This weekend in St. Petersburg there was an exhibition "The World of Architecture and Design" - a completely new format for the city. According to the organizers, Project Baltia magazine and its editor-in-chief Vladimir Frolov, ARCH Moscow, as well as similar events of the Scandinavian neighbors, became an example for the Neva expo. Its purpose is to gather on one site different participants in the urban planning process, to show a complete picture of the architectural present of St. Petersburg, to show it in an interesting way.
MAD Expo has gone far from the traditional architectural events of St. Petersburg. The most obvious difference is the interesting site. Instead of the halls of the Ethnographic Museum or the minimalist "contextless" Manege, they chose
"Sevkabel Port": a public space on the historical territory of the operating cable plant, the "texture" of which gives many opportunities to beat the exposition. In addition, on weekends, "Sevkabel" is filled with the necessary audience, who come for a view of the Neva and the bay in an industrial setting, sunbathing, delicious food and events. These are mainly young and young family people, that is, active “users” of the city who are able to change it. One must think they visit the Ethnographic Museum less often.
Next is the topic. For the first exhibition, they did not take the "eternal": heritage, gray belt, mass development and green frame. They offered to investigate the "Total Landscape", the essence of which was revealed in a complex
manifest. The total landscape is the one that is created by the all-pervasive tracking and accounting systems, processed into maps and schemes "big data", an urban product. The total landscape is virtual, invisible, unconscious, but permeable and barrierless.
Several curatorial projects have been devoted to this topic. The most interesting, perhaps, is the installations in the "Secret Rooms", which could not be found on the fly. The exhibition was held in the historical building, where wooden spools were made earlier, in the depths of it there is a “building within a building” - apparently, workshops or offices of former employees. That's where the secret rooms were hidden. Behind one of the roughly plastered walls, the ideally divine designs of Stepan Lipgart were shown to the music of Alexander Scriabin. In another dark room, under infrared rays, there are onions arranged in jars on the lid of a piano. Someone received more light and sprouted, someone got less, he is closed and in the dark. In the third room, thin rays of light penetrate the entire space of the room, draped with a huge garbage bag. In artistic comprehension, the total landscape looks rather bleak.
Several more curatorial works were scattered throughout the hall. At the entrance there is a laconic pavilion with "Simple Landscapes" by Andrey Lublinsky. The artist brought the postcard views of the city to graphic minimalism - this is how a computer could draw, and he printed them on wooden boards, a little "defining" them. The MLA + stand was made in a similar way: a schematic map of St. Petersburg rivers is supplemented with a "real" one - test tubes with water from each of them. The authors wanted to remind that St. Petersburg is a river city, but this resource is used up to insulting little. To take water samples, we had to overcome many obstacles - highways, fences, steep slopes and abandoned areas. Paradoxically, as close to the city rivers as here, at this stand, hardly ever was at least one of the guests of the exhibition.
Arhataka prepared the object "Own Place", thinking that in a total landscape we are looking for an ideal place, but in the end we are content with "what we have" and adapt to it.
The central place was given to the tablets: they were hung in two rows, dividing the entire space into three "naves". The side ones house exhibition modules from commercial partners, as well as a market with books and design items.
The tablets cover four themes: City, Office, HoReCa and Home. There are few projects, but they are noticeable and interesting. The city, for example, was represented by different typologies: the Mendelssohn house of the Intercolomnium bureau and the Svetly Mir residential complex, Studio-AMM, the Studio-44 Railway Museum and the LES workshop, the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in Mamoshin's workshop and MFC "Grani" of the Institute of Territorial Development, "Park of Generations" in Tikhvin and a memorial for the "Road of Life" from students of SPbGASU, a dental clinic from the bureau "Golovin & Schreter".
Since the exhibition took on the role of a "window to Europe", a foreign project became the flagship - the exposition of the French prize AJAP (Les Albums des jeunes architectes et paysagistes), which greeted visitors at the very entrance. The award, presented every two years to twenty young architects and landscape designers, helps build their careers and provides insight into the issues that interest young professionals and society at large. Trends are visible: on French tablets, there are a lot of "green" works, wood, understanding the heritage and proposals for updating existing buildings.
Like AJAP, Project Baltia is launching the ProMoArchDiz award - Projects of Young Architects and Designers. It will be awarded to ten specialists who will be selected by a Russian-French jury. Then there will be a joint exhibition - AJAP and ProMoArchDiza, which will go to ARCH Moscow, and then to the regions. It will be really interesting to compare the approaches.
Summing up, I would like to note, first of all, the diversity of the event, which makes it closer to the festival. In addition to the above, the stages of two competitions have also ended here - for a mobile installation
"Mobile Obelisk" and "Horizon" - for the project of the campus on the roof of one of the Sevkabel buildings. We gave lectures and held master classes. We organized a playground for children. It is impossible not to say about the design of the entire exhibition: it turned out in its own way architectural, graphic, multifaceted, asking for social networks - this is important in popularization. At the same time, no one flirted with the audience, everything was serious, professional and helpful. New names and the neighborhood of small studios with masters delighted us. In general, it is a pity that the holiday is over quickly, and now wait for the next year.
