Stylistics, style, stylish… like many other popular words, the word “style” has lost its precise meaning, but still maintains the image of prestige. Who doesn’t wish to be stylish? Many architects want their works to be placed on a certain “stylistic shelf”. But the aspiration to be unique is no less strong. Everyone wants to be modern, but all methods of precise stylistic analysis work only at a historic distance, ideally of several centuries. What is happening to architecture today? Is it a revolutionary breakthrough sweeping away old ideas of styles? Or are the current processes mere...
Historians of architecture have not arrived at a common view on the processes occurring in architecture in the 1920–1930s. The genesis of such a phenomenon of the world architecture as Art Deco is of special interest.
Avant-garde is a military term. It is an advanced detachment of the army, which is the first to face the enemy, the first to get into action, and which is more likely to die than others. The destinies of avant-garde movements at the turn of the 20th century are full of tragic episodes and biographies. How should we treat the historical heritage of the avant-garde of the 20th century? Should we be respectful toward its memory in the hope that the new avant-garde waves would be treated more carefully? Or should we search for the keys in the history of avant-garde to understand today’s and...
ART DECO is, probably, one of the most controversial and complex styles of the 20th century. The style is fine and, at the same time, vulgar. This style is a direct successor of the sophisticated art nouveau and the haughty kitsch of nouveaux riches. Being omnivorous, it has absorbed elements of almost all historical styles of East and West without staying within any stylistic limits… Probably, it is ART DECO which should be considered a precursor of the general stylistics of the 20th century. The selection of materials on the main topic of this issue is devoted to the thoughts on the...
The topic of the previous issue, small and historic, stroke a chord with our authors, and rightly so. The precious girth of Russia, as academician Kudryavtsev figuratively calls such cities, demands enhancement of legislation, participation of specialists, involvement of inhabitants. POST SCRIPTUM speaks about the studies of military towns and villages of Siberia conducted by Novosibirsk researchers and about lovely Krapivna, which history and overwhelming landscapes have captured students and professors from Moscow.Yakutia is a separate topic. Opened this year, the railway line to...
The news section announces the winners of the National Concert Hall Architectural Design Competition (Lithuania), as well as the 2019 Architecture MasterPrize winners.
ArchInnTech Architectural Award is an initiative of Decotech Engineering (www.dekotech.ru) promoting innovative products for design and architecture on the Russian market.
The International Architectural Drawing Competition "Archigraphics” has become a regular event. In 2019 it was held for the sixth time already. The organizers emphasize that possession of graphic skills is a professional necessity for architects. `The exhibition opened on October 5, 2019 awarding the finalists. It was held in the Satacomba Gallery, located in an ancient wooden house, an architectural monument of the XIX century, in one of the Arbat alleys.
The basic ideas of Ya. Chernikhov are considered and analyzed by the author of the monograph. Ya. Lisitsina pays special attention to the problem of form-making. She underlines the connection of his ideas with the avant-garde ideas and, at the same time, the difference between them, as well as his absorbtion in the cultural fabric of his time.
The article describes the peculiarities of rehabilitation of the historical urban environment through the example of Krapivna settlement in the Tula region. The tools for development of the given territory were the benchmark for working on the graduation thesis at the MITU-MACI Department of Architecture.
Climate change is happening on a faster pace than ever recorded before. It has become visible in multiple wildfires on nearly all continents, heat waves, melting glacier, thawing of permafrost, water shortage, the reduction of the biodiversity and other occurrences. The Paris agreement, based on the negotiations of the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP21) in December 2015, focus to contain global warming well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels by 2100, and strives to limit the increase to +1.5°C. To implement the objectives of the Paris agreement on their territories,...
The results of the Competition of graduation projects are presented, and the prospects of such events with regard to enhancing the educational level are assessed.
The article presents the comparative analysis of the sources of the Oriental and European studies of styles. It highlights the qualitative difference between the paradigms of the eastern and western traditions of style: the eastern tradition focuses on universal, unifying definitions of style, while the western understanding of style is aimed at building a hierarchy of cultures, with Greco-Roman antiquity and the Mediterranean region being seen as an unconditional center. Crisis phenomena in modern architecture are considered as practical consequences of the development of western...
The article gives a general theoretical assessment of utopias, utopian consciousness and strategies. It analyses the dialectics of utopia and anti-utopia, as well as strategies and tactics in the real Soviet history and politics. It features three types of utopia in the history of Russia and their connection with the styles of the Western world in corresponding periods. The social space represents the essential features of the Soviet utopia; it lacks the succession. Professional characteristics of architecture also have internal contradictions.
The nature of the phenomenon of the «beautiful book» is usually described in the categories of style. This allows to clearly identify the problems that in our time stand in the way of Russian art critic of book graphics. The origins of these problems lie in a constructive (functional) approach to it provided by William Morris’s theory of the “beautiful book”. In Russia this approach has been established due to Ivan Bilibin and it remains the main way to consider the book graphics in Russian art study.
The history of the formation of the organization of the Union of Soviet Artists in the remote regions of the country has not been fully studied, but it is of interest for understanding the features of the development of domestic fine art. The article discusses the process of formation of branches of the East Siberian Regional Union of Soviet Artists, which existed for a short period and laid the foundation for separate territorial organizations of Soviet artists. The research is based on the documents deposited in the funds of the State Archive of the Latest History of the Irkutsk...
The coming 100th anniversary of Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS brings us back to the meaning of those cultural-historical professional events. Starting from boundless admiration and equally boundless abuse of avant-garde, we are now coming to its semantic basis revealed by the new millennium. There is no sense in waving the national avant-garde, which is demonized and devastated, like waving a national flag. But a new context is gradually coming up. In this context, the avant-garde was the first bold movement towards the new millennium, the age of rethinking of humans, their classes and...
The brief rise of the Soviet avant-garde in the 1920s was the basis for the formation of the myth and the foundation for the architects’ creative work in the 1960s. The studies conducted by historians of architecture within the last 20 years reveal a number of details and contradictions of the life of the Soviet avant-garde and VKHUTMAS. However, the myth that was formed in the 1960-70s is living its own life. Being a part of the history, it exists alongside with other renderings and models, and none of the revealed paradoxes or contradictions can shake it.
The Colour Avant-Garde is a paradigm of the profession and culture in Russia of the early 20th century, a symbol of a new world perception and a feature of style formation. It is considered a living space of the new reality with an active intrusion of colour into all spheres of life in the country. The “new painting” is interpreted as a quintessence of the colour avant-garde, which introduces the ideas of style formation of the emerging epoch. The reminiscences of the colour avant-garde in contemporary culture show the significance of the avant-garde ideals and the attempts to use it as...
This paper is dedicated to the problem of studying the communication potential of Russian avant-garde stylistics in architecture of Novosibirsk as a basis of actual progression from the position of discursive analysis. Continuity of elements of rational modern style, directions of avant-garde and post-constructivism style is in consideration as a genetic base. Distinguishing features of local interpretation of semantics of post-constructivism style in Novosibirsk are reviewed.
The article discusses the life and work of the Irkutsk architect K. V. Mital (1877–1938). His fate is both unique and typical at the same time: the son of Polish exiles who found themselves in Siberia was educated in St. Petersburg and, after returning to Irkutsk, made a brilliant career as an architect before and after the revolution, using the style trends that prevailed in different periods of the first third of the century: art Nouveau, eclecticism, constructivism. Despite the fact that in a certain period of time he had a direct relation to the socialist revolutionary party, in the...
Russian avant-garde of the 1920-ies and Japanese metabolism of the 1960-ies are close to each other in their fundamental ideas and major concepts of morphogenesis: the removal of the distinction between form and content, architectural structures, combining forms of the building and its functional purpose, the relations of the architectural structures with the city and nature. Japanese architects not only studied the Russian avant-garde and were fond of its ideas, but also developed them, bringing to life what existed only in the projects and sometimes seemed unrealizable utopia. It...
Charles Edouard Jeanneret who changed his name to the symbolic Le Corbusier was the author of a hundred of buildings, dozens of books and articles, a symbol of the age and the culture and an iconic man. The logic of Le Corbusier and the rhetoric of his demonstrations, his theory and practice are supported by his skills in individuation and persuasion with a thing. The role of Corbu’s cousin Pierre in their creative work has not been revealed yet. Le Corbusier was a great man, but Man was not his real hero.
Стилистическое многообразие архитектуры 1930-х годов демонстрируют ключевые свершения стиля ар-деко – павильоны выставки 1925 года в Париже, высотные здания, выстроенные на рубеже 1920–1930-х в городах Америки. Разнообразны были исторические источники этого стиля. Тем не менее ар-деко предстает цельной, узнаваемой эстетикой. Ее примеры можно обнаружить в советском архитектурном наследии 1930-х. Ар-деко предстает мировой архитектурной модой межвоенного времени. В статье описывается феномен стилевого параллелизма, наблюдаемый в отечественной и зарубежной архитектуре 1930-х гг.
The article tries to reveal the peculiar features of architecture of the USSR in the 1930s as a Soviet version of the world-wide Art Deco stylistics. It primarily considers the role of formal categories relating to architecture of the interwar period, and, first of all, the category of tectonics.
The article considers stylistic peculiarities of the Narkomtyazhprom (NKTP) project and several contemporary projects by I. I. Leonidov, which form a specific style combining futuristic and ancient Egyptian motives. Taking into account the impact made by this style on the works by the group of Ginzburg and the Vesnin brothers and the NKTP bureaus headed by them, the author of the article proposes to consider the style as a significant phenomenon in Soviet architecture of the middle 1930s and to introduce the term “NKTP Style”.
Philosophy, literature, art and architecture of Art Deco appeared in the west during the interwar period and reflected the worldview of the “lost generation”. Art Deco, like a mirror, reflected the spirits that emerged in the society after the World War I and in anticipation of the World War II. In the USSR, Art Deco had quite different ideological roots, while having similar forms and techniques. Romantic dreams of the future fair society needed to be monumentally supported by architecture, which images declared the stability and happiness of existence.
The article considers the formation of the Art Deco style in the Viennese architectural school and highlights the role of Josef Hoffman in the emergence of a new stylistic theme formally opposite to Art Nouveau. The article studies the change in the function of decoration in the architectural image through the example of A. Stoclet Palace in Brussels. The relation of Hoffman’s individual artistic language to the development of the Art Deco style was demonstrated in the architecture of the pavilions at the 1925 Paris International Exhibition. Similarity of Art Deco and Art Nouveau was in...
The many-sidedness of the Art Deco phenomenon attracts more and more attention. The term itself is polemical, as well as its analogues, the acceptable extension of the “range” of this style, its extension to phenomena and monuments of different years and regions. The author tries to introduce readers to the atmosphere of Art Deco in its “core” manifestations, first of all, in the American architecture and design of the 1920-1940s. As the author believes, without such exposure, we can understand neither the meaning of the phenomenon, nor its lessons for our time, which is increasingly...
The significance of the small historical towns is still rather important in the system of settlement of Russia, its culture and history as well, its population is yet great. But the process of commercial urbanization stopped their development. Beginning from the 1990s, the RAACS has been investigating the issue, considering participation of all layers of citizens, improving the management and the juridical basis of these activities to be the key directions of their renaissance. Different examples of practices dealing with this kind of settlements are given.
The article is devoted to modern trends in the development of rural space, the characteristics of rural architecture on the example of Western Siberia. The dependence of planning decisions and architectural features in the countryside on lifestyle is indicated. It is revealed that a change in the rural lifestyle affects the change in the architecture of the rural manor house. The conclusion is made: the study of the settlement systems and the architectural environment of various territories should be considered not only in the context of the natural environment, but also in the context...
The military towns are considered as one of the components of the military-strategic function of the cities of Omsk and Novo-Nikolaevsk in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The military-strategic aspect of construction is described and the features of the placement of barracks complexes in urban areas are revealed. This research showed that the military building complexes built within the city were quite autonomous in the structure of Siberian cities and their structures corresponded to all functional purposes. It has been established that the objects of military infrastructure...
Basing on his study of archival and literature materials, as well as his field observations and photofixation, the author explores architecture of Olyokminsk, one of the first historic towns in Siberia. He analyzes the wooden architecture of the town, stone structures, decoration of residential buildings, window surrounds, as well as the planning structure of Olyokminsk. The architecture of the lost part of the city, skoptsy’s settlement Spassky, is analyzed too.
The educational project “…There Is Such Avant-Garde”, the ideologist and the curator of which is Olga Uspenskaya, head of the creative space “ArchiMY” (Krasnoyarsk), became one of the laureates of the International Architectural Festival “Zodchestvo 2018” and was awarded the Union of Architects of Russia Diploma. The main partner of the project is Eduard Kubensky, editor-in-chief of TATLIN Publishers (Yekaterinburg). The article presents the content and the events of the project.