Does new always mean the best? Throughout the last century people had been actively trying to invent and build a new world. A world without old or obsolete things. The end of the millennium gave rise to an illusion that all achievements, disasters and confrontations of the previous ten centuries were left behind. But the new century has already brought so drastic changes that the attitude toward the past is no longer the...
he news section presents the UIA Heritage & Cultural Identity Work Programme Webinar and the winners of the Architecture MasterPrize 2020.
2020, the reporting and election year for many organizations of the Union of Architects of Russia, fell on a situation of force majeure due to the pandemic.
The Festival “Zodchestvo of Eastern Siberia” was founded at the turn of the millennium. The first Festival was held in 2001 at Irkutsk Sibexpocenter and caused a massive outcry among the architectural community in Siberia and throughout the country.
Using the example of the transformations of French classicism, the author examines the ways and means of its succession in subsequent styles. It is shown how the attempts to build upon the classical style give rise to shocking and grotesque forms, which paradoxically help to develop the aesthetic principles of the very style that innovators and revolutionaries are trying to subvert. Conversely, formal imitation leads to the hollowing out of the original style, to the substitution of its emotional content while preserving external attributes.
Participants and guests of the Festival discussed the problems of cultural and architectural succession, the relationship between the history of cities and their current state, and the fate of architectural monuments of the 20th century. They touched upon the issues of traditions and innovations in the social and architectural practices and spoke about the status of the monuments of the 20th century and their preservation.
The intervention of the new in the historical heritage is always painful and contains a contradiction between consumers and architects. Conflicts in this sphere accompany the urban development just up to confrontation between the population and authorities. An exit is in the procedure of taking decisions by a dialogue of all participants of the process, its transparency. There is an importance of not only the conservation of heritage but also the persuasion of the new proposal about the future.The example of Zaryadye near Kremlin walls traces the transformation of visions about its...
The word “place” is entering the architectural vocabulary, gaining upon the notion of “space”. Despite its intuitive clearness, “well-placedness” is rarely used in the architectural discourse. It is mostly used at architectural meetings and discussions concerning the environmental context of a new building. However, it is worth recalling well-placedness not only in rhetoric, but also in architecture. In the art of the 20th century there was a keynote theory of “ill-placedness”, which beat the former ideas of well-placedness.
The most important role in the succession is played by prototypes: models, formulae and principles refined by previous generations.
Avant-garde and modernism have shown that generation of unprecedented and new forms is practically impossible without basing on prototypes. The article considers the “denying of prototypes” declared by architects in different periods of time and its hidden grounds. The mobility of prototypes and their connection with the culture and contexts is discussed.
The problematics of succession and innovations in architecture cannot be discussed beyond the prototype category. It is a key category for the history of architecture, which has been perceived positively for thousands of years. But in the 20th century prototypes began to be considered obsolete; avant-garde was focused on the complete refusal of them. In the second half of the 20th century the methodology of design tried to find a theoretical basis for the struggle against the prototypes. Have the prototypes been defeated? Should we fight against them? These are the questions that arise...
Adolf Loos’s works, regardless of all the circumstances, have been relevant for more than a century. Although Loos is called a functionalist, his architecture is beyond this definition. Loos can be considered as a master of Art Deco, if Art Deco is regarded as a worldview. Adolf Loos expressed his views on the nature of architecture in a number of articles and essays. The ideas expressed by Loos are not yet fully comprehended by architectural theorists. His Raumplan (Spatial Plan) is a unique planning method.
he history of architecture implies a continuous search for options, and the aim of these experiments is to find the best image, a prototype; the same is true of the evolution of forms in nature. That is why architecture is mostly conservative. Only the innovations in ideology or technology define the time when one stylistic prototype succeeds another. It may seem that commitment to the chosen prototypes is a cherished architectural virtue. Nevertheless, the freedom and the ability to work out new languages and solutions have become the most important discoveries of the masters of the...
The article considers several realizations in Kislovodsk and Moscow in the second half of the 1930s. They have characteristics typical of Ivan Leonidov. The author speaks about the possibility and the degree of his participation as an author, as well as the arguments for this supposition.
Every time creates its style, and the style reflects its time and mostly forms the image kept in the succession throughout the following ages. In continuation of the series of articles by Petr Kapustin devoted to the history and philosophy of separate architectural elements, we are publishing the material on pilasters and their transformations in the context of different styles and times.
Within the last century, a lot has been said pejoratively about the pilaster, when accusing it of imitativeness, figurativeness and all other manner of offenses concerning architectural forms. “Pilaster!” almost became a specific architectural curse in those years. It seemed that the pilaster itself simply wished it looked like a modest shadow of a column. Whenever it appears, however, it signifies restoration of the right of the wall. But the phenomenon of the wall is too ancient to be treated carelessly or disrespectfully. The pilaster seems to contain a lot of mystery, including the...
During the reconstruction of theatres of national significance after the World War II it was revealed that the most valuable monuments of theatrical architecture were damaged by bombing. The article studies the three stages of the post-war reconstruction of such buildings in different European countries, including the USSR. At the turn of the 21st century, different countries launched a significant renovation of the worn-out architecture and a radical change in its characteristics. The author points to the best theatres of Russia, La Scala, Semper Opera House, Warsaw Grand Theatre and...
It is impossible to study national art without understanding the experience of the previous generations of artists who worked in the frameworks of socialist realism, an art method prevailing in the Soviet area. This cultural phenomenon is characterized by idealization and transformation of the reality in compliance with the state ideology, and by the impact of artistic images on the collective consciousness. The author uses archive materials to study the case related to the portraits of stakhanovites of Eastern Siberia created by Irkutsk artists and the reaction from party structures.
The article focuses on the role of antiquity in general and the Athenian Acropolis in particular in the formation of Le Corbusier’s creative individuality and the key subjects and ideas of his works.
This article analyzes the use of the theory of linguistics as applied to the theory of architecture and its rhetoric in particular. It attempts to interpret architecture in the period of postmodernism as a language and studies the notions of “topos” and “atopon” in the framework of the paradigm shift from the modern to the postmodern. The succession is viewed through the “topos” category as a speech complex, which expresses common narrative forms, “eternal topics” communicated from the past, and the invariants of the positioning relative to it in different paradigms. The article explains...
The architectural world is currently at the civilizational breaking point, which is caused by the climate change and the exhaustibility of the most important natural resources. The period of mass production, which actively uses carbon technologies, will soon be over. The conveyor and mass characteristics of architecture are fading away. Architecture cannot resist this international-scale tectonic shift. Thus, a new stage of development of the civilization demands new thinking. Digital architecture can represent a new ethics of the post-carbon civilization based on low-carbon life support...
It has long been recognized that children take more after their grandparents than after their parents. This phenomenon of “generation-skipping” succession is so widely observed that it cannot be accidental. Today’s trends in the development of architecture have much in common with the predecessor of postmodernism (although it seems to be a thing in the past) rather than postmodernism itself. A careful study may unveil the patterns and ideas of modernism in today’s iconic structures. The examples are around us. The 130 Quarter is probably the only one new project comparable in its scale...
The prefabricated mass housing in microdistricts has been recently demolished due to the technical, social, functional and aesthetic problems. But it constitutes a significant stage in the history of Soviet town-planning and the heritage which potential has not yet been fully realized. The article presents the methods and basic stages of the international scientific and research project focused on the search of the concepts and strategies for sustainable development of the prefabricated mass housing areas in the 1960-1970s, which was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Two decades after the end of World War II are characterized by profound changes in the general direction of the development of architecture. The use of industrial methods in construction made it possible to quickly restore the destroyed housing stock. At the same time, similar processes took place both in the countries of the socialist bloc and in Western Europe and the United States. Based on the theory of information flows, the article shows the patterns of development of the architectural process. The priority of high quality construction leads to a reduction in the number of...
During the 1960s, radical ideas emerged in Dutch urban planning. For the first time, the two major cities in the Netherlands engaged in building high-rise residential districts. If we understand this period as an experiment, then the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam produced opposite but exciting results. The uncompromising Amsterdam Bijlmermeer district grows into a problem area of national proportions. The more moderate Rotterdam Ommoord district, however, will be doing just fine. This article places the initial urban design features of those districts side-by-side for comparison. It...
Evaluating a series of important moments which brought together the architects of Timișoara brings into light mechanisms and chances which defined their small universe and their work. By accumulating national and international awards and prizes, by being present in international exhibitions and biennials, Timișoara became an important pole of the Romanian architecture. These dynamics generated three important moments - the presence of Timișoara architects and the Timișoara Architecture Faculty at the Venice Biennial in 1996, the appearance after 2000 of the “De Arhitectura” journal, and...
serious crisis in the system of architectural education has already become a constant pain on a global scale. Is bringing up the next generation of architects under threat? How deep are the roots of the reasons of the crisis? How systemic is it? The debates are still going on.
The crisis of meanings in the national design education system, which occurred as a result of historical marginalization of the profession, necessitates the institutional transformation and changes in the format and form of training. The article sets strategic directions for the necessary transformation in the present context and provides their methodological reflection.
The general patterns of organizing the learning space in most modern schools are based on the traditions of the class-and-lesson system. The disadvantages of this system are especially noticeable in the field of architectural education. The rapid growth in the number and variety of virtual educational resources poses an unusually innovative and urgent task - the formation of the architecture of the virtual educational space.
The article tells us about Irkutsk merchant Pavel Ponomarev, the author of a unique testament first made when he was 26 years old. It describes his family house, which is both a historical monument related to the merchant’s charitable activities in the field of public education and a wooden architecture monument of the first quarter of the 19th century. The author raises awareness of the necessity to protect this house and to preserve it for our culture.