Confront wildness

Arkhnadzor and Markhi opened the "Heritage School"

Moscow "School of Heritage" is a new non -profit educational project. Free lectures and seminars will be able to attend everyone. The founders of the school believe that the necessity in it has long been shaken, because the preservation of material and intangible cultural heritage has remained the destiny of few professionals. For most people, this is something incomprehensible and not too relevant.

Why does customers, officials and builders be not sorry to demolish architectural monuments? I would like to think, not only because they are guided exclusively by selfish considerations. Perhaps this comes simply from a lack of taste and knowledge about the value of what they call either rotten woods , then miserable slums, or even a garbage dump . By the way, in society the next loss of some old house and the construction of another shopping and entertainment center in its place rarely causes a wide resonance.

The "Heritage School" invented by the city -defenders is designed to fill the gaps in education, there would be those who want to study. Classes will be held every Thursday at the Architectural Institute and every Wednesday in an old mansion on Volkhonka, where there is a philanthropic organization called "The White City Project" . The place in many respects is wonderful, a stone's throw from the Institute of the Russian Language and on the near approaches to the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum. The house is ancient, its history has been leading from the 17th century. According to the chief architect of the “White City project” Tatyana Tsarev , the mansion is like no other in Moscow for the Heritage School:

-This house has more than a 300-year story. They were owned by Naryshkin, Volkonsky, Ladyzhinsky and Dolgorukovs. At Dolgorukovs, this house was bought by Catherine II, in order to give it to the hero of the Russian-Turkish war to Count Rumyantsev-Zadunaysky. The house was part of the Prechistensky Palace, and when the celebrations of Victory in the Russo-Turkish war were held in Moscow during the year, the celebrations were here.

Then, for more than a hundred years, the building belonged to the first Moscow gymnasium, and immigrants from this gymnasium replenished the ranks of people who are still known to everyone. These are writers, such as Ostrovsky and Ehrenburg, and political figures, including Prince Kropotkin, Milyukov and Bukharin. Such opposite natures, with opposite opinions ... and wonderful people taught here. For example, the poet Apollo Grigoryev, who, incidentally, taught not literature, but jurisprudence. Here, for the first time in Moscow, the picture of Alexander Ivanov was shown "The Family of Christ the People." This happened in the largest hall where the classes of the "School of Heritage" will take place.

After the revolution, the university of workers in China is located in this building, where the personnel of the future Chinese revolution were stared. Trotsky spoke in front of them, it was generally a nest of Trotskyism for five years. So, the school will be located a building that stores the memory of a wide range of cultural heritage, this is the quintessence of almost our history, ”says Tatyana Tsareva .

Arkhnadzor and Markhi opened the "Heritage School"

For free to give lectures and conduct seminars at the Heritage School by theoreticians and practice, leading in their areas. Among them is one of the founders of the Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D.S. Likhacheva Yuri Vedenin :

- The city cultural landscape is the category that is not actually taught either at the Architectural Institute or at the University Geographical Faculty. We must protect not only individual buildings. An equally important task is the protection of landscapes, entire panoramas. In the 60s of the last century, art historian Yevgeny Viktorovich Nikolaev wrote an article “Spectacles of Moscow”. Unfortunately, these spectacles in Moscow, which he wrote about, are practically no.

The second position - the city cannot be recognized without taking into account the intangible heritage. Let's start with the simplest. The city can be destroyed without destroying the buildings. It is enough to change the name of the streets, lanes, squares, and the city will lose a lot. I will devote my lecture on these problems, ”promises Yuri Vedenin .

Arkhnadzor and Markhi opened the "Heritage School"

I had to visit rallies devoted to the protection of the architectural heritage more than once. Alas, they are not crowded. Will the "School of Heritage" be able to increase the interest of a sufficiently large number of people in this problem? American and Russian writer, designer, culturalist and architectural historian Vladimir Paperny believes that he can:

-Because the task of this project is to include the problem of maintaining heritage in a wider cultural context, to show that this is not just a desire to preserve individual bricks or some kind of architectural plan, but this is the idea of preserving cultural and historical memory, the idea of preserving traditions. If you tell it to people, then they will certainly be interested in the problem of maintaining the heritage, since this applies to everyone. Each person has a memory, and everyone is expensive in the city, ”says Vladimir Paperny .