compound moscow - Bardakhanova Champkins architects

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COMPOUND MOSCOW
NICHOLAS CHAMPKINS
Fig 1. The twelve lane Sadovoye ring (or Garden ring), here bridging the Yauza river, is the second of four major roads that define the concentric layers of the city’s growth.
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K
uzia is homeless. His traditional timber house has
been demolished to make way for new modern highrise apartments and he must reluctantly go from doorto-door to find a new place to stay. Kuzia is young and
cheeky; he is only 700 years old. This is the opening
scene from the first episode of a classic soviet animation series
based on the children’s stories by Tatiana Alexandrova. Set against
the backdrop of a young family moving into a new apartment in
a microrayon (mini-district) of a Russian city, the story ‘A home
for Kuzia’ (1984) describes the relationship between a domovoi
(домовой) or house spirit, and a seven-year-old girl, Natasha.1,2
While the old houses are demolished in the background,
Natasha admires and cleans her new, and as yet unfurnished,
prefabricated apartment until she is disturbed by the sound of
sneezing from the balcony. She opens the door to find the dustcovered Kuzia and, after an initial wariness, they quickly become
firm friends. In the first half of the story the domovoi searches for a
space to live and becomes very upset that there is no gap, crack or
redundant leftover place to hide. His first choice is a free-standing
kitchen unit under the sink that he thinks could be ideal but
Natasha’s mother pragmatically uses this space for rubbish. Later
when family friends visit, he hides in the oven and then the fridge;
none of these places are suitable. The new flat does not contain
any ambiguous and concealed spaces that Kuzia can recognize
and enjoy.
The children’s stories by Tatiana Alexandrova rely upon
the dislocation and consequent visibility of the house spirit to
create a series of incidents where fantasy and the everyday can
meet.3 Traditionally domovoi are thought to be sprites responsible
for the wellbeing of those who live or stay in a house; when you
move homes you must make friendship anew. These imaginary
characters reinforce a sense of belonging and the meaning
of home that is also associated with the layout and routine of
inhabitation. It is clear that the cartoon is, in part, reinforcing the
modernist (and soviet state/commercial developer) message that
the new, system-built spaces are progressive, clean and healthy—
everyone should aspire to such an environment. Kuzia resorted to
a game of ‘hide and seek’ precisely because new buildings do not
have secret or idiosyncratic spaces, they are portrayed as being
modern, efficient and rational.
DOMA (HOME)
In traditional Russian houses domovoi should be found in, or
behind, the centrally located pech (печь), a large square hearth
with a warm, frequently ceramic tiled, face to each room. Such
a cellular arrangement, without corridors, means that the hearth
becomes the focus, identity and organizing element for domestic
and everyday life. The sprite is irrevocably linked by the layout
of the house to a sense of containment, identity and security.
Indeed in contrast to Gaston Bachelard’s romantic idea of home
expressed by a candle or light in a window on a winter’s night,
Russians are more introspective and less concerned with outward
expression of status or ‘keeping up appearances’ through the
external beautification of their home. The emphasis is inward
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and closed; ostentatious expression of wealth, particularly in the
design of dacha (дача) or holiday/weekend cottages is a relatively
new and fascinating—if ultimately nauseating—phenomenon.
Most Russian families now live in flats and apartments,
rather than houses, and share a vertical system of communal
heating pipes rather than a hearth. In most cases one enters an
apartment through two consecutive doors or tambour (тамбур)
usually no more than 300mm apart, and often much less (Fig. 2).
The cavity provides effective acoustic and thermal insulation to
the stairwell and in larger flats a space for household items. This
sliver of theshold space has become one of the popular homes for
the domovoi and in a way signifies a demarcation of hospitality; it
is considered very impolite to your host and their home if a visitor
continues to wear outdoor shoes or to refuse replacing them with
the house slippers, tapki (тапки or тапочки) that are offered. The
tambour is where these two contrasting modes of dress coexist
and the visitor changes from one to another. There is a very clear
distinction between private, domestic space and shared public
or common areas; there is a tension between what is inside and
guarded and what is outside and alien.4
Consequently, although all the flats are accessed from
a shared stairwell, there is little sense of common area. The
spaces are without any character or manifest expression of the
people who use it and are understood only in functional terms;
a sequence of spaces, stairs and corridors that give you access to
your distinct and individual apartment hidden behind twin doors.
In recent years it has become fashionable for the outer face of the
tambour to be upholstered with faux leather padding and brass
studs. The edge of each territory is identified by habiliment of the
interior decoration industry. This has the disconcerting effect of
employing a surface material more commonly associated with
living room furniture than an outward and public aspect. The
effect however is not welcoming or domestic, but defensive and
akin to classical rustication.
ULITSA (OUTSIDE/STREET)
The emphasis on the home as a discreet spatial component within
clearly defined boundaries is a useful means to understand the
character and organization of the spaces outside: the shared
common spaces, streets and city.5 Moscow in particular has a
reputation of being confusing for visitors, and consequently
creating an opportunity for hedonism, with disorientating
juxtapositions of scale, meaning and building typology. Groups
of similar and generic buildings create informal architectural
vignettes that are loosely assembled within a legible nineteenthcentury urban structure of concentric rings and radial boulevards
that have been disproportionately distended by excessive car use
and vainglorious planning (Fig. 1). Moscow still functions despite
such major surgery and impositions; the Soviet masterplans
for the city have added new layers of frequently incomplete
infrastructure at a dizzying speed and dislocating scale but the
predisposition for loose collections and tense relationships
between buildings and spaces remains.6
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Fig 2. A tambour at the entrance of an apartment in the Stalinist Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building at the mouth of the Yauza River. Once beyond the twin door
arrangement Russian apartments the quality of the interior contrasts with the anemic shared spaces within the building.
The underlying fragmented nature of Moscow is not a
recent rupture or fracture but a product of the prevailing attitudes
to land ownership and development. Russian towns and cities
are typically loose confederations of buildings that are collected
or ‘corralled’ within the street pattern. Each structure apparently
sits independently with minimal fuss or explicit concern for
fashionable ideas of ‘site’, ‘building line’ or ‘active frontage’ but
each has a relationship, or spatial tension, with its neighbor while
maintaining a stand-alone and individual identity. The seemingly
arbitrary planning and ambiguity in definition of what is ‘front’
or ‘back’, primary entrance or service area underlines that
Moscovite activities are not choreographed to occur in particular
places or in a certain way as is understood in Europe. Equally
shared external spaces are the product of the expediency; if you
can drive your car to a space it is fair game.
But the city works. There is a subtle clarity about what
is public or private, what is to be enjoyed and where to find things.
This is legible almost immediately to the visitor and without the
need to understand the Cyrillic alphabet or make reference to
a guidebook. Paradoxically, the reason it is successful is that,
excepting more recent developments particularly on the edges
of the city, the exact extent of landownership is not always clearly
defined with few boundary walls or fences and as a result, there
is minimal risk of trespass or invasion of privacy.7 Public routes
through spaces, including buildings and seemingly private
territories, quickly become common knowledge and it is possible
to travel considerable distances in the city via a necklace of
courtyards or dvory (дворы) that are accessed through arches
and passageways (Fig. 3). Only rarely does one need to cross
the over-scaled and congested roads, often confronting them
through large portals and openings that work like an apartment
door, or tambour at the scale of the city; the openings separate the
congested and raucous from the intimate and humanist.
Tourists and the uniniatated are often reluctant to stray
from the main roads—the density of such routes only becomes
apparent shortly after sustained periods of snow. The grit from
pedestrian traffic highlights unannounced secret routes; the grain
of the city begins to appear as if written in invisible ink. Moreover,
throughout the winter the detail and changes in ground surface
become lost under a thick blanket of snow, interrupted only by
buildings, that allows pedestrians to choose the most appropriate
path. The simplified and uniform landscape capitalizes on the
relative inefficiencies of the arrangement, and planning allows
both direct connections and more informal, indirect routes to
be created. The success and popularity of these paths does not
rely on the quality of the spaces, but rather on a clear narrative
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that provides a conducive for further exploration. In contrast with
the mews typology—a secondary service access, that despite
frequently being public, is associated with private activities—the
dvory are the primary form of public realm from which all flats
are accessed, via an anonymous metal door.8 Within this context
the loose arrangement of mid-twentieth-century buildings,
particularly those of similar scale (for example the ‘Khrushchev’
(Khrushchyovka), system-built, four- to six-storey residential
blocks) is often more careful than it appears at first glance. The
arrangement fosters the creation of sheltered public space often
with children’s play equipment clearly defined by painted short
metal fences and usually densely planted with trees.
The typical Russian dvory is defined by buildings that
are the result, in both style and scale, of a ‘cohesive sameness’.
That is to say the architectural language and built form is slightly
secondary to the value placed on subtle informality of pedestrian
connections and the variety of every-day domestic occupation
that takes place.9 Stretching this analogy, distinct tones of ‘dullness’
can be identified. The earlier, primarily residential buildings
offer a blank but slightly incomplete or ‘textured’ canvas onto
which the daily activities of life can be projected and balconies
customized. Although the buildings are homogeneous there is a
distinct contrasts with the heterogeneous methods of occupation;
while there is a sense of repetition, each occupant and the way
the flat is occupied is individual—anything goes!
The network of paths and routes, courtyards and uses,
may be intricate but they are far from fragile and continually
evolve and change. Their value and success is brought into sharp
focus when compared to the current vogue for gated-community
developments that are appearing at an alarming rate in Moscow.
Aimed at an emerging middle class, they are frequently built in
a bastardised Russian Art-Nouveau or Neo-Classical style and
commonly branded to have the qualities of European cities.
However their similarities are only 500mm deep; the planning of
the complexes and flats makes no attempt to function in the way
their outward styling suggests and the result is dysfunctional both
formally and in the way the owners occupy their apartments—
insecurities that make easy pickings for a rampant and shallow
‘interior design’ industry.
PRODUCTI (LOCAL SHOP)
Such an apparently informal and less structured approach to
making a city has created a filigree network of capillary routes
that can sustain a high concentration of small shops and services
often in surprising locations within the block, away from the street
edge.These are small independent businesses that can serve both
obvious and immediate local needs (продукты or local shop)
or unique specialists and services. The spaces colonized are
often redundant or undesirable parts of the buildings; leftover
and unplanned spaces that are sufficiently visible that they
can be adapted without fear of being missed by passing trade.
Furthermore buildings rarely allow for commercial use at ground
level in their design and there is not a tradition of ‘shop front’
or window display and dressing. Consequently, spaces must be
adopted and adapted.
At the scale of the city, the spaces that a domovoi would
call home are the nooks, niches, gaps and forgotten corners. The
functioning order of the city and district relies upon these smallscale building characters to exist; their scale and informality
help to mediate between people and repetitive austere buildings
(Fig. 4). The current Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin’s recently
announced ‘crusade’ against the legal, and illegal, freestanding
kiosks that populate the streets, parks and ‘eddy’ spaces in the
public realm is therefore misguided. In a desire to appear more
European and sanitized, the erasure of small structures and uses
misunderstands their importance in how the city works. These
commercial kiosks and seasonal temporary buildings have a
long and rich history in Moscow, many architects and designers of
the Russian avant-garde such as Melnikov, Ginzburg and students
from Vkhutemas ‘cut their teeth’ on these structures although
none remain today following the later Soviet ‘edit’ or ‘erasure’ of
undesirable parts of the city.10
The use of ad-hoc additions and adaptions of buildings
to accommodate commercial uses is commonplace, often
creating strange and very local juxtapositions in scale, typology
and character (Fig. 5). In a similar way to the ‘pet architecture’
studied by Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo, these adaptions often
incorporate other functions and brash signage to embody the
pragmatic and commercial concerns in a creative response to the
particularities of the host location. Where Moscow differs from
Tokyo is that these characters are not created as consequence
of major infrastructure or high land values but an informal and
entrepreneurial approach to space, route and building edge.
These micro-developers discovered ways of using space that
were unanticipated by architects, and in doing so they confer new
meanings upon the existing spaces and repetitive typologies.
Although micro-development and colonization have
certainly proliferated in the past decade, one need only to look
at films such as ‘Moscow’ (1927) by Mikhail Kaufman and Ilya
Kopalin to see that such an entrepreneurial exploitation of tiny
public or ambiguous spaces is integral to the way that the city
works. Frequently, these uses are transitory in nature and only
appear for short periods or particular seasons and result in
hastily printed advertising and signage.These surprisingly generic
banners primarily illustrating fruit or flowers in saturated and
sunlight bleached colours, are stretched across the façade without
any attention to the host location. Sometimes their identities are
supplemented by a freestanding and isolated sandwich board,
directing passersby to an unmarked and rarely inviting doorway.
Almost without exception these adaptions occupy a zone that is
neither fully inside, nor outside, the building envelope and are
inevitably bound up with their host—if not stylistically, certainly
by adulteration and in an augmentative manner.
BALCONI (BALCONIES)
The inhabitation or enclosure of disused spaces (overhangs,
niches and basements) is not limited to the ground level or
commercial uses. Indeed some of the most interesting examples
overlook the dvory where the apartment balconies are enclosed
by each resident in whichever style or method of construction is
Fig 3. A typical Stalinist apartment building on the Sadovoye Ring. The over scaled portal to the dvory beyond is typical.
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Fig 4. Although the building has fallen into disrepair, the illegal producti kiosk thrives.
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Fig 5. A small dvory is enclosed by a 1970s apartment building (left) and a recent office building that straddles a reconstruction (concrete copy) of a nineteenth-century mansion building. Such collisions and awkward juxtapositions are by no means unusual.
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most expedient or in a way they see fit—seemingly without any
interest on how it will be perceived outside.11 This creates a richly
detailed and accidental façade that is the product of incogitant
bricolage: the resident’s primary objective is inward looking and
to extend the internal volume of their flat rather than to express
taste or wealth (Figs. 6 and 7). Without nooks and awkward
spaces, secondary and tertiary activities are pushed to the edge
and occupy the balcony space and invariably they become the
repository for bicycles, plant pots and mops.12 The visible face of
the home becomes the receptacle for the storage of things that
must be kept, often for unclear reasons or have little practical
function. The retention and hoarding of clutter that might be
useful in the future does not sit comfortably with high-density
living. Throughout new apartment buildings in the UK, each flat
with its prerequisite mean balcony or ‘external space’ exhibit
their occupiers’ surplus or redundant possessions. One can only
imagine the public outcry if people started to randomly enclose
these spaces with the cheapest and most expedient materials in
an incoherent and short-lived way.
The accidental enrichment of the façade allows a more
mannered and complex reading of particular buildings and their
occupants. This is real townscape where elevations and spaces
are full of incidents and details, and there can be no doubt that
a sense of place and ownership is created. Although the style
and materials are diverse, and often poorly constructed, the
overall effect is to add a level of texture and interest that balances
the austere and modular buildings. Janus-like and amateur in
character, these are one of the most invigorating things about
contemporary Russian cities, despite many architects’ disapproval.
Indeed many new developments explicitly ‘design
out’ the opportunity for customization to ensure that the cheap,
imaginatively bereft and brutally over-scaled remain exactly
that. There is a parallel with the Stalinist apartment buildings
in that they are aggressive and numbingly banal with austere
details applied without any particular emphasis or narrative.
The outcome is one-paced and bombastic, any sense of scale
or variety is nullified; the buildings are crude and raw with
applied and mass produced details that become the product
of shallow propitiation. These buildings underline an autocracy.
However, unlike the equally leaden contemporary new apartment
buildings these brutish Soviet buildings do allow identity and
‘texture’ through modification and addition, but only to the less
bombastic rear, facing the public space of the dvory.
SOSTAVNOI (COMPOUND)
Most structures have, however, been modified in some way and
exhibit the physical manifestation of the forces that have come
to bear and the relationships created. These changes in fabric
and use are the orthography and punctuation that articulates the
reality of the city, the underlying context. Moreover, the success
and unthinking acceptance of these additions and adaptions
encourages further buildings and spaces to be adapted for or
colonized by programmes for which it was not designed. For
example, shops, offices and workshops occupy spaces within
what are ostensibly residential buildings or neighbourhoods.13
Fig 6. A mid-twentieth-century apartment building exhibits different modes and
period of additions and balcony bricolage. Note the stairway to the basement that
leads to a restaurant and gun shop.
Such programmatic variety within one structure has become
the conventional, and the greater majority of buildings
contain dissimilar and multi-various uses that are the result of
appropriation or adaption. At a larger scale, dissimilar functions
often coexist within larger industrial buildings or complexes
in a frequently surprising and yet familiar and uncontrived
way, without the brittle carapace of ‘edgy’ or ‘creative economy’
branding.
These are not trendy ‘hybrid’ buildings or stodgy
creatures born of an artificial contrariness but participants in
a process of change and disturbance brought about by the
peculiarities of occupation. Such a process of adaption and
modification can be likened to the scientific use of the term
‘compound’, where through substances being united together
another new element is formed with its own distinct identity. This
is in contrast to a ‘mixture’ that remains a recognizable blend
of its constituent parts. It is interesting that where a group of
uses operate in shared occupation, in one or several buildings,
it is common for Russian speakers to use the term ‘territory’
(территория) to highlight that is an identifiable entity even if there
is no clear boundary or shared purpose. As if by co-inhabitation
a ‘common law marriage’ has been created that binds various
parties to a shared objective and status, and therefore creates a
new entity (Figs. 8 and 9).
Reuse, adaption and addition to create a compound is
a distinct approach to built form in Russian architecture. Moscow
has a large number of buildings that have become conjoined
and extended to the point that their constituent parts, language
and rhythm become obscured. The crude Russian approach
to construction and maintenance, in particular the default use
of a cream/white render surface finish, further obscures the
constituent parts. The accidental compositions take on a quality
that is greater than a grotesque collision to become something
original and absorbing.These buildings are genuinely exciting and
are a product of the political and economic values embedded in
the structure and life of the city; curation from the bottom up.
Fig 7. The ambiguity in status—public or private—of balcony space.
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Figs 8 and 9. The state of disrepair of this avant garde building (c. 1925) with the Kazarmenny Periolok dvory reveals the timber and plastered lathe façade. The building is in
fact made from four constituent parts from different periods from mid-nineteenth-century to the contemporary, each with its own construction language and geometry.
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Figs 10 and 11. Novosukharevsky Market building (Konstantin Melnikov 1924-25). The form of the building dynamically responds to aspect and yet is sufficiently robust to withstand change and infill. Note the expressive pilasters whose rhythm opens up as the windows slip down to follow the line of the stars in the northern corner. The half landing
of the stair is celebrated by a large circular opening that ‘grazes’ the last pilaster.
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The idea of a ‘compound’ approach, where architectural
language is used in an ambiguous way to create buildings
that shelter and encourage other contrasting functions, has a
rich history. For example, Raphael’s Palazzo Alberini (1515-19)
was deliberately and carefully considered so that it could be
constructed in two stages to assist his client’s ability to raise
capital. Once occupied, the rent from the botteghe (shops and
workshops) in the rusticated base would finance the construction
of the upper storeys, including the piano nobile and his client’s
living quarters.The idea that the rusticated base expressed wealth
and ownership of the owner is subverted by the introduction of
third parties who have a very different and direct relationship to
the street and the buildings identity.14
KATALOG (CATALOGUE)
Moscow is not Rome, nor will it ever be despite the aspirations of
Stalin and others. The serendipitous conjunctions and grotesque
collisions that occur in scale, form, use, language and meaning
have however, created a fertile environment for buildings and
spaces that are experiential and particular. That is to say, rigorous
in individual and singular expression yet loose and adaptable to
be modified to suit a place or time. The ambiguities that arise in
the urban structure of Moscow between street edge, commercial
and private functions result from ownership boundaries that
are parcels of space to be created, chopped or merged to suit
programmatic requirements. This results in a diverse and vibrant
expression of typology and ownership with considerable variation
in the choice of detail set against host structures that are robust
and relatively mute.
Moscow contains many lessons on how rich and
valuable ambiguities in generic and simple buildings can
be adapted. This is a fertile territory for understanding the
everyday and neglected details of ordinary life. Such ‘accidental
architecture’ suggests approaches that might avoid voguish and
contrived architectural complexity or shallow styling by focusing
on the concerns and behavior of real people. Despite the unique
delight of traversing the city via dvory and the Janus-like qualities
of domestic and commercial bricolage, such particularities of
place are rarely quoted as positive precedents either by architects
or Moscovites.15 Yet these uniquely Russian urban characteristics
have the tolerance to absorb variation, changes in quality of
workmanship and the realities of procurement to generate a
richness of presence that should be celebrated.
This is not always the product of a happy accident:
some of the most interesting examples of the Russian avantgarde architecture also have this quality. A splendid example
in central Moscow, yet almost unknown, is the Novosukharevsky
Market Building (1924-25) by Konstantin Melnikov (Figs. 10, 11).16
Although completed relatively early in his career, it exhibits a
sophisticated use of architectural language and composition to
unite simple, yet competing sculptural and plastic forms with an
abstract classical rhythm as part of a ‘masterplan’ that is distinctly
Muscovite. The approximately triangular administration building
originally formed the centerpiece and focal point of a large food
and wholesale market, which was formed by subtly radiating
and folding phalanxes of modular terraces of angular and
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interlocking timber pavilions, also by Melnikov, now unfortunately
demolished. Each pavilion was identified with a large number
and an abstract graphic appropriate to the location and trade
thereby transforming, as described by Melnikov, ‘the entire area
into a sea of architectural art’.
Compound architecture in Moscow, such as the
Novosukharevsky Market Building, give valuable clues on how
a distinct approach might develop in Russia. Melnikov’s design
is at once playful and balanced to create a subtly sophisticated
massing where individual architectural components can be
identified but cannot be separated or isolated from the whole.
Internally, there are a series of spatial and sectional relationships
between three volumes that, although not explicit, allude to a set
of complex and somewhat ambiguous programmatic functions.
The subtle additions and subsequent alterations are difficult to
identify as a consequence of the ambiguity and complexity of
the form, uniform materiality and how the volumes are occupied.
The building is robust and flourishes with change and adaption.
Despite such a rich context, the vast majority
of contemporary architectural education in Russia, and
consequently contemporary practice and client expectations,
is seemingly preoccupied with formal Beaux-Arts compositions
and the application of a priori ideas, or aping superficial
simulacra that are tirelessly repeated on blogs the world over.
The underlying concern is for the primacy and uniformity of
the concept and a systematic regularity in construction and
occupation. Furthermore, there is little acknowledgement of the
limitations or qualities that can be found in materials and making.
Indeed, most students and many practicing architects have scant
regard for the actual resolution and material manifestation of
their ideas and a rejection of constraints and limitations that site
and ‘making’ bring. This lack of acknowledgement rejects the
references and techniques that are prevalent and particular to
Russia; such particularities of architectural language, approaches
and technology remain an area for further study in their own right.
One of the key ideas that architectural education should draw
attention to, and learn from, is the oddness of what we take for
granted—Moscow is an incredibly rich and, as yet, uncatalogued
archive of ambiguous and compound architecture, with spaces
that are both personal and successful.
All photographs are courtesy of Moscow based architectural photographer Olga
Alexeyenko.
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Notes
1.
See
www.issuu.com/partizanpublik/docs/
microrayonliving (accessed: 21st March 2013).
2. See Домовенок Кузька (дом для Кузи) часть 1, www.
youtube.com (accessed: 21st March 2013).
3. The witch who owned Kuzia’s previously isolated
home in the forest neglected to maintain it and he
was forced to leave. The witch is frequently the villain
character who tries to abduct Kuzia. As an additional
complexity her house has chicken-like legs and runs
away; without a domovoi the witch cannot stop it from
escaping.
4. The feeling of separation and difference between
being inside and outside is reinforced by the twin lines
of single glazed windows that form a wide air cavity to
insulate the flat from the extreme winter temperatures.
5. It is worth noting that in Russian the word ‘Улица’
which means ‘outside’ is also commonly used to mean
‘street‘ hence a children’s television show called Улица
Сезам - Sesame Street.
6. Recent years have also seen illegal demolitions or
radical revisions to the city fabric with increasing
frequency and seeming impunity that adds to
the sense of continual transition. More frequent
developments have started a process of enclosure and
privatization that has parallels with the UK. See Moscow
Architectural Preservation Society, http://www.maps-
moscow.com/index.php?chapter_id=139
(accessed:
21st March 2013).
7. Of course this is in part the legacy of the Soviet Union
but is also apparent in the remaining fragments of the
city and older regional towns, such as Tomsk, where
nineteenth-century buildings and spaces continue to
be the primary components.
8. A distinction that is underlined by the numbering
system used for Russian postal addresses. Usually a
group of buildings, and sometimes a whole city block,
will share a number, with each building, annex and
stairwell having its own secondary nomenclature. This
can be confusing and disorientating particularly when
new buildings are added that disrupt the numbering
logic.
9. The contrast is striking with later soviet development
and microrayon where rigid and formulaic guidelines
are applied in a mechanical and repetitive ‘antiarchitecture’ that dehumanizes the inhabitants. Where
this ‘breaks down’ it is at a ‘jaw-dropping’ scale that
cannot be appropriated or adopted/used by the local
community in a similar way to the traditional dvory.
10.Vkhutemas (1920-30) was a state-organized Arts and
Architecture Academy and had close parallels with the
Bauhaus in terms of intent, organization and scope.
11. There are some parallels with ‘non-plan’ but the
results contrast strongly with more ‘designed’ and status
conscious British urban and suburban processes.
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12. In the winter they become a cool or freezing
larder for storing food due to the very high levels of
uncontrollable heating in Russian apartments.
13. This is equally true of the Russian shops in London
who frequently occupy basement or third-rate spaces
that a UK operator would probably not consider.
14. It should also be noted that in Rome the city block
is continuous, and except for steps in the eave or subtle
changes in windows scale and rhythm, it is difficult to
identify individual buildings. This contrasts with the
much vertical and regimented approach to ownership
that has shaped cities such as London and the isolated,
standalone building approach in Russia.
15. Moscow continues to expand at a rapid rate with the
construction of self-contained and identikit ‘sleeping
districts’ at dehumanizing scales. Their architectural
language is shallow styling that treats buildings as a
singular and unyielding edifice onto which a cursory
style, colour or pattern is applied. The sleeping districts
are breathtaking in their crudeness and sheer banality.
16. Frequently and erroneously described as
demolished.