Shaping The Cultural Environment

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

In 1975, there were 135 thousand Houses and Palaces of Culture in Russia. In 1991 there were only 72 thousand of them left. Since then, their number has decreased by about a thousand every year, so now there are no more than 42 thousand. The most frequent reasons for the closure of recreation centers are their dilapidated state, lack of funding and lack of demand for services by the population. The system of local cultural centers, created in Russia over a hundred years, risks disappearing before our eyes, without the resources and opportunities to adapt to new conditions of existence, new demands of society, new economic and socio-cultural realities.

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  1/8 House of culture in Chelyabinsk, st. Novorossiyskaya, 83. Exterior © Identity in a typical

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  2/8 House of culture in Chelyabinsk, st. Novorossiyskaya, 83. Interior of the hall © Identity in a typical

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  3/8 Palace of Culture in Ufa, Prospect Oktyabrya, 137. Exterior © Identity in a typical

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  4/8 Palace of Culture in Ufa, Prospect Oktyabrya, 137. Fragment of decorative design of the facade © Identity in a typical

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  5/8 House of culture in G. Sterlitamak, st. Tukaeva, 9 © Identity in a typical

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  6/8 House of culture in Nizhny Novgorod, Chaadaeva street 17 © Identity in a typical

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  7/8 House of Culture in Novosibirsk, st. Chelyuskintsev, 11. Exterior © Identity in a typical

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  8/8 House of Culture in Novosibirsk, st. Chelyuskintsev, 11. Stained glass in the foyer © Identity in a typical

Over the past few years, various attempts have been made to find a solution to the problem of the Houses of Culture. One of the most resonant was the DNA project - the creation of a fundamentally new system of cultural centers with the author's architecture and innovative filling. Competitions were held for projects to modernize the recreation center. Several interesting experimental projects were developed for the reconstruction of historic buildings of the Palace of Culture, some of which have already been implemented. For example, the recreation center in Voronezh and in Zheleznovodsk. The reconstructed KZ in Nizhny Novgorod is not a recreation center in the full sense of the word, but the complex method of working with the building of Soviet modernism may well be used in the reconstruction of a number of Houses of Culture, built in the 1970s - 1990s according to standard designs.

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  1/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Main facade © Identity in a typical

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  2/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Fragment of the main facade © Identity in a typical

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  3/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Interior of the foyer © Identity in a typical

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  4/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Fragment of the foyer interior © Identity in a typical

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  5/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Fragment of the interior of the hall © Identity in a typical

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  6/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Hall interior © Identity in a typical

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  7/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Fragment of the main facade © Identity in a typical

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  8/8 Voronezh City Palace of Culture (DK Mashinostroiteley. 2019. Project AB Visota. Fragment of the main facade © Identity in a typical

Simultaneously with these experiments, as part of the federal project "Cultural Environment", under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, a program of budgetary funding for the repair and re-equipment of the recreation center was launched. In just four years, starting in 2016, more than 1.5 thousand houses of culture were built, restored and overhauled for a total amount of more than 10 billion rubles. But, unfortunately, only in some cases in these projects were the experience and results of successful experiments taken into account, and architects, specialists in socio-cultural programming and work with local communities were involved in the renovations. Thus, the implementation of the federal project in isolation from the research results, the opinions of experts and professionals provides only a cosmetic effect, without changing the foundations of the existing problem of DC.

To solve this problem and create a basis for coordinating the efforts of all parties (departments of culture, architecture and tourism of the region, the leadership of the recreation center, residents and professionals) interested in the revival of the recreation center system, the methodology that is being developed by the team of the project "Identity in a typical", which started three years back and since then successfully developing under the supervision of young architects Alexei Boev and Daria Naugolnova (read more about the project

here). With the support of the Union of Moscow Architects, the Union of Architects of Russia and the Presidential Grants Fund, the project team "Identity in the Typical" began active work to popularize the methods of reviving the Houses of Culture, and one of the steps in this direction was participation in the International Festival Zodchestvo 2020 with a special exposition and conference "New formats of cultural centers as part of the Cultural Environment project.

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  1/3 Exposition "Identity in the typical" at the International Festival "Architecture 2020" © Identity in the typical. Photographer Evgeniya Yarovaya

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  2/3 Exposition "Identity in the typical" at the International Festival "Architecture 2020" © Identity in the typical. Photographer Evgeniya Yarovaya

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  3/3 Exposition "Identity in the typical" at the International Festival "Architecture 2020" © Identity in the typical. Photographer Evgeniya Yarovaya

Representatives of relevant departments of various regions, actively working on the modernization of the recreation center, and experts from related fields, architecture, sociology and creative industries were invited to participate in the conference, which made it possible to present within the framework of one event the points of view of the main participants in the process and outline the multifaceted nature of the problem.

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  1/4 Conference "New formats of cultural centers as part of the federal project" Cultural environment ". Festival "Zodchestvo". November 11, 2020 © Zodchestvo

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  2/4 Conference "New formats of cultural centers as part of the federal project" Cultural environment ". Festival "Zodchestvo". November 11, 2020 © Zodchestvo

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  3/4 Conference "New formats of cultural centers as part of the federal project" Cultural Environment ". Festival "Zodchestvo". November 11, 2020 © Zodchestvo

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  4/4 Conference "New formats of cultural centers as part of the federal project" Cultural Environment ". Festival "Zodchestvo". November 11, 2020 © Zodchestvo

Azat Abzalov, head of the culture department of the Kazan mayor's office, spoke about the situation with the Houses of Culture in the capital of Tatarstan. Like many other social and cultural programs, the process of modernization of recreation centers in the republic is carried out systematically. Based on several pilot projects, approaches have been developed that are successfully applied in practice. One of the most striking events that demonstrated the possibilities of transforming palaces of culture into modern cultural centers was the Moskovsky Cultural Center, the former Uritsky House of Culture. Modern external and internal design, the latest equipment and an updated program designed for all age groups have made this center one of the most popular and demanded sites in Kazan. Another good example is the Saydash multifunctional cultural center. Here it was possible to combine the almost incompatible - a classical stage with virtual sound, where you can carry out opera productions and pop performances, with renovated dance halls, a library, coworking and so on. Of course, during the reconstruction of the Houses of Culture, the adjacent territory is being improved.

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  1/13 Speech by Azat Iskandarovich Abzalov, Head of the Department of Culture of the Kazan City Hall © Zodchestvo

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  2/13 Reconstruction of the "Said Galeeva" Palace of Culture © Culture Department of the Kazan City Hall

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  3/13 The building of the Cultural Center "Moskovsky" (formerly the Uritsky Palace of Culture) after reconstruction. Main facade © Department of Culture of the Kazan City Hall

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  4/13 The building of the Cultural Center "Moskovsky" (formerly the House of Culture named after Uritsky) after reconstruction. General view © Department of Culture of the Mayor's Office of Kazan

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  5/13 The building of the Cultural Center "Moskovsky" (formerly the House of Culture named after Uritsky) after reconstruction. Reception desk © Department of Culture of the Mayor's Office of Kazan

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  6/13 The building of the Cultural Center "Moskovsky" (formerly the House of Culture named after Uritsky) after reconstruction. Fashion show for the older generation © Department of Culture of the Mayor's Office of Kazan

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  7/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. Main facade © Department of Culture of the Kazan City Hall

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  8/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. Foyer interior © Department of Culture of the Mayor's Office of Kazan

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  9/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. Fragment of the foyer interior © Department of Culture of the Kazan City Hall

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  10/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. Wardrobe © Department of Culture of the City Hall of Kazan

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  11/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. The interior of the hall on the second floor © Culture Department of the Mayor's Office of Kazan

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  12/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. Computer class © Department of Culture of the City Hall of Kazan

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  13/13 The building of the multifunctional cultural center "Saydash" after reconstruction. Multifunctional hall © Department of Culture of the Mayor's Office of Kazan

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is no less systematically and actively working with the regional system of recreation centers. For residents of many large and small settlements located on the vast territory of Yakutia, recreation centers are the main resource for cultural development. According to research, in settlements where there are cultural institutions, demographics and other social indicators are significantly improved. The total number of institutions in the republic reaches 500 and, according to Vladislav Lyovochkin, First Deputy Minister of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the townspeople themselves take an active part in their modernization and construction of new centers under the program “My Yakutia in the XXI century”. Thanks to the program of co-financing and the implementation of the Kultura national project in Yakutia, the amount of subsidies in terms of culture has grown from 4 million rubles to 225 million in five years. In addition to renovating recreation centers and creating multifunctional social and cultural centers on their basis, funds are allocated to create an information base for the activities of the recreation centers. In particular, the Identity in Typical team is developing the Biir City website for Yakutia, a prototype of an Internet portal that unites the administration and visitors of the recreation center, officials from the departments of culture, architecture and construction of the entire republic into an interactive information network.

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  1/5 Vladislav Valerievich Lyovochkin, First Deputy Minister of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) © Ministry of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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  2/5 On the territory of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) there are 486 municipal cultural and leisure institutions with branches © Ministry of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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  3/5 Rural house of culture in the village. Dikimdya © Ministry of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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  4/5 House of culture in the village. Syrdakh, Ust-Aldan District © Ministry of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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  5/5 Development of a pilot site "Bir City", uniting all regional recreation centers in an information system © Ministry of Culture and Spiritual Development of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

Houses of culture in the Moscow Region are involved in the implementation of three federal projects at once: "Cultural Environment", "Creative People" and "Digital Culture". Deputy Minister of Culture of the Moscow Region Inga Morkovkina spoke about the plans of the Government of the Moscow Region for the comprehensive reconstruction and overhaul of thirty recreation centers with funding of more than 7 billion rubles over the next four years. When developing and implementing this program, the experience of previous years was taken into account, when the reconstruction was carried out partially and, as a result, it was possible to solve only some problems, as well as the results of the 2018 competition for the concept of modernization of three standard recreation centers. “Together with the main department for architecture of the Moscow region, we held an all-Russian open competition for design projects for spaces of cultural and leisure institutions. And they solved the most important task - to develop a new conceptual proposal for the appearance and functionality of the recreation center,”said Inga Morkovkina. The principles that should be applied in the development of projects for the renovation of the recreation center were determined: modern design, transformability of spaces, "smart furniture", multifunctional and comprehensive landscaping. Already, within the framework of the program "Construction of social infrastructure facilities" for 2021-2024, nine recreation centers have been identified for reconstruction and seven sites for the construction of new recreation centers based on a new standard project that meets all the requirements.

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  1/13 Speech by Inga Evgenievna Morkovkina, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Moscow Region © Zodchestvo

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  2/13 Speech by Inga Evgenievna Morkovkina, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Moscow Region © Zodchestvo

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  3/13 Fragment of the presentation. Dense sites for the implementation of the reconstruction program of the recreation center in the Moscow region © Ministry of Culture of the Moscow region

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  4/13 Project-winner of the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © AB Planet 9 + ABCdesign + Agency for strategic development "Center"

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  5/13 Project-winner of the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © AB Planet 9 + ABCdesign + Agency for strategic development "Center"

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  6/13 Project-winner of the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © AB Planet 9 + ABCdesign + Agency for strategic development "Center"

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  7/13 The project that took the second place in the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © AB A2OM

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  8/13 The project that took the second place in the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © AB A2OM

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  9/13 The project that took second place in the competition for the concepts of modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © AB A2OM

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  10/13 The project, which took the third place in the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © Nowadays Office + Orchestra Design + Pictorica

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  11/13 The project, which took the third place in the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © Nowadays Office + Orchestra Design + Pictorica

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  12/13 The project, which took the third place in the competition of concepts for the modernization of cultural centers in the Moscow region. © Nowadays Office + Orchestra Design + Pictorica

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  13/13 Speech by Inga Evgenievna Morkovkina, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Moscow Region © Zodchestvo

Andrey Erenkov, Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Voronezh Region, spoke about the importance of the modernization of at least one House of Culture for the urban community. In the summer of 2018, Voronezh hosted an open city conference "Cultures are waiting for changes", which caused a wide public outcry. In the wake of general interest, in the same year, as part of the VRN Architecture festival, a workshop on reprogramming the recreation center was held, organized by the curators of the Identity in a Typical project, Daria Naugolnova and Alexei Boev. Young architects and ordinary townspeople together came up with three new models for the functioning of cultural centers. By the way, one of the sources of inspiration for the workshop participants was the Moscow Palace of Culture in Kazan. Fortunately, the proposed ideas did not remain on paper.“The city administration has allocated money for the overhaul of the main municipal recreation center - the City Palace of Culture. We managed to build communications between the administration of Voronezh and the directorate of the Palace of Culture itself, - recalls Andrey Erenkov. - So we were able to implement the first pilot project of reformatting a traditional recreation center for modern functions, developed a logo, a brand book, and thought out a positioning strategy. As a result, the resulting modern cultural space is living a new life."

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  1/7 Andrey A. Erenkov, Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Voronezh Region © Zodchestvo

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  2/7 Exterior view of DK Machine builders before reconstruction © Identity in the standard

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  3/7 Workshop on reprogramming the recreation center within the framework of the festival "VRN Architecture" 2018 © Identity in a typical

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  4/7 Participants of the workshop on reprogramming the recreation center as part of the program of the festival "VRN Architecture" 2018 © Identity in a typical

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  5/7 Workshop on reprogramming the recreation center within the framework of the festival "VRN Architecture" 2018 © Identity in a typical

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  6/7 The results of the workshop on reprogramming the recreation center within the framework of the program of the festival "VRN Architecture" 2018 © Identity in a typical

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  7/7 Reconstruction project of the recreation center of Mechanical Engineers in Voronezh. © Visota

The success of the modernization of the recreation center in Voronezh became a turning point for the Identity in the Typical project. From a purely research one, it turned into a completely pragmatic one, having, albeit somewhat idealistic, but a far-reaching goal - the restart of the entire system of Houses of Culture in Russia. According to Aleksey Boev, the DK system as cultural centers has no analogues in other countries and can become a global brand. Its uniqueness is not only in scale, but also in the whole complex of socio-cultural, interethnic, interethnic and other problems that were solved thanks to the existence of accessible recreation centers. The reconstructed recreation centers can not only compete with shopping centers, but also give impetus to the creative economy. “In the circles of the Palace of Culture, basic concepts of culture, science, art are laid. This system can cultivate creative people who can participate in the development of the creative economy. When culture, science and sport intersect in one place, something interesting always comes out,”explains Aleksey Boev.

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  1/5 Determination of the list of relevant services and functions for a specific DC when developing a modernization concept. Based on the materials of the project "Identity in a typical" © Identity in a typical

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  2/5 Analysis of functions, units and areas occupied by them for the development of the concept of reprogramming © Identity in the typical

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  3/5 Reconstruction project of the city Palace of culture named after Tikhon Khrennikova vg. Yelets © Visota

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  4/5 Reconstruction project of the city Palace of culture named after Tikhon Khrennikova vg. Yelets © Visota

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  5/5 Reconstruction project of the city Palace of Culture named after Tikhon Khrennikova vg. Yelets © Visota

Alexey's colleague, project curator Daria Naugolnova focused her introduction on an integrated approach to the problem: “We believe that at the moment the houses of culture are monofunctional. This is bad for living conditions in small towns. Often such a building is, in fact, the only object that carries an element of aesthetic education. And we, as architects, really want the palaces of culture to become better in terms of architecture,”said Daria Naugolnova. “But architecture is not the only area of our interest. We analyze the functions and structures that are based in the DC, find their strengths and weaknesses. We analyze the socio-cultural activity in the city, we strive to understand what forms of activity attract young people and people of working age in order to reprogram the system and change the archaic stereotype of the perception of DC”.

According to Daria, the creation of a modern website of the institution is of great importance in the rebranding of cultural centers. The site is not only a convenient tool for enrolling in circles, but also a manifesto and a communication platform that will help to achieve self-sufficiency of the DC as a condition for maintaining the system as a whole. On this platform, representatives of the regional leadership, cultural departments, other departments, as well as the director of the Palace of Culture, people of art, and ordinary users can interact, exchange experience, help each other. The site, which the team is developing for the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), can be repeated in other regions, and over time, individual sites can be combined into an all-Russian system.

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  1/5 Speech by Daria Naugolnova, partner of AB Visota, curator of the project "Identity in the typical" © Zodchestvo

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  2/5 Development of new branding as part of the modernization of the recreation center. Based on the materials of the project "Identity in a typical" © Identity in a typical

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  3/5 Logo of the site "Biir City", a prototype of the Internet portal that unites the administration and visitors of the Palace of Culture, officials from the departments of culture, architecture and construction of the whole republic into an interactive information network © Identity in a typical

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  4/5 interface of the site "Biir City", a prototype of an Internet portal that unites the administration and visitors of the Palace of Culture, officials from the departments of culture, architecture and construction of the whole republic into an interactive information network © Identity in a typical

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  5/5 Logo of the site "Bir City", a prototype of an Internet portal that unites the administration into an interactive information network. Concept of uniting regional portals of DC systems into a single all-Russian network © Identity in a typical

Experts in the field of historical and cultural heritage, analysts of the strategic development agency "Center" Maria Sedletskaya and Stepan Popov in 2018, together with the graphic design studio "ABC design" and the architectural bureau "Planet 9" took part in the competition for the modernization of the recreation center in the Moscow region and told about the results research that they received in the process of working on a competitive project. First, the team assessed the resource potential of the recreation center, then thought over the concept of identity (unique craft traditions and production), analyzed the composition of the target audience. “We approached typical 1950s and 1960s recreation centers in terms of cultural conversion, even though none of the buildings are cultural heritage sites. The competition had rather strict conditions, for example, the cost of one square meter of the renovated object should not exceed 32,000 rubles. But, on the other hand, thanks to the limitations, there was scope for imagination. We operated in two formats. The first is large transforming spaces that can perform various functions during the day. The second format is small multifunctional rooms. These are meeting rooms, libraries, workshops. The main conclusion we made is that the recreation center today can become a driver of the socio-economic development of the city as a whole,”said Maria Sedletskaya.

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  1/5 Presentation of experts in the field of historical and cultural heritage, analysts of the agency for strategic development "Center" Maria Sedletskaya and Stepan Popov © Zodchestvo

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  2/5 Speech of the analyst of the agency for strategic development "Center" Maria Sedletskaya © Zodchestvo

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  3/5 Speech by Stepan Popov, an analyst of the Center for Strategic Development Agency © Zodchestvo

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  4/5 Analysis of the main trends in the development of DC © Agency for Strategic Development "Center"

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  5/5 Concept of cultural conversion © Agency for Strategic Development "Center"

The conclusion of colleagues was confirmed by Ilya Tokarev, director of projects of the center of urban competences of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) Over the two years of the implementation of the “100 City Leaders” program, more than 50,000 letters have been received, which in one way or another touch upon the issues of renovating houses of culture and other municipal spaces - libraries, schools, and so on. “In the next year 2021, which has been declared the year of creative industries, we will launch a program of piloting approaches to the involvement of illiquid real estate objects through socio-cultural practices and the construction of urban communities, training management teams that can program and develop sites. Further, depending on the typology of the site and the characteristics of the external environment, they will go either into social or commercial history. Their task is to involve local communities, raise the level of human capital in a particular territory and, as a result, revitalize the space,”said Ilya Tokarev. In villages and cities, multifunctional infrastructure sites that bring together representatives of local creative professions are in great demand - this was proved by the Creative Thursday online format held in July 2020, which united 20 sites of creative industries across the country. And the updated recreation centers can take over the functions of such sites.

Summing up the results of the conference, Daria Naugolnova recalled the need to act together, collectively: “It seems to me that no team alone will be able to influence the system. But if we all combine our expertise, we can modernize the DC system in the country."

You can watch the video recording of the conference on the CMA YouTube channel:

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The project team "Identity in a typical" is open for cooperation and invites everyone who works in the DC system, in the cultural departments of cities and regions of Russia, who have already implemented projects based on the local DC and are ready to share their experience, who would like to restart the DC in their native city or implement your own project on the basis of a local recreation center, join the research and develop a methodology for updating the recreation center system in Russia.