Whatever one may say, the main intrigue of the Arch of Moscow this year is the venue. The exhibition-festival, which has been so successfully organized by Expo Park in the CHA for 23 years in a row since 1995, and has grown together in the minds of many with a place, this year, although conversations had been going on for a long time, was forced to leave her home and move to the Manezh, a long and traditional site large Moscow exhibitions since the time of Vysotsky (I remind you: "… at the exhibition in the Manezh, a man with a suitcase will approach you, he will say: do you want cherries …". Suitcases - spoiler - this time there, but more on that later). However, many Arch Moscow after the move rather liked it: no matter how much the progressive community was sick in its time for the modernist building of Sukoyan / Sheverdyaev in 1962/1973, and the space of the equestrian hall of the Empire era is perceived better. What can I say, the Betancourt beams, restored by Pavel Andreev in 2005, look epic and hang overhead at a seemingly unattainable height.
However, the architect of the year 2018, Totan Kuzembaev, made an attempt to reach the ceiling, turning his exposition into an analogue of the Tower of Babel. The wooden ziggurat in the center of the arena hall is visible from everywhere, clearly dominates the space, and lures those entering. The architect's expositions of the year have been impressive before, but, perhaps, never before have they occupied the main place in the space of the entire exhibition so definitely. On the second floor, Totana's ziggurat would also be good, and it is high up to the ceiling, and yet not as in the Manege, where you can see it from everywhere.
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zooming 1/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 5/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 6/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 7/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 8/8 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
At first, there was an idea to make a tower with a staircase, so that everyone could go up to the ceiling and touch the “Betancourt beams,” says Totan Kuzembaev. - But it didn't work out because of the altitude restrictions of the Manezh. In a word, they were not allowed to reach the ceiling, it is good that not a voice from heaven, but only the administration. So, the installation consists of a large wooden lattice structure, similar to a ziggurat, a little - on the Iofan Palace of the Soviets, and a little more on the Tatlin tower, due to the slight rotation of the tiers. In the lower register, in front of the eyes of the visitors, in the sections between the gratings, Totan placed drawings of his structures: “here everything is generally devoted to the frame,” the author specifies. Contour drawings on a transparent film become an additional layer of perception of a translucent structure, whose specificity is precisely that layering of different themes and volumes, which are limitedly accessible for the eye and for penetration.
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zooming 1/3 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/3 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/3 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
You can enter inside, but there are not many entrances and inside it is cramped, like under scaffolding, but overhead is an interweaving of thin beams. And you can go around the perimeter around, as in the deambulatory. In the center, the frame of a Kazakh yurt is woven into the structure, and not just any one, but belonging to Totan's younger brother, donated for such an occasion and brought by truck from Kazakhstan specifically for the exhibition. You can look inside, but not go: the painted gate is closed. Inside there is a kind of constructor: small clay bricks, several toy houses have been built from them. “There were no toys in my childhood,” says Totan, “and I sculpted them out of clay. And now he blinded bricks. Maybe my grandchildren will come in the evening, I'll show them how to play, we'll see what they can do. Indeed, by the evening of the opening day, someone was inside, and the mud brick houses were dismantled. An installation means, according to the author, the head of an architect, or maybe his soul, where there is a core and there are layers, and for inspiration you need to go somewhere deep and fish out something from there - a process of creativity that is close to many, but with difficulty verbalized … So it is understandable why they are not allowed inside, who will let everyone in a row into his soul or head? Still, this is an analogue of the Holy of Holies, it's good at least you can look. In addition, Totan Kuzembaev speaks about different materials, layer-by-layer distributed in space: a tree of the outer frame, a memory of felt (in Kazakh, a yurt is not a yurt, but a “felt house”), clay.
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zooming 1/4 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/4 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/4 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/4 Object of Totan Kuzemaev. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
And the yurt in Totan's works is met for the second time after the installation at the 2008 Venice Biennale by curator Aaron Betsky, on the Arsenal embankment: there the yurt was covered with felt, inside there was Italian fiat, Italian-assembled Zaporozhets, and the yurt, as the architect told us, later ended up in the collection Renzo Piano.
Still, it's a pity that they didn't let me build a staircase to the sky up to the ceiling. But one way or another, the exhibition space develops from the center, where the Tower of Totana now stands. It is echoed by the stand of the Kaluga region, where the lecture hall is surrounded by lattice wooden arches, perhaps the most pleasant lecture space at the exhibition. The region is a special guest, a rich program of discussion of future transformations of the city of Kaluga is planned. Behind Kaluga, a city full of monuments of provincial classicism of a special Kaluga school, which has been mutilated a lot in the last 30 years, I want to cross my fingers and think that the remaining environmental buildings, not to mention the monuments, will be lucky in the process of improvement, and not vice versa. However, everyone who is interested in the question is welcome to the stand, see the program, many conversations are planned.
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zooming 1/3 Kaluga region. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/3 Kaluga region. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/3 Kaluga region. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
On the other side of the "ziggurat" is the wooden stand of the special project of the speech: magazine, which is not the first time showing architecture "by country" at Arch Moscow. This time the hero is Turkey, the public buildings were selected and the architecture shown is, admittedly, more than interesting, and it is convenient to look at it thanks to the installation by Sergei Tchoban and Alexandra Scheiner, reminiscent of a wooden carpet spread on the floor, and raised by waves-benches on which you can sit looking at the project boards placed on the gentle side of the waves. The benches are full. I would like to transfer such an installation to Zaryade Park.
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zooming 1/3 Turkey. speech:. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/3 Turkey. speech:. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/3 Turkey. speech:. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
And again, it is a pity that Totan Kuzembaev was not allowed to build a staircase in the spirit of the famous structures of the Venice Biennale in the Arsenal, there are now up to ten of them at a time, if not more. Meanwhile, one such staircase - not to heaven, but just a little upward, and yet a start has been made - in the Manege appeared at the Archimatika bureau's stand dedicated to several schools designed by architects, including the A + gymnasium, shown in detail, with photographs and layouts of the premises …
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zooming 1/4 Archimatika. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/4 Archimatika. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/4 Archimatika. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/4 Archimatika. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
However, at the entrance to the main hall of the Manege, we are also met by a strong group: the stand of the Moskomarkhitektura is dedicated to competitive projects of metro stations, which are represented by completely white objects that were built by students under the guidance of buromoscow architects as part of the Open City educational program of the ICA. The leadership, one must think, was quite total, since all objects are subject to a general, rather strict, style and are completely different from the usual student discord.
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zooming Venue. MKA stand. Arch Moscow 2019. buromoscow Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming Venue. MKA stand. Arch Moscow 2019. buromoscow Photo: Archi.ru
On the sides - two projects of young bureaus and their PR agencies. On the one hand, Balance is a tower of boxes from under New balance sneakers, in the words of Artem Ukropov from megabudk, "architecture aimed at a new generation."
On the other hand, the House of the Future today, it must be admitted, has more participants and information, since each showed his own stand, more or less information richness. It is here that we find suitcases, a whole tower of them, symbolizing the mobility of the housing of the future, Archimatika shows them. In general, projects revolve around ideals: coliving, mobility, community self-development and moving from skyscrapers to land. A separate competition is held among the projects.
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zooming 1/8 The house of the future today. GAFA & ATOM ag / Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/8 House of the future today. Archslon. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/8 House of the future today. Archslon. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/8 The house of the future today. Archimatika. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 5/8 House of the future today. Archimatika. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 6/8 The house of the future today. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 7/8 House of the future today. Blank architects. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 8/8 House of the future today. Blank architects. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
The most notable project in the lower tier of the Manege is Moscow Strangeness, the exposition of the Nowadays studio students at MARSH: very rich both in the number of projects presented in a voluminous and informative way, and in the number of interesting, although mostly paper and provocative ideas. You can spend the whole day there, but it's just stuffy.
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zooming 1/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARSH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARSH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARCH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARCH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 5/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARCH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 6/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARCH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 7/7 "Moscow strangeness" / Nowadays / MARSH. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
The Bauhaus stand, designed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the great school, is another accent of the lower tier, many events are planned in it, but there are not enough chairs and everything together is somehow oversaturated with props.
The current Arch Moscow is subtitled NEXT, although, as we have noticed before, it is becoming more and more blurred. Where is NEXT here - you can't always figure out what is generally in tune with the situation: young bureaus are not so young, and the idea of NEXT is not expressed in the Arch Catalog of the exhibition, very venerable masters participate in it.
The new idea of the curator of the entire exhibition as a whole and of the catalog in particular, Ilya Mukosey, is to present the catalog in the form of installations on the general theme of the exhibition “old and new”. The tallest, tower-type installation by Sergei Skuratov very accurately corresponds to the theme: the layout of Sakharov Avenue, about 4 meters high, is placed vertically, and nothing else is on display, but a skyscraper designed by the architect next to the Le Corbusier Centrosoyuz. The same project, to which there were a lot of questions from the city rights defenders, is a project that was successfully defended, however, by an architect at the School of Heritage. The object turned out to be similar to the steles of some prehistoric, let's say, kuros. Or a lightsaber stuck in a city.
Nikolai Lyzlov showed the old and the new in the form of his photographs, old and young. Sergei Tchoban presented chess: black figures in them - houses with pitched roofs and stepped ardekosh skyscrapers - queens and kings, and a new one - white prisms of different sizes, but without differences. The pieces can be moved and, in principle, even played with them. The group - this time rather young, although also relatively - architects: Mukosey: architecture / design / media; Nowadays; Citizenstudio; "Syndicate" and AM Alexei Kozyr, shows the collective project of the "Arctic Museum of Contemporary Art" in Norilsk, the most northern, according to the authors, of the museums of contemporary art. UNK project demonstrates the project of the martial arts palace in Luzhniki, which has been exposed so far only in the ICA and youtube mailing lists. Bureau Praktika has presented a project for the improvement of the "magical part of Derbent" called the Wall of Time. He will also be presented with a separate presentation at Arch Moscow. ABD architects is an office building in Volgograd. Studio 44 is a project to transform a power plant in the center of Pskov into housing, partly a loft. Bureau ASADOV reflects on renovation in abstract bricks and mossy greenery. DNG ag exhibited an interactive black and white sandbox symbolizing "city life as an endless process." Vitruvius and his sons placed a living bulb in a rusty metal cage. In a word, the catalog has ceased to be a catalog, but has turned into a creative exhibition.
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zooming 1/6 Arch catalog. Sergey Skuratov's project. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/6 Arch catalog. Sergey Skuratov's project. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/6 Arch catalog. Sergey Skuratov's project. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/6 Arch catalog. Sergey Skuratov's project. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 5/6 Arch catalog. Buromoscow project. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 6/6 Arch catalog. Sergey Skuratov's project. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
This is what distinguishes Arch Moscow from Zodchestvo, an old-timer: a minimum of cataloging and a maximum of creativity. The fractional information of small tablets is not particularly welcome here. Although how to say, maybe an element of cataloging is appropriate and maybe it will come back. In the meantime, the arena debut of Arch of Moscow was supposed to be, by definition, bright, and, perhaps, the emphasis on installations helped to achieve the desired effect and declare itself.
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zooming 1/7 Mosinzhproekt. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/7 Mosinzhproekt. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/7 Arch Moscow 2019 Mosinzhproekt. Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/7 Stand of the Krost company. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 5/7 Stand of the Krost company. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 6/7 Stand of the Krost company. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 7/7 Stand of the Krost company. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
And yet, I completely forgot: in the far corner to the left of the main stage of the Moskomarkhitektura lecture hall, the Project Russia magazine opened a vote for the best model of the magazine's award badge. Everyone is invited to write the favorite number on their own business card and throw it into the lottery drum.
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zooming 1/4 Project Russia: competition for the award badge. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/4 Project Russia: competition for the award sign. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/4 Project Russia: Competition for the Prize Badge. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 4/4 Project Russia: Competition for the Prize Badge. Arch Moscow 2019 Photo: Archi.ru
