The epoch of globalism’s victorious march is coming to the end. Today’s and tomorrow’s architecture should be based on national roots, nature and distinctions. It is declared in the Memorandum of one of the recent International Union of Architects Congresses. In August 2014 the XXV UIA Congress was held in Durban, South Africa. Its details are given in the beginning of our news section (5).
The annual Festival Zodchestvo of Eastern Siberia (ZES) was devoted to identity of Siberian cities. It was held in Krasnoyarsk for the first time in its 14-year history. This issue presents the...
Methodological issues of historical research on architecture and town planning of the Soviet period are represented in the article within a new paradigm, which is called by the author ‘a political history of Soviet architecture and town planning’. Its subject is how architects that became ‘government officials’ were made dependent on the power, how housing and town-planning policy was predetermined by external circumstances and how designing was considered as production but not as creation.
The search for identity of cities looks rather urgent and attracts attention of many researchers. Addressing this issue, the article draws an analogy between a human person and a city. Like a city, a human being needs to comprehend his self-identity in order to resist depressive tendencies. It is shown that a person’s depressive symptoms are similar to those of cities. The city identity necessary to resist depression can be searched for both historically and geographically. The historical aspect consists of local myths and legends about the city and the citizens. The geographical aspect...
In the article the concepts of city and urban way of life are critically reexamined in the wake of megapolitan crisis and global communications. The concept of city is still and ignoring rediscovery of alienation and meaning of identity limits in consuming oriented society. In 21 century understanding of urban and planetary phenomena should be reassessed and the fundamental limits of telluric destiny of the humankind rediscovered as a next step in architectural approach to survival of mankind. There are some special points emphasizing situationist approach to urban and architectural...
Giving names to city streets, squares and other places (godonymy) is a complex and ideologically important process, which has many mysterious features. In the context of debunking of the Soviet mythology, the unwillingness of the Siberians to get rid of the names of the city places related to “the Soviet project” is rather strange. Most of the godonyms of the Soviet period are of unified nature, which blurs the identity of Siberian cities. On the other hand, rehabilitation of pre-revolutionary names of city places means conservation of their perception. The life of godonyms is closely...
The article presents a record of a round-table discussion held as part of the Festival “Zodchestvo of Eastern Siberia 2014”. The problem of identity of Siberian cities was discussed by the leading architects of Russia, urban specialists, historians, ethngraphers, cultural specialists, etc. Different debatable opinions on the past, present and future of Siberian cities were advanced during the discussion.
The building boom that took place in Russia at the turn of the 20th century led to drastic changes in the architectural look of the cities, which had developed for centuries. Expansion of a new high-rise development resulted in misbalance between old and new. Hence the historical cities are losing their identity. The majority of middle-aged and older population gives a negative estimate to the changes in their cities, which become unfamiliar to them.
The article reveals a complex and multicomponent identity of a Siberian city. Special attention is paid to the history of foundation of Siberian cities and ethnic identity of citizens. Like other forms of identity, ethnicity remains in the city space, while acquiring new forms of presentation, especially in the capitals of Siberian republics. Though there are regional features, referring to which we can speak about common features of formation of Siberian cities, there are no Siberian cities with similar image and history.
The processes of globalization that lead to loss of national and cultural peculiarities of big cities arouse a keen interest toward the idea of identity. Opposite tendencies develop as a reaction to globalization, including increase of national consciousness that implies a high interest toward national history, traditions and religion. The philosopher E. H. Erikson defined identity as continuous internal equality with oneself. This definition suits urban studies best of all.
This article is about activity of Valery Kondakov, Siberian artist and writer, who lives on the shore of Lake Baikal. In search for his own identity he uses the Neo-Archaic style, while emphasizing the importance of ethno-cultural heritage. However, the regional/territorial identity and freedom are more important for the artist than simple ethnicity.
The article considers peculiarities of planning development of new industrial Western Siberian cities in the 1930s, which occurred during realization of the industrialization programme. It is assumed that those cities resemble each other like twins. They have neither identity nor any specific qualities, because in the frameworks of the Soviet town-planning policy the same planning postulates were compulsorily applied to all newly-built socialist cities, and recognition of local conditions was relegated to the background or sacrificed for planning stereotypes. Those planning stereotypes...
The article considers the consequences of implementation of city models: of an industrial city, a new city, and a scientific center. The complex of elements determined by the idea of life arrangement, projects of spatial organization, milieu of behavior in the realized ‘city samples’ are studied in the article. Special emphasis is laid on users’ (inhabitants’) feeling. Observation of experimental entities is based on the objects that fully represent historical epochs: the industrial period (Leftbank Novosibirsk, 1930s), development of the oil and gas deposits (Novosibirsk, 1960-1980s),...
The article considers identity as a system of selfdetermination in the global/local opposition. The ‘identification resource’ inherent in the historical environment is presented as a specific feature of modern territorial entities, architecture, as well as objectivespatial environment to identify them with a certain space or place. The means of cultural formation and translation of the identity resource are set up through the concept of the ‘transmutation contact’, which captures the essence of the processes of new creation and formation. Nomadism as another pole of the global/local...
On the turn of the 1980s, a Chinese market named ‘Shanghai’ spontaneously appeared in the center of Irkutsk. Initially it was just a venue where several hundreds of small sellers sold goods brought from China. A primitive infrastructure included sheds, stalls, stores, public catering enterprises and toilets. Except the Chinese, sellers of many other nationalities appeared on the market. Development of the market caused many problems: insanitary conditions, crime situation, corruption among government and security agencies.
The house number thirty on Karl Marx Street in Irkutsk is an example of domestic architecture of Stalin’s period. The article features the style of life typical of the 1930-50s in comparison with the subsequent decades. Basing on her personal memories, the author tells how collectivism and trust-based friendly relations between the dwellers of the ‘thirty’ gradually faded away. Despite its old age and old-style construction, the house remains rather prestige and expensive. Probably, it is because of nostalgia for the values of the lost style of life.
Foreign investment by the United Arab Emirates in the 'Beograd na vodi' master plan sets the stage for the largest urban development in the Serbian capital since the planning of Novi Beograd. While the government embraces the plan as an instrument to spur economic growth in Serbia, critics are more cautious and warn for cliche corporate development.
The territorial self-identification is based on the historical and geographical uniqueness of the place. The specific landscape where a city lives and develops is reflected in the aesthetic criteria of the regional culture. As a result, every element of the regional traditional culture is ‘image-balanced’ with the local landscape and can be considered as a bearer of a unique image of the place. This tendency is largely demonstrated in the regional traditional (folk) costume. The article shows an image-bearing connection between a folk costume and features of the landscape, climate,...
In this article Architect Nikos Fintikakis gives a detailed description of the implemented in 2012 the project of preservation of the archaeological site in Akrotiri (Greece) using a bioclimatic canopy (http://www.projectbaikal.com/index.php/pb/article/view/688/ 649). The problem of preservation of the archaeological heritage is urgent and also relevant to Irkutsk with it's Glazkovsky necropolis, a unique monument of the Neolithic (Baryshnikov V. Glazkovsky necropolis in Irkutsk: archaeological monument of world importance // Project Baikal. 2014. № 41. S. 140-141 ). The implementation...
The essay descries a visit to the Majorelle Garden, which is located in the city of Marrakesh (Morocco).
Based on archive and field studies, the article considers architecture of prison camp facilities built on the territory of Yakutia during Stalin’s terror. With the help of field studies, measurements and photofixation we have revealed compositional, planning and design features of bridges and prison camp facilities and analyzed their location.