Childhood and study. Family and friends
Vladimir Ginzburg was born on July 23, 1930 in the family of the world famous functionalist architect Moisei Ginzburg. He lived with his parents in the famous Narkomfin building on Novinsky Boulevard, built by his father, in a communal apartment. A friend of Vladimir Ginzburg, Yuri Platonov, later recalled how together, as children, they went with cans to the factory kitchen to take meals at home. In addition to the general education school, Vladimir Ginzburg studied at the art school of the ISSA. There he was friends with the future director of the State Tretyakov Gallery (1980-1992) Yuri Korolev and the future monumental artist Yevgeny Ablin. In the summer camp, Vladimir Ginzburg met Alla Kireeva, who became the wife of Robert Rozhdestvensky, with whom Vladimir Ginzburg also subsequently developed respectful communication.
Not so long ago, new details about the architectural dynasty of the Ginzburgs came to light. The son of Vladimir Ginzburg, Alexey, discovered 120 projects in Minsk signed by Yakov Ginzburg, completed from 1890 to the early 1920s. Yakov Ginzburg, the grandfather of Vladimir Ginzburg and the father of Moses, was an architect or civil engineer, and very successful, as he was able to send all the children to study abroad. An apartment building was found in Minsk, which Yakov Ginzburg built and lived in it in one of the apartments.
In 1946, when Moses Ginzburg died, Vladimir was only sixteen years old, and when his mother died - eighteen. He was evicted from the Narkomfin house. For some time, Vladimir Ginzburg lived with his mother's cousin, Raisa Konstantinovna Kantsenelson, whom Moisei Ginzburg had brought to Moscow from Tbilisi. She studied history and theory of architecture at VNIITAG. Then the young man was given a room in a communal apartment. There he met the future writer Anatoly Zlobin.
The choice of the profession of an architect was a natural decision for Vladimir Ginzburg. But in 1948-1949 there was a campaign to combat cosmopolitanism, so he did not enter the MAI - that was the name of the architectural institute then. He was admitted to the MISS, and he transferred to the Moscow Architectural Institute later with the loss of a year. He graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1956 with the teacher Mikhail Sinyavsky (author of the Moscow Planetarium, associate of Moisei Ginzburg - ed.). Yuri Grigoriev (the future deputy chief architect of Moscow Alexander Kuzmin) and Vsevolod Talkovsky studied in the same course with him.
Start of professional activity. Brutalism
For some time after graduating from the institute, Vladimir Ginzburg worked in Giprosport, and then for thirty years - in Mosproekt. He became the head of the workshop as a very young man, at the age of 29. He headed the 19th workshop, and then, when it was merged with the 10th, he headed the 10th. He married around 1958, and his daughter Elena was born in 1959. In 1968, Vladimir Ginzburg married for the second time to Tatyana Barkhina, a year later his son Alexei was born.
Like many graduates of the Moscow Architectural Institute, in the late 1950s, Vladimir Ginzburg made club projects. Together with other Moscow architects, he participated in the restoration of Tashkent after the earthquake, was engaged in residential development.
One of the first public buildings designed by Vladimir Ginzburg was the Bus Station on Shchelkovskaya, a textbook example of Soviet modernism. Unfortunately, the building was demolished in 2017 in order to build a new station.
The most striking work of Vladimir Ginzburg in the 1960s was the Institute for Problems in Mechanics on Prospekt Vernadsky. In the sixties, Soviet architects rediscovered the Russian avant-garde, taking it through the prism of contemporary European architecture. In the artistic solution of the Institute of Mechanics, the influence of brutalism is noticeable.
The 1970s brought with them new possibilities in architecture. In some genres, it is already allowed to build from bricks and travertine, the search for new forms begins, although postmodernity has not yet come. Moscow Region boarding houses are becoming a field of experiments for architects, including Vladimir Ginzburg. If the sanatorium in Krasnovidovo is a strict and honest modernism, then for the boarding house in Voskresensk the solution with vaults and arches is typical. Later this topic will appear in the Cinema Center. The sanatorium of the Council of Ministers is an interesting example of woodworking in Soviet architecture.
Cinema Center on Krasnaya Presnya
The architect himself considered the ensemble of the Cinema Center with the Hungarian Trade Representation to be his main achievement, for this construction Vladimir Ginzburg received the USSR State Prize. There were Krasnopresnenskie baths on the site: in order to start construction, it was necessary to build a replacement - baths in Stolyarny Lane, then demolish the old baths, and in their place the Hungarian trade mission had already been built.
The new building of the Krasnopresnenskie Baths, built by Ginzburg, is distinguished by a facade with a huge round window - an expressive, in essence constructivist element, but in a brick design.
In parallel, Vladimir Moiseevich designed
The Corps of Engineers of the Moscow Metro on Prospekt Mira, together with Andrey Taranov, a friend and the head of his workshop. The façade solution is based on a large relief pattern of deeply framed concrete frames arranged in a checkerboard pattern. The active plastic of the surface provides deep light and shade. The repetitive rhythm brings to mind the popular structuralism in these years.
The cinema center and trade mission began in the 1970s and took 15 years to build. The Ensemble of the Cinema Center is a large public building with a powerful scale. Volumes with different functions: trade mission, foyer, hall - received different plastic solutions, clearly showing the internal structure of the building from the outside. The stained-glass window on the facade overlooking Druzhinnikovskaya Street emphasizes the difference in the components of the complex. The author fought for anodized aluminum windows, choosing a color.
In the 1970s-1980s, a tendency to complicate architectural solutions emerged. The pathos of the public building was emphasized by a powerful massive wall with "loopholes" windows. Due to the deepening, an exaggerated constructive reading of the wall appears. The hidden columns and apses create a sense of power not because of the smooth wall, but because of the depth. Arched rounded windows emphasize the expressiveness of the openings and soften the shape. By the way, the same shape is used in the Metropolitan building, but on a different scale. At the Cinema Center, the elements became gigantic, marking the scale of the public building.
The interior was dominated by the theme of vaulted ceilings - translucent, backlit. Exedra corresponded to the protrusions of the facade inside. The interior was decorated by the work of Zurab Tsereteli. Unfortunately, the interior has been redesigned many times. The appearance of the Cinema Center and the Trade Representation also suffered from inept operation. Both buildings were clad in travertine. Now the travertine facing of the trade mission is covered with orange porcelain stoneware tiles, which distorts the original design of the ensemble.
Postmodernism
In the late 1980s, the era of postmodernism began, the ideas of Robert Venturi became popular. In the work of Vladimir Ginzurg, echoes of postmodernism can be seen in the first building of the Military-Political Academy in Blagoveshchensky Lane (1989). However, the version of postmodernism proposed here by Vladimir Ginzburg is closer to the solution of the large form in the Cinema Center and is far from the version of the direction associated with the "Luzhkov" turrets that was later established in Moscow. Another building of the Academy, located closer to Spiridonovka, was converted into the RFBR building. In 1991, with the fall of the USSR, construction stopped and, since the Academy was subordinate to the central government, its complex was not completed until the end.
Approaches to the restoration of the Narkomfin House
In the mid-1980s, Vladimir Ginzburg started restoring the Narkomfin house, the most famous work of his father and an experimental example of new housing, looking for funding in Soviet art funds. In 1986 Alexey Ginzburg joined the work. In 1995, it was planned to involve an American company in the restoration, at the same time Vladimir Ginzburg, in partnership with his son Alexei, organized a private workshop, the main task of which was the restoration of the Narkomfin building; but it was not possible to find funding until the death of Vladimir Ginzburg in 1997. ***
Remembering his father's personality, Alexei Ginzburg says: “He has always been the soul of the company in Mosproekt, in Sukhanov, in Gagra, in all these houses of creativity, he constantly quoted literally“The Master and Margarita”or other books, was receptive to classical music, sang opera arias, made tape recordings of Wagner, other composers. He was a person of principle, courage, decisive and decent, was not an intriguer, in some ways, perhaps, was naive, did not feel danger in the difficult reality of the 1990s."
Vladimir Ginzburg created striking buildings belonging to the layer of Soviet modernism that have become an integral part of the Moscow landscape. The restoration of the Narkomfin House was continued by Alexei Ginzburg. In 2016, an investor was finally found, who assessed the potential of the monument, and at the moment it is in full swing.
