Countryside Avant-Garde

The project of the museum of Aleksey Gastev, the ideologist of scientific organization of work, located in his hometown of Suzdal, is inscribed in multiple contexts: the contest of a small town, the context of avant-garde design, the context of “lean production”, and the context of the creative quest of Nikolai Lyzlov’s minimalist architecture – and it seems to us that this project even reveals a distant memory of the fact that Aleksey Gastev learned his craft in France.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

23 August 2023

send.project

Aleksey Gastev was a revolutionary, trade union activist, ideologist of the Proletkult, and also a poet and, most importantly, one of the founders of the Soviet movement of “Scientific Organization of Labor”, and the “Central Institute of Labor”. He was also the author of the “social engineering” program, “applied sociology of labor” and the theory of lean production. The essence of the first was to accurately and economically organize the joint work of man and machine, which is clearly inspired by Henry Ford’s conveyor, although Gastev gained experience working as a mechanic in France; the second – to the collection of primary information directly on the production: what is wrong? Why does the worker work slow? – and so on. The third one is still used to hold the Lean Production Leaders Cup.

Aleksey Gastev died in Kommunarka in 1939.

zooming — This is what an optimal hammer swing looks like according to Aleksey Gastev. Cyclogram of chiseling with a chisel. Alexei Gastev in the pedagogical laboratory of the Central Institute of Labor. From the book: “Labor Attitudes”, Moscow, CIT, 1924

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio

He was born in Suzdal, and Suzdal was also the place where he was exiled in the Tsarist time. This is why one of Suzdal’s streets bears his name.

Dmitry Razumov is an entrepreneur, CEO of ONEXIM Group and at various times a member of the boards of directors of several companies, from Nornickel to Megafon. He is also a philanthropist and founder of the MIRA Center in Suzdal, which includes a library, a recording studio, and an exhibition hall.

Dmitry Razumov decided to build a museum of Alexei Gastev in Suzdal, on Gastev Street, 1.

Since the beginning of 2021, the project has been curated by Nikolay Lyzlov. He proposed a very characteristic project, according to the author’s description, “in the spirit of the Avant-garde and Gastev’s views, with the preservation of traditional forms and materials of Suzdal”.

It is hard to imagine a place more inappropriate for the notion of “avant-garde” than the ancient town of Suzdal, which, after happily avoiding the construction of the railroad, turned into a vivid example of a bourgeois “semi-village” town, exceptionally sleepy and drowned in vegetable gardens, which now constitute its tourist charm. There is not a single monument of constructivism in Suzdal. On the other hand, avant-garde artists sometimes did develop in such an environment, and, dare I say it, often in opposition to its reverie charm.

In a word, Suzdal is Suzdal. The site is situated at a distance from the main Lenin street running from one end of town to the other, next to the gate of Alexander Cathedral, which, according to legend, was founded by Alexander Nevsky himself, but was actually built on the money of the Czaress Natalia Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great; she gave the money right before her death, and the architecture of the cathedral is provincial, like everything in Suzdal of the late XVII – early XVIII century.

To the right of the site, there is the monastery, and to the left, there is the Spartak stadium, which makes the site one of the characteristic local underdeveloped places. Further away, there is a small meadow and a slope descending to the Kamenka River: a small museum, designed for 50 people with staff, will stand in the open space above the river.

But – the devil is in the details – we should note that despite the spaciousness of the surrounding area, the placement of the building is far from accidental: a gas pipeline runs through the site, and it is only possible to build on the southern side, between the pipeline and the boundary of the stadium.

On the 3D render – which the authors, definitely intentionally, immersed in the most cloudy Suzdal day, probably to avoid any misleading tourist gloss – one can see that the volume of the museum is rather miniature and is lost in the vastness. The Medny Dvor hotel on the right and even the monastery on the left look noticeably larger, and they are the first things that meet the eye. And the Gastev Museum, also because it faces the main viewpoints with its sidewalls, looks exceptionally modest – like lean production.

The features of the building, as the architects say, inherit the mixed construction technique adopted in Suzdal’s tourist facilities construction, both in the past and now: a brick story in white cladding at the bottom and a wooden story clad with planks at the top. The boards are arranged horizontally, that is, as they originally always were, and not vertically, as is now fashionable – but according to the project, there are no plans to paint them, they are supposed to age naturally, maybe to a “dark or almost-black color”.

This beautiful idea is not entirely accurate. When it comes to black, the boards are already starting to rot, which is undesirable – but dark gray, on the contrary, is quite possible. In combination with boiled linseed oil, dark brown, rich tinted flecks may appear – everything will look pretty much as drawn.

This is not the main inaccuracy, however. The neighboring house is depicted by the architects on their renderings as gray, as the museum of wooden architecture; in fact, however, it is painted saturnine red, like many of the houses in the city.

The silvery-gray color of naturally aging wood can be found either in old two-story apartment buildings with warped staircase extensions that have not been repaired for a long time, or in brand-new, modern buildings that are oriented both to the Museum of Wooden Architecture and to those very houses that have not been repaired, but even more to global trends.

And yet, it’s still beautiful. What we see is a very delicate reinterpretation of a local, albeit universal, building tradition.

To no lesser extent, the project fits into the context of Nikolay Lyzlov’s own architectural research, and fits perfectly into the row between, for example, the recent office on Verkhnaya Krasnoselskaya, which was awarded the “Golden Section” diploma in 2021, and the 15-year-old project for an equestrian complex in Pirogovo. The similarities with the first one are: traditional technology without a vent facade, bricks in cladding, a wooden cornice, and the fenestration proportions. The similarities with the second one are even more numerous: the combination of wood, which the architect at some point planned to make black (sic!), extended proportions, a pediment, and even a “temple”, though to the same extent a “manege”, portico. And now let us look at the version of the Gastev Museum building the way it looked back in the spring of 2023: the river was faced by a portico with a large outreach, resting on several supports, and protecting the terrace from the rain.

Now the portico is gone, but there is an open terrace on the river side for events, with an area of 72 m2. The portico was replaced by a vertical stained glass window, its left border is located exactly in the center, and the stained glass window is shifted from off axis, saluting the right-hand part of the stained glass window in the ridge of the roof, providing light to the atrium of the museum.

The second main facade – and I am reminding you that it’s the sidewalls that play the first fiddle here – facing Gastev Street, is also laconic and looks even more like a village house, with a window only at the top, which illuminates the “Heritage” exhibition, while the corner recess in the first tier is responsible for the entrance highlight: it faces the city center, where visitors are more likely to come from, with a simple glass door and a very simple inscription saying “Gastev”. Like I said, the ideologist of sociology of labor was amazingly modest.

Despite the loss of the portico, the interior of the museum retains a few traces of the “temple” approach – it is built as a three-nave basilica on wooden pillars, with a narrow and elevated central “nave” of the vertical atrium, illuminated both by an oblong skylight of the roof ridge and a vertical window facing the river. This “lighting plane” cuts the museum into two halves.

But this light is not a laser, it cannot cut things. Moreover, the atrium is crossed by a staircase, and in the middle there is an elevator shaft – but then again, it is transparent. At the same time, the surrounding space becomes increasingly complex. We see a spatial axis, a thin axis of symmetrical construction, through which parts of the museum begin, as if playing, “jump” first in one direction, then in another. All the more so because the architects planned to include “cells” of avant-garde colors on the sides, like the rectangular spots in Mondrian’s paintings.

On the sides, the space is two and three-tiered in different parts, the floors to the south and north, left and right, are not at the same level, only meeting at about 2/3 of the height. This type of “packing” the internal volumes is reminiscent of the approaches of the House of Narkomfin: it also strives for optimization and the best possible folding, like a three-dimensional puzzle. One can definitely see parallels in this: in this case, we are seeing a “lean” organization of space, just as we saw a “lean” organization of labor....

The volumes of the technical rooms, the boiler room and the storage room, located in the southern part, are deepened, and are lightened up by areaways. The whole floor is deepened by approximately 1.5 meters relative to the zero mark, and on the first floor the public space of the tea room is located 45 cm higher than the space of the lecture hall.

Here we would like to draw your attention to one more thing. The wooden columns of the inner frame are very good, and you don’t even have to speak of a temple here – the museum typology rather pushes us towards a temple – it can be any industrial building, from a barn to a hangar, which is closer to Gastev’s story: let us imagine a former, once optimally organized conveyor belt turned into a museum. The only trouble is that we can’t think of any Russian examples of such spaces, but there are several French ones. But then again, we can recall that Gastev learned his locksmith skills, or perhaps his habit of industrial discipline, in France. The circle is closed.

1 / 8

Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
2 / 8

Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
3 / 8

Plan at the -0.900 elevation. Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
4 / 8

Plan at the +0.900 elevation. Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
5 / 8

Plan at the +2.000 elevation. Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
6 / 8

Plan at the +4.200 elevation. Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
7 / 8

Gastev Museum, Suzdal

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio
8 / 8

Cross-section view (original version). Gastev Museum

Copyright: © Lyzlov Architectural Studio

23 August 2023

Headlines now

News

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Interview

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.

Object

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.

send.project

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

send.project

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Interview

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.

Overview

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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”.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

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.

Object

New Aeroflot Office: Lightness, Play, Comfort

Even if you have no plans to fly with Aeroflot anytime soon, their new office at 2A 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street is still worth a visit for its interior design alone.

Object

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.

Object

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”.

Object

Warm Black and White

The second phase of “Quarter 31”, designed by KPLN and built in the Moscow suburb town of Pushkino, reveals a multifaceted character. At first glance, the complex appears to be defined by geometry and a monochrome palette. But a closer look reveals a number of “irregular” details: a gradient of glazing and flared window frames, a hierarchy of façades, volumetric brickwork, and even architectural references to natural phenomena. We explore all the rules – and exceptions – that we were able to discover here.