- So, maybe you give us
reveal this secret, - sarcastically grunted
chief of the artists, -
since you are such a connoisseur.
Ivan Efremov, "Razor's Edge".
What is beauty
The Tallinn Architecture Biennale is the largest event of its kind in the Baltic region. This year, the competition for the right to be the chief curator was won by Yael Reisner, an architect from Israel, who has devoted the last ten years to the study of the phenomenon of beauty: its perception, signs, influence. She took the liberty of suggesting a complex topic: "Beauty matters: The rebirth of the beautiful."
According to Yael, beauty not only in architecture, but also in many other spheres is unfairly forgotten or pushed into the background. In professional circles, they are ashamed to talk about it, because they consider it a sign of bias or naivety, it no longer becomes a guideline or the main goal, the word itself is associated with something outdated, frivolous, non-progressive. This attitude emerged eighty years ago, along with the theoretical writings and manifestos of Alberto Sartoris, Siegfried Gidion and Lewis Mumford, which led to the form follows function pardigm. However, over the centuries, things were different: remember at least the triad of Vitruvius.
Yael tried to understand what leaves with beauty, and why it is still important, involving modern philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists in the discussion, who prepared a theoretical basis. Advances in neuroscience, for example, suggest that the experience of beauty makes us not only happier, but also healthier, and the absence of such can lead to the extinction of civilization. Mathematicians call beauty a measure of truth and depth, a sign of orderliness and consistency. Psychologists note that intuition, through which we create and cognize true beauty, is much broader than logic, its possibilities are richer.
Yael believes that the measure of good architecture is its ability to create powerful aesthetic impressions, intuition plays an important role in creativity and perception, as well as new technologies.
Surprisingly, the essence of the official releases of the Biennale very accurately conveys an excerpt from the book of the Soviet writer Ivan Efremov "The Razor's Edge". Let us allow ourselves a big quote: “Beauty is the highest degree of expediency, the degree of harmonious correspondence and combination of contradictory elements in every structure, in every thing, in every organism. And the perception of beauty cannot be otherwise imagined as instinctive. In other words, it is entrenched in the subconscious memory of a person thanks to billions of generations with their unconscious experience and thousands of generations - with conscious experience”.
The architects selected for the curatorial exposition tried to find an aesthetic embodiment of all these ideas and show what the housing of the future might look like. Yael brought everything together and created a dramatic, slightly mystical space in which beauty is perceived as a mystery and, above all, at the level of sensations.
Curated exposition: the mysterious forest
The curatorial exhibition, “a channel for the emotional experience of beauty in an urban setting,” is located on the second floor of the Estonian Museum of Architecture, a former salt warehouse. Out of eight large-scale installations, Yael "built" the street that we observe at dusk, at a time when winter gives way to spring.
First sensations: twilight, birch trunks, muffled “city” birdsong. The large black screen does not immediately allow you to see the exposition - a "turn" that makes you experience an experience similar to the one when you walk along a narrow street of an ancient city and suddenly find yourself on a square with a huge cathedral. Instead of a cathedral, bizarre shapes, a combination of a rigid mesh and chaotic formations, tactile objects and virtual reality create a wow effect.
Semi-darkness, thunderclaps, dark tree trunks and light spots of chamber spaces against their background create the feeling that a person is returning to the cave, respectfully retreating before the forces of nature. Lighting, soundtrack, the objects themselves really cause a lot of emotions and experiences: from fear of the elements to a sense of security in the mother's womb, from aliens to belonging to something big.
Later, generalizations arise: modular designs are popular in the city of the future, many mechanisms are borrowed from nature, VR glasses make up for the missing, intuition is part of the creative process. A person is embedded in the landscape, and does not subjugate it to himself.
Yael Reisner and Barnaby Gunning, who once built a full-fledged house from Lego parts, presented a universal cell for living and working for a person of any age and status, which consists of interlocking spaces: from cozy private to open public. A variety of plants are integrated into the cells: ordinary indoor or random grown, as well as hydroponic gardens.
So Fujimoto, creator of the 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, sees the housing of the future as a primitive "Open Cave" in which floor, walls, ceiling and furniture are constructed from a versatile set of wooden blocks that allow you to change and adapt the space while maintaining its comfort.
Another modular system is from Australia's March Studio. The supporting structure is filled with wooden lattice modules-beams with living cells inside, the size of which depends on the needs of the tenant. Together they form a tower or "vertical city" for 500 people, which is endlessly modified: parts of the building can be moved, rebuilt, replaced, or even completely take their cell and move it to another "superstructure" or even put it in the forest or on the beach. The design is not speculative: the studio is already creating real prototypes.
The Austrians SOMA have come up with temporary structures, partially printed on a 3D printer, with which you can influence the familiar urban landscape. Complex swirling structures can radically transform a place, accentuate an entrance, and attract attention. As an example, the architects chose the cultural and sports complex on the shores of the bay in Tallinn, built for the 1980 Olympics, and showed its new interpretations with the help of their compositions.
Kadri Kerge's project is called Beauty-Ful (l): it is a house dedicated to binuclear families, which have grown rapidly in Estonia. The architect proposes to integrate a module into a traditional wooden house, the parameters of which are calculated on the basis of the golden ratio. A system of private and common spaces appears, and the interior has a therapeutic effect.
KTA went from narrative and came up with an apocalyptic story for their project. In the future, humans receive protein from insects, which are also few. A mite - a "beauty agent" - is once attached to a panel house, and it is completely covered with heat-insulating foam in order to keep the mite and grow a colony. A farmer lives on the ground floor and supplies the house with food. The biennale features a farmer's booth with loudly chirping grasshoppers.
Some of the projects are related to interiors. Elena Manferdini, for example, suggested a virtual reality wallpaper: the herbs sway, butterflies flutter, the wall comes to life.
Studio Space Popular sees the interior of the future, when human closeness will be completely replaced, according to the authors, by video calls, like a collage of different layers: in virtual reality, any object has the potential to become beautiful, and the setting and atmosphere change in seconds. Beauty for architects is something that helps improve communication and convey feelings and thoughts.
All installations are united by the virtual reality platform “Talking Trees of Tallinn”. A person puts on VR glasses and, touching one of the fragments of one of the installations with his hand, sees the full space. Also in the gallery of the hall there are video projections that reveal in more detail the idea of each participant. According to Yael Reisner, the budget for the curatorial exposition amounted to 60 thousand euros, and b about Most of it went to augmented reality.
One of the important conclusions of the curatorial exposition: "beauty is not a single idea, its multiplicity is more important."
Embodied beauty
Another Biennale event is the Huts and Habitats competition, for which it was proposed to create something like a modern hut - probably a reference to the concept of "primitive hut" by Marc-Antoine Laugier, the origin of all "true architecture."
The models of the 12 finalists were displayed in front of the entrance to the main exposition, and the winners' project was implemented. The steam-bent timber structure, called "Steampunk", was installed on a small hill in front of the entrance to the Museum, where it will stand until the next Biennale.
The Steampunk model was developed by a computer, there are no identical parts in it, the assembly was possible only in VR-glasses, which indicated the levels and sequence of installation of wooden panels. It turned out that a man created an idea - an algorithm, a machine built an image and "guided" the process, while the aesthetics are natural, the pavilion is very much like a cocoon of a wasp's nest.
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zooming 1/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 2/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 3/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 4/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 5/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 6/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 7/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
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zooming 8/8 Installation "Steampunk" at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019. Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham (Fologram, AU), Soomeen Hahm Design (UK), Igor Pantic (UK) Photo © Evert Palmets
Paths of beauty
The parallel program of the Biennale is not so serious, at least without neuroscience and augmented reality; however, it expands on the concept of beauty. An extremely touching exhibition called "Awfully Beautiful": it brings together projects of students of prestigious architectural schools, which for one reason or another failed. The participants presented their stories and the lesson they learned, as well as finalized the projects in terms of beauty.
In addition to traditional video screenings and photo exhibitions, there is an opportunity to visit the architectural bureaus of Tallinn with a guided tour, listen to music created specifically for buildings, learn about the beauty of "low-lying" architecture - toilets, for example.
It is gratifying that Russian architects are participating in the Biennale: the team of authors consisting of Dmitry Prikhodko, Natalia Krymskaya and Amirkhan Gabdullin won first place in the Vision competition, the Telliskivi creative space hosts the Children of the Avant-garde exhibition organized by Project Baltia magazine: a series of photographs by Dmitry Tsyrenshchikov with the buildings of the Leningrad constructivists.
The Tallinn Architecture Biennale runs until November 17, 2019.
