Shukhov is the most famous Russian engineer, this is our Russian Gustave Eiffel, whom the whole world knows. In his inventions, Shukhov found himself on the verge of a fundamentally new system of understanding buildings - as spatial “shells”. The architecture in them is the structure itself. Shukhov is loved by architects, perhaps because his contribution to building technology guaranteed a new degree of freedom in handling space and form. True, this second, "architectural" idea of his heritage was perceived only in the second half of the 20th century. While contemporaries appreciated its utilitarian value to a greater extent. Lightweight innovative designs were quite simple to install, not expensive in terms of material and were able to cover large areas of the premises.
Shukhov's inventions are the fruit of their time, associated with the rapid development of industry and the engineering thought that followed it. It was on this basis that Shukhov's outstanding abilities matured and came in handy. At the same time, the path of an engineer from industrial devices for the distillation of oil to the architecture of railway stations symbolically reflected the evolution, or, as the curators (Elena Vlasova, Mark Hakobyan) wrote, the "emancipation" of structures that made a truly qualitative leap at the turn of the century. The systems became lighter and more elegant, and at the Nizhny Novgorod fair in 1896 they first appeared in the form of self-sufficient "shells" of buildings.
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zooming 1/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 2/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 3/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 4/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 5/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 6/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 7/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 8/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 9/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 10/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 11/11 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
What was done at the fair by the engineering office A. V. Bari, for whom Shukhov worked until the nationalization of the company in 1919, shocked his contemporaries. Perhaps it was something akin to Paxton's Crystal Palace in London's Hyde Park, made of cast iron and glass half a century earlier. Similar to circus tents, the Oval Pavilion and the Rotunda showcased the capabilities of hanging mesh steel structures to cover over 1,000 m2… Assembled from straight rods, these shells worked exclusively in tension.
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zooming 1/8 V. G. Shukhov. Shells of double curvature in the ceilings of the buildings of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant. 1897. Model O. V. Bernova, 1989, NII Promstalkonstruktsiya, model workshop. GNIMA // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 2/8 V. G. Shukhov. Shells of double curvature in the ceilings of the buildings of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant. 1897. Model O. V. Bernova, 1989, NII Promstalkonstruktsiya, model workshop. GNIMA // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 3/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 4/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 5/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 6/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 7/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 8/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
The highlight of the fair was a water tower - a hyperboloid. The structure developed by Shukhov, the method of its calculation and installation made the hyperboloid a universal system for various tasks. Almost like in the book by Rem Koolhaas "S, M, L, XL", it was only necessary for each specific case to choose the right parameters of the structure. The height and diameter of the base, the number of vertical elements and their angle of inclination were varied. By making, for example, a structure with a more pronounced narrowing, it was possible to provide increased spatial stability, but at the same time a lower bearing capacity, and vice versa. As a result, Shukhov made quite a lot of such hyperboloids. The most famous is the tower on Shabolovka, the highest is the lighthouse in the Dnieper estuary, 70 m high.
The hall, where all the Shukhov towers gather in a certain pantheon, should probably be considered the central one: in the middle there is a metaphorical model of the Shabolov television tower, around which are its sisters and brothers from different regions of Russia. The Ass Architects made the exhibition structures white for this particular hall, which gives it a certain solemnity: this is the main representation of Shukhov's legacy, whom most people still know precisely as the creator of the tower.
Thanks to Architects Ass, we, nevertheless, starting from the first hall, which meets us with physical experiments demonstrating the “nature” of mesh shells, do not forget for a second that we are looking not only at Shukhov the engineer, but also Shukhov -architect. Following the historical sequence of events in his life, represented by a huge collection of archival materials, we end up in the last room - face to face with architecture. It is here that a direct metaphor of constructions as artistic creation appears: the central place here is occupied by the video art of the American innovative engineer Konrad Waxmann, whose spatial mathematical grid becomes an object of art.
It took half a century to translate Shukhov's inventions into a purely architectural plane and assess their importance for the development of the architectural profession. In the post-war period, when it became necessary to “do more with less”, the new architecture of “shells” replacing the facades developed in a whole direction. She has a number of "fans" from among the world's "stars" - from Fry Otto to Norman Foster. In 1964, on the basis of the University of Stuttgart, the Institute for Light Structures was founded, which to this day - and today it is headed by Professor Werner Sobek - develops the theme with suspended structures invented by Shukhov.
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zooming 1/8 Model of a roof structure in the Hamburgcity Überseequartier. Hamburg, 2013-2021. Plastic. 2019 Werner Sobek Stuttgart // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 2/8 Model of the roof structure in the Hamburgcity Überseequartier. Hamburg, 2013-2021. Plastic. 2019 Werner Sobek Stuttgart // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 3/8 Model of a roof structure in the Hamburgcity Überseequartier. Hamburg, 2013-2021. Plastic. 2019 Werner Sobek Stuttgart // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 4/8 Model of a dome in Millennium Park, Chicago. 2003. Werner Sobek, Stuttgart. Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design. 2019 // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture .2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 5/8 Model of the mesh covering of the building of the Institute of Lightweight Construction. 1993/1995, archive of the institute // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 6/8 Model of the mesh covering of the building of the Institute of Lightweight Construction. 1993/1995, archive of the institute // Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 7/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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zooming 8/8 Exhibition “Shukhov. Formula of architecture . 2019, Museum of Architecture, Moscow Photo: Y. Tarabarina, Archi.ru
The most interesting thing is that the topic of mesh shells is still innovative and even futuristic, its potential is far from being exhausted. In 1965-83. the ingenious Buckminster Fuller patented his geodesic climatron domes, which looked like energy-efficient housing for aliens. But to this day they have remained a "great fantasy." Modern technology opens the way for further thinning, digitalization of the wall, up to the emergence of a media "screen". This path was indicated 100 years ago by the brilliant Shukhov, the path of an absolutely new logic of spatial expression. Exhibition at the Museum. A. V. Shchusev stretches out an invisible bridge that begins at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries in a disturbing pre-revolutionary atmosphere, well conveyed by stereo photographs of Shukhov himself, and ends somewhere in the very distant future.
