Vyksa is the city of the OMK metallurgical plant, which provides residents with jobs and annually, for a long time, has been hosting the Art Ovrag festival (about the 2019 festival, see here). In Vyksa, the palace of the founders of the metallurgical plant, the Batashevs, was turned into a reception house and a museum, and a giant graffiti was painted on one of the factory workshops; and some of the city houses are decorated with quite artistic graffiti. There is an art residence where contemporary artists are invited, courtyards are landscaped during festivals; every year new installations appear in the city, including in the Batashevs' park, which now bears the title of PKiO. Since 2017, the festival has been curated for three years by Yulia Bychkova and Anton Kochurkin, the founders of the Archstoyanie festival in Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga.
This year, on one of the two ponds of the Batashevs' park - on the Malaya Lebedyanka pond - a wooden rotunda pavilion appeared on an island, designed and implemented by the 8 lines bureau of Anton Kochurkin. She recently received the ArchiWOOD Jury Prize in the Small Object category.
“One of her ideas is to express some of the Vyksa residents' love for the neoclassical rotundas in the park. Its outline exactly repeats the existing prototypes, but the design is avant-garde and consists entirely of wooden ribs , - this is how the authors describe their work.
The gazebo consists entirely of wooden slats, with separate supports replacing the classical columns only at the entrance - that is, the desire to resemble the classical prototype is moderate. But the capitals are marked with overhanging protrusions - "mukarnas", and the frieze above them is curved with an intriguing Baroque wave.
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zooming Fragment of the facade. Rotunda with a bridge Photo: Alexey Naroditsky. © 8 lines
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zooming Fragment of the interior. Rotunda with a bridge Photo: Alexey Naroditsky. © 8 lines
To top it off, in the center of the wooden dome there is a through hole-occulus, which enhances the resemblance of the gazebo to the miniature Pantheon.
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zooming The dome of the rotunda. Rotunda with a bridge Photo: Alexey Naroditsky. © 8 lines
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zooming Plan, section. Rotunda with a bridge © 8 lines
In classical parks, gazebos were sometimes placed on islands without bridges to them, as an object of admiration, and assuming that you can get to them by boat. Although the bridge from the coast to the island is a logical decision. However, Anton Kochurkin, having proposed a pavilion of rails instead of the usual pavilion in columns, and the bridge decided paradoxically.
The bridge is oval and is not thrown from land to land, but between two ponds above the ground. It connects two ponds, just Lebedinka and Malaya Lebedinka. In addition, the bridge has a small "secret" - it does not lead directly to the rotunda, but bypasses it, not reaching about a meter. That is, on it, for example, you can wander in circles, now over the grass, then over the water, and you can never jump into the gazebo. In principle, this can be understood as a paraphrase of the attitude towards milovids in parks of the 18th century, where the panorama of the “round temple” is essential, and reach is not required. In addition, the bridge with the rotunda looks like some kind of astronomical model, as if the planet-rotunda left here from the orbit-bridge. A little, but got off. At the apogee.
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zooming Situational plan. Rotunda with a bridge © 8 lines
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zooming Facade. Rotunda with a bridge © 8 lines
"A small area without railings - so that the visitor can feel the boundaries of the entrance to the architecture not only visually, but also at the level of the vestibular apparatus, which makes the heart beat a little more intensely, and the loving groom - to raise the bride in his arms during the wedding ceremonies," they explain architects.
Thus, the bridge connects not the shore to the shore, but water to water, but it does not quite connect the pond with the gazebo, adding a new scenario to the park - which sounds quite in the spirit of "park ideas" of the 18th century from Peter I to Catherine II - and then the same time corresponds to the modern striving for theatricalization and action. In addition, both the rotunda and the bridge are excellent, downright "lamp-like" glow in the evenings in the dark.
