Protivochuvstvie

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PROTIVOCHUVSTVIE

Protivochuvstvie — presence of the oppositely directed emotions evoked by the material and by the form of an artwork.

Any work of art arouses mutually opposed emotions, causing their short circuit and annihilation. This is catharsis.

Lev Vygotsky

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We don’t have a ‘favourite’ type of project or client as we perceive each commission as an opportunity to explore a particular topic or area and see where it might get us. For example, territory as an actor in the planning process is the one of utter importance. How can the territory (place, landscape) influence the planning process or even guide it?

We regards the territory (or place) not as a “point in space” but rather as a collection of overlaying narratives, a palimpsest. Fitting the building into the context we see as interlining a new narrative into an existing one, and the language of this additional narration is artistic rather than merely technical.

Our work is always manifested through the narrative (the story that we tell via architecture), the language (both of visual representation and architectural form) and the material (its aesthetic qualities, physical characteristics and symbolic meaning). But all that, of course, is supplementary to the principal and fundamental work with space.

Working in Moscow, we explore its intertwining narratives and images and try to incorporate them in our project to the point when they become a project’s driving force. Moscow ornaments and patterns, materials and geometry, Moscow discrepancies, contradictions and hybrids — all find a way into our pallette or, if your wish, our bestiary.

We have an ever-growing collection of images, materials and shapes that stimulates the creative process and awakens inspiration. For the ArchMoscow exhibition in 2015 we decided to pick those items of the collection that had to do with our Moscow projects (both buildings and interiors) and organize them according to the principle of ‘schizophrenic’ systematization. The idea of our showcase was to deconstruct “Moscowness” and reorganize the elements to build a certain compendium that would reflect our perception of the city — its architecture and its spirit.

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Moscow bestiary

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Nowadays Office stand at Archmoscow’2015 exhibition

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Exhibition stand plan

The exhibition project — ‘Protivochuvstvie’ (“counter emotionality”) — was named after a specific psychological effect, discovered

by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. It is a pre-cathartic state, provoked by contradicting emotions cause by an artwork: its form and its material. Moscow, as any other megapolis, is a city of contrasts. We wanted to take a step further than simple pointing out the obvious socio-economical and aesthetic contrasts: we wanted to bring out the less visible contradictions buried in materials, geometry, ideas, etc.

The stand was designed as a square white bureau or chest-of-drawers with many shuttles of various forms and depth that viewers could pull and check and that stored fragments of Moscow (stories, secrets, images) we carefully collected. Alongside there were our projects displayed mainly in the form of visualizations and models. The showcase looked chaotic at first but upon a closer examination a viewer would notice the logic behind the chaos: all the objects were thematically arranged and a narrative would unravel upon examination of the exhibits in a prescribed order (although, the route we planned for the viewers was rarely followed).

Among the subjects represented by the groups of exhibits there were Materiality, Geometry, Ornament, Contradictions and Narrative.

Each of them revolved around or contained a binary opposition — a prerequisite for protivochuvstvie.

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MATERIALITY real/imaginable, centre/periphery

‘Glavtabak’ pavilion at VDNKh

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Materiality is both a quality of architecture and its way of being: essentially, architecture is nothing but the intentionally constructed materiality. Materiality in architecture is both physical and symbolic. The elusive genius loci that architects like to chase often nests in building materials.

In Moscow of XV-XVI centuries bricks and glazed ceramic tiles were widely used as substitutes for marble and other valuable materials that invited Italian architects were accustomed to work with. Ruddy red plus dark green is basically a colour code for the Kremlin – architecture piece that symbolises Moscow itself. This combination of materials and colours was used on facades of residential building complex just outside of Moscow, so that it can be symbolically connected to the city centre, its history and its culture.

Name: Housing in Podmoskovie Type: residential Status: commission Year: 2014

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Moscow textures palette

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Name: Iskra Type: interior Function: 2-level cafe and bar in a historical building Status: commission, under construction Area: 200 sq m Year: 2015

Cafe and bar Iskra (Sparkle)is located in one of the most authentic neighbourhoods in Moscow, Kitai-Gorod, a part of the old city that was once behind the vallum co-joined with the Kremlin walls. Iskra occupies a light and spacious square room on the ground floor of the classicist building of late XVIII century that used to be a home for a noble Moscow family. The vaulted ceiling of the room suggests there was a private church there used by family members only. After the building had been nationalised in the Soviet era, the space was used as a dairy shop.

The idea behind the project was to build “a very Moscow interior” that would stand out of the monotonous galaxy of Brooklynesque internals of countless venues recently opened in the city. However, the authenticity didn’t have to be authentic: designing “very Moscow interior” didn’t mean referring to the real city and not the imagined, invented, fictionalised one. So “Moscowness” was to be conveyed via use of colours (green and red) and materials (marble — a reference to the underground marble paradise of Moscow metro).

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Exhibition stand fragment

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Exhibition stand fragment

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Name: Solntsevo Type: interior, transport Function: metro station interior and above-ground pavillions Status: competition Year: 2014

The architectural concept of Solntsevo metro station is set to overcome the style discrepancies between the central and the peripheral metro interiors and merge the design formulas of different periods of city’s underground architecture. The neutral background is filled with textures and details, borrowed from a carefully curated “palette�, where all the typical Moscow materials are collected: granite slabs with rough edges, brass clad aluminum panels, concrete of different corrugation patterns, marble splinters and chunks, textured brass elements. The above-ground entrance-halls design exploits the same principle of combining and alternating fine and crude forms and materials: the lines of a of granite lump follow the slope of a staircase, shiny garland of thin brass clad stilts comprises a canopy colonnade.

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Marble underground

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Moscow layers

SREZ concept

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ORNAMENT industrial/hand-made, dimensional/flat

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In contemporary architecture ornament is no longer a crime — it is a legitimate tool of communication as well as an inherent quality of many recently designed materials. We use ornament both for the exterior and the interior: in the former case — to overcome modernist cliches, in the latter — to create a delicate optical illusion, flattening the volume, making a visitor experience the space differently.

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Name: Radisson BLU Hotel Status: competition Year: 2015

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In the Raidisson BLU project that facades of the both towers were “sliced” horizontally with ornament belts of different patterns and width. There were only 4 types of belts designed but their repeated sequence created the impression of infinite variety and, what’s more important, and illusion of artisanry and handcraft whilst the pattern was comprised of the inexpensive industrially produced panels.

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Name: Lavka-Lavka Type: interior Function: shop, streetfood cafe and gastropub in Mega mall Status: comission, under construction Area: 600sq m Year: 2015

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The Lavka-Lavka restaurant interior project is, in fact, a case for uninterrupted and thoroughgoing ornament. Restaurant space is dissected into parallels that are leveled with different objects: the plinth, the bar counter, the sofa back and filled with different ornaments (relative to folk patterns). This trick dramatically flattens the space of the restaurant but that is the only way to bring it out of the junkspace of a commercial mall where the venue is located.

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GEOMETRY chaos/order, totalitarian/liberal

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The “sacred geometry” of Moscow is an irregular one of the annual (centennial) rings, spanning from the Kremlin. Regular geometry can be found in the grid of soviet mikrorayons, Moscow churches and cathedral plans and ornaments on the facades of VDNKh pavilion.

In the project of temporary installations at VDNKh geometry was used as means of organising disparate segments into a steady composition — the power of symmetry holds together an ensemble of objects of different forms and scales (an instrumental approach for a chaotic city). In order to design the installation that compliments the monumental architectural backdrop, we analyzed the geometry of the place, its structure and surroundings. Classical symmetry of the square was the key to the optimal solution — to arrange all the parts of the installation the according to the principle of kaleidoscopic symmetry.

VDNH geometry

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Name: ‘Kaleidoscope’ Type: installation Function: temporary street installation for science festival Status: commission, completed Area: 5000 sq m Year: 2014

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CONTRADICTIONS luxurious/mundane, up/down

Barocco ceiling vs cheap imitations

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The very expression “Moscow style” holds a contradiction: style is essentially a language, and Moscow, being as eclectic as it is, is simultaneously speaking several languages. Therefore, “Moscow style” can only be defined as an error, a contradiction manifested in a city form, a hybrid that suppresses tension between its contradicting parts. One of the most eloquent examples of these contradictions is a noticeable discrepancy between Moscow’s striving for luxury and the grim reality of at least half of its built environment.

The unity and conflict of opposites is an important subject of the Zhukovka (a village just outside of Moscow that is famous for it’s elite residential estates) market project. The temple typology of a building (a roof resting on a set of columns) serves the most mundane and pragmatic function — trade. The lavish baroque ceiling is made up of the most banal manufactured materials: armstrong and griliato commercial ceiling panels. This reflects a contradiction, deeply rooted in the location hosting the market: Zhukovka, like Moscow, is, in fact, a village of contrasts.

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Name: Zhukovka market Type: retail Function: roofed marketplace Status: commission, under construction Area: 2000 sq.m Year: 2015

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Exhibition stand fragment

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NARRATIVE tangible/intangible, hard/soft

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Good architecture is definitely more than a blessid union of form and function; it should be an image that stays in your memory and and a story that you want to hear. The story can be either entirely fictional or “based on true events” — anyway we always try to find the right way to tell it.

The design-method behind the Kristal factory reconstruction project was mainly storytelling. Researched historical material provided basis for the new narrative, unveiled in a form of lubok*: both in terms of visual representation and in terms of naive, fictional plot.

In order to emphasize the uniqueness of the place, we have proposed a number of spectacular, somewhat ‘theatrical’ spaces that produce diverse and memorable experiences. The essence of our suggestion was to concentrate on non-material and symbolic changes in the early stages which, in turn, would trigger the processes that attract resources for capital reconstruction.

The project was designed to simulate the process of gradual, stepwise development of the territory, based on its internal resources, to create a flexible system and the algorithm for future changes. An important part of the project was to create an inventory of mobile objects made of all kinds of industrial elements and materials found at the factory and, therefore, provide the territory with certain flexibility and variability of the occurring processes. * Russian popular print, some sort of proto-comics, characterized by simple graphics and narratives derived from literature, religious stories and popular tales

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Name: ‘Kristal’ Type: industrial revitalisation, public space Function: vodka factory reconstruction project Status: competition, winning project Area: 9000 sq.m Year: 2015