Field of Life

The new project by the architectural company PNKB (an acronym for “Design, Research, and Advisory Bureau”), led by Sergey Gnedovsky and Anton Lyubimkin, for the Kulikovo Field Museum is dedicated to the field as a concept in its own right. The field has long been a focus of the museum’s thorough and successful research. Accordingly, the exterior of the new museum building is gentler than that of its predecessor, which was also designed by PNKB and dedicated specifically to the historic battle. Inside, however, the building confidently guides the visitor from a luminous atrium along a spiral path to the field – interpreted here as a field of life.

Written by:
Ilya Mukosei
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

30 December 2024

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I’ve placed them all, each in their place,
And spread the field below for space
For battle, I prepared the field,
With trees, I’ve lined it, fully sealed,
With oaks and firs, I’ve set the frame,
And bushes here and there proclaim,
With tender grass, the ground I clad,
And filled it with small bugs I had
Dmitry Prigov, “Kulikovo Field”

I started school in the year of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo, in 1980. That anniversary of the historic battle became a significant component of Soviet patriotic propaganda and was widely and diversely celebrated. I vividly remember our class visiting exhibitions held at the State Historical Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery for the occasion. Beyond the special museum exhibits, the topic inspired slide films, educational TV programs, and even substantial sections in children’s textbooks (as history wasn’t a standalone subject in the lower grades). My memory is filled with historical and legendary details: the introductory duel between Peresvet and Chelubey, the ambush regiment led by Voivode Bobrok, Prince Dmitry burning the bridges... The year 1380 stood out as one of the key historical dates I carried with me from elementary school, so the significance of the Battle of Kulikovo for Russian history was never in question for me.

Thus, it was kind of a surprise for me to learn that the first full-fledged museum exhibit at the site of this historic event wasn’t opened until that same anniversary year of 1980, and a dedicated museum was established only 16 years later, in 1996.

That said, the diverse and dynamic work of the museum staff has been so impressive that it’s now hard to believe the museum is only 28 years old.

Since 2016, the task of “museumification” of events directly connected to the Battle of Kulikovo has been carried out by the Kulikovo Battle Museum, whose building was also designed by the PNKB. This museum, located in the village of Mokhovoe at the heart of the historic battlefield, was detailed by Yulia Shishalova for Archi.ru at the time.

In addition to this building, located in the village of Mokhovoe at the heart of the historic field, the State “Reserve” Museum “Kulikovo Field” also includes other numerous institutions, whose exhibits are often not directly connected to the titular event. For instance, the displays at the complex in the village of Monastyrshchino, north of the battlefield, cover the history of the surrounding lands from the Great Migration of Peoples to the historic battle with Mamai, while the exhibits in the nearby settlement of Epifan are dedicated to merchant life in the 19th–20th centuries.

The area around the battlefield also includes several memorial structures. Among these, the most fascinating, in my view, is the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh, a memorial built in 1917 on Red Hill, south of the battlefield, designed by Alexey Shchusev. Both this church and the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God in Monastyrshchino (architect Alexander Bocharnikov, 1884), now under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, have at various times housed museum exhibits or temporary exhibitions.

Yet, within the “reserve” museum, there is still no dedicated building devoted to one of its principal treasures: the field itself.

Its vast expanse, spanning more than 7,500 hectares, constitutes 65% of all the specially protected steppe areas in the Tula region. A third of the animal and plant species found here are listed as endangered species. Unsurprisingly, the museum operates not only as a historical site but also as a nature reserve. Its staff actively work to conserve and study this significant natural resource: combating poaching, setting up camera traps to document rare animals, monitoring the condition of natural landmarks, and collecting herbarium and entomological specimens. They also engage in unique efforts to “restore the forest and steppe sections of the battlefield within their historical boundaries of the 14th century”, based on research into the changes in natural and cultural landscapes over centuries.

They are even growing oak groves and planting feather grass!

The natural aspect of the field is currently explored in part of the underground level of the Kulikovo Battle Museum. However, with the introduction of the new “Russian Field” museum, whose architectural concept was unveiled in November 2024 at the “Zodchestvo” exhibition, the narrative of “studying and restoring the natural and historical landscape of Kulikovo Field” is set to become much more detailed and vivid. The goal of the new project, as unanimously stated by both the institution’s representatives and the architects, is to “highlight this commemorative site not only as a battlefield but also as a field of life”.

zooming — The Russian Field Museum. Satellite footage

Copyright: © Architecture and Cultural Policy PNKB

The concept for the building, which is planned for construction in the village of Monastyrshchino to mark the 650th anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo, was developed by the familiar team behind the Kulikovo Battle Museum – PNKB’s Architecture and Cultural Policy Bureau. This project continues their long-standing collaboration with the “reserve” museum, naturally inviting comparisons between the two museum buildings designed 15 years apart.

Like the 2016 building, the new structure appears to grow out of the ground. Visitors will also be able to ascend unobstructed from the field to the roof, where the view from this elevated point will not only allow them to admire the surrounding landscape’s beauty but also grasp the sheer scale of the field.

From this vantage, the visitors might spot the roof of the museum in Mokhovoe, located 5 km to the south, and beyond it, on Red Hill, Shchusev’s church and the 1852 memorial column (designed by Alexander Brullov).

The external appearance of the “Russian Field” is significantly softer than that of the Kulikovo Battle Museum. From most angles, the new museum resembles sun-scorched, wind-bent blades of giant feather grass or an enormous bundle of straw. This “gentle” image, reflecting the more peaceful theme of the new exhibition, is further enhanced by the architects’ choice of façade materials. The building, which is plan-wise reminiscent of a giant snail, is clad in diagonally laid logs forming a hyperbolic surface. This hyperboloid – a smooth form composed of straight lines – is ideally suited to fulfilling the task of harmonizing nature and geometry.

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The Russian Field Museum. Plan of the basement floor

Copyright: © Architecture and Cultural Policy PNKB
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The Russian Field Museum. Plan of the 1st floor

Copyright: © Architecture and Cultural Policy PNKB
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The Russian Field Museum. Section view

Copyright: © Architecture and Cultural Policy PNKB

The spiral – the shape that forms the basis of the floor plan – evokes an obvious set of quite appropriate associations: it is the shell of an ancient mollusk, the spiral of evolution connecting this mollusk with modern forms of life, and the spiral of history linking us with the contemporaries of Dmitry Donskoy...

Perhaps a less obvious association is with a compressor, which creates excessive pressure inside the building. This pressure allows the concentrated Kulikovo natural and historical context to be placed in the halls, gathered evenly like dust with a vacuum cleaner from the entire surface of the field and even partly from its depths.

However, the main task of the spiral structure, according to the project’s authors, is to prepare the visitors – who arrive at the “reserve” museum through “less prominent” fields – for the visual and tactile perception of the historically significant natural space. This is why the architects confidently guide the flow of visitors along a strictly defined route, far more imperatively than in the Kulikovo Battle Museum. Visitors entering the building from the access road are first “sucked” into its very center.

“This shift is absolutely necessary” – explains architect Anton Lyubimkin – “So that the person first enters a space that, in some sense, contrasts with the Field”. This space is represented by the well, connecting the first and basement floors, illuminated through a skylight in the roof. Compared to the surrounding expanses, it is tight and, according to the architect’s concept, is meant to “immerse the person into itself”. There, Anton continues, “the field space unfolds in such a way that the visitor to the museum inevitably lifts their head upwards, and at some point, we see the sky, and there occurs an awareness of the inner freedom that exists regardless of physical freedom...”

After spending some time on the balcony encircling the well at ground level, the “compressor” building first sends the guest downward to the basement and then upward – along the steps of the halls in the expanding coils of the spiral.

The detailed conceptual content of the exhibition is still being developed under the guidance of the renowned designer Anton Fyodorov, but one can already grasp the basic idea of it from the architects’ descriptions: at each stage of the exhibition, the field reveals a new aspect to the visitor, starting from geology and soils, through the diversity of everything that grows and runs across the surface, to the air above the field, and ending with all the birds and butterflies that the field contains.

As the visitor moves from underground to the sky, the exhibition space expands. On the second, outer coil, part of the exhibition becomes the actual field itself: here, the museum space reaches the external glazed wall, beyond which the field emerges through the slanted palisade of logs.

At the end of the journey, the spiral path “throws” the “prepared” visitor outside, with their face to the field, about which they now know much more, and are ready for a conscious immersion into this simultaneously unique and typical Russian landscape.

30 December 2024

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