Does a theory of architecture exist? If so, what does it involve? Researching and analysing what has already been implemented? Refining methods and matrices based on practice? In other words, is the theory secondary?
The debate about this has been going on for many years and even centuries. But today, in the age of robots and computers, the question of architectural theory takes on a new meaning. As the development of technology accelerates all practical processes – from design approval to the construction of objects in material, when million cities appear on an empty place in...
The news section presents the theme for this year’s World Architecture Day, the host city of 2029 UIA World Congress of Architects and General Assembly, and the results of the 14th edition of RTF Awards 2023.
The article is devoted to the jubilee of Maria Vladimirovna Nashchokina, an outstanding theoretician and historian of architecture, a brilliant writer, a fine graphic artist and painter. Her works, the epoch to which they are devoted and their themes are presented in the article.
The exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Andrey Vladimirovich Bokov opened on the day of his jubilee, 26 September, at the Pushkin State Museum. Two parts of the exhibition included two components of A. V. Bokov’s creative activity – architectural graphics and collages composed of photos of his realised projects.
On 12-14 October the Museum of Architecture and Design of the Ural State University of Architecture and Art (USUAA) held the regional festival “Days of Architectural Heritage. Yekaterinburg: past, present, future”. The participants discussed the problems of heritage preservation, restoration, reconstruction and popularisation. There was a presentation of a new publishing series and awarding of the winners of three competitions.
The year 2023 is coming to an end. It was filled with bright architectural events in the life of Irkutsk, Siberia and the whole country. PB has published detailed materials about the main Siberian events (Zimnik, Archbukhta, Archigesh and ZVS) in its previous issues. Here are a few more events that should not be left unmentioned at the end of the outgoing year.
The existence of a general architectural theory is seriously doubted by most researchers. Based on the assumption that the modern stage of architecture development requires the construction of a workable theory, the article considers the process of creating a theory similar to the creation of an architectural project. It is shown that the axiomatic basis of the theory is similar to the foundation of a building. The complex of specific methods of analysis and synthesis in the theory is considered as an analogue of building materials and details in an architectural project. The connection...
A practice is an activity that fulfils the tasks given by the administration or ordered for money. Such practice (design activity) does not need the theory of architecture. Architects-designers ignore it for a reason. The well-known paradox “there is nothing more practical than a good theory”, however, can be applied in the field of architecture. The idea of fundamental independence of theory and practice in architecture (and not only) is justified by the fact that it is impossible to know in advance how theoretical ideas will affect practice. The value of theoretical ideas is not...
Consideration of the evolution of architecture of the 20-21st centuries through the prism of the world global crises allows us to feel the influence of economic and political cataclysms on the formation of modern architectural theory and practice. Being a kind of mirror, architecture reflects all the current problems that worry and excite the society, so architects have always been deeply involved in crisis problems and have sought to find ways out of them by means of the architectural profession. Each global crisis of the past and present centuries became a turning point in the...
At the beginning of the 21st century the world has moved into the phase of global restructuring characterised by large-scale crises of life organization and science. For any science it is important to investigate the methodology of its cognition. Architecture and urban planning are no exception. The current commercial and industrial civilisation is built upon Western European positivism based on individualism, for which it is important how phenomena occur, not why they occur. The alternative to such a vision is a cosmic worldview based on the search for a genetic, eternal and always...
In 1932, the competition for the Palace of the Soviets formally proclaimed a focus on “mastering the classical heritage”. From that moment on, Soviet architects turned with passion to Italian Renaissance motifs and the tradition of domestic pre-revolutionary architecture. However, in 1934, the Palace of Soviets was accepted for construction in an innovative, ribbed style and Art Deco forms. In those years, that kind of architecture was developing abroad as well. New York and Chicago became centres of rapid growth in the number of skyscrapers in Art Deco style; the new centre of...
The social nature of the city, its landscape and architectural, iconic and system codes ensure cultural continuity and unity of society. The article presents a comparative analysis of the concepts of the city in the era of modern, postmodern (“second modern”) and metamodern. In order to identify the basic approaches to the comprehensive study of the city, the context of urban research is characterized at each stage of the development of scientific knowledge, and the discourse of the most significant concepts is determined. The author substantiates the necessity for modern urbanism to...
The aim of the research is to study the formation of the ontological foundations of the science of architecture as an experience of its self-consciousness in the context of the evolution of spatial codes of cultural experience. The article considers contradictions of the modernist definition of architectural form, as well as the formation of the scientific discourse of architecture and the identity of architects’ professional thinking in general. The main hypothesis is based on the thesis that the freely historically unfolding evolution of architectural form is an objective experience of...
During the twentieth century, reinforced concrete acquired a status of a leading building material. Its wide application influenced the construction technologies and the layout of cities and largely shaped the aesthetics of modernism. At the beginning of this century, the cost of cement and concrete production is showing rapid growth, and the environmental burden from cement production is becoming increasingly unacceptable. Economic and environmental factors force us to look for a replacement for reinforced concrete. In particular, there is renewed interest in wood-based building...
The article analyses the key ideas and basic concepts of ecological theories of urban coloristics, the authors of which believe that the color identity of a city should be the result of an evolutionary process and be formed on the basis of local shades, which are characteristic of individual settlements and conditioned by geography and climate, natural environment and lighting conditions. The article reviews the stages and principles of the methodology of chromatic analysis of place proposed by J. Brino and J.-Ph. Lenclos. It also discusses the links between ecological theories of color...
The article describes the relationship between the development of the concept of urban green infrastructure and digital technologies that allow modeling the sustainable development of populated areas based on the analysis of the state of the environment and the natural framework of the city. The possibilities of digital tools for field and remote data collection and analysis of green infrastructure are mainly demonstrated through the example of Krasnoyarsk. The article presents the interim results of D. V. Zlobin’s thesis research.
The article considers the prospects of formation and development of the South Siberian conurbation, transformation of functional and spatial structure of Novosibirsk as the largest city of the South Siberian settlement system, modern urban development management tools for urbanised territories and peculiarities of their application in South Siberian macro-region.
About a hundred years ago, a period of unprecedented flourishing and multiplication of theoretical models, which treated architecture from a variety of positions, began. The poetic whims of modern and the laconic volumes of modernism, the irony of postmodernism, the paradoxical games of structuralists, the mathematical formulas of parametricism, and many other attempts to use theories adopted from other sciences show that one cannot do without theory. Does architecture have its own set of methods for analysing and synthesising meanings (which, in fact, forms a science separate from other...
The article deals with the essential regularities of form making in architecture. The authors outline two logics of aesthetic organisation of visual material. One logic goes from inside to outside – from the internal structure of the object to its external form as a system of information expression of the functional and planning organisation and structure; the other logic goes from outside – from the artistic and figurative solution for the architectural environment of the town-planning complex to the building, to its tectonics and geometric form. The analysis of modern architectural...
The article identifies and describes the evolution of the architectural form of the Versailles Palace and Park Ensemble as a single spatial artistic experience. The change in the layout and structure of the palace is considered from the point of view of the general trend of Western European architecture – the appearance and development of Rococo in the bosom of architectonics and composition created in the Baroque manner, which evolved from classical Baroque in the Italian style to the purely national tradition of Rococo and early classicism. This forms a unique semantic space of the...
“Something for Nothing”, pause containers, container buildings and other interpretations of the category “Containers” were raised for the first time by the XIX Congress of Architecture in Barcelona as a topical problem of the profession. The representation of architecture as a container, when the form does not follow the function at all, and the content actually becomes a replaceable and transformable filling, changes the traditional ideas about the impossibility to transfer the content of a work into another Form.The ideology of hybrid spaces and flexible offices, the need for...
Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies have attracted much research attention, especially in the last fifteen years. The prospects and benefits that BIM promises for all participants in the design, construction and operation of buildings are hopeful and enthusiastic. Nevertheless, the global adoption of BIM has been slow and uneven. A bibliometric analysis shows that BIM research is concentrated in a few centers and performed by a narrow group of specialists. As a result, there are research areas with few or no publications (“blind spots”). One such area is the economics of BIM...
From the current turbulent and fast-paced century, the 19th and even a part of the 20th centuries look unhurried, steady and full of common sense. The classical order system of proportions and the methods of town-planning tested over the centuries served as a reliable basis for creative searches for new architecture. In the block “Practitioners” we publish rare biographical and analytical materials on the architects of the Russian Far East and Siberia little-known to the general architectural public. It was here where the unity of theory and practice was preserved until the middle of the...
The article presents the interim results of a study conducted within the framework of the scientific project “Architects and engineers of the eastern outskirts of Russia (second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries)”. On the basis of archival data and materials of field surveys, the author presents a complete picture of the creative and professional activity in the Far East of a military engineer, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Nikolaev Engineering Academy Nikolai Vasilyevich Konovalov. Brief biographical information is given, projects and surviving buildings in Port Arthur and...
The article reflects intermediate results of the research project “Architects and Engineers of Eastern Outskirts of Russia (Second Half of XIX – Beginning of XX Century)”. On the basis of archival material obtained from the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East (RSHA FE), the author describes the creative and professional activities on the island of Sakhalin performed by Ivan Stepanovich Stepanov, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, architect and artist.
The article reflects the interim results of a study conducted by the authors within the framework of the scientific project “Architects and engineers of the eastern outskirts of Russia (second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries)”. On the basis of archival data and materials of field surveys, the authors present a systematized picture of the professional activity of the Chita architect, construction technician Fedor Evplovich Ponomarev. The surviving buildings of the architect are considered, the characteristic features of his work are revealed.
The article is devoted to the creative activity of Khabarovsk architect of the middle of the 20th century, V. M. Campioni, great-grandson of the famous architect and sculptor Angelo Campioni, who worked in Moscow and created a lot of architectural and sculptural works. The article traces the family network of the architect, his creative relationships with other architects of the Far East, who studied with him at the Odessa Civil Engineering Institute in the 1930s. His work as the main architect of the city and his buildings in Khabarovsk are analyzed in the article.
The purpose of the article was to restore the memory of the famous Irkutsk architect, teacher and scientist. The year 2023 marks the 150th anniversary of the talented architect. Some facts of his biography and creative path became especially important milestones in the fate of this man. The study is based on archival materials of the Irkutsk Regional Organisation of the Union of Architects of Russia. The authenticity of the materials is confirmed by the fact that the documents in the archive appeared thanks to the relatives of N. I. Boikov. The work with archival documents prompted the...
The article is devoted to the biography and creative work of the Soviet architect Nina Anatolievna Rumyantseva. Nina Anatolievna’s life and creative path are related to a significant geography of places – from Kazakhstan, Western and Eastern Siberia to the Far East and the capital of the country, which can be considered a vivid reflection of the specifics of the Soviet time. The years of her creative activity, particularly in Irkutsk, fell on the late 1940s – early 1970s and coincided with the period of intensive development of Eastern Siberia. For the first time the pages of N. A....
The article considers one of the most striking objects of the Soviet period, the House of Soviets, at different stages of its realisation – from its design to final result. On the example of the Irkutsk House of Soviets the peculiarities of the approach to buildings of this type are revealed: architectural competitions, complex environmental approach, stylistic features associated with ideological attitudes, construction problems.
The article is based on the results of the 2023 field season in Northeast China. Three stories in the history of westernization of Manchuria are examined: the construction of railroads, the activities of Catholic missionaries, and the greening of the Liaodong Peninsula. It is concluded that the Jesuits managed to introduce the main architectural symbol of Western civilization, the Gothic cathedral, into the Chinese cultural landscape. Ideology proved to be more effective than faith in technical progress, which consistently guided both the Russians and the Japanese in their exploration of...
23 February 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Georgy Petrovich Stepanov (1924-2007), a Soviet and Russian architect, Doctor of Art History, Professor, Honoured Art Worker of the RSFSR, Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences. A major project implemented by G. P. Stepanov was a theatre for Zheleznogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk region. On the basis of the revealed archival data and published materials, the stages of the search for the architectural appearance of the theatre building for the Siberian city are restored. The structure built...
The article is devoted to a special phenomenon in the architectural and historical environment of Tobolsk – stone merchant houses of the second half of the 18th century in the context of the development of urban stone construction of the late 17th-18th centuries. The paper provides periodisation and identifies the main factors that caused active stone construction in Tobolsk in the 18th century. The study considers the preserved dwelling houses, characterises the architectural, planning and stylistic features of the buildings, and provides an assessment of their current state in the...
The aim of the article is to describe the urban structure of the ancient polis and inter-polis spaces as they were in the period of mature antiquity, and to determine the regularities of their formation and development. The article uses materials of expeditions to Asia Minor, modern Turkey, historical sources, as well as cartographic materials and satellite data. A reconstructive map of Asia Minor and its fragments is drawn up. The territory, which approximately repeated the outlines of the Seleucid Empire and the Kingdom of Pergamon later conquered by Rome, was chosen because it...