PROJECT RUSSIA №40 - conversion

Large and high spaces, red brick walls, concrete floors, steel frame windows, roof lights, gigantic sliding doors, incomprehensible texts and signs sprayed on the Avails, traces of machinery, tubes, ducts... all this is the aesthetic of the abandoned industrial building. After fust appearing in New York in the 1960s, this aesthetic became the birthplace of the underground - anti-bourgeois, anti-establish­ment, marginal, critical, list as punk music showed you can make music without being able to play an instrument, so by occupying and living in these buildings it became clear that you don't in fact need a custom-designed apartment in order live comfort­ably. You can live anywhere. The fact that it has been designed and used for another purpose gives this kind of space an authen­ticity that can hardly be equalled by newly built inte­riors. An old building has the quality of an objet trouvÎ - its appropriation for another use transforms the original design of the building into an uncon­scious and random act. an almost natural phenome­non. The new user does not just inhabit a precon­ceived space that fits his demands, he is also challenged to adapt his life to the space and to adapt the space to his life: the space becomes a means of self-identification. There is something paradoxical in the way post-Soviet society is dealing with its architectural her­itage. On the one hand, there is a nostalgia for the old. and on the other, old buildings are lightly demolished - the nostalgia is very selective. Constructivist architecture, wooden houses, but also old factories tend to be demolished rather then reconstructed. The sensibility for the aesthetic of abandoned industrial complexes as described above seems to be underdeveloped, at least in com­parison to Western Europe, where the respect for the cultural value of these complexes has become close to fetishism. One could say this is the result of the changes of the 1990s primarily being a bourgeois revolution, whereas the underground culture that took over post-industrial heritage in the West was anti-bourgeois. More important, however, seems to be the fact that the possibility of attaching historical value to a building has to do with the question of to what extent society can perceive the former function of the building as a historical one. In Western Europe, the process of de-industrialisation started in the 1970s, and by the 1980s the factory had dis­appeared from the city centre and become a histori­cal phenomenon, at least for the urban middle class. For Russia the industrial period, artificially prolonged by the Soviet system, only came to an end a decade ago. and this might still be too close to evoke any feelings of romantic nostalgia. The Soviet Union was an ideological system that with its prioritization of production was obliged to the era of industrialisation. It is no coincidence that the disappearance of Soviet ideology corresponded with the end of the industrial era. One could consid­er Russia as one enormous old factory that has been vacated because its meaning (formerly provided by communism) has been lost: people have stopped producing and are engaged in business, trade, and design. Following the logic of the beginning of this article, this means that the building stock produced in the Soviet era (i.e. 95 % of the Russian built envi­ronment) has acquired the authenticity of the objet trouvÎ to no less an extent than old factory buildings in Manhattan in the 1970s. Russia's cultural avant-garde has understood this a long time ago:  Tarkovsky's Stalker and Nostalgia, the Sots-art of the 1980s and 90s. and the work of the Paper Architects are clear expressions of this sensibility. It is no coincidence that these works have been appreciated mostly in the West: the West's attrac­tion to Russia is directly connected with its love for abandoned industrial complexes. At the same time, this historical layer could play an important role in the process of self-identification of Russian architecture and town planning. The chal­lenge to the squatter of an industrial building could find its equivalent in the challenge to architects and urban designers to inhabit areas abandoned by industry. To erase the historical traces by demolition would deprive the Russian city of this opportunity. Bart Goldhoorn editorial director CONTENTS news Alexander Zmeul In brief   Vladimir Frolov Apology of the stars     Under the Roof of Home 2006   Elena Gonzalez Perspective award   Alexander Lozhkin Lost in translation   Alexei Muratov Four exhibitions and one revelation   Vladimir Frolov Zenit is a champion!     Call of the times from Yakov Chernikhov Foundation   Alexei Muratov Foster's hall   Anna Kostina Milanese Land-art   Anna Kostina Memphis forever     Snaidero Kitchen Centre     NAYADA competition     Conceptual space   Alexander Matveev 100% FIDexpo   Bart Goldhoorn Architects and sport: comparison to foreign practice   Maria Fadeeva Russian projects for Norway     Kovcheg Architects -     Residential building on Sadovaya Street in Samara (first stage of construction)     Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners -     Residential building on Staro-Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg     Reynberg & Sharov Architects -     Shopping centre on Kazanskaya Street in St Petersburg (Vanity Clothing Store)       conversion Bart Goldhoorn Editorial: The squatter experience   Alexander Zmeul,     Alexei Muratov Superfluous architecture or Industrial architecture during an age of de-industrialization       impromptu   Valode & Pistre architectes     Naslediye [Heritage] quarter on the premises of Derbenevskaya Calico Printing Factory in Moscow     Sergey Kisselev & Partners     Reorganization of Krasnaya Roza silk weaving factory in Moscow     Mosproekt-4 Business park at Arma Factory   Maria Fadeeva From Red October to Golden Isle     Mosproekt-2 / Jean-Michel Wilmotte & AssociÎs / Koma     Reconstruction of Krasny Oktyabr Factory. Bolotny Island in Moscow   Ekaterina Lazareva The industrialisation of art 102     Alexander Brodsky Architects     Moscow Wine Factory conversion to the Centre for Contemporary Art   Vladimir Frolov Terra Nova     Erick van Egeraat Associated Architects     Competition proposal for the reconstruction of the New Holland Island in St Petersburg     KSP Engel und Zimmermann Architecten     Competition proposal for the reconstruction of the New Holland Island in St Petersburg     Foster and Partners     Winning design in the competition for the reconstruction of the New Holland Island in St Petersburg     Pastushenko & Samogorov Architectural Bureau Iceberg Shopping Centre, Samara   Sergei Sitar, Olga Filatova The'Factory of the 8th of March': The automation of living and the'return of the repressed'       monitor   AMC Cafe'lnguri'     McAdam Architects Country house in Nikol'skaya Sloboda     SL*project NEXT and POPSA broadcasting studio in Novinsky Arcade     MK-lnterio Architecture office     Vitruvius and Sons Architecture office       texts   A person with intelligent face Round table         Bart Goldhoorn The Russian market in architecture: myth and reality   IrinaShipova Social housing construction in separated Berlin       technology           20c heritage Anna Bronovitskaya Heritage at Risk     Maristella Casciato: At war one needs a strategy   Natalia Dushkina Towards a new heritage   Winfried Benne Case study: Bauhaus Meisterhouses at Dessau project russia catalogue