“A huge circus, the Tower of Babel, from which the voice of culture is heard, boundless and fearless, loud and clear” [1] - this is how Teresa Mavica, director of the V-A-C Foundation, sees the future building of this foundation on Moscow's Bolotnaya Embankment.
This is one of the most ambitious construction projects in modern Moscow. 20,000 m2 in the center of the capital should already in the coming 2020 turn into "spaces for exhibitions, performance and educational programs, a hall for 420 people with a solid glass wall behind the stage and a view of a birch grove", the planting of which is also part of the architectural concept …
The project is being prepared in the Paris branch of the Renzo Piano bureau, perhaps the most authoritative creator of museum spaces over the past half century. The architect was recognized thanks to the Center for Contemporary Art in Paris (1971-1977), who later received the name of its customer, French President Georges Pompidou. Designed together with Richard Rogers, it became a symbol not only of a new era in architecture, but also a metaphor for a new world that emerged from the ruins of post-war Europe. Since this project, which has made the unknown 33-year-old Italian a world star, Renzo Piano has built many museum buildings across most of the continents, skillfully combining the expressive style of his Renzo Piano Building Workshop with the individual requirements of the order. Soon this rich panorama will be complemented by a Moscow building.
Piano is by no means the first arch-star to create museum spaces in the capital. The protagonist of the new museum fashion, after
of failed attempts by Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas became here, which is by no means accidental: Russia is much closer to him in spirit and method than to any of his other "star" colleagues. "Garage" is not just another "non-European" project of a fashionable architect, it contains traces of his student interest in the Soviet avant-garde, his texts about Leonidov in Peter Eisenman's journal Oppositions, attitude to the post-socialist heritage, theoretical discourse on the role of the author and the team in architectural creativity in general.
But all this is far from the style and attitudes of Renzo Piano, who is indifferent to the theory of architecture, to the heritage of the twentieth century with its radicalism and collectivism. He literally calls his bureau “workshop” and emphasizes the “artisanal” nature of his approach, which “combed” the radical trends of his older utopian contemporaries, from the English Archigram to the Italian Archizoom, making them digestible for super-big business, be it a wealthy state, an influential corporation, or a "private" millionaire. Such customers see their idealized portrait in Piano's projects - innovation, manufacturability, scale, openness to society, while refinement and chic immediately exclude all possible "left", "philo-communist" allusions.
An analogy involuntarily suggests itself: HPP-2 is the Prada foundation in the homeland of Teresa Mavica in Milan, built by the already mentioned Koolhaas (2008–2018). Both here and there, the customer is large private capital, the face and basis of the national economy: they have a fashion brand, we have oil and gas,
the first number of the Forbes list Leonid Mikhelson. True, the Milanese foundation was supposed to "gentrify" the unsightly eastern periphery of the booming Italian "northern capital", but we are improving one of the most prestigious places in the quite prosperous city center.
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zooming 1/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
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zooming 2/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
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zooming 3/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
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zooming 4/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
Renzo Piano, who today has already reached the venerable age of 82 and has all possible titles, including the academician of the Roman Academy of St. Luke, is a witness to the "heroic" history of the twentieth century. He still found the “pioneers” of modern architecture, but managed to “take the best from them”, minimizing the social pathos inherent in “classical” modernism that hinders well-provided material creativity. In the 1960s - 1980s, when even the nephew of the key architect of the fascist regime Marcello Piacentini - Carlo Aimonino - was a member of the Communist Party, Renzo Piano managed to maintain neutrality in the best traditions of the Catholic democrats ruling in Italy for almost half a century, who know how to masterly balance between tradition and innovation, elitism and nationality.
The master went to Russia with reluctance, which he repeatedly repeated in interviews and at a recent press conference in TASS, stating that he was “not asked to do the project, but ordered” (“ordered”). Indeed, the architect could hardly have been attracted by the unlimited financial capabilities of the Moscow customer, who, according to his own words at the same press conference, is not worried about the already twice exceeded budget of the project. Usually such circumstances cause a flurry of public criticism against the architect and the contractor, but here it is useless, because our customer seems to agree to everything. In parallel, the RPBW bureau is developing museum buildings in Istanbul and Beirut, building skyscrapers in London and Taipei, and implementing a landscaping project in the Kingdom of Monaco. There are many such budgets in the world, but Renzo Piano is the only one.
An architect who always subtly feels how not to get involved in a potential adventure (remember him
the project of a residential and office complex for the Roman region of EUR in 2008 or the failed participation in the competition for the Zaryadye park), rather than millions convinced, but the diplomatic talent of the compatriot Teresa Mavica, a curator of contemporary art who has been working in Russia for a long time, director of the VAC Foundation, and now the Commissioner of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. It is worth noting that in Italy itself the "calling of the Varangians" is very much disliked, and the appointment of foreigners to leading positions causes a stormy wave of indignation: suffice it to recall the competition for the positions of directors of the largest Italian museums in 2015, passions over which are still simmering.
For Russia, foreigners are a part of their own, national culture, which is clearly demonstrated by Russian history in general and the history of architecture in particular. And the building site half a kilometer from the Kremlin is an illustrative example of this. Here anyone would feel if not Aleviz the New, then Osip Bove, or at least a graduate of the Roman Academy of Arts Boris Iofan, whose Palace of the Soviets was supposed to appear just opposite (did he not make Teresa Mavica dream of the "Tower of Babel"?).
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zooming 1/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
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zooming 2/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
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zooming 3/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
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zooming 4/4 HPP-2 under construction Photo © V – A – C Foundation / Gleb Leonov. Courtesy of the V-A-C Foundation
This task is traditional for the architecture of modern exhibition buildings: the reconstruction of the objects of "industrial archeology" - the Tram Power Station and the warehouses of the Smirnov vodka distillery at the beginning of the 20th century. The solution offered by RPBW is impressive, it captivates with style, openness, "modernity". It recognizes the hand of a master, his virtuoso ability to give an object recognition without obsession, capacity without ponderousness, elegance without excessive pathos, in the best traditions of Made in Italy. Space solutions are also recognizable, if not predictable: an open area, suspended ramps, a combination of glass and metal, a very modern, but at the same time cozy atmosphere, innovation and, as the authors of the project promise, environmental friendliness. But Piano is always respectful of the local tradition: for example, if the roofs of the Roman Auditorium are covered with lead in memory of the Baroque domes of the churches of the Eternal City, then in Moscow, genius loci is recognized in a birch grove, unexpected for its center: a stereotype turned into an archetype.
The architect is proud to be erecting a high-quality building, especially "compared to what is being built today" in the Russian capital, as he noted at a press conference. He brings goodness to Moscow architecture, civilizes Beirut and the islands of New Caledonia, introduces eco-technologies around the world to monster skyscrapers. Today, when Genoa, where the architect lives and works, is cut off from the world because of the freeways that have fallen into disrepair during the recent rainstorms, he designs a new bridge free of charge to replace the one that collapsed last year due to a lack of timely repairs. From the height of the slope of the Ligurian coast, where his famous office is located, he speaks of beauty, nature, attention to working conditions - detached and contemplative, as befits a figure of his age, experience and fame.
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zooming 1/4 HPP-2 © RPBW
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zooming 2/4 HPP-2 © RPBW
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zooming 3/4 HPP-2 © RPBW
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zooming 4/4 HPP-2 © RPBW
The image of the Moscow project Piano, as one would expect, is capacious, high-quality, recognizable, as befits a well-known brand. Without obvious pathos, he absorbed the memory of the architecture of Moscow from Ivan III to the present day, delicately built a contrast between the historical environment and the present. Today it is hardly possible to scare someone with modern architecture in the historical center, especially since not much has remained of the historical monuments in the place where the new V-A-C building is being erected, besides the Kremlin, over the past 100 years. Neo-Gothic architecture was included in the new design solution and provided the building with a dialogue with the architectural forms of the Kremlin towers, and the pipes, which turned into “masts” indispensable for the projects of the Genoese “navigator” Piano, indicated the coastal location and gave dynamism. Undoubtedly, the "star" object will add nobility to one of the most interesting, but at the same time controversial Moscow districts, in the visual overview of which Fioravanti and Iofan, pseudo-Ton and Tsereteli are adjacent.
What will GES-2 become - a “factory of culture” that generates a “cultural product” or a “huge circus” responding to the demand for “bread and circuses”? Susan Lacey is trying to find an answer to this question: the project of this artist from the USA is now launched by the V-A-C Foundation. Within its framework, residents of the outskirts of Moscow districts
Yasenevo and Novogireevo ask how such a center can be useful for their region and for themselves. If the non-obviousness of the usefulness of the new object is already noticeable because of the Garden Ring, then the hope remains only for the guests of the capital.
Completion of the "main construction of the capital" is scheduled for 2020. I would like the building to meet all expectations, and most importantly, it did not become the "Tower of Babel", a grandiose undertaking that lost its meaning in the process of its incarnation.
The author is an architectural historian, PhD.
[1] From the correspondence between Teresa Maviki and the artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who was invited to make a “site-specific” project for the opening of the building on Bolotnaya Embankment. Quote based on material presented to the public at the V-A-C Foundation press conference on October 29, 2019 in Moscow.
