Murmansk

OBSERVATIONS:

Dan Dorocic

Military Architecture

“Indeed, the form of the mountain settlements is constructed according to the laws of a geometric system that unites the effectiveness of sight with that of spatial order, thereby producing sightlines that function to achieve different forms of power: strategic in its overlooking of main traffic arteries, control in its overlooking of Palestinian towns and villages, and self-defence in its overlooking the immediate surroundings and approach roads.� 1

1 Rafi Segal andEyal Weizman, A Civilian Occupation: The Politics o f Israeli Architecture

Murmansk is an artificial city built by the central bureau in Moscow as a strategic outpost for industrial and military marine operations.

During the cold war it functioned as Russia’s main harbour with most of the Soviet Submarine fleet stationed there.

trend

1989

2010

Murmansk’s shrinking Population: from

307,664

The human is represented in obscure and monumental ways - from a 40m tall soldier to esranged beings that fit into the mould of repeating blocks that were erected in masses.

It is a city planned around notions and nodes of military and industry.

Industries Shtokman field - Штокмановское месторождение- one of the world’s largest natural gas fields, lies in the central part of Russian sector of the Barents Sea, 600 kilometres (370 mi) north of Kola Peninsula. Its reserves are estimated at 3.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and more than 37 million tons of gas condensate. (wikipedia.org) Nikel - Никель - is an urban locality and the administrative center of Pechengsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located on the shores of Lake Kuets-Yarvi 196 kilometers (122 mi) northwest of Murmansk and 7 kilometers (4.3 mi) from the Norwegian border. (wikipedia.org) Murmansk is the newest city built by the Russian empire, a city built in haste. Having sprung up so quickly it seems many qualities of the design seem to have been overlooked.

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2010

1973 Nikel’s shrinking Population:

12,771

Mikhail Gorbachev Boris Yeltsin

Nikita Khrushchev Stalin

Leonid Brezhnev

Control Architecture Murmansk reminds me of an architecture of control.

The central planners of the Soviet Union designed the Dwellings of Murmansk in a rough and massive scale, where finer details of the design quickly faded into the background. In my view the project of Murmansk is one of the clearer examples of the brutality of such an approach to housing. From a sociological point of view, housing is an issue that depends on specific economic and social realities and needs to be understood in its full dynamics and complexity.

What are the expressions of an architecture of ideology?

What are the typelogies of architectural control?

How does society battle the hardness of this space?

How does public space function in these massive cocnrete blocks?

How does the forgotten human intervene?

MURMANSK

it reminds ofme of another archtiecture of control....

Settelment outside Betlehem

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/israeli_settlements_in_the_wes.html

Political Landscapes What happens when rigid ideologies are forced upon the landscape?

When a single political or religious ideology is adopted by us, it is evident everywhere -in our culture, our economic system, our philosophy, our art, and our architecture, it filters through the entire network of our beliefs.

How does the nature of this ideology express itself in the built form?

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Israel-adoptslaw-to-stop-settlements-boycott-22071.html

How does human creativity intervene in these landscapes?

rigid/geometric informal/ organic

MURMANSK

Analogue Pisgat Ze'ev is an Israeli settlement and residential neighborhood with a population of 50,000 located in East Jerusalem. It was established on land annexed by Israel after the Six Day War. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this. Construction began in 1982, and the first families moved in three years later.

Pisgat Ze'ev is situated east of the Arab neighborhood of Shuafat, west of the Arab villages of Hizma and 'Anata, and south of Neve Yaakov. formal settelment SETTELMENT

informal palestinian village

Pisgat Ze'ev from Google maps

scale loses all meaning...

public space?

Leninovka

‘The evidence, as is always the case, is in the drawing. It is by investi- gating the working methods and tools of architects — the lines drawn on plans, 'master plans', maps and aerial photographs — that the equation setting material organisation against the abuse of power begins to unravel.

Formal manipulations and programmatic organisations are the very stuff of architec- ture and planning, and it is in the drawings that their effects are stated. “ Excerpted from Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, A Civilian Occupation: The Politics o f Israeli

Russian Architecture Timeline

Late Muscovite period (1630–1712)

Imperial Russia (1712–1917)

Post Revolution Constructvism(1917-1932)

Post-war Soviet Union (1945-1990)

Modern Russia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_architecture

MURMANSK’S FUTURE? When we visited the murmansk planning office, we asked about their ideas and plans for future projects.

In 1974, a massive 35.5-meter-tall statue Alyosha, depicting a Russian World War II soldier, was installed on a 7-meter-high foundation.

To commemorate the 85th anniversary of the city’s foundation, the snow-white church of the Savior-on-the-Waters was modeled after the White Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal and built on the shore for the sailors of Murmansk.

In 5 years Murmansk will have its 100th year anniversary.

What do are your plans for the centenial celebration?

Do you have any projects in mind. “ We are thinking about building a monument to commemorate our Naval Military history” they also showed us a picture of a hotel in the works:

In Murmansk the Soviet-style architecture of monumentality is still not dead.... but what does the future hold?

Citation: Segal, Rafi and Weizman, Eyal(2003)'Occupation in space and time',Index on Censorship,32:3,186 — 193 link:

http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/03064220308537271 Images: http://darksondesigns.proboards.com/index.cgi?board= resources&action=display&thr ead=746