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Nuanced Alternative

How can you rhyme a square and space? Easily! But to do so, you need to rhyme everything you can possibly think of: weave everything together, like in a tensegrity structure, and find your own optics too. The new exhibition at GES-2 does just that, offering its visitor a new perspective on the history of art spanning 150 years, infused with the hope for endless multiplicity of worlds and art histories. Read on to see how this is achieved and how the exhibition design by Evgeny Ace contributes to it.

24 June 2024
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The exhibition named “Square and Space: From Malevich to GES-2” which recently opened in the underground space of the “House of Culture” boasts a star-studded lineup. Francesco Bonami, a renowned contemporary art curator, publishes Flash Art magazine. In 2000, he curated the traveling contemporary art exhibition Manifesta in Ljubljana, and in 2003, he curated the 50th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, where the manifesto glorified “The Viewer’s Dictatorship”. In 2017, GES-2 published Francesco Bonami’s book “I Can Do That Too!” explaining “why contemporary art is still art”. As for Zelfira Tregulova, she was, until recently, the director of Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, into which she had brought a lot of contemporary art as well.

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    Zelfira Tregulova at the inauguration of the exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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    Francesco Bonami at the inauguration of the exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Now, Francesco Bonami and Zelfira Tregulova have come together to create an exhibition at GES-2, offering an intriguing angle on contemporary art and its history. As paradoxical as it may seem, contemporary art already has a significant history. It’s interesting to understand how much this history “weighs it down”, given that one of contemporary art’s key elements is novelty, a rejection of the old. How does one navigate this when your rejection of history has itself become a history over 110 years long? You need to respond to this contradiction in one way or another!

The curators respond brilliantly, in my opinion. They use excellent examples from a historical span ranging from the Peredvizhniki and Aivazovsky to an installation by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, created specifically for the exhibition, to show that alternative histories of contemporary art – just like Max Fry’s alternative worlds – can be endless. By looking at the echoes of the “Black Square” from a slightly different angle, everything changes a bit; and there can be many such angles. The perspectives for creative reimagining of art history are fundamentally open.

This novelty lies specifically in the curators’ approach, and not in Francesco Bonami’s comparison of the “Black Square” to a QR code. This last innovation seems somewhat contrived to me.

The exhibition itself is excellent. The exhibits are of high quality, from good collections, and very diverse. There are even two codices, where the curators found “black squares done before Malevich” (sic!) as a lyrical digression: one from 1880 depicts a “battle of black men in a dark room”, and the other, an even earlier one, shows “darkness before the creation of the world”.

Creation of the world as a black rectangle. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


According to the curators, the exhibition begins with the “Black Square” (not the original, but an authentic repetition by Malevich) and ends with a total installation by the Kabakovs. However, if we are to look from the chronological standpoint, the beginning of the exhibition is Aivazovsky’s “Black Sea” from 1881, which pairs Malevich at the entrance, along with several other 19th-century paintings. The ending is not another Kabakov installation but one by Vladimir Seleznyov, dated 2024.

Both the Kabakovs and Seleznyov are a highlight.

The Kabakovs’ installation named “Incident in the Museum, or Water Music” is a series of rooms from a “retrospective” of the entirely fictional artist Stepan Koshelev, a Cezannist/Social Realist, featuring milkmaids, dachas, skis, and a mock catalog signed by none other than Alpatov. The exhibition is convincingly executed, and the paintings are skillfully done “by all the canons of the genre.” However, the installation suggests that “something went wrong,” and on the opening day, the ceiling leaked, leaving the rooms filled with basins catching water from tubes installed under the ceiling, resembling sprinklers, but without nozzles. The main theme is thus the music created by the dripping water, though in reality, it is the embarrassment and awkwardness of the leak that take center stage. At this point, I couldn’t help but recall the opening of the Russian Pavilion at the 2008 Architecture Biennale. Even the walls in the first room are red, and the name Koshelev would ring a bell for anyone interested in contemporary architecture. There is one big “but”, though: the Kabakovs created this installation in 1992, long before any of these events were planned...

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    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Vladimir Seleznyov’s installation is not as immersive as the Kabakovs’, but it can be equally interesting for those with an architectural mindset. It is titled “Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt”; the second word translates from German as “city of dreams” though for Russian and English speakers, it also resonates with the word “trauma”. This play on words is likely intentional, inviting contemplation on whether dreaming is inherently traumatic for the Russian psyche.

For all intents and purposes, this name was not chosen by accident – I could go on and on about whether it’s really traumatic for a Russian individual to dream, but I digress. The essence of the installation, placed in a dark room, is a city constructed from trash. When the lights come on, we see that it is unmistakably trash, but when the lights switch off according to a schedule, the objects marked with phosphorescent paint transform into a cityscape, resembling a somewhat zombified city with a greenish tint. The author’s view on the metropolis and its trashy allure is apparent (he doesn’t think much of a metropolis, to put it bluntly), yet the scene mesmerizes you precisely because this heap of trash strikingly resembles a real city.

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    Vladimir Semyonov. "Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt." Installation. 2024. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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    Vladimir Semyonov. "Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt." Installation. 2024. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


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    Vladimir Semyonov. "Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt." Installation. 2024. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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    Vladimir Semyonov. "Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt." Installation. 2024. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


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    Vladimir Semyonov. "Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt." Installation. 2024. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
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    Vladimir Semyonov. "Metropolis. Traum(a)stadt." Installation. 2024. Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


The exhibition develops chronologically from the old to the new, with well-known works and authors juxtaposed and even intermixed with those familiar solely to contemporary art specialists. Nonetheless, a determined visitor, who thoroughly explores the exhibition (going preferably a couple of times back and forth), will indeed feel acquainted with an alternative version of the last 150 years of contemporary art history, encompassing all of its key movements: realism, abstraction, optical art, tensegrity structures, photorealism, and total installations. It might even be possible to pass an exam on contemporary art after such a visit, despite the lack of obvious textbook examples –the “Black Square” being the only exception

So, the curators offer us a nuanced alternative history of contemporary art, based on “solid” items (not random by any means!) from good collections, including, of course, the V-A-C collection. They clearly suggest that this “revolution” has neither an end (since contemporary art continues developing) nor a beginning (since it is not so difficult to trace it back to 19th-century realist painting and old Latin codices – when they depict the world before the beginning of time or the battle of the negroes). We haven’t even mentioned the pre-classical alabasters yet... Nevertheless, one of the main emotions the exhibition evokes is this slightly new perspective, fundamentally open, indicating that there can be many angles, and the chronological “loose ends” aim at the absence of rigid boundaries.

All this was helped to be expressed by the architect Evgeny Ace with his exhibition design.

Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


The fundamental openness of the curatorial statement in the space is visually represented by the plane of a stand visible through the glass separating the exhibition hall from the cloakroom, a kind of red (rather, terracotta!) wedge that suppresses (but not completely!) the otherwise white space of GES-2. This is supported by the fascias, most of which hang on the ends of the stands.

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    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Inside, in the space of the hall, divided by the GES-2 supports into three naves, three other naves of a smaller size are inscribed, made of stands of several muted shades, connected at the top by flat strips – at an angle, like several linear hangings, with one “rope” intersecting above the other, looking very much like a housewife hangs laundry in the yard, although we now mostly see this mise-en-scène in movies.

The lines of the building’s metal supports, duplicated by drainage strips on the floor, run in one direction, while the lines of the stands are at an angle to them. The two structures intersect; two spatial grids overlap each other, as if visibly representing the idea of looking at contemporary art from a slightly different, though not perpendicular, angle.

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    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


But then again, the angle at which the lines of the stands are set is not arbitrary. The central promenade starts behind the Black Square, and the square is turned towards the entering person as the key exhibit. Thus, the axis of Malevich’s “Black Square” strings together 20th-century art.

The exhibition booths themselves are subjected to a certain modular width, standing with large gaps between them, so while the lines are marked, one can stroll along and across in various directions, providing a wide choice of sometimes unexpected perspectives. Thus, in the space of GES-2, “streets” and “squares” (sic!) are formed, which Francesco Bonami considers linguistically friendly to the “Black Square”. The layout turned out to be modernist, composed of individual plates, and not just modernist, but “late-modernist” from the 1980s, because the plates are not set at a daring 45° angle and not end-on to the red line, but rather hold their formation, albeit intermittently, like on Moscow’s Sergius Radonezh Street (formerly Tulinskaya until 1992).

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    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


The ends of the exhibition booths are not cut straight but slightly protrude, echoing the plaques of the fascias and the very first title “tail” of the exhibition, as if each stand is formed, like a sandwich, from two outer plates and a filler. A similar H-beam contour can be seen in the metal supports of GES-2, and they resonate with each other. I asked Evgeny Ace if this resemblance was intentional – no, he said, the stands have such a contour simply to lighten their construction. However, if it seems that way to the visitor, then so be it, reassured the author of the exhibition design. Well, I’ve got nothing against it either.

Nevertheless, the booths indeed look like overblown pillars, very akin to the original interior, as if a modified DNA had been grafted onto them, causing them to develop in a similar but slightly different way. A rather curious effect!

By the way, more about the city! Besides having a “city within a city” – that same “Metropolis” like a large model at an architectural exhibition, and a “show within a show” (the total installation by the Kabakovs), there is also a “little house inside GES-2” which seems to be becoming a tradition in this day and age.

Here, the little house is of approximately the same size: the exhibition includes an authorial repetition of the “Shed” designed by Meganon Architects. As the tour guide told us, in Nikola-Lenivets – where it was built in 2006 – this house was more of a lantern, while here it serves more to cast shadows in its interior, similar to the classic “shadow gaps”, so much loved by Renzo Piano.

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    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


I asked Evgeny Ace if he was the initiator of the authorial reproduction of the long-lost Shed – again, he said no. But it’s gratifying to see the object as an old acquaintance.

The free yet confidently directed construction of “streets” and “squares” in the exhibition is echoed by its internal orchestration. There are many narratives and even more shapes here, resonating with each other, creating dialogues, rhythmically paired, and sometimes even more complex. For example, at the beginning of the exhibition, we see several landscapes divided by the horizon into two halves, close to two strips of abstraction. One of them is Aivazovsky’s “Black Sea”, sky and water, a pair to the “Black Square” by name and minimal figuration, because the chaos of waves, so well captured by Aivazovsky, is minimally figurative. It should be noted that on the same exhibition booth “behind” Aivazovsky, there are two more landscapes divided similarly; the curators subtly play on the edge of abstraction and reality in 19th-century art, but what’s really interesting is that the same line (and this is visible from the entrance), further includes the work of Erik Bulatov, a lover of “Horizons” – the painting “Black Evening / White Snow” luxuriously interpreting both the perspective and the monochrome of the “Black Square” and the non-objective division into sky and earth. This is something that we can understand as “the separation of heaven from earth” or “darkness from light” as in the mentioned book of the Old Testament.

Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


You enter, see this not-so-simple but obvious rhyme, and understand that there will be plenty of such things here. Just as the space is tied together by rows of showcases and lines of free passages, so do the exhibits resonate with each other, forming many threads, sometimes in subtle, and sometimes the most obvious way.

Take, for instance, the shadows from the kinetic objects of Kolaichuk and Francisco Infante on the floor next to the horizontal plane projection of the Qubbat as-Sakhrah shrine, which one cannot step on (marked by a pair of black strips). Nearby, there is another shrine, paper sacred vestments; and so on. Here, if you wander, look, and think, you can find a lot for yourself, much of it seemingly accidental, but not so accidental.

Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru
  • zooming
    Exhibition "Square and Space. From Malevich to GES-2". 20.06.2024 – 27.10.2024
    Copyright: Photograph © Julia Tarabarina, Archi.ru


Perhaps the high level of orchestration combined with a high level of freedom – both in space and selection – is what makes the exhibition truly magnificent; the selection of items is also important, but it is naturally expected from a good curator, while making them string together, making them “have a conversation” in space, sometimes even facing away from each other – that is something of great value.


24 June 2024

Headlines now
​A Brick Shell
In the process of designing a clubhouse situated among pine trees in a prestigious suburban area near Moscow, the architectural firm “A.Len” did the façade design part. The combination of different types of brick and masonry correlates with the volumetric and plastique solutions, further enhanced by the inclusion of wood-painted fragments and metal “glazing”.
Word Forms
ATRIUM architects love ambitious challenges, and for the firm’s thirtieth anniversary, they boldly play a game of words with an exhibition that dives deep into a self-created vocabulary. They immerse their projects – especially art installations – into this glossary, as if plunging into a current of their own. You feel as if you’re flowing through the veins of pure art, immersed in a universe of vertical cities, educational spaces – of which the architects are true masters – and the cultural codes of various locations. But what truly captivates is the bold statement that Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy make, both through their work and this exhibition: architecture, above all, is art – the art of working with form and space.
Flexibility and Acuteness of Modernity
Luxurious, fluid, large “kokoshniks” and spiral barrel columns, as if made from colorful chewing gum: there seem to be no other mansion like this in Moscow, designed in the “Neo-Russian-Modern” style. And the “Teremok” on Malaya Kaluzhskaya, previously somewhat obscure, has “come alive with new colors” and gained visibility after its restoration for the office of the “architectural ecosystem” as the architects love to call themselves. It’s evident that Julius Borisov and the architects at UNK put their hearts into finding this new office and bringing it up to date. Let’s delve into the paradoxes of this mansion’s history and its plasticity. Spoiler: two versions of modernity meet here, both balancing on the razor’s edge of “what’s current”.
Yuri Vissarionov: “A modular house does not belong to the land”
It belongs to space, or to the air... It turns out that 3D printing is more effective when combined with a modular approach: the house is built in a workshop and then adapted to the site, including on uneven terrain. Yuri Vissarionov shares his latest experience in designing tourist complexes, both in central Russia and in the south. These include houseboats, homes printed from lightweight concrete using a 3D printer, and, of course, frame houses.
​Moscow’s First
“The quality of education largely depends on the quality of the educational environment”. This principle of the last decade has been realized by Sergey Skuratov in the project for the First Moscow Gymnasium on Rostovskaya Embankment in the Khamovniki district. The building seamlessly integrates into the complex urban landscape, responding both to the pedestrian flow of the city and the quiet alleyways. It skillfully takes advantage of the height differences and aligns with modern trends in educational space design. Let’s take a closer look.
Looking at the Water
The site of Villa Sonata stretches from the road to the water’s edge, offering its own shoreline, pier, and a picturesque river panorama. To reveal these sweeping views, Roman Leonidov “cut” the façade diagonally parallel to the river, thus getting two main axes for the house and, consequently, “two heads”. The internal core – two double-height spaces, a living room and a conservatory, with a “bridge” above them – makes the house both “transparent” and filled with light.
The White Wing
Well, it’s not exactly white. It’s more of a beige, white-stone structure that plays with the color of limestone – smoother surfaces are lighter, while rougher ones are darker. This wing unites various elements: it absorbs and interprets the surrounding themes. It responds to everything, yet maintains a cohesive expression – a challenging task! – while also incorporating recognizable features of its own, such as the dynamic cuts at the bottom, top, and middle.
Urban Dunes
The XSA Ramps team designed and built a three-part sports hub for a park in Rostov-on-Don, welcoming people of all ages and fitness levels. The skate plaza, pump track, and playground are all meticulously crafted with details that attract a diverse range of visitors. The technical execution of the shapes and slopes transforms this space into a kind of sculptural composition.
Proportional Growth
The project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential area has been announced. The buildings are situated on an elongated plot – almost a “ray” that shoots out from the center of the area towards the river. Their layout reflects both a response to Moscow’s architectural preferences over the past 15 years, shifting “from blocks to towers”, and an interpretation of the neighboring business park designed by SOM. Additionally, the best apartments here are not located at the very top but closer to the middle, forming a glowing “waistline”.
The “Staircase” Building
In designing the “Details” residential complex in New Moscow, Rais Baishev spiced up the now-popular Moscow theme of a “courtyard” building with an idea drawn from the surrealist drawings by Maurits Escher. He envisioned the stepped silhouettes and descending slopes as a metaphysical mega-staircase, creating a key void within the courtyard that gave the project an internal “spine”. This concept is felt both in the building’s silhouette and on its façades.
Projection of the Quarter
No one doubted that the building that Vladimir Plotkin designed as part of the “Garden Quarters” would be the most modernist of all. And it turned out just that way: while adhering to the common design code, the building successfully combines brick and white stone, rhythmically responding to the neighboring building designed by Ostozhenka, yet tactfully and persistently making a few statements of its own. This includes the projection of the ideal urban development composition “14–9–6”, which can be found right next door, mathematical calculations, including those for various types of terraces (and perhaps the only reminder of the Soviet past of the Kauchuk rubber factory!), and the white “cross-stitch” pattern of the façade grid.
Domus Aurea
In this issue, we examine the “Tessinsky-1” house, designed by Sergey Skuratov and completed in 2023. Located in the middle of the Serebryanicheskaya Embankment district, at the intersection of its main streets, this house assumes a sort of “nodal” role: it not only responds to everything around it and preserves many memories of the former EMA factory within itself, but it weaves all this into a newly directed pattern, reconciling bright “gold” and dark-colored brick, largely with the help of the new, modern-yet-archaic Columba brick, which, come to think about it, is the most precious element here.
The Chimney of Nikola-Lenivets
In this issue, we are examining the “Obelisk House” designed by KATARSIS and built for the Arkhstoyanie 2023 festival. However, it was only finished later on, and this is why we are examining it now. It seems to us that after the “Obelisk House” appeared in Nikola-Lenivets, a dialogue and a few inner connections appeared between the temporary structures built here. These houses no longer look like “accidental neighbors”, more of which below.
​Periscope by the Bay
The jury awarded the second place in the competition for a public and cultural center in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the companies GORA (“Mountain”) and M4. In the consortium’s proposal, the building resembles a sperm whale with a calf swimming next to it or a periscope, whose lenses capture the most spectacular views from the surrounding landscape.
From Arcs to Dolmens
While working on the competition project for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, ASADOV Architects prioritized the value of the natural and urban environment, aiming to preserve the balance of the location while minimizing the resemblance of the volume that they designed to a “traditional building”. The task was challenging, and the architects created three versions, one of which having been developed after the competition, where their main proposal took third place. However, the point of interest here is not the competition result but the continuity of creative thinking.
Hide and Seek
The ID Moskovskiy house, designed by Stepan Liphart in St. Petersburg, in the courtyards near Moskovskiy Avenue beyond the Obvodny Canal and recently completed, is notable for several reasons. Firstly, it has been realized with considerable accuracy, which is particularly significant as this is the first building where the architect was responsible not only for the facades but also for the layouts, allowing for better integration between the two. On the other hand, this building is interesting as an example of the “germination” of new architecture in the city: it draws on the best examples from the neighborhood and becomes an improved and developed sum of ideas found by the architect in the surrounding context.
The Big Twelve
Yesterday, the winners of the Moscow Mayor’s Architecture Award were announced and honored. Let’s take a look at what was awarded and, in some cases, even critique this esteemed award. After all, there is always room for improvement, right?
Above the Golden Horn
The residential complex “Philosophy” designed by T+T architects in Vladivostok, is one of the new projects in the “Golubinaya Pad” area, changing its development philosophy (pun intended) from single houses to a comprehensive approach. The buildings are organized along public streets, varying in height and format, with one house even executed in gallery typology, featuring a cantilever leaning on an art object.
Nuanced Alternative
How can you rhyme a square and space? Easily! But to do so, you need to rhyme everything you can possibly think of: weave everything together, like in a tensegrity structure, and find your own optics too. The new exhibition at GES-2 does just that, offering its visitor a new perspective on the history of art spanning 150 years, infused with the hope for endless multiplicity of worlds and art histories. Read on to see how this is achieved and how the exhibition design by Evgeny Ace contributes to it.
Blinds for Ice
An ice arena has been constructed in Domodedovo based on a project by Yuri Vissarionov Architects. To prevent the long façade, a technical requirement for winter sports facilities, from appearing monotonous, the architects proposed the use of suspended structures with multidirectional slats. This design protects the ice from direct sunlight while giving the wall texture and detail.
Frozen Magma
A competition for the creation of a public and cultural center was held in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Three architectural companies made it to the final, and we consider it important to share about the work of each. Let’s start with the winner – the consortium led by Wowhaus.
Campus within a Day
In this article, we talk about what the participants of Genplan Institute of Moscow’s hackathon were doing at the MosComArchitecture booth at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition. We also discuss who won the prize and why, and what can be done with the territory of a small university on the outskirts of Moscow.
Vertical Civilization
Genpro considered the development of the vertical city concept and made it the theme of their pavilion at the “ArchMoscow” exhibition.
Marina Yegorova: “We think in terms of hectares, not square meters”
The career path of architect Marina Yegorova is quite impressive: MARHI, SPEECH, MosComArchitectura, the Genplan Institute of Moscow, and then her own architectural company. Its name Empate, which refers to the words “to draw” in Portuguese and “to empathize” in English, should not be misleading with its softness, as the firm freely works on different scales, including Integrated Territorial Development projects. We talked with Marina about various topics: urban planning experience, female leadership style, and even the love of architects for yachting.
Andrey Chuikov: “Optimum balance is achieved through economics”
The Yekaterinburg-based architectural company CNTR is in its mature stage: crystallization of principles, systematization, and standardization helped it make a qualitative leap, enhance competencies, and secure large contracts without sacrificing the aesthetic component. The head of the company, Andrey Chuikov, told us about building a business model and the bonuses that additional education in financial management provides for an architect.
The Fulcrum
Ostozhenka Architects have designed two astonishing towers practically on the edge of a slope above the Oka River in Nizhny Novgorod. These towers stand on 10-meter-tall weathered steel “legs”, with each floor offering panoramic views of the river and the city; all public spaces, including corridors, receive plenty of natural light. Here, we see a multitude of solutions that are unconventional for the residential routine of our day and age. Meanwhile, although these towers hark back to the typological explorations of the seventies, they are completely reinvented in a contemporary key. We admire Veren Group as the client – this is exactly how a “unique product” should be made – and we tell you exactly how our towers are arranged.
Crystal is Watching You
Right now, Museum Night has kicked off at the Museum of Architecture, featuring a fresh new addition – the “Crystal of Perception”, an installation by Sergey Kuznetsov, Ivan Grekov, and the KROST company, set up in the courtyard. It shimmers with light, it sings, it reacts to the approach of people, and who knows what else it can do.
The Secret Briton
The house is called “Little France”. Its composition follows the classical St. Petersburg style, with a palace-like courtyard. The decor is on the brink of Egyptian lotuses, neo-Greek acroteria, and classic 1930s “gears”; the recessed piers are Gothic, while the silhouette of the central part of the house is British. It’s quite interesting to examine all these details, attempting to understand which architectural direction they belong to. At the same time, however, the house fits like a glove in the context of the 20th line of St. Petersburg’s Vasilievsky Island; its elongated wings hold up the façade quite well.
The Wrap-Up
The competition project proposed by Treivas for the first 2021 competition for the Russian pavilion at EXPO 2025 concludes our series of publications on pavilion projects that will not be implemented. This particular proposal stands out for its detailed explanations and the idea of ecological responsibility: both the facades and the exhibition inside were intended to utilize recycled materials.
Birds and Streams
For the competition to design the Omsk airport, DNK ag formed a consortium, inviting VOX architects and Sila Sveta. Their project focuses on intersections, journeys, and flights – both of people and birds – as Omsk is known as a “transfer point” for bird migrations. The educational component is also carefully considered, and the building itself is filled with light, which seems to deconstruct the copper circle of the central entrance portal, spreading it into fantastic hyper-spatial “slices”.