The Public Architecture - the Future of Europe exhibition is the result of cooperation between GNIMA, the Russian division of the European Cultural Center ECC Russia and the Italian Cultural Center in Moscow. It occupied the main halls of the Talyzins' house on Vozdvizhenka and started on January 31 with a curatorial excursion and a symposium, all participants of which were handed out freshly published exhibition catalogs.
The exhibition, in which, according to the organizers, about 40 architects and organizations are participating, was solved, figuratively speaking, according to the principle of a kaleidoscope or a "mixed hodgepodge", which in many ways resembles the curatorial expositions of the Venetian Arsenal at the Biennale of architecture of different years: the curator formulates the idea, as a rule rather difficult to interpret and therefore blurred, and invites a huge number of architectural workshops that fit, from his point of view, the slogan, giving them a patch of more and less. Basically, everyone shows their projects, it is good if installations entertaining the imagination of the viewer; less often, someone makes really thematic expositions that raise questions and reveal the topic. It turns out, in general, very informative, although the signatures are poor, almost conditional, and if the author has submitted his project in detail, it looks clearer, and if not, then it really does not.
A notable example of such a set was the 2018 Biennale, curated by Grafton; Within the framework of that biennial, the European Cultural Center, within the framework of a parallel program, arranged two small Marinaressa gardens along the Seven Martyrs embankment and showed exhibitions in two palazzo, Bembo and Mora (the latter serves as the Center's residence). They have been actively participating in the ECC Biennale since 2012, both in the Biennale of Contemporary Art and Architecture - all projects for the latter are united under the name Time Space Existence, each gathering quite a few participants of varying degrees of fame.
As they say, it would seem, what does the biennale have to do with it? - Well, at least at the exhibition, which is now unfolding in the suite, the project for the arrangement of gardens on the embankment of 2018 is shown, and the video interviews of the Time Space Existence program shown in the hall with columns, all with "stars", including Arata Isozaki, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind and not only - make up a rather fascinating part of the program. You can sit and listen, they are not long, and the texts are given in the catalog. All of this creates an encouraging projection onto a global context, reminiscent of Venice - and, to paraphrase cinema, Venice is always a good idea. The stars, which are present here on the screens like prophets on the temple vaults, presenting a couple of truths, overshadow the exhibition and create the effect of participation. In a word, the Venetian note is by no means superfluous here, and maybe even the main one, moreover, the exhibition may even seem to be part of the preparation for the Biennale, whose theme “
How we will live together”correlates well with the theme of public architecture chosen by ECC for GNIMA. One could take this exposure and "transplant" it somewhere in the collaterale; however, nothing of the kind is reported, according to the catalog and descriptions, the exhibition has nothing to do with the biennale, so this is my personal value judgment based on the format of the exhibition, mind you, mind you.
Returning for a moment to the "stars" - apart from the interviews on the screens, which present a separate, educational, plot, there are very few of them in the rest of the exhibition. Strictly speaking, only a building fits the definition of "star" architecture
a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee Kengo Kuma. And, probably, also Peter Kulka, who is assigned a whole hall (with columns, the same one where the video interview is) - he shows his projects for the reconstruction of public buildings in Germany after the fall of the wall, a total of 7 subjects, of which two parliaments and one railway station in Leipzig. And also, perhaps, the project of a hospital in the Portuguese Evora, in the work on which Eduardo Sotu de Mora participated.
Russian participants - depending on how you count - either two or four. Andrey Bokov shows a project dedicated to Yevgeny Rosenblum's Senezh studio: the topic is interesting in all respects, but, firstly, it falls out of the general context of the exhibition, composed mainly of modern plots, and secondly, due to the fact that excerpts from the publication Tatlin are cut into a voluminous structure, very poorly perceived and almost useless as an information carrier. It is difficult to study the Senezh Studio, looking at the resulting puzzle - even if you want to; yes, you can get interested and turn to Tatlin's book, and yet the viewer may feel a little deceived, as if he was drawn into a certain plot, but given too few hints.
The second purely Russian participant -
Ural University of Architecture and Art. It's good that he exists, but his stands are an example that lies closest to the practice of traditional Russian "tablets".
Two other examples are more related to the field of international cooperation: UNStudio among its three projects shows
the terminal of the cable car across the Amur River in Blagoveshchensk, the winning project, and the M + R interior architecture studio - a large set (about six) of lounge zones at Sheremetyevo airport. And if you meet Blagoveshchensk at the exhibition rather with joy, then from the Rublev lounge, where a kind of Faraday cage was made from the contours of the church head, you would rather shout and hide this picture from the spirit of Tarkovsky so that you would not see it inadvertently.
The rest of the projects differ, in general, by their variegation and variety, both in terms of scale and presentation and the degree of disclosure of the topic in them. As you progress, it becomes clear that they are collected in groups, but the logic of the bundling is rather inconsistent. In the first hall, for example, it is worth bowing to the name of the Mies van Der Rohe Foundation, but to bow down, its wall rather denotes the presence of a famous organization and support for the undertaking in its name. On the other hand, in the same room, an interesting project by the Viennese architects Baar-Baarenfels, dedicated to the conservation of Roman ruins on Independence Square in Sofia - looks like a flattened version of the Louvre pyramid, surrounded by Stalinist architecture, which you involuntarily begin to compare with a Parisian palace, and at the same time represents is an interesting option for exposing the ruins - much better than just misted glass underfoot.
On the other hand, below we see a selection of simple LCDs, some of them even high-rise. Public architecture here is in courtyards and other additional spaces, in landscaping and in what we usually call MOPs, common areas. The topic is terribly popular and even overheated, it is immediately surprising that there were no people in Moscow to speak about them as subspecies of public architecture. On the other hand, it is shown well in places - for example, Duplex Architekten demonstrate the reconstruction of a glass factory into a residential area with developed public and commercial space in a win-win "keyhole" method with colored miniature figures in the windows.
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zooming 1/5 Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/5 Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/5 Duplex Architekten. Reconstruction of a glass factory in Bulach, Switzerland Models: Gruber Forster GmbH. Photo: Archi.ru.
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zooming 4/5 Duplex Architekten. Reconstruction of a glass factory in Bulach, Switzerland Models: Gruber Forster GmbH. Photo: Archi.ru.
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zooming 5/5 Duplex Architekten. Reconstruction of a glass factory in Bülach, Switzerland Models: Gruber Forster GmbH. Photo: Archi.ru.
LAVA show their project for the German pavilion at EXPO 2020 not only with a layout and a video, but also in a VR device using 3D glasses, presenting it as an interaction of digital technologies and nature: nature is no longer an object of copying, it evolves “from itself”. But all this, both words and techniques, for some reason does not work for understanding the exclusivity of this project, rather it seems like a redundant addition. Either it is not well explained, or the authors simply play with words a lot.
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zooming 1/3 LAVA: project of the German pavilion at EXPO 2020. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/3 LAVA: project of the German pavilion at EXPO 2020. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 3/3 LAVA: project of the German pavilion at EXPO 2020. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Photo: Archi.ru
The most pleasant room is the one in which the stands of the Ural University are located. Its middle is occupied by an installation on thin legs dedicated to a very small object - the exhibition pavilion of the Rose in Remshaden Park, a small town east of Stuttgart. The aerial pavilion on the hill is shown in the same airy way, so that its social meaning is quite obvious and even felt.
Like the neighboring project, the observation deck in Icelandic Bolugarvik by Sei Studio architects.
The project from the genre of participation is quite exciting: the archbureau NIDUM and transparadiso show the results of a survey of residents of Malta about the fate of the Chalet in Sliema, an abandoned seaside terrace-dance floor. The wall is covered with photographs and inscriptions, and in the video one can hear typical, almost straightforward Moscow discussions about the dominance of developers and "boxes" of glass and concrete that look awful in historical buildings.
But in fact, you have to go straight to the very last hall - the apotheosis is there. The "Working Group of Ideal Spaces" on a roughly drawn diarama and another additional screen shows a cut of left-utopian cliches and scarecrows: "Our exposition is about possible options for the future." For example: people did not listen to alarm climate scientists, everyone was flooded, few remained. The world government controls and inspires thoughts. And vice versa: utopia, land in common possession, no one offends animals, “the war between the sexes is over” (apparently, one should be called the gender world, the other animalistic) - all this is described a thousand times in films and books, the feeling is that we are reminded the main plots, but very dotted, so as not to forget the charter of the Komsomol, because tomorrow it will be taken.
The most enchanting is the diorama itself, a combination of three spaces with three plots. On the left is a park that is terribly similar to VDNKh in spirit, although by no means just like it: at the entrance there is a colossal young man and a girl, but not in a rush, like a Worker and a Collective Farm Woman, but in a statue stand-up, opposite a house-column, a hybrid of the Tatlin tower, Palace of Soviets and Trajan's Columns. All together, it proves that the antique ideal of public spaces is still relevant and neither Soviet nor fascist examples of such pretentious spaces seem to scare away. On the opposite wall is a variant of the future, where people deliberately left the big cities: against the background of glass towers, similar to the film Valli; the inhabitants of the new world live in such wigwams, their public buildings are also wigwams, but larger. The third world is "terraced", the most real, although it is lined with ziggurats, but cars are under the residential platforms.
In principle, it is logical: before that, it was mainly a potpourri of public architecture, and for an appetizer, a potpourri of ideas about the future, bright and not very, however, presented somewhat stereotyped, and very recognizable, if not bored, - so to speak, the future in the past. But the main thing that I want to understand is whether there is a grain of a joke here, and now there is no certainty that there is. What if all this is sincere? Scary then.
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zooming 1/7 Diarama of the Ideal Spaces Working Group. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Photo: Archi.ru
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zooming 2/7 Diarama: International Center. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Working group of ideal spaces / re-filming of the video
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zooming 3/7 Diarama: International Center. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Working group of ideal spaces / re-filming of the video
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zooming 4/7 Diarama: International Center. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Working group of ideal spaces / re-filming of the video
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zooming 5/7 Diarama: International Center. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Working group of ideal spaces / re-filming of the video
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zooming 6/7 Diarama: Terrace world. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Working group of ideal spaces / re-filming of the video
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zooming 7/7 Diarama: Wigwams for a new life outside the metropolis. Exhibition "Public architecture - the future of Europe", GNIMA Working group of ideal spaces / re-filming of the video
Despite some seemingly randomness of the set of projects, the exhibition looks lively and exciting, and the catalog successfully supports it: many of the shown projects do not go "to the top", which makes the selection at least curious, although it is not at all catalog and does not reveal the topic so much how much it affects. But at the Biennale we quickly run through such exhibitions due to the abundance of different materials, but here there is an opportunity to peer and ponder some not entirely obligatory stories: the transformation of a warehouse into an elementary school in Basel or the creation of a "play cohousing" in an old school building of the 19th century, in the forests near Helsinki. Not always everything is explained and understandable, in places weaving of words and empty rhetoric prevails (although, among other things, you need to read the Russian translation less, it limps both at the exposition and in the catalog). But the plots themselves are mostly interesting.
