Here are two fragments of the book "Modern Russian Wooden House". M., Garage, 2020, courtesy of Garage Publishing
In the preface to the book, Nikolai Malinin names two sources from which it emerged: the 2015 exhibition "Russian Wooden" at the Museum of Architecture, where "an attempt was made to combine old and new wooden architecture" for the first time, and where Malinin, as a curator, was ultimately removed - for not quite "politically correct" titles of the sections: "Neglect", "Rejection" … - and the ArchiWOOD prize held for the 11th year in a row, the curator of which the author of the book, fortunately, retains (the sponsor of the prize, the company HONKA, also supported the publication of the current book).
In fact, there are more sources, as Malinin himself said at an online presentation last Friday, and as everyone who at least somehow observes his research, there are more sources: there was an even earlier exhibition and at least one more
book published for the 8th anniversary of ArchiWOOD. However, what should be considered sources - Nikolai Malinin painstakingly collects everything that is noticeable in modern Russian wooden architecture, and for some time now, somewhere since the appearance of the Restoration nomination in the award, his sparkling performances at the awards ceremony began to include serious historical excursions. Presumably, all this determined the specifics of the book released in this strange 2020 by the publishing house of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. For the same publishing house, Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolai Malinin have already written two books about Soviet modernism, in Moscow and in Alma-Ata, and are now working on a third, about St. Petersburg.
And a book about a modern wooden house - it seems to be also about modernism, but a wooden one.
That is, it is a doubly alternative: with a preference for wood it opposes the concrete construction common in the 20th century; the focus is on the private house - city houses, which are becoming more and more apartment buildings before our very eyes. Over the past 15-20 years, the tree itself has firmly acquired the position of an alternative material: it is for landscaping, it is for festivals where architects do something very different at the stage P and RD. Some authors “leave” for the tree from large architectural companies (the most famous hero is Nikolai Belousov). Of course, enthusiasts are fighting for the legalization of multi-storey construction from LCT panels, and they are successful, but the practice of such construction has not yet developed.
So for now - if you look at what was built, and not at the invented, wooden architecture is somewhat similar to Moscow of the 18th-19th centuries in its comparison with St. Petersburg - that is, this is a place of escape, solitude and quirks, as well as diverse, even far from radical, but pleasant to the sensations of fronting.
Of course, in the set of wooden houses from Nikolai Malinin there is also a third side of the alternative: the log tree of the "lacquered hut", or even better the baths, is excluded from the viewpoint in favor of the avant-garde tree, experiment, or at least a modern tree.
All of the above became the material for the book, and in general it is not surprising that with such an anamnesis, the selection of crème de la crème - “strange from the strange,” “personal from the private,” the book could not fit into some kind of template. In general, let me say so, in some ways it is a catalog of eccentricities: from customers, from architects, and from the author-compiler. Such things that had the opportunity to grow only in private territories that did not require artistic advice ("why is this squirrel here?"), But are extremely sensitive to the synergy of all participants in the process. This is a hymn to individualism, to the idea of embodying the hortus conclusus - a secret garden that also has the meaning of paradise - on your own site, where decisions can be made personally and willfully, and embodied in some visible form, without consulting anyone except friends. If we continue the reasoning, then the hymn to the Russian estate, not to its letter, with the serfs, but to the spirit of going beyond the framework of the "painted blue" official country.
The spirit is still relevant and in demand, the author of the book carefully collects its sprouts. I collected quite a lot - a hundred houses, and about sixty more worthy ones, according to Malinin, were left behind, donated to reduce the volume of the book. And it begins with one of the most wonderful eccentricities, with Nikolai Sutyagin's "wooden skyscraper" and its history: the author was planted, the house was burned … The lost "wooden skyscraper", already evoking nostalgic memories, becomes the first word of the entire subsequent collection.
Of course, not all assembled houses are downright eccentricities, although there are quite a few of them; there are also "calm solutions", sometimes bars, sometimes "Scandinavian". But each has its own inner plot and differences "from others." So, as it was rightly said at the presentation, the book cannot be called an album, let alone a catalog of exemplary projects. Not even a guide - what kind of guide to private houses can be? They will kill! In modern times, hortus conlusus is generally well guarded. Sutyagin himself, the author of The Wooden Skyscraper, at the first meeting threatened Malinin, who had come to examine the remains of his house. And some of the houses, according to the author, were not included in the book precisely because of the reluctance of the owners to show them at all.
But back to the characteristics of the book - with such material it could not become predictable either in structure, or in presentation, or in design. The “catalog” of a hundred houses is not quite a catalog, because 1) it is incomplete, 2) the descriptions contained in it, as many have already noticed, are long and written in the way God put on the author's soul. They are more stories, but not all, and reasoning about problems and style, but not about all. There is no rigidity in the presentation, there are rules, but there are not very many of them. But at times you can stumble upon interesting stories, so you should read this "catalog" as a collection of stories. Note that the very name “One Hundred Houses” sounds ironic, since it is often applied to design guidelines for non-advanced housewives, which it never is.
Further. A selection of a hundred houses is preceded by the history of a Russian wooden house. No - a Russian wooden non-urban house. No - rustic. Again, no - in fact history of the idea of a Russian non-urban wooden house … Firstly, no one (!) Prefaces the catalogs of modern wooden houses, Finnish or avant-garde-experimental, with any prehistories. Secondly, if you look in prehistories for the real origins of, say, the Finnish house, which is popular with our advanced householders, then you need to explore Finland, if the origins of experimentation are the pavilion "Makhorka" by Melnikov. There is neither one nor the other in prehistory. But as a history of an idea, on the contrary, it is very suitable even in place. What conclusion can be drawn from this? Perhaps such that the author collected a hundred modern houses according to the principle have an idea (read the message).
The introductory chapters of the book, let's say again, cannot be understood as the history of a Russian wooden house. As such, it would be incomplete and even incorrect. First, the historian cannot dismiss a medieval village house by mentioning Meyerberg through the lips of Pushkin. The history of wooden dwellings in the city, monastery and village, in fact, is not at all absent, but is quite subject to reconstruction based on bits of sources, images, descriptions of foreigners and later buildings. Let historians, as the author rightly assert, wrote more about churches and barns, but dwelling houses also got something. There is, for example, the 1655 icon of the Tolgskaya Mother of God from the YAHMZ, which is surprisingly accurate for an icon of the 17th century, depicting buildings, and on it there are many wooden buildings; this is in addition to Meyerberg's drawings, which, we note in parentheses, are considered quite accurate, and not at all "not too authentic" (Nikolai Malinin writes that they are recognized as such, but does not specify by whom).
Further, the history of the Russian house in general cannot be written as only rural and only urban, since almost before industrialization they were a single phenomenon. A large village and a small town look almost the same even now, before they are completely wiped off the face of the earth. In general, the line between wood / rustic is not as clear as it seems. There is another line: between the city and the estate, it is more understandable as private / general, and however, we know that Moscow was called a big village for two reasons: because many village people came to it during the same industrialization, this time, but and that's why. that it used to be (and in many ways at the time of their arrival) consisted of mansions, estates, these are two. That is, the estates here were built in, "stitched" into the city, just a little more densely than in the village on the hill. In all these senses, a wooden house in the city and in the village was very often similar: they copied each other, repeated intentionally or by inertia.
Not that idea non-urban home. She was brought up in romantic minds and at some point began to influence both the city house and the country house, and the attitude of people to their location in space: whether in the city near a factory, in a manor house, in a pre-revolutionary dacha, or in a dacha " Khrushchev ". Actually, this is an idea that is very important for a person and has a powerful effect on self-identification - where am I? - in the book and researched. And this is done artistically, artistically, incompletely, but with a lot of interesting and unfamiliar to the reader (as, for example, to me) details and stories. It is interesting to read - you understand that you are touching some little-known and little-explored area. Then, of course, you begin to mentally argue with the author. Why is there no manor? Why, if we are still talking about the idea of a country house, are there no park pavilions and sentimental "undertakings" (although Marie Antoinette with her Versailles village is mentioned at the beginning of the second chapter)? Because the author is constantly hesitating on the verge between two poles: either to share all the knowledge with the reader, but it is clear that a lot has been accumulated, or not to “dry out” the reader, which is also noble. It succeeds, perhaps, in both areas.
Poems and quotes. It's full of both. Starting with Pushkin, who mentions Meyerberg, and then everywhere, Nekrasov, "The Cherry Orchard" and, of course, Blok with his unforgettable "hut, kondovaya, fat ass." The poetic tone of the story itself, both in the prehistory and in the “catalog”, is supplemented by a large amount of fiction, and it actually “drowns” in it. Why reading, of course, is easier and more enjoyable, as if we are being carried from topic to topic - what, in fact, are the writers doing. However, in the margins there are references to quite serious articles and books, and at the end there is a list of literature, from the author's point of view, the best.
All this flow is systematically growing - the closer to the XXI century, the more attention, then follows a summary of the current typology, the appearance of which Nikolai Malinin justifies the “turning point” of 2020, and finally, after this “leveling layer” (porch-roof-terrace-main -volume; the last two chapters can be read, let me remind you,
here) - one hundred modern houses, about each - already a lot.
In the historical part, it is remarkable about the stories of the Soviet man and about the projects of Mark Gurari in his role as the chief architect of Giprolesprom. There are many interesting things, primarily from the point of view of the relatively recent past, and you catch yourself thinking that something is worth rereading and remembering better. But. This is not the story of a Russian wooden house. This is the story of his image in the minds.
And good. Because the hundred houses collected in the second part of the book are mostly so individual and experimental, so do not continue any one direction of "wooden housing construction" that I would like to draw a conclusion like this: two hundred years ago, people thought about the image of a wooden house, thought and thought, and at the beginning of the XXI century all this fell apart into a kaleidoscope of separate individually conceivable universes, each of which has, let’s say, its roots and preferences, but each in its own way, and not a single system. And how good it is that there is a kaleidoscope. But it is a pity that examples are few and far between. But here is a book to help.
So, when I said at the presentation that the book could be turned into a dissertation-type research, then - I will clarify here - I meant exactly the history of ideas. The history of an individual residential house is different, it requires a comparison of city and country houses, more minor details and trends, the study of imitation of stone in wood and wood in stone (although no, no, this topic will flash in the book, for example, where in panel series of country houses series 25 and 135, wooden decorations are hung on concrete facades). The history of a wooden house for 200 years will, perhaps, be very voluminous - although, looking at the volumes of the Collection of Monuments, one would also very much like to see it consistently and meticulously written.
But the story of the idea, of this whole dream of escaping the city and showing individuality there, on your site, in the form of digging in the garden, building a tower house or a fashionable boathouse, a patchwork barn house or a manor house with columns - also well deserves to continue working. As Nikolai Malinin said at the presentation, "in the spirit of Paperny." The author shows us that the idea of a tree in connection with all these images of personal freedom is alive, that is why the material is especially alive, and not because it has grown somewhere and will someday rot. And here's another thing. It would be wrong to preface a collection of modern wooden houses with a real history of a wooden residential building, because they are not so connected. But the images - yes. Images fly wherever they want. And it already seems that Malinin's analysis of images somehow not only sums up, but also moves their further development, through a presentation of history that is close to modernity.
All these features are well suited to the design of the book by Dmitry Mordvintsev and Svetlana Danilyuk (they also made books about the monuments of modernism for Garage). A book made of thick, but lightweight paper; voluminous, but easy to handle. Pictures, text and analogies-references are grouped in a picturesque way, and a large picture is often found on a spread. To prevent it from distorting too much, the authors of the design, in their own words, proposed an open spine. A person of traditional hardening at the first moment thinks that he has come across a defective book: the cover falls off, revealing the ends of the stitched "books" of the spine. But they are tightly sewn, so you can read and reread without fear. The designers have already used such an open spine in the catalog of the exhibition "Russian Poor", so here the continuity is also outlined.
In addition, the open, unpapered cardboard on the part of the cover, according to the authors of the design, echoes the "living" tree, denotes it. Note that sticking a wooden block here would be pretty wild, and cardboard is just right.
It seems that all these features work in unison and the specifics of the material - whatever one may say, the assembled houses are alternative housing with an author's approach: his analysis is also author's, which is normal and pleasing. Ideas and images are born in the heads of individuals / individuals, in contrast to the tradition, which is born out of any idea, but is fixed in the minds of the masses. Here is the book - "defused" according to Shklovsky, unusual, individual. She has no genre: neither a catalog, nor a monograph, nor an album, nor a guidebook, nor even a "big essay" fit. But this allows the author to cite any comparisons he wants, without substantiating them meticulously, rather with a hint - to give pictures of references, sometimes catching the reader with their mysteriousness, and sometimes forcing him to exclaim: "But it’s true!" It turns out that before our eyes, among other things, some new genre of research is being molded - and this is undoubtedly it - non-canonical, "journalistic", but thorough and interesting. On live, sometimes resisting (or even drinking, and criticizing, and joking) material. It remains only to wish the author to move in the chosen direction, since it already seems that the chosen topic will not develop so successfully without his efforts.
Book presentation, broadcast recording:
