Death of architecture in Venice

(Photo: Irina Kaydalina )

After a four-year break, the seventh International Architectural Exhibition, held as part of the Venice Biennale, has opened. 57 thousand square meters of space, almost 90 personal exhibitions and 36 national pavilions. The exhibition at the turn of the millennium is dedicated, naturally, to the architecture of the future. Its theme is "Cities. Less aesthetics, more ethics."
Architectural ethics implies not only that architects should think about the needs of citizens (from the general convenience of the layout of entire cities to the availability of wheelchair ramps), but also that lay citizens have the right to judge architecture. Having chosen such a topic, the exhibition director, Italian Massimiliano Fuksas, wanted to attract the attention of the public and spectators to a special - intra-shop - event. But it turned out differently.
By proposing to forget about beauty, Fuksas not only scared away the audience (when you come to Venice, you don’t really want to go somewhere that is not aesthetically pleasing), but also confused the participants themselves. The result was not one topic, but three. Firstly, the city itself, that is, urbanism, environment, etc. n. Secondly, ethics, that is, the social aspect of architecture. Finally, thirdly, new technologies, communications, virtual reality, in a word, digital architecture.
Good for some Americans for whom these problems are relevant.
But what should poor Russia do, where, although they build a lot, they don’t think about ethics, or urbanism, much less about digitality. We had to show the works of former “wallahs” - an installation and watercolors by Mikhail Filippov and photographs and etchings by Ilya Utkin. The exhibition was named conceptually - “Ruins of Paradise” - and we began to wait to see what the world architectural community and, in particular, the jury would say. And the jury took and awarded Ilya Utkin a special prize “For architectural photography” with the wording: “For outstanding participation in the exhibition of the Russian pavilion and a vivid expression of the imagery of the abandoned ruins of Utopia.” This is the first prize that a Russian architect received in Venice, and the second received by a Russian participant in the entire history of the Biennale (in 1993, one of the prizes was awarded to Ilya Kabakov).


Photo exhibition of Ilya Utkin "Melancholy". (Photo: Irina Kaydalina )

Receiving the prize, Ilya Utkin said something like this: “Digital architecture is, of course, good, but real architecture is better.” Those present laughed and applauded. Then, in an interview with Itogi, Utkin admitted: “When I said what I thought, I felt Fuksas’s gaze on me. I wanted to say it much softer, but it turned out harshly.”

Not only the words, but also the exhibition itself, shown by Ilya Utkin on the first floor of the Russian pavilion, sounded like a challenge to the organizers of the biennale. While they are there thinking about the future, Utkin talks about the past - he exhibits several dozen very beautiful black and white photographs of the ruins of old Moscow buildings (the "Melancholy" project, which he carried out six years ago in the Moscow gallery "Regina"), and immediately hangs a patina-covered " chair of a contemplator”, and next to it he places etchings from the “Time Capsule” series and a huge stone with a map of Moscow carved on it, which also seems to be a ruin (project “The Crust of the Earth”). All this together is called “Stratigraphy of the City” and should remind Fuksas of the futility of his utopian efforts.


Project "City at once" by the Austrian architectural bureau "Ortlos". (Photo: Irina Kaydalina )

The organizers swallowed the pill. But this was only the first pill. It was followed by others - all the projects that the jury noted did not fit into the theme of the biennale. The Spanish pavilion, called "the best foreign pavilion", simply displayed the latest achievements of local architecture. But the whole world is now investing a lot of money in Spain and its real estate, and therefore for the second time in a row Venice is awarding it with prizes. Master of French architecture Jean Nouvel received the prize "For the best interpretation of the theme of the Biennale." But at his personal exhibition, he showed already completed projects of residential buildings, and in the French pavilion he supervised there was nothing but clumsy inscriptions on the walls dedicated to ethical problems (including Chechnya). Or Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, who received the Architectural Patronage Award. But, most likely, not because in recent years the Guggenheim museums have been built in Bilbao and Berlin, but because the foundation has recently acquired new sites in Venice itself (in addition to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum already existing there).

It turns out that the presentation of the Biennale awards is a political matter or the result of lobbying. These awards have no practical significance. Well, Jean Nouvel received the Golden Lion. Yes, he has similar prizes - a whole warehouse, and this will not increase orders (however, it will not decrease). It’s the same with Utkin: to think that, having returned to Moscow, thanks to the Venetian prize, he will immediately receive an order to build something is, to say the least, ridiculous. Simply because in Moscow no one is interested in the Venice Biennale. We have our own table of ranks (and where does Ilya Utkin belong to Mikhail Posokhin in it). And this is the main problem of Russian participation in the Biennale. The line between opposition to the West and elementary non-inclusion in the Western context is very fragile. On the one hand, the fact that a Russian architect finally - and for the first time - received a prize means that modern Russia has taken the first step into the global architectural community. But on the other hand, the theme of the biennale is not “the ruins of the past”, but the future.


At the entrance to the central pavilion, famous architects and artists discussed ethics in art from monitor screens. (Photo: Irina Kaydalina )

Ethics versus architecture
Massimiliano Fuksas managed to scare away the audience: there were surprisingly few people at the exhibition. Urbanism and architectural ethics are boring things for the public. The theory of the issue is of no interest to anyone, only its practical side is interesting. An art historian I know, having abandoned science, fought for several years to ensure that the height of a certain house being built in the center of Moscow did not exceed five floors - but only because if the building were taller, it would block the view from his window.

Thoughts about architectural ethics arise only when there is a lot of bad architecture. (For some reason, it is believed that quality can be ensured with the help of ethics.) Such thoughts first appeared at the beginning of the 19th century in England. Critics then grumbled that London was a beautiful city, but it has become an ugly city. Then they remembered ethics at the beginning of our century. Architects designed utopian cities, and artists depicted in horror apocalyptic scenes of human death in the industrial landscape. Finally, modern architectural ethics was born again in England. Moreover, it was not the architect who planted it, but Prince Charles. It was he who first spoke about the right of a citizen to judge architecture.


In the American pavilion, experimental works of Columbia University students, designed on a computer, were shown. (Photo: Irina Kaydalina )

On the one hand, architectural ethics is a good thing. It would be great if Muscovites were asked what they thought about the Manezhnaya Square reconstruction project before it was implemented. But, on the other hand, architecture has always been a matter of only two people - the architect and the client. One can imagine what Ryabushinsky’s mansion would have turned out like if Shekhtel had started asking the opinions of the townspeople. Democracy, by definition, is contraindicated in architecture (at least good architecture). And ethics means the death of architecture.

Actually, there is no architecture at the biennale. There is sociality - a cart house project for the homeless. There is cultural studies - the transformation of a football stadium into a cultural center. There is a gender issue - a city for girls. There is ecology - a bamboo wall. There is a utopia - New Atlantis. There is a dystopia - a city with a million or a hundred million inhabitants. There are new technologies - digital flowers. There is a lot more, but not architecture. However, this is exactly what Massimiliano Fuksas wanted: tired of architecture, he, like many architects of the past, felt like a philosopher creating a new world order. Fuksas's philosophical ambitions could have been neglected if the exhibition in Venice had not been an event that reflected the main trends of modern architecture.

The lack of architecture is also visible in the exhibition. The exhibition turned out to be somewhat monotonous - computers and video installations. Each layout or drawing is perceived as something extraordinary. As a result, the architectural biennale was very reminiscent of last year’s art biennale. Paintings, drawings and other traditional techniques have left the sphere of visual arts, and drawings, blueprints and models have left the sphere of architecture. In both cases, installations, videos, photos and computers remained. But if for an artist technique does not matter, only ideas and statements are important, then for an architect everything is different. Still, architecture is not only a statement, an abstract form or a project.

Therefore, viewing an exhibition is a rather specific activity. Most of the participants presented projects (sometimes quite utopian) for reconstruction and urbanization of old cities. In fact, only the work of Fuksas himself fully corresponded to the theme of the biennale - a giant video installation (280 meters in length) about the life of the city (filming took place in different cities, including Moscow): a panoramic view, crowds of people on the streets, electric trains and metro trains and etc. Having subordinated all other projects to his installation (they are exhibited along the opposite side of the hall), Fuksas acted as a real curator. His video is both the main hit of the biennale and the most impressive work. Next to her, everything else seems small and frivolous.

The only way to escape Fuksas's curatorial dictates was the national pavilions. They really solved their own - local - problems. Most countries showed urbanization projects for their megacities - for example, Berlin, Cairo and even Tallinn. And some, like Japan, are utopian projects for cities of the future. The most interesting, although also unrelated to the theme of the biennale, was the Austrian pavilion. The authors of the exhibition made a real political gesture, expressing their opinion about the new fascist government of their country. Calling the exhibition “Zone of Tolerance. For peace and freedom of art - against racism and xenophobia,” they invited only foreign architects working in Austria to participate in it. However, the pavilion is also interesting because these foreigners turned out to be the largest architects of our time - the same Jean Nouvel, the same Massimiliano Fuksas, several Englishmen, including Sir Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Peter Cook and others.



If we talk about the most “alien” pavilion of the biennale, then, naturally, it turned out to be Russian.

Russia against the Biennale
The slogan of the biennale “Less aesthetics, more ethics” should mean that everything is in order with beauty in architecture now. But modern architecture can hardly be considered beautiful. She is interesting, spectacular, unexpected, bold, fashionable, attractive, whatever - but not beautiful. The modern architect (as well as the modern artist) faces only one task - to create something new. And when you create something new, there is no time for beauty.

In the West, only a small community of traditionalist architects is interested in beauty. They quietly study old treatises, draw capitals, build houses and hold small exhibitions in Rome, Bologna or London. For ideological reasons (after all, Fuksas is an inveterate modernist) they were not invited to the Venice Biennale.

They are also interested in beauty in underdeveloped (at least from an architectural point of view) countries. For example, in Hungary (the Hungarian pavilion at the biennale was turned into New Atlantis). Or in Russia.

The authors of the Russian pavilion joked that due to their lack of knowledge of foreign languages, they translated the theme of the biennale exactly the opposite: “More aesthetics, less ethics.” But seriously, the concept of our exhibition was deliberately oppositional. What was said in an interview with Itogi by its author, who is also the commissioner of the pavilion, who is also the architectural critic of the Kommersant newspaper (by the way, for the first time in the history of the biennale, the Russian pavilion is supervised by a journalist) Grigory Revzin.

- What is the exhibition in the Russian pavilion about?
- The exhibition is called “Ruins of Paradise”. The idea is that we have already experienced these utopias that the Biennale calls for. Take Utkin's photographs. Looking at them, you can understand that, on the one hand, everything has collapsed. And on the other hand, that it is in this destruction that there is aesthetics and a new design language can grow from it. It grew up on the second floor - at Filippov's exhibition (where three urban utopias in the classical style were shown - "Results"). There was a concept there that tied the two floors together. And the jury reacted only to the first part. They read the call of the ruins, but they did not read the answer to it. But I think the concept of a curator or commissioner is a bit of a smoke. There are artists, and it is right that they receive awards for what they have done. And the concept is a perishable product.

- But the curator still sometimes produces not smoke, but an exhibition.
- I also tried not to make smoke. I believe this is the right concept. But the jury saw only part of it. Lord, let's forget about the concept, let's rejoice that the Russian architect received the prize.

- The Russian pavilion is very different from other pavilions of the Biennale. It's good because everyone comes and is surprised. But at the same time, this indicates that Russia is in no way integrated into the global context. That all the problems that are discussed at the Biennale are of no interest to us.
- I thought that there was an international exhibition dedicated to how architecture exists, say, in the digital era. If you take Russia in this context and look at how it exists in such an era, it exists at the level of the Congo. There is an understandable difference between the country's intellectual capabilities and its real state. And then I came up with an idea: we must show the exact opposite of what everyone will have. They have monitors, we have black and white photographs; they have computer design, we have watercolors; they have new neighborhoods created on the computer, we have ruins of buildings. It was hard not to pay attention to this. In this sense, I believe that I calculated correctly.

- So, initially there was a hope for a prize?
- There was a calculation for attention. To be noticed.

- Shocking?
- Yes. But I didn’t count on the prize. When I came to Ilya and said that I wanted “Melancholia” to be at the exhibition, I chose the best that, in my opinion, there is in Russia, and what can make an impression at the international level. I could not count on him receiving a prize, especially for a photograph. I didn't even know there was a prize for photography. But the fact that these works of art can be noticed and appreciated, of course, was the calculation. Why was I bringing them?

- Many builders came from Russia. It feels like they came to the wrong exhibition, because the biennale is not about construction.
- Why don't we get the first prize? In order for a country to receive a prize here in Venice, that country must have good architecture and great construction capabilities behind it. In Spain, whose pavilion won first prize, there is indeed construction going on. I didn’t plan for our builders to come. But I'm glad they saw it. It’s ridiculous to count on the educational effect of the exhibition, but let them remember that we could have received first prize if the country had normal architecture.

- Are you not embarrassed by the gap in the Russian pavilion between what is shown and what is actually being built?
- There is only Soviet experience on this topic. There was the experience of the 20s, when the avant-garde was an export art. There is no one in the country, but, for example, in Berlin there is one. There is a gap between the export version of art and the local one. There is another experience: our pavilion reflects what is actually being built in the country. This was the case at the first five biennales. No one ever received anything. The question is what is right? It would be possible to bring and show real architecture - what is being built in Moscow today. But I couldn't do it. For me personally, this architecture is not a convertible commodity. It would be strange to bring it and say: “Look how bad our architecture is.”


English architect William Alsop showed his project for a cultural and shopping center for an industrial zone in the British pavilion. In architecture and design, it is reminiscent of the Pompidou Center in Paris - transparent walls, details painted in the brightest colors, new technologies. The project is called very ethically: “Art in the community.” (Photo: Irina Kaydalina )

Russia's opposition to the West was evidenced not only by the exhibition in the Russian pavilion, but also by the exhibition held in the first days of the Biennale in the Nadia Baldeschi Gallery, the only Russian gallery in Venice. Its name, invented by curator Yuri Avvakumov, speaks for itself: “Paper architecture. Non-digital Russia.”

And finally, about the sponsors of the Russian pavilion. This year it is the Moscow stone-processing plant MKK-Holding, most of whose shares belong to the Moscow government. Of course, it’s good that the organizers managed to find such rich sponsors (it seems, the richest in the entire history of Russian participation in the biennale). It’s just a pity that their appearance at the exhibition turned out to be so pushy. The most expensive restaurants and hotels where serious men with shaved heads and their guests spent time. Distribution of lighters and ballpoint pens with holding company logos. Advertising catalog with samples of the company's products. Toasts to Luzhkov's health as "the organizer of all our victories" and to Russia with three cheers. A delegation of chief architects of the largest Russian cities led by the main Moscow builder Vladimir Resin. Two scandals caused by the same Resin: at the opening ceremony of the Biennale, he (presumably, just out of habit) sat in the first row, taking other people’s personal seats, and managed to get into the closed banquet on the occasion of the same opening, taking the only invitation card to the entire Russian delegation, accompanied by guards - in both cases the stewards could not do anything with him. And so on and so forth. Such was the atmosphere around the Russian pavilion. And all this against the backdrop of a purely creative atmosphere of the biennale.

However, the delegation from Russia can also be considered as part of the Russian project. The Americans brought experimental work by students. The Japanese - a funny project called "City of Girls". And the Russians are sullen officials in expensive and not very elegant suits. This is another fruit of Utopia, read - another “ruin of paradise”.

VRES: LAUREATE

Venice Biennale Prizes
"Golden Lion" for the best interpretation of the theme of the Biennale - Jean Nouvel, architect (France)
Special prize for the best foreign pavilion - Spain Pavilion
Bruno Zevi Special Prize - Joseph Rykvert, historian and architectural theorist (USA)
Special Prize for Architectural Patronage - Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation
Special prize for architectural publication - Eduardo Luis Rodriguez, publisher of the magazine "Architecture of Cuba"
Special prize for architectural photography - Ilya Utkin, architect (Russia)
"Golden Lion" for professional achievements - Renzo Piano (famous Italian architect, one of the authors of the Pompidou Center project in Paris), Paolo Soleri (the largest theorist of urbanism in Italy), Jorn Utson (Danish architect, famous for the design of the Opera House in Sydney)