In the Museum of Architecture named after A.V. Shchusev, there was a presentation of a special issue of the architectural magazine “Tatlin”, dedicated to the activities of the design bureau “Architects Ass”. In relation to modern Russian construction, “Architects Ass” is John Cage in relation to Oleg Gazmanov. It’s not even clear how this bureau can work here, in the capital and its environs; here, where everything - from weather conditions to business ethics - contradicts the principles professed by Evgeniy Ass: purity, simplicity, transparency. But come on, the bureau is fully stocked with orders and for the past ten years “Architects Ass” have been decorating Russian landscapes with their absolutely puritanical architecture, existing according to the commandment “do no harm” (professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute, master Evgeniy Ass personally began to practice, of course, long before the birth of the bureau, from the mid-70s). Every building of the bureau, be it the “Our Artists” gallery near Nikolina Gora or the boathouse on the Klyazminskoe reservoir, turns out to be a tuning fork not only for an aesthetic, but above all for an ethical attitude towards space, material, function, form, and quality. And the strict rhythm of the planes, the rigid subordination of elementary geometric volumes, elegant color accents, and special light drama always create an image worthy of dialogue with the great modernists of the 20th century, be it Adolf Loos or Kazimir Malevich.
Architect Evgeniy Ass considers the principle of “casting one’s own shadow” to be the best in architecture. Perhaps the idea of “objects of direct action” is connected with it: the birth of a purified form, devoid of illustrativeness. You can be convinced that Asov’s minimalism can even be very lyrical and poetic by picking up the new issue of Tatlin.
