The future
is happening right now…
If you live in the house, it will not fall down.
Arseny Tarkovsky
Architecture plays a very special role in the complicated relationship between the past, present and future. The oldest examples of human architectural activity are over 45 thousand years old. But the future is also powerfully present in architecture. Of course, hardly anyone of today’s designers think forty millennia ahead, but making projections for several centuries looks quite reasonable. Regarding the future, every...
On 30 January, regular and new participants of the PB Discussion Club gathered in the Green Sitting Room of the Irkutsk House of the Architect to discuss the theme of this issue. They discussed the problems of the current state of architectural forecasts, the influence of the past on the present and the future, and compared the design and construction practice in Irkutsk and other Siberian cities and towns. Konstantin Lidin and Elena Grigoryeva were the initiators and moderators of the discussion.
The news section presents the Declaration announced by the UIA President at the Buildings and Climate Global Forum, as well as the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Riken Yamamoto.
The article describes the features of the Festival of Architects-Mountain Skiers 2024. It provides information about the participants of sports competitions, competitive-educational and entertaining-creative programmes. The authors emphasize that the importance of the professional component of the festival becomes more serious and diverse.
Every year in March, the All-Russian Architectural Festival ArchBukhta takes place. The festival brings together teams of young architects from different regions of Russia and abroad to create art objects that are installed in the urban environment. Thanks to the team of the Club of Young Architects, it was held for the 18th time. The authors describe the preparation process of the festival and its chronology, as well as the art objects created at the festival.
The four small publications summarise the long-standing publishing practice of the journal PROJECT BAIKAL. The history, topics, staff and authors of the journal are presented. The texts emphasize the importance of the journal for discussing topical problems of modern urban planning, practice and theory of architectural design, history of individual styles, activities of architects and preservation of urban architectural monuments.
The article is dedicated to the memory of Yu. P. Gnedovsky, academician of the RAACS, People’s Architect of Russia, President of the Union of Architects of Russia, winner of the State Prize of the Russian Federation. The article characterizes his organizational, scientific and architectural activity and presents an interview with E. I. Grigoryeva.
Winter and spring were full of architectural events. Read detailed articles about skiing ARCHIGESH, youth ARCHBUCHTA and educational WINTER in this issue. Here, in brief, are the events held at the Irkutsk House of Architects and several Moscow events.
The article describes the themes and structure of the monograph by A. V. Bokov. It features the innovative searches in Soviet architecture. The author unites them by the concept of ‘visionariness’. The analysis of the profession combines real practice and informal architecture, drawing and free artistic expression. The article emphasizes the author’s innovative views on architectural education such as MArchI and children’s studios.
Vadim Iosifovich Kolyanovsky (8 April 1873, Popovo village, Poltava province – 8 December 1949, Irkutsk) was a Russian civil architect, one of the leading architects of Irkutsk before the revolution. In May 1898 he received a diploma of graduation from the Institute of Civil Engineers (IGI). He worked for many years in Irkutsk province. He implemented projects for settlements in Transbaikalia, Irkutsk region and other territories. He died in Irkutsk on 8 December 1949. The article “Problems of New Irkutsk” was published on 18 January 1948 in the newspaper “Vostochno-Sibirskaya...
The article presents the results of the 25th session of the International Baikal Winter University of Urban Planning Design in Irkutsk. Along with the assessment of the effectiveness of the urban planning session, the article shows a fundamentally new experience and experimental format of the work of project teams, outlines a summary of the concept of integrating urban planning sessions into the new educational program of the master’s degree. How can the local potential be used to create regional projects of the future focused on knowledge and innovation? What spatial transformations can...
Architecture and urban planning are turned to the future due to the durability of their works. Therefore, the development of architecture is closely related to the state of futurology and the presence of fruitful ideas and images of the future in it. The current situation in this sphere is characterised by the predominance of ideas about the future of either linear or retrospective type. The linear type builds an image of the future, continuing the tendencies of the present with small quantitative changes. The retrospective type draws the image of the future as a return to previous...
In postavantgarde culture, the future has become an object of desire and obvious value. The uncontested belief that every new thing should be accepted as an undoubted good lies at the heart of numerous utopias and speculations. Visions of the future in such utopias are usually associated with hyperscales and unusual shapes. The question of the future of architecture is largely turning into a problem of its substantial basis. Paradoxically, the full-fledged image of the future is seen as architecture made of stone. But it is not even about forms and substantiality, but about restoring the...
In the system of the main trends of Art Nouveau architecture (neoclassicism, neo-Romanticism, rationalism, irrationalism), futurism belonged to irrational trends in which avant-garde aesthetics, which denied Art Nouveau, was formed. Creative attitudes, artistic practice and life position of Sant’Elia lay in the mainstream of futurism, which played the role of a powerful artistic impetus. The futuristic epos of Sant’Elia was far ahead of the most rationalized architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He suggested thinking in terms of the city as a design unit,...
In recent years, tiny apartment buildings and tea houses, capsule hotels, and micro-gardens have become increasingly popular in Japan, which suggests a vivid tendency to reduce space. Japan is indeed one of the countries where the problem of high urban density and lack of free space has been acute for a long time. The space shrinking tendency in the future will only increase, this is due to such factors as urban overcrowding and extremely high land prices. Japanese architects showcase outstanding cases of micro-space development. It is certain that the effective organization of minimal...
High-rise construction has always been at the forefront of construction technology and therefore accompanied by a high degree of risk. Neither the technical, economic nor aesthetic effects of super high-rise buildings can be guaranteed. The authors of this article conducted a survey of professionals in the architectural and construction industry in the city of Amman, Jordan. The purpose of the survey was to identify how the respondents feel about the future of high-rise construction in Amman. Both the prospect of this direction and the need for a more cautious and thoughtful attitude...
The review addresses the diversity of approaches to the development of the idea of an “eco-city” which emerged at the end of the 20th century and represents a revival of the “garden city” concept. An ecocity (eco-city, ecological city, green city, sustainable city, smart city) is a forced response of urban planners, designers, industrialists, entrepreneurs, scientists, and governments to the demands of civilization’s transition to the sixth technological mode in the conditions of the accelerated scientific and technological revolution at the beginning of the 21st century. This is a...
The population of Shymkent is constantly growing, which has negative effects, such as the uncontrolled sprawl of the city, and pressure on the social and engineering infrastructure of the city. Additionally, an analysis of the urban carrying capacity of the city of Shymkent is important because the city is among the leaders in terms of the number of industrial productions in Kazakhstan. Together with a million inhabitants and a large number of vehicles in the city, the issue of urban carrying capacity is quite acute. The authors of the research focus on architectural and urban planning...
Forming the intensity of emotional impact that captures the viewer’s attention and draws them into the world of illusions and images is the main goal of any artistic work. The state of immersion (immersivity) is considered as one of the main characteristics of modern architectural space. The main objectives of this article are to define the immersivity of architectural space and to identify the tools that are used to ensure the inclusion and immersion of urban park visitors into the landscape, symbolic, natural and cultural-historical environment.
This article aims to show the interdependence of science and society by the example of the development of the national sociology of the city (social urbanism). The author proposes а new approach to the periodization of the development of Russian urban sociology based on the prevailing type of sociality. The idea is that the social nature of the modern city determines the need for a new scientific direction, ‘epistemological urbanism’, the construction of a discursive meta-model of modern domestic urbanism, which integrates an internal (cognitive-research), external...
The purpose of the article is to study the algorithms and patterns of social perception of the ‘city of the future’. The following provisions are conceptualized: the social perception of the ‘city of the future’ is determined by the discourse of the city of the past and, thus, is textualized; the cognitive algorithm of social perception of the future is similar to the algorithm of perception of the past; the perception of the past is as subjective as the perception of the future. The institute of epistemological prognostics is proposed as a conceptual basis for planning the city of the...
The purpose of the article is to study the phenomenon of extreme urban discourse and, on this basis, to trace the influence of the phenomenon on the aesthetics of the city. The author comes to the conclusion about the complex and contradictory nature of the extreme state of being. The conclusion is due to the situation of stimulating city designers to innovative solutions, as well as the dichotomous influence of extremeness on the dynamics of the city. The aesthetic dimension of crisis states reveals shocking architectural solutions and directions of the early 20th century. However, in...
Energy efficient small size housing is a strong trend in the development of architecture. In most countries of the world, there is a growing interest in small and tiny housing with minimal energy consumption for heating and air conditioning. Small houses are also able to solve some problems in urban planning, such as filling in awkward building lots and other voids in the city structure. Small houses look very promising in terms of solving the problem of homelessness. This article examines the potential of Jordan’s traditional small houses as a basis for modern house building and...
The sustainable development of rural Arctic settlements should be based on the analysis of not only tangible but also intangible resources of the area, the elderly population’s knowledge and historical memory of the architectural and planning environment of the settlement, as well as their emotions towards specific architectural buildings and places. This complex approach ensures the formation of resilient and friendly architectural and planning environment for the elderly community even in unfavorable areas. The results of an architectural and ethnographic study of intangible resources...
Based on the conquest of the forces of nature, Western European civilisation is technogenic. But extensive development of the planet becomes exhausted, and a new view of the interaction between nature and society is needed. The original cosmism of ancient thought and the works of outstanding Russian scientific cosmists can be the basis of urban cybernotopics – a new scientific direction that creates an image of the future based on the study of the mechanisms of multidimensional ‘embeddedness’ of the activity of human society in socio-economic and landscape systems. The article considers...
Nobody knows anything for sure.
Looking at the guide’s back, wide and mature,
think that you’re looking into the future, and strive
to keep your distance. Life
is actually a distance between today and
tomorrow, that is the future.
Joseph Brodsky
In the history of our country there has never been a time when young people made up such a small percentage of the population. Young people have become a rare species that could be included in the Red Data Book. And this places a special responsibility on those who are preparing the next...
Professor of the MARCHI Mikhail Belov and Associate Professor Petr Zavadovsky offered the students of their group not only to complete the standard training program of the MARCHI, but also to build together a virtual utopia city of Nikolograd. The successful experiment has been going on for three years now. Students learn how to design various types of buildings: clubs, residential buildings, theaters, etc. – everything that is provided by the MARCHI program, as well as work in a team, creating a virtual city with a unique appearance based on their individual projects. Teachers allow...
The New Urbanism model, an alternative to the Corbusian city model, emerged in the 1980s. It rethinks the formal and image-symbolic structure of the historical European city and tries to solve modern problems: social, ecological, economic and aesthetic. The aim of the article is to clarify the principles of new urbanism taking into account the experience of Russian urban planning and new research in the field of neuroscience. The article is devoted to the Russian line of traditional town-planning of the 1980s-2020s, which is ideologically close to the New Urbanism, and the role of...
What role will cultural heritage play in shaping the future? Will the link between the past and the future be broken or will it be preserved?
Ilya Georgievich Lezhava
If we try to imagine a future in which there is no longer anything called historical and architectural heritage, what will happen? If suddenly the real and often powerful tendencies to “destroy everything and build anew” prevail? Who will want to live in such a “city of robots”, as the young poet Alexander Delfinov described it:
In the city of robots there is no single centre
There is no...
The publication “Historical and cultural assessment of the architectural heritage site based on the materials of published sources (on the example of the Irkutsk Cadet Corps)” is described. The manual is devoted to the study of history, architectural peculiarities, contemporary discussions and methods of studying buildings and structures that are of historical and architectural interest or have characteristics of cultural heritage. The author of the manual is Associate Professor of INRTU Alexei Chertilov. Special photography was carried out by Igor Berzhinsky, Anna Sidorenko, Alexei...
The article describes four stories about the upcoming or initiated demolition of buildings in Yekaterinburg. The article analyzes how fear and collective memory are connected, the reasons why buildings with a high level of physical deterioration can be protected by public organizations, while the owners are ready to leave them painlessly, and how the value of architectural heritage is formed in the eyes of citizens. Based on the described cases, a classification of fears has been compiled in relation to the demolition of buildings.
The article reflects the intermediate results of the research conducted within the framework of the scientific project “Features of the development of architecture in Manchukuo (1932–1945)”. The main focus of the article is on government facilities built in the city of Changchun, which was the former capital of the puppet state of Manchukuo. The Japanese authorities organized a construction program that significantly influenced the development of the city and led to the creation of new infrastructure, as well as the construction of residential, commercial and administrative buildings....