По-русски

Convergence Points: Alexander Brodsky in Berlin

Sergey Tchoban Museum of Architectural Drawing has opened an exhibition of selected graphic works by Alexander Brodsky.

19 March 2015
Review
mainImg

This architect/artist hardly needs any special introduction, even to the European audience. He is one of the world's best-known Russian architects. In 2006, his works represented Russia at the Venice Biennale, and now they are to be found in the collections of the world's most famous museums: German Architecture Museum (Frankfurt-am-Mein), MOMA museum of modern art (New York), and the Russian Shchusev Museum of Architecture. Europe knows Brodsky, first of all, for his "paper architecture": numerous proposals and concepts that he created in collaboration with Ilia Utkin for the Japanese architectural contests. Brodsky's "solo" works include installations on the verge of architecture and modern art, as well as a number of minor-form theater objects - his interior designs, restaurants, and conceptual pavilions are also widely knows in the western architectural community. 

The works selected for the show cover the span of the last thirty years of the author’s creative work and give the visitors an idea about the variety of the techniques that this architect employs. The hall of the first floor of the museum features the more traditionalist works by Brodsky. These are pencil drawings, etchings, and silk printing. The upper hall demonstrates the new works created specially for this show: the "clay" graphics and the Indian ink drawings on tarpaper. 

The exhibition. Photo © Michaela Schöpke, 2015
The exhibition. Photo © Michaela Schöpke, 2015


The exhibition. Photo © Michaela Schöpke, 2015


The exhibition. Photo © Michaela Schöpke, 2015


In spite of the diversity of the techniques, the exposition looks like a single statement meant to expose the visitors to the themes and motifs of the architect's creative work. Brodsky's "poetic manner" is based on the imaginary fantasy worlds that are presented, to a certain degree of conditionality, in the style of the classical architectural presentation: facade, section, perspective, and overview. The artist is focused on timeless compositions, or, rather the "after time" ones, like the marks left by people and left by history. 

Located at the basement floor, the small museum halls, or "studies", as the museum employees prefer to call them, demonstrate the works of the 1980's - early 2000's. Here we see Brodsky as the follower of Piranesian school with its monumentality and fantasy-like flavor, although, his vision is always that of a postmodernist with the characteristic irony, overlapping of meanings and openness to various meanings. One of the main themes here is the unity of chaos and classic beauty, the postmodernist entropy and the renaissance imagery. It is expressed in the chaotic fractured perspectives with an odd inclusion of the basic architectural elements - the pyramids - and on the appearance of a pendulum under the fractured classic composition, and in the industrial chaos inscribed into a cupola space in a longitudinal section, set upon a building next to an industrial chimney. The renaissance aesthetics and the motif of the Venetian Carnival sound also in the allegorical portraits of some imaginary character. On one of these portraits, as if looking to give a clue to the viewer, Brodsky calls this character "an architect". The other allegorical portraits are reminiscent of the medieval "mysteries" and about the "carnivalized" commedia dell'arte, and are, of course, among other things, a paraphrase of the famous Primal Elements of Giuseppe Arcimboldo whom the surrealists considered to be their predecessor. Instead of the four natural primal elements, Brodsky uses the architectural primal elements (the perfect city that the architect holds in his hands is the Tower of Babylon hoisted on top of the characters' heads, the surrealist aesthetics being one of the clues to understanding the worlds that he creates. 

At the inauguration. Photo © Michaela Schöpke, 2015




The same aesthetics permeate Brodsky's industrial landscapes. These works are all about immersion into the introspective world of the subconscious where the logic ties are cut - or at least it looks that way - while the hero of the piece is in fact the world from which the humans have been deleted. This is the same theme that Brodsky explores over and over again: the human being was here and left his traces. 

Most of the exhibits are left untitled. This way, the guests are left without any text clues that have become the custom in the modern art. Of course, the ideal viewer of Brodsky's works is a man of wide reading that is also quite knowledgeable in the visual art, somebody who is capable of counting the layers of hidden meanings, capable of appreciating the artist's subtle postmodernist irony, while the less experience viewer can get a slight feeling of discomfort finding himself or herself thrown in a world devoid of the familiar cause-and-effect connotations. These two viewer types are in fact two way in which Brodsky works can be read, the interpretations of this or that particular viewer capable of potential being a lot more emotional and leading him or her to an even wider stream of consciousness. 

One of the pictures that are the closest to the art of book illustration is "Mesto Vseobshchego Protsvetaniya" ("Land of Plenty") (1998) - this is both a direct reference to Piranesi's images of Pantheon revised by the author's metaphoric subconscious, and an allusion to the solemn and stately markings of the city infrastructure objects that were common in the USSR back in the 1960: a library, for example, is a "temple of knowledge", and a movie theater is a "temple of spectacles". Here Brodsky uses the technique of a "metaphor come alive". What we see in front of us is indeed a temple, and not just any temple but the protoplast of all temples. The conditional suitcase on the picture, however, gives away a soviet citizen that is presented as a mythical being with a dog's tail that has just come to the "Temple of Plenty" with a sole intention of having a mug of beer. 









The same space includes the pencil sketches of conditional architectural facades and other objects. In them, one can also easily see the surrealist aesthetics showing through, and one of the most enigmatic objects is probably the paraphrase of the most quoted work by Rene Magritte. 

The exhibition is organized in such a way that the pencil sketches open up with Brodsky's studies for the works that are exhibited one floor higher. These are the works of 2014, most of which were created specially for the exposition in Tchoban Museum. Executed in the author's unique technique of "clay graphics", the facades refer us to the monumentality of the Stalin Empire Style and to the inaccessible within the boundaries of the human logic Kafka's "Castle". Here we also see the continuation of Brodsky's key theme - the footsteps left by the time. The key to interpreting these creations and the key to the entire exhibition is in the two pictures executed in Indian ink on tarpaper and reminiscent of a geographic map or maybe an axonometric model of an archeological research site. Powdered with little cracks, the clay facades thus are nothing but artifacts of the times past. Again, there is a fair share of postmodernist irony present: tarpaper was a very popular building material in the soviet "dacha" construction. 











In this connection it will be interesting to also remember the architect's projects that did get implemented. These works are not in fact represented at the exhibition - but they are also about the construct of human footsteps left by our predecessors. Be that the "Vodka Ceremony Pavilion" at "Art-Klyazma" festival, "Rotonda" in Nikola-Lenivetz, or the restaurant "Pier 95" in a Moscow suburb, they all are built with the use of parts of the objects that had already been there: window frames, doors, and floor boards. 

It is remarkable that the Berlin exhibition of the works by Alexander Brodsky takes place concurrently to Martin-Gropius-Bau's exhibition of architectural drawing "VKHUTEMAS: Russian Laboratory of Contemporaneity" (open until April 6) that showcases the soviet utopia drawings of the 1920's and the "paper" projects of the 1980's - two main phenomena of "paper" design, both born in Russia. In the situation of a raging economic crisis and the monopoly of large architectural companies to designing all the major projects, a new round of "paper" architecture is inevitably on the way. Possibly, the architectural drawings and the conceptual projects of the late 2010's will one day make the core of the museum's future expositions. 

The exhibition is open until June 5 2015.

19 March 2015

Headlines now
​The Power of Lines
The building at the very beginning of New Arbat is the result of long deliberations over how to replace the former House of Communication. Contemporary, dynamic, and even somewhat zoomorphic in character, it is structured around a large diagonal grid. The building has become a striking accent both in the perspective of the former Kalinin Avenue and in the panorama of Arbat Square. Yet, unfortunately, the original concept was not fully realized. In 2020, the Moscow ArchCouncil approved a design featuring an exoskeleton – an external load-bearing structure, which eventually turned into a purely decorative element. Still, the power of the supergraphic “holds” the building, giving it the qualities of a new urban landmark with iconic potential. How this concept took shape, what unexpected associations might underlie the grid’s form, and why the exoskeleton was never built – all this is explored in our article.
Resort on the Kama River
Wowhaus has developed a project for the reconstruction of Korabelnaya Roshcha (“Mast Grove”), a wellness resort located on the banks of the Kama River.
Nests in Primorye
The eco-park project “Nests”, designed by Aleksey Polishchuk and the company Power Technologies, received first prize at the Eco-Coast 2025 festival, organized by the Union of Architects of Russia. For a glamping site in Filinskaya Bay, the authors proposed bird-shaped houses, treehouses, and a nest-shaped observation platform, topping it all with an entrance pavilion executed in the shape of an owl.
The Angle of String Tension
The House of Music, designed by Vladimir Plotkin and the architects of TPO Reserve, resembles a harp, and when seen from above, even a bass clef. But if only it were that simple! The architecture of the complex fuses two distinct expressive languages: the lattice-like, transparent, permeable vocabulary of “classical” modernism and the sculptural, ribbon-like volumes so beloved by today’s neo-modernism. How it all works – where the catharsis lies, which compositional axes underpin the design, where the project resembles Zaryadye Concert Hall and where it does not – read in the article below.
How Historic Tobolsk Becomes a Portal to the Future
Over the past decade, the architectural company Wowhaus has developed urban strategies for several Russian cities – Vyksa, Tula, and Nizhnekamsk, to name but a few. Against this backdrop, the Tobolsk master plan stands out both for its scale – the territory under transformation covers more than 220 square kilometers – and for its complexity.
St. Petersburg vs Rome
The center of St. Petersburg is, as we know, sacred – but few people can say with certainty where this “sacred place” actually begins and ends. It’s not about the formal boundaries, “from the Obvodny Canal to the Bolshaya Nevka”, but about the vibe that feels true to the city center. With the Nevskaya Ratusha complex – built to a design that won an international competition – Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban created an “image of the center” within its territory. And not so much the image of St. Petersburg itself, as that of a global metropolis. This is something new, something that hasn’t appeared in the city for a long time. In this article, we study the atmosphere, recall precedents, and even reflect on who and when first called St. Petersburg the “new Rome”. Clearly, the idea is alive for a reason.
On the Wave
The project of transforming the river port and embankment in the city of Cheboksary, developed by the ATRIUM Architects, involves one of the city’s key areas. The Volga embankment is to be turned into a riverside boulevard – a multifunctional, comfortable, and expressive space for work and leisure activities. The authors propose creating a new link with the city’s main Krasnaya (“Red”) Square, as well as erecting several residential towers inspired by the shape of the traditional national women’s headdress – these towers are likely to become striking accents on the Volga panorama.
Valery Kanyashin: “We Were Given a Free Hand”
The Headliner residential complex, the main part of which was recently completed just across from Moscow City, is a kind of neighbor to the MIBC that doesn’t “play along” with it. On the contrary, the new complex is entirely built on contrast: like a city of differently scaled buildings that seems to have emerged naturally over the past 20 years – which is a hugely popular trend nowadays! And yet here – perhaps only here – such a project has been realized to its full potential. Yes, high-rises dominate, but all these slender, delicate profiles, all these exciting perspectives! And most importantly – how everything is mixed and composed together... We spoke with the project’s leader Valery Kanyashin.
​The Keystone
Until quite recently, premium residential and office complexes in Moscow were seen as the exclusive privilege of the city center. Today the situation is changing: high-quality architecture is moving beyond the confines of the Third Ring Road and appearing on the outskirts. The STONE Kaluzhskaya business center is one such example. Projects like this help decentralize the megalopolis, making life and work prestigious in any part of the city.
Perpetuum Mobile
The interior of the headquarters of Natsproektstroy, created by the IND studio team, vividly and effectively reflects the client’s field of activity – it is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure companies, responsible for logistics and transport communications of every kind you can possibly think of.
Water and Light
Church art is full of symbolism, and part of it is truly canonical, while another part is shaped by tradition and is perceived by some as obligatory. Because of this kind of “false conservatism”, contemporary church architecture develops slowly compared to other genres, and rarely looks contemporary. Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts in this field out there: the cemetery church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, designed by Dmitry Ostroumov and Prokhram bureau, combines tradition and experiment. This is not an experiment for its own sake, however – rather, the considered work of a contemporary architect with the symbolism of space, volume, and, above all, light.
Champions’ Cup
At first glance, the Bell skyscraper on 1st Yamskogo Polya Street, 12, appears strict and laconic – though by no means modest. Its economical stereometry is built on a form close to an oval, one of UNK architects’ favorite themes. The streamlined surface of the main volume, clad in metal louvers, is sliced twice with glass incisions that graphically reveal the essence of the original shape: both its simplicity and its complexity. At the same time, dozens of highly complex engineering puzzles have been solved here.
Semi-Digital Environment
In the town of Innopolis, a satellite of Kazan, the first 4-star hotel designed by MAD Architects has opened. The interiors of the hotel combine elegance with irony, and technology with comfort, evoking the atmosphere of a computer game or maybe a sci-fi movie about the near future.
History never ends
The old railway station in Kapan, a city in southern Armenia, has been given new life by the Paris-based design firm Normal Studio. Today, it serves as a TUMO center.
A Deep, Crystal Shine
A new luxury residential development by ADM architects is set to rise in the Patriarch’s Ponds district, not far from Novopushkinsky Square. It will replace three buildings erected in the early 1990s. The project authors, Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, have placed their bets on the variety among the three volumes, modern design solutions, and attention to detail: one of the buildings will feature smoothly curved balconies with a ceramic sheen on their undersides, while another will be accented by glass “sculpture” columns.
Grigory Revzin: “What we should do with the architecture of the seventies”
Soviet modernism came in two flavors: the good, author-driven kind, and the bad, standardized kind. The good kind was “on the periphery”, while the bad kind was in the center – geographically, in terms of attention, scale, and everything else. Can we demolish it? “That would be destroying public consensus out of thin air”. So what should we do? Preserve it, but creatively: “Bring architecture into places where it hasn’t yet appeared”. Treat these buildings not as monuments, but as urban landscape. Read our interview with Grigory Revzin on the pressing topic of saving modernism – where he proposes a controversial, yet really intriguing, way of preserving 1970s buildings.
A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists
Marina Egorova, head of Empate Architectural Bureau, brought together urban planning theorists – the successors of Alexey Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev – to revive the substance and depth of professional discourse. At the first meeting, much ground was covered: the participants revisited the theoretical foundations, aligned their values, examined a cutting-edge case of the Kazan agglomeration, and concluded with the unfathomable intricacies of Russian land demarcation. Below, we present key takeaways from all the presentations.
Perspective View
CNTR Architects has designed a business center for a new district in Yekaterinburg, aiming to reduce the need for commuting and make the residential environment more diverse. The architectural solutions are equally focused on creating spatial flexibility, comfortable working conditions, and a memorable image that could allow the building to become a spatial landmark of the district.
Malevich and Bathhouses, Nature and High-Tech
The Malevich Bathhouse complex is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025 on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The project, designed by DBA-GROUP under the leadership of Vladislav Andreev, is an example of an unconventional approach to the image of a spa in general and of a bathhouse in particular. Deliberately avoiding any kind of allusion, the architects opted for streamlined forms with characteristic rounded corners, a combination of wood with bent glass, and restrained contemporary shapes – both inside and out. Let’s take a closer look at the project.
Rather, a Tablecloth and a Glass!
After many years, the long-abandoned Horse Guards Department building in St. Petersburg has finally received the attention it deserves: according to a design by Studio 44, the first restoration and adaptation works are scheduled to begin this year. Both the intended function and the general scope of works imply minimal alteration to the complex, which has preserved traces of its three-century history. All solutions are reversible and aimed, above all, at opening the monument to the city and immersing it in a lively social scene – hence the choice of a cultural center scenario with a strong gastronomic component.
​Materialization of Airflows
The Nikolai Kamov International Airport in Tomsk opened at the end of August last year. We have already written about the project – now we are taking a look at the completed building. Its functionality is reinforced by symbolic undertones: the architects at ASADOV sought to reflect local identity in the architecture as fully as possible.
The City as a Narrative
Sergey Skuratov’s approach to large urban plots could best be described as a “total design code”. The architect pays equal attention to the overall composition and the smallest of details, striving to ensure that every aspect is thoroughly thought out and subordinated to the original vision. It’s a Renaissance-like approach, really – a titanic effort demanding remarkable willpower and perseverance. The results are likewise grand – architecture that makes a statement. This article looks at the revived concept for the central section of the Seventh Heaven residential district in Kazan, a composition so thoroughly considered that even the “gradient of visual emphasis” (sic!) across the facades has been carefully worked out. It also touches on the narrative idea behind the project – and even the architect’s own doubts about it.
A Garden of Hope for Freedom
In October, at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal, the Prison Yard Garden opened on the site that had served as a prison from the 18th century until the Khrushchev Thaw. The architectural concept was developed by NOῨD Short Film, and the landscape design by the MOX landscape bureau. In fact, there are two gardens here – very different ones. We try to understand whether they evoke the right emotions in visitors, while also showing the beauty of June’s ruderal plants in bloom.
A Laconic Image of Time
The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.
The Flower of the Lake
The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.
Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue
The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
An Interior for a New Format of Education
The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.
Penthouses and Kokoshniks
A new residential complex designed by ASADOV Architects for the Krasnaya Roza business district responds to its proximity to 17th-century landmarks – the chambers of the Hamovny Dvor and St. Nicholas Church – as well as to the need to preserve valuable façades of a historic rental house built in the Russian Revival style. The architects proposed a set of buildings of varying heights, whose façades reference ecclesiastical architecture. But we were also able to detect other associations.
Centipede Town
The new school campus designed by ATRIUM Architects, located on the shores of a protected lake in the Imeretian Lowland Ornithological Reserve, represents an important and ambitious undertaking for the team: this is not just a school, but a Presidential Lyceum for the comprehensive development of gifted children – 2,500 students from age 3 through high school. At the same time, it is also envisioned as a new civic hub for the entire Sirius territory. In this article, we unpack the structure and architecture of this “lyceum town”.