Russia, In Search of Lost Modernity

Russia was the largest republic in the Soviet Union and has retained its vast territory unchanged since the empire crumbled in 1991. Three-quarters of the country’s population of 143 million is urban, but dispersed. There are only fourteen cities with over one million residents and just two true metropolitan centers: Moscow (11.5 million), Europe’s biggest city where West meets East; and St. Petersburg (5 million), the Russian Imperial capital for almost two hundred years, after which, in the wake of the 1917 socialist revolution, Lenin reinstated the seat of government in Moscow. It is in these two cities that the greatest majority of architecturally significant historical and contemporary projects is concentrated.

 Traditional architecture in Russia is distinctive. Its Orthodox churches are recognizable by their tent-like towers and gilded or brightly painted onion-shaped domes. Russia’s first masonry buildings for sacred purposes were influenced by Byzantine architecture of the 10th century—the time when the country was converted to Christianity—while its timber building culture goes back many centuries before this. The evolution of European architecture can be seen everywhere in Russian cities, as European styles were preferred by Russian monarchs following Peter the Great’s visionary building of St. Petersburg from scratch at the mouth of the Neva River on the Baltic Sea. But starting even earlier, some of the most renowned landmarks in the country were built by foreign masters and crafters, imported from Constantinople, the Balkans, the Netherlands, Italy, France, and Germany. Many of these architects made Russia their home and stayed there for generations, making significant contributions to adapting Romanesque, Renaissance, baroque, neoclassicism, empire, art nouveau, and other styles to Russian soil. The likes of Bartolomeo Rastrelli (Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, 1762) and Joseph Bove (Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, 1825) are among most widely celebrated architects, rightfully referred to as Russian despite their foreign origins.

Orthodox churches, Moscow

Rejecting its Soviet Past

Architects practicing in Russia today have been searching for their own identity ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, when it was finally up to them and not the state bureaucrats to define their creative agenda. It was this freedom and the advantage of the market economy embraced by a new Russia that delivered a plethora of novel building types that were nonexistent in the previous socialist society (where workers’ clubs, palaces of pioneers, and communal housing figured largely), including corporate headquarters, places of worship, private universities, museums, banks, luxury apartment buildings, shopping malls, night clubs, spas, and perhaps most importantly, single-family homes—a quintessential playground for architectural experimentation. These sudden opportunities scattered Russian architecture into all possible directions at once—postmodernism, historicism, and eclecticism as new unsophisticated clients tended to associate beauty with the old age—pre-modern, pre-revolutionary, or even Stalinist-era socialist realism. These pseudo-historical choices, being the most common, were welcomed by clients and the public alike, as well as by many architects in their compulsive urge to get rid of the austerity and faceless construction of mass housing—the most prominent and depressing feature of socialist cities from the 1960s forward. By rejecting the whole of the immediate past—the reoccurring tradition of Soviet architects going through an absurd cycle of emotionally and politically charged u-turns, from constructivism (1919-32), to Stalin’s socialist realism (1932-54), and back to modernism (1955-85) initiated by Khrushchev—the new generation of Russian architects of the late 1980s and early 1990s undertook yet another 180-degree turn, the fourth time in less than a century, but for once, it was of their own accord!  

New Symbolism

The building that perhaps symbolizes the new Russia best is not architecture on the cutting edge but the rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (Konstantin Thon, 1883; rebuilt, 2000), the tallest Orthodox church in the world. Splendidly designed in Russian Revival style and originally consecrated on the day Tsar Alexander III was crowned there, it was blown up by Stalin in 1931 to clear the way for the Palace of the Soviets, envisioned as a 400-meter tall monument to socialism designed by Boris Iofan. The unfinished building was dismantled at the outbreak of World War II, and the site was subsequently converted into world’s largest swimming pool. In the 1990s, as architectural plans to rebuild the cathedral were interpretively drawn, it proved too tempting not to “improve” the historical project by placing the dome a little higher and inserting modern-day parking underneath.

      It is perhaps such paradoxical examples as the fate of the cathedral that explain why architecture in Russia revolves around its own, often ideological orbit and is not yet a part of the current global debate on social agenda, as was in fact the case during the Soviet period. Sustainable design is still thought of as too exotic and unfit for the local climate, landscape architecture as a profession is in its infancy in the country. There is still no consensus among architects about whether modernism or historicism should be pursued as a model for architectural development. Some architects practice in both paradigms, drifting from one client’s taste to the next. The eighteen-year tenure (1992-2010) of the charismatic Moscow mayor Juri Luzhkov, who personally preferred and encouraged the use of neo-baroque superfluities in architecture did much damage by luring Russian architects to yet another breed of pseudo-historical architecture, now widely known as Luzhkov Style or New Moscow Style.

 Luzhkov modernized the capital city as no one before him had done, by heavily investing in new infrastructure and erecting numerous residential and commercial venues to keep up with exploding population and increasing consumerism, most apparent in the quadrupling of the number of cars in the city in the last twenty years. This hyper development often proceeded at the expense of losing valuable historical and modernist urban fabric. In some cases, historical structures are completely rebuilt as novodels—replicas of the original buildings—to avoid expensive faithful restoration and to provide modern-day amenities. One of the most outrageous examples of this built heritage vandalism was the “upgrade” of Hotel Moskva (1935) designed by conflicting generations of architects during a transitional period from constructivism to socialist realism, with distinct features of both. This building was demolished and rebuilt anew in 2012, flattening its rich architectural history to a mere facade image to accommodate underground parking for two thousand cars and a new five-star hotel within.

Parallel to such eradication of culture, a number of Russian architects of the paper architecture generation, as well as recent graduates including a loosely associated Moscow-based group called Children of Iofan (after architect Boris Iofan), have committed themselves to working within neoclassical language, arguing that classicism did not reach its full potential. When asked about his place in modern architecture, one of the key proponents of classicism in Russia, Mikhail Filippov, replied: “There is no such thing as modern architecture.” Yet, classicists there do realize that they operate in modern times and, as a result, employ a multitude of familiar tricks of a far gone post-modernist era, locking themselves in a time capsule that has no relevance to current architectural debate.

Creative Crisis

Russia’s architectural culture remains in isolation and should be defined as “going through creative crisis.” The architectural profession there is tiny—the entire workforce of Russian architects, a mere 12,000, is comparable to that of Portugal, which has a smaller population than Moscow, and its impact on the country’s built environment is relatively insignificant. Russia’s building industry standards remain low with little competition among developers, as their profit margins are significantly higher than in the West. Its building codes are very conservative and disjointed with world practice. Its education system is poorly funded and not integrated into the global thought process. Due to their limited experience during the final Soviet period when architects’ creativity was suppressed by constrained choices and budgets as well as their subordination to contractors, the older generation of architects does not possess the kind of knowledge needed to pass on to their younger colleagues. In fact, it is the practitioners in their 50s who are the most experienced in Russia today. The architects in their 20s and 30s are not showing progress and compatible edge compared to their counterparts in the rest of Europe or America, as many went to schools in the 1990s, when students were keener to indulge in working for private clients rather than to focus on schooling. Finally, Russian schools and offices do not attract professionals from abroad as the rest of the world does—a much needed condition for a true creative environment to flourish.

            All in all, due to so many directional changes and interruptions throughout Soviet history, local architects never had the opportunity to build a distinctive long-term architectural culture of their own. It is these factors that surely did not glean much confidence in the eyes of the new generation of local clients. As a result, the most prestigious commissions were either given to foreign architects directly or awarded through international competitions, some of which did not even invite Russian architects to participate.

Fathers and Sons

The post-Soviet, generation-spanning learning curve of Russian architects is now well documented in glass, steel, stone, and wood in Moscow and across the country. Since 2000, considerably improved design and construction quality have begun to emerge. Among the most mature projects created within the modernist idiom are residential and office complexes by Juri Grigoryan of Project Meganom, Vladimir Plotkin, and Sergey Skuratov; the Hermitage Expansion in St. Petersburg (2013) by Nikita Yaveyn; and the Car Park in Moscow (2004) by Nikolay Lyzlov. The Hermitage-Plaza Business Center in Moscow (2006) by the late master Sergey Kiselev is one of the first successful examples of high-tech architecture in Russia.

             Curiously, some of the best quality buildings designed by several leading Moscow-based practitioners are conveniently located in one exclusive residential enclave, Ostozhenka, in downtown Moscow, which has cemented its reputation as the ultimate showcase of the best urban contemporary architecture in Russia. This affluent neighborhood, dubbed “Golden Mile,” commands real estate prices comparable to the most expensive addresses in Hong Kong, London, and New York. Among its dozen or so office and apartment buildings, one stands out—Copper House by Skuratov (2004), perhaps the most western-looking building in Russia. Three residential blocks with one apartment per floor are clad in stone and oxidized copper. They are interconnected by the linear volume of a glazed, single-story lobby. Two of the end walls of the complex feature fields of playfully angled narrow glass panel strips that beautifully reflect the sun and the sky. It is undeniable that Ostozhenka’s building envelopes are delightful and beautiful, but this neighborhood fails spectacularly when it comes to contributing to the quality of urban space, as it comprises deserted streets and sidewalks alongside heavily guarded buildings, accessed mainly through automated garage doors that open to chauffeured luxury cars.

            Among still forming young practices in Russia there is Boris Bernasconi, the first Russian to win an open international competition for Perm Art Museum (2008) whose heroically inventive and provocative work follows distinct footsteps of such architects as Rem Koolhaas—conceptually, textually, graphically, and even image and attitude wise. His seemingly dissolving in a forest surrounding Villa Mirror Mongayt in Moscow region (2010) is a literal reflection on such themes as incompleteness and multiplicity of meanings and functions. Other young practices such as Totement/Paper and Za Bor explore deconstructivist language in their complex fractured interiors and small-scale residences. Since 2005 architects Ivan Ovchinnikov and Andrey Asadov have started a semiannual tradition of organizing architectural festivals “Goroda” or Cities with such themes as City on Water (2005) and City on Snow (2006) where young architects and students from all over Russia and now the world gather to build small-scale structures and land-art objects with their own hands. Another annual art festival that has become international has been organized since 2006 by artist Nikolay Polissky in Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Here architects along with local residents use their imaginations to push architecture beyond what is seemingly possible and expected by constructing primitive towers, ziggurats, and aqueducts of wood, earth, snow, and hay. Russian architects now have been building a culture of their own—most importantly, not from scratch.