Alexander Andreevich Skokan, head of the bureau "Ostozhenka"
When in the 50s and 60s they talked about the Future, with a capital letter, they did not name the exact timing of its coming out of caution (except for the promise of communism already in the 80s, N. S. Khrushchev), but they certainly meant, that it will certainly come in the 21st century. And now we have been living in this coming Future for 17 years and can, looking back, compare it with the expectations of that time.
That time is ten years after the Second World War, after the death of Stalin, and the opening of the "Iron Curtain" and a whole series of events, quite recently impossible, when everything testified to the beginning of a new era, behind which some other a more wonderful Future.
More and more miracles unfolded before our eyes, we were shown the exploration of Space, jet aircraft, peaceful and non-peaceful atomic energy, television and every other, new, unprecedented …
And at the same time, all this euphoria and the expectation of the Future existed simultaneously with a miserable life, primitive technologies, an all-embracing need for a great country that had been drained of blood by previous shocks.
This harsh reality and at the same time romantic aspiration and belief in the Future created a certain emotional tension, which prevented us from calmly engaging in everyday prosaic affairs and made it a priority to think about what the Future, to which we are inevitably approaching, would look like ("forward to victory …", "The victory of communism is inevitable …" and the like).
A priori, it was believed that the Future is better, brighter, happier than the present, and even more so the past, about which I did not want to remember.
The then young Soviet architects could not but be involved in these games for the Future, in this expectation of the coming holiday. They were like children, looking forward to a holiday, trying to look through the crack into the room, where the Christmas tree probably already stands and the final preparations are underway …
Is it possible in such a situation to calmly engage in everyday affairs, do homework, design typical buildings, or, for example, study the history of architecture?
Therefore, the main thing on the agenda was the Future. It was only worth talking about it, only it could and was interesting to design, invent. The present could not provide any exciting topics for the architect - microdistricts with typical houses or houses for the party nomenklatura.
This is certainly an exaggeration, but not a strong one, in addition, the extremely limited possibilities of construction technology did not allow thinking about the possibility of the appearance of any complex and interesting architecture.
This is also why the Future was that place - the time where and when everything that is inaccessible today was possible.
The future is like a hallucinogen with which one could escape from the present. Of all the other ways to avoid encountering reality (tourism, religion, alcohol, dissidence, science, artistic creation), “futuristic design,” as it was called at the time, was the most professional. In addition, it was interesting and, since it took place in good company, it was also very fun.
This may look like one of the reasons for such an increased interest in the Future, its forecasting, design, drawing, prototyping.
Therefore, in the late 50s and early 60s, various informal, i.e. bound only by common interests, carried away by some ideas of a group of architects, to some extent continued in the new conditions the traditions of the Soviet architectural avant-garde.
One of these groups, perhaps the most famous, was the N. E. R.
In 1960, a group of graduates from Moscow Architectural Institute defended the collective "experimental design work - New Element of Settlement - the city of the future."
This work aroused great interest, it was then much talked about and even wrote in the press. Since there was nothing like that in our architecture at that time, this could become the main professional news, and the authors themselves were extremely popular personalities. Now they would probably be called "stars" - and at that time "popular rumor" spread various fables about them, and even then it all became a bit of a myth.
Developing the ideas inherent in this diploma, the authors publish the book "A New Element of Settlement" (1966), which was later translated into English, Italian and Spanish and published in 1967 in the USA, Italy and several Latin American countries.
Then comes the exhibition period in the biography of NER - an exposition at TsNIITIA in 1966, two international exhibitions: the 14th International Triennial in Milan in 1968 and an exposition in a pavilion designed by Kenzo Tange at the 1970 EXPO in Osaka.
The original NER's idea was to create compact cities with a definite finished form (architectural thinking) with an optimal population of 100 thousand people. This number, according to the authors, guaranteed the social contacts necessary for a harmonious urban life ("according to interests"), for which the main space of the NER, its heart, or, as it was then called, "the center of communication" was envisaged.
New ideal cities were opposed to the existing cities hopelessly and uncontrollably sprawling, despite all the smart and beautiful plans and general plans. Famous historical ideal cities from Palma Nuova to English garden cities were cited as analogues or prototypes.
The entire internal layout of the NERs was designed for pedestrian accessibility, bicycles were not yet fashionable and at that time they were ridden only in China and Holland.
The growth of these formations was limited, on the one hand, by the completeness of the spatial form, and on the other, by the number limit of 100 thousand people.
But the main thing was what these new cities were built into - a global network structure that unites the whole country, called the "settlement system". This structure included the nodes of existing cities in the European part of the country and stretched out in the line of the "settlement channel" in the Eastern direction.
And, if today the idea of "parceled" urban development has not found its confirmation and now seems to be a pure utopia, then the existence of a "settlement system" on a national scale is by no means refuted, but seems to be the only correct reading of the existing structural and spatial structure of the state.
In addition, during this period of NER's activity, mainly by Alexei Gutnov and Ilya Lezhava, a number of theoretical theses and design terms were formulated and, one way or another, introduced into professional circulation. In fact, its own NER language was created: the restoration center, frame, fabric, plasma, channel, KVAR and many others.
Here, in fact, the history of the NER ends, and all the participants in this extremely intense creative period, this futurological company disperse to their "winter quarters", maintaining the most friendly relations, and Alexey Gutnov, together with Ilya Lezhava, publish another book "The Future of the City" (1977) …
NER was an attempt of a professional architectural response to the challenge of that time, the 50-60s, an attempt to give an image of the approaching Future, “to design a city of a close communist society” [ii].
And what is commonly called the NER is design and scientific constructions around the idea of the “City of the Future”, and the New Element of Settlement itself is nothing more than this very city of the Future, a fragment of a global urban planning structure covering the entire country.
These appeals to the Future, the spells of the Future, looking beyond the horizon, nevertheless, ended somewhere in the late 60s and then everyone lived with different ideas and moods.
For the sake of fairness, it must be said that the design of the cities of the Future performed by the NER team was not something unique, at the same time or, rather, a little later, several more teams appeared, exhibited, published utopian projects - the group of A. Ikonnikov, K. Pchelnikov and I. Gunst, A. Bokova with
V. Gudkov, V. Lokteva and possibly some other less well-known enthusiasts.
Not to mention the fact that all architectural magazines of that time were filled with fantastic projects and few of the then famous architects resisted the temptation to speak out on this topic - Kenzo Tange, Otto Frey, Iona Friedman and, of course, the leader in popularity among young architects of that time, English group Arcigram.
Pedagogical practice became a logical continuation of the NER history
Ilya Lezhava at the Moscow Architectural Institute and the scientific and design activities of the Advanced Research Department of the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan of Moscow, led by Alexei Gutnov, where several more NER activists came to work with him.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the early 70s, something happened to the Future, something in it seemed to have deteriorated - they stopped joyfully expecting its coming, learned to live in the present, got used to it. Time stopped.
But this stagnant present did not become more interesting from a professional point of view, and the problem of moving away from everyday life into a "parallel" existence for new young architects remained. It was no longer some suspicious future (besides, inevitable), but a completely different world, a different dimension, not yesterday, not today, and not tomorrow, where fantastic plots of "paper" architecture began to unfold. It was not another time, but another space. And it was also fascinating, interesting, although not too optimistic.
But the Future nevertheless came, at least with the onset of a new century, and it turned out to be not quite what was expected 50 years ago. And it’s good, of course, that it didn’t come right away, not as if we woke up and - this is how it happens on the road, when in the morning or even at night you see an unfamiliar station through the window, a strange landscape and read the name of the station - “Future - have arrived!
Fortunately, everything, as always, does not happen immediately, gradually, not the first time, any innovations are preceded by some kind of events denoting vectors of development, trends, in short, something flashes around all the time that predicts the next, that is near or more distant future.
We are constantly being warned about something, and if we do not notice it or do not understand it, then this is our problem.
What surprised us at the Future station that we did not expect to see?
People and their cities. Fifty-odd years is a short time to count on any fundamental changes in people - they are practically the same people as before, only they have aged a lot.
But now they are much better informed, both about what is relevant to them (economy, health, politics, etc.), and about what it is absolutely unnecessary for them to know, or even harmful (special medical and other information).
On the one hand, people overloaded with all kinds of information have become more sophisticated, on the other hand, they are much more easily controlled by prudently imposed and specifically oriented information (information manipulation).
"Homo-informaticus" - this information-charged person is actually programmed for certain actions and emotions. In principle, there is nothing new in this, to a greater or lesser extent in different societies it has always been like that, it is just that now all these technologies of information impact have become much more effective.
With regard to the city, this means that people who spend so much time in a parallel, virtual world have become much more indifferent to the real material, including the city, its spatial environment, and in a broader sense - to the place.
As one of the consequences of this informational charge, there is a much greater mobility of the person of the Future, that is, modern, today.
This means that he no longer has the former attachment to one native, only place, constantly moving, he managed to fall in love, become attached to different and, as a rule, quite remote places, cities, landscapes from each other.
Of course, information, but rather propaganda, that is, targeted information, can "charge" our hero with patriotism, love for home, city, country, but this virtual love will not be durable, strong, reliable. A professional answer to this challenge can be, and most likely it will be enough, a set of some pictures, "3d images", graphic illusions.
It is possible to enumerate for a long time in what ways this coming Future confirmed our expectations and dreams, in some ways even disappointed, where we did not see anything new, but something, somewhere, somehow worsened. This in itself is a very interesting topic, and expectations were most often associated with technical innovations and scientific discoveries. A lot of wonderful things really happened here and, according to past ideas, incredible, but, in general, the Future did not come quite in the place where it was expected, or not so noticeable and tangible, but somewhere it never came, or something like that, which would be better not to come. But, probably, the main difference between today's Future and the past from which we tried to discern this future Future is that now the Future with a capital letter, some kind of bright, joyful, happy cloud, in which you want to be as soon as possible - more not.
It will be more pragmatic, it promises problems that today still have no solution - overpopulation, resource depletion, global warming or cooling, the so-called "hybrid" wars and a host of other, not very pleasant or understandable situations.
But we will be comforted and gladdened by further news in the field of information technology and further improvement of the virtual world, where we will obviously look for consolation if we disagree with something or are upset in the real, material and pragmatic Future.
This was the time of numerous literary, artistic, philosophical, etc. associations, groups, circles, studios, where their members were looking for and discovering new opportunities, overcoming the tight and rigid framework of the then life. [ii] Construction newspaper 1960-27-04 № 51 (3734) "City of the future", A. Baburov, A. Gutnov and other students of the Moscow Architectural Institute.
