Architectural salon in the Central House of Artists

History of architecture
The second Moscow salon "Architecture and Design", organized by the joint-stock company "Expo-Park", opened in the Central House of Artists. This year, about fifty firms, architectural studios and individual architects took part in it. Within the framework of the salon, for the first time, the traditional review competition of the Union of Moscow Architects for the best design and construction of this year is being held, as well as several non-commercial projects.

Approaching the Central House of Artists, I thought: what’s the point of going to the exhibition if the whole new Moscow is visible from the Crimean Bridge - the freshly gilded domes of the main capital’s temple, the terrible black Peter, the European-dry facade of the Moscow International Bank on the embankment, the powerful Gazprom tower on the horizon? All these material traces left in the urban space of the main driving forces of post-perestroika Russia - the new state Orthodox ideology, personal entrepreneurship, private and state capital - are now firmly inscribed in the Moscow landscape. Like their neighbors and predecessors - the Stalinist main entrance to the Park of Culture and the building of the Central House of Artists itself, an example of the decline of architectural ideas and construction technologies of the distant Brezhnev era.
What's the point of looking at new Moscow buildings in photographs if every evening on the way home from work you see them in person? Manege, Toko Bank, Converse Bank, Pyramid on Tverskaya, Park Towers on Taganka, and so on along the route. Although there is a lot you might not notice, the city is changing faster than you can see the changes.

Architects going public
I’ll say right away: the project conceived by the Marat Gelman Gallery and sculptor Zurab Tsereteli “I love Moscow. Moscow doesn’t love me” was not implemented. Maybe it’s for the better - the newspaper pages are tired of these names, and the discussion about the ill-fated monument suppressed all other Moscow architectural news, like the idol itself - the surrounding area.
I don’t want to talk much about the salon itself. Like last year, this is a commercial exhibition, not designed for a commercial effect - almost no deals are concluded here. The salon is similar to a bazaar, where they present what is clear - samples of finishing materials, for example, specialized magazines, or impressive architectural paintings, and what is not clear - design ideas. Some stands are decorated in a fashionably elegant and ascetic manner, while others resemble a sales counter. The latter are more picturesque. It is difficult for the ignorant to understand all this, but the knowledgeable one knows who is worth what.
The fact that the traditional review of Moscow architects is being held within the framework of the salon, which for the first time has emerged from the dungeons of the House of Architects into a publicly accessible exhibition space, is a significant and positive fact. Now, on tablets, any visitor to the Central House of Artists can calmly see what they have seen on the streets more than once.

A rush for the ages
“This is all vain architecture. It’s clear that people don’t have time to sit down and think. About life, about space,” noted architect Andrei Gozak, who is stingy with praise, about the exhibition. And it is true. All participants in the modern fast-paced architectural process in the conditions of the Moscow construction boom have no time to think. Customers and investors must invest money as quickly as possible, architects must go through all approvals, builders must build. And the daily newspaper columnist discusses all this in his hastily written articles.
The saddest thing is that although among the participants in the architectural process there are quite elderly people and daring beginners, they are all essentially beginners. Just ten years ago there were no private clients, architects built up remote neighborhoods with panels, and architectural critics talked about the eternal and foreign. The changes that came took everyone by surprise. This can be seen from the results. For example, I have long wanted to declare a moratorium on all new construction within Moscow and a hundred kilometers around it. And force everyone to think before building something. Because an architect's work, even an unsightly one, usually outlives the author. It seems that some interested people are ready to agree with this proposal. Even architects. Not investors. And our mayor will probably be against it.

Architectural "Nika" is alien to flight
Somehow the curators of the Architectural Gallery decided to stop and look around in the fever of architectural everyday life and organized a rating of the best Moscow buildings “The Best in Architecture of 1987-1997”. Having chosen leading Moscow practicing architects, famous architectural critics and active critics (50 in number) as respondents, the organizers of the professional competition asked them to name the ten best Moscow buildings over the past decade. The results of this professional selection were announced at the salon opening day. Photos of the heroes of the top ten rankings are presented at the exhibition.
Oddly enough, the award event was held in a family-like manner, modestly, although similar cinematic or television events usually cause terrible excitement. What’s unfair is that there are now far fewer films being made than houses are being built, their lifespan is shorter than that of buildings, and cinema costs much less than any architecture. It's true that architects don't wear tuxedos.

I want to blame the mirror
The building of the Moscow International Bank took first place in the ranking. Its authors have already been so favored by everyone - from the commission for awarding state prizes to the independent architectural critic working in this newspaper - that well-deserved praise has become a burden to them. Second place went to McDonald's on Ogareva Street - the glass tower of the sandwich empire, reflecting in its mirror the neighboring monsters of the Stalinist architectural empire. This building once irritated me immensely, but not for long - then much more powerful irritants appeared. Third place - and here I am jubilant - went to the authors of the interiors of the Atrium restaurant. I want to remind you about this work, because it was done a long time ago and has become a separate story.
"Atrium" is one of the first private restaurants; it was built ten years ago by pioneer cooperators. And they invited the best Moscow architects - Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin. They were given complete freedom. Brodsky and Utkin made a sophisticated, dark and smart replica of classical architecture - an eternal professional ideal. One of the two small restaurant halls actually imitates a Roman courtyard with a sky-lit ceiling, a lion fountain in an arched niche, columns with unprecedentedly shaped capitals and goddesses of unknown origin. All this was handmade by the authors from a strange mixture similar to marble. “Pathos and irony, endless love for the profession and boundless skepticism about it,” critics wrote about “Atrium” and appropriately quoted another postmodernist, the famous namesake of one of the architects, an unsurpassed master of majestic irony and melancholic pathos: “The second century of our era... The decor is more Palladian than Piranesi... In the center of the chamber is a Doric-style column... On the shelves and niches are busts of the classics."
"Atrium" is the only architectural work of recent years that has become a cultural fact. An exemplary and only example of domestic architectural postmodernism. All subsequent Moscow architecture is closer to housing construction, ideology, commerce, a falsely understood national idea, but not professional reflection. It reflects not a professional ideal, but our common post-totalitarian life, where power and money mean much more than relationships with harmony and tradition.
There is no place for irony in this architecture, although it can be ridiculous; instead of pathos, there is pomp. Here columns and pediments are treated without respect and blurted out anywhere. The marble for them is selected in Italy. The atrium has become a common place for office buildings and country houses. When designing banks, the authors seriously recall Gothic churches. Life has defeated architecture in a way proven by history - with money and power. True, I hope not completely.
OLGA Kommersant-Kabanova

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 79 dated May 29, 1997, p. 14

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