at the end of the USSR.
