ILYA UTKIN.
STRATIGRAPHY OF METROPOLIS

   “I believe that the architect is neither a demiurge nor a craftsman who is completely unaware of the harm he might cause,” M. Fuchsas noted in one of his declarations to the Venice Biennale. This statement is more accurate, and most importantly - simpler - it explains the essence of the main, put forward by him, the verbal architectural symbol of Venice in 2000: “Less ethics, more aesthetics”. Like all slogans with their schematized parameters, he calls for extreme, sometimes straightforward reasoning and action. In “do no harm” calmly commenting on Fuchsas - contemplating “ravines, clefts and canyons of the metropolis” from aeroplanic skies, as well as citta, cities, stadte, villes, cuidades and cities around the world — there is much more ethics than nerve-rhetoric rhetoric official motto. What does “do no harm” mean, including to the architect at the turn of two millennia? En grand, conscious attitude to values. Like the shape of a cube, which embodied the stability and stability of the earth’s firmament in the ancient world, it rests today at four points of support: Values ​​of human life, Values ​​of natural surroundings, Values ​​of man-made environment (with all the richness of the heritage of architecture, the center of which is the “city”, designated as the main characters VII-th Venice Biennale), and, finally, cultural values ​​in all the luxury of centuries-old strata.
   The twentieth century - one of the most destructive in the history of mankind - concludes modern history with a declaration of salvation of its most fragile and vulnerable potential. Why is "ethics" again and so loudly elevated to the international architectural scene? Indeed, ethics, in contrast to the immensely caressed “aesthetics,” is an unloved child of architecture. Ethics in architecture is rarely spoken and written about. As with any manifestation of "moralizing," they treat her with respect, but without much enthusiasm, and consider it an inevitable, but boring matter. So deeply believing person in the world is perceived with sympathy, and rarely - with an understanding of the enduring value of the knowledge open to him. Even in a country such as England, where a centuries-old and Europe’s most representative school of interpreting ethics in architecture has developed, a special system of artistic worldview has been born, colored by brilliant names in philosophy, art and architecture, the craving for morality has waned at the end of the millennium. In the 1960s, she flared up with renewed vigor, remembering the architectural criticism of R. Benham, and crumbled with bright sparkles in the essays of D. Wotkin and R. Scraton at the end of the 70s, drawing a line under an entire era.
   And yet, when the language of architecture is exhausted, when the circle is completed and the artistic forces gain a “critical mass” of transition to a different, unknown quality, ethics is in demand. Its very appearance is a sign of a turning point. Ethics is called upon when they try to understand the content and meaning of the emerging architectural process, to quench the thirst for change by the purifying criticism of their own professional vices and harmful social phenomena. How does today's Russia fit into this international context? Can it give an adequate answer to the questions posed by the West? Is this huge country that passed through political repressions and wars with enormous human losses, with an unprecedented loss of national cultural values ​​in the 20th century, entitled to give recipes of an ethical quality? The Russian exposition “Ruins of Paradise”, whose concept is a direct legacy of “Paper Architecture”, will try to answer these questions. Again, and not the first time at the Biennale in Venice, it is in demand as one of the most striking creative directions of recent decades. An appeal to the fundamental principles of architecture, its content and meaning, the philosophy of being and culture - this is the core of "Paper Architecture" (almost a section of eschatology), which carries an attractive force. The work of its most prominent representatives is evidence of a conscious attitude to values, on the basis of which the future fate of the world and man is formed.

ILYA UTKIN - MAITRE OF «PAPER ARCHITECTURE» 

​

   One of the fragments of the Russian exposition at the VII Venice Biennale is associated with the name of Ilya Utkin. It is well known both in the homeland of the architect - in Russia and in the West. Utkin is one of the founders and recognized leaders of the creative movement of the 1980s, which later became known as Paper Architecture. The phenomenon, which was blown up by the sluggish dream of official architecture, built the opposition, created its own philosophy and school. The “wallet” heroes gained international fame by winning conceptual architectural contests, receiving almost physiological pleasure from overthrowing stamps, self-irony, an unrestrained flight of fantasy, bird flying above the ground, which had no state borders or political leaders. When the whole world entered the era of computer design and was rapidly approaching the extreme line - the depersonalization of architecture, its technicalism and globalization - they worked with etchings and graphic compositions, creating unique (literally) man-made images, scratching with the pen or etching needles the contours of ideal architectural spaces and creating landscapes filled with fantastic city visions.
   From 1978 to 1993, Ilya Utkin worked with Alexander Brodsky. During this period, one of the main topics of their joint work was determined - a man and his fate in the modern city, which was, to a large extent, a reaction to the undivided mass consciousness of the commune society that fed them. The value of an individual human being has always been ignored in him. Moscow became the nutrient broth for the imagination, that primordial chaos from which the image of the city was fashioned - here they were born, grew up, received an architectural education. Real paintings of the 60-70s from the life of the Russian capital, which underwent one of the most destructive urban transformations in Europe in the 20th century, provided food for thought. Their intonation was largely determined by the romantic perception of the world, great inner freedom and sincerity, easy movement of thought beyond conventional boundaries. The view of the world, which so ridiculously did not coincide with the isolated existence in the country with a totalitarian regime (or was its product), protested its dull architectural reality. When this look - sad, ironic, full of intellect and skepticism - touched the body of a gigantic wounded city, the birth of the world that is now strongly associated in the history of architecture with the names of Brodsky and Utkin took place. In their non-existent city-state, you will not see allusions to the world-famous constructivist Moscow. Their sheets do not inhabit the shadows of the Stalinist colossi and the primitive Moscow modernism of the 60s. This material environment brought into the graphic work of architects not so much concrete architectural images as an invisible trace of the passing time, the rarefied vacuum of the destroyed and disappearing Moscow, the feeling of the gradual death of modern urban civilization. In the metaphor, mythical city they created, there is a bunch of human emotions, the whole chimeric life-time decay, the finalist concept of being, which cannot be resisted. The Columbarium Habitabile project (1986) is one of the central to understanding the philosophy of urbanism in the interpretation of Brodsky and Utkin, a symbolic embodiment of the values ​​of human life with its constancy and conservatism, inseparable from the most intimate environment of a person’s “survival” - his home. “The house is dying twice. For the first time, when people leave him, that is, man is the soul of the house. The second time, and finally - when it is destroyed ... " This project tells the long story of old houses inhabited by thousands of souls, from which - on equal terms - the space of the city is constructed. In the projects “Intelligent Market”, (1987), “Comfort in the Metropolis” (1988), in a diametrically different interpretation the same theme sounds - sterilely deserted squares and labyrinths of streets that form mystical landscapes. The cold and alienation of the big city frightens the homelessness of existence on earth, drives into the depths all living things in a closed introvert space. So the mollusk takes refuge in the infinity of its shell, fused with it into a single whole in the water depths.

  The works of Brodsky and Utkin of this period (virtuoso etchings, installations, sculptural compositions) read recognizable biblical metaphor images of perishing cities and civilizations (Diomede II, 1989), the pastoral prosperity of an ideal city growing out of a virgin landscape and medieval Renaissance utopia ( Town Bridge, 1984). Several Noah's arks are recognized (Wandering Turtle, 1984, The Architect, 1988, Ship of Fools, 1989, etc.) - grotesque, almost to the point of shocking, taking those who are still able to confront him. The city is understood as an infinite temporal space, saturated with images of the past and perceived from the perspective of a bird's flight. The categories of memory and eternity reign in it, the laws of theatrical direction and human drama apply. Another take-off took place over the city in European culture. So John Ruskin, like a demiurge, flew over the Mediterranean, admiring the fruits of great creations - nature and architecture. Victor Hugo soared over medieval Paris, Aldous Huxley - over the imagined London era of Christopher Rene. So Mikhail Bulgakov cast a farewell gaze and left socialist Moscow in flight. In the graphic projects of Brodsky and Utkin, devoted to the city and man, master plans were never outlined, infrastructure and development were not designed. But they turned out to be more of a game of the mind, architectural meaning, morality and didactics, and, ultimately, humanity, than in many real city-planning projects. A new type of thinking, architectural philosophy and culture, turned to the world of human feelings and emotions, has formed. The last joint project of Utkin and Brodsky - the spatial sculpture "Portal" at the Center for Ceramics in the Netherlands (1992) - can be considered as their creative message. The explosion of tremendous internal force smashes into pieces the architectural and spatial “body” - a collective image of the “city”, “home”, and “culture”. The outer shell of the substance does not withstand the internal tension - the result of inverted meanings and cultural meanings, negative energy, in an apocalyptic riot overwhelming the world. The hope of overturning being is at four points of support, those eternal values ​​on which the entire structure of the structure rests. There is no utopian vision of the future, there is a warning.

​

UTOPIA OF THE «NEW RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE»

​

    The semi-monastic alienation of this place with its theatrical blockages, stratifications of objects, and a multitude of temporary layers created an elegiac mood that needed to be supported and strengthened by architectural means. Moscow antiquities, the ruins of Rome and architectural fantasies in the etchings of Piranesi, paintings by Robert, industrial utopias of the industrial era gave impetus to the imagination. The idea of ​​cultivating the ruins as carriers of the memory of the place, as the quintessence of historical and spiritual values ​​defining its aura — the Moscow replica of the “ruined” romanticism of the 18th century, was in demand. Ilya Utkin created a composition in which modern architecture did not play a dominant role. By introducing several architectural volumes into the existing context, the composition acquired a completed character. All these buildings have inherent properties that bring them closer to the architecture of antiquity and classicism: clarity of form, poise, neutrality with respect to the environment in which they are included, the effect of their “eternal” topological presence in Syromyatnikakhi. In the symbolic names of the new volumes - “Gates”, “Wall-Aqueduct”, “House-Tower”, “Stylobate”, “Pipe”, in the laconicism of their forms, parallels with the Ledu ensemble in Shaw, with its architecture parlante and the declaration “ The cult of moral values. " With the difference that Utkin’s project was based on the figurative synthesis of historical and cultural strata of the city — a kind of urban planning stratigraphy. Mythologized, and not literal, design of the construction of “new ruins”, turning back the clock, is aimed at revealing and preserving the spirit of the reconstructed space, its genius loci. The project builds an opposition to the methods of historical stylization, makes a bet on the fundamental properties of a "living" architecture, which has the ability to regenerate space and image, and therefore - carries the quality of timelessness. In fact, already in this project Utkin gives an answer to M. Fuksas’s ethical reflections about “do no harm”, consisting in the constructive, cultural-tribal role of the modern architect, who works outside the system of total technicalism, out of attempts to global rebuild the world. In the works following this, at a different scale level and with different accents, he continued to develop this topic. In the Wall project (VIVOSS Laboratory, 1996), it was transformed into a local didactic maneuver exploiting the “peacekeeping functions of architecture”. The “wall” or “house-mask” gave the city the quality of scenography, changing according to the urban planning situation and logic, overcoming the discomfort and aggressiveness of the environment. In the competition project "Duke University Museum of Art" (1998), the idea of ​​theatricalization was again in demand, this time to draw attention to the problem of "superficial perception of the world." As Utkin commented on the current situation, “you need to scream so that you can be heard. Other art is not perceived. The contemplation and quiet mystery of perception is a thing of the past”. Developing the concept of the Museum, which should house Brodsky and Utkin's famous sculptural installation “Portrait of an Unknown Person or Peter Carl Faberge's Nightmare” (1990), he creates a model of a multi-valued “urban space” reminiscent of the ideal utopian cities of Dürer and Buckingham in the form of a square (personification of stability and moral values) and gives rise to associations with the melancholic paintings of Böcklin. On a free site, a complex architectural intrigue develops with a change in psychological states, a gradual transition from anxiety of the external world to peaceful contemplation. To this end, the author models the bedding of culturally significant layers - the relief of the earth and the landscape labyrinth, walls and communications, and, finally, the layer in which the works of art are concentrated. Unlike the chaos of Syromyatnikov, where the spatial and temporal complexity was present on the site itself, beyond which a person cannot fully exist in the city, here it is artificially generated based on the principle of stratigraphy. The order is perceived not just as a tribute to form-creation, but as a sign of Utkin's systematic approach to modeling bedding.In 1994, Ilya Utkin creates a creative studio "Utkin Studio". After wandering around the world and a resounding success in the New World, Utkina was waiting for Moscow, in which, following the political changes, large-scale construction began in the historical center. This period of his activity can be compared with the arrangement of a musical clavier for solo performance with accompaniment. All previous poetic exercises faced the brutalism of practice, which he inevitably had to plunge into. Utkin falls into the scissors of the transition from the “Soviet” system - when design, as he writes in his article “Monster Hour” (1998), came down to “moronic laying out boxes on the plan and counting panels on the facades... wretched architecture” for the people "Which no country in the world knew," - to the era of Russian capitalist dreams. “New Russian architecture, ”he continues“, is a mixture of ideas about modern Western and “eternal” Russian art, about a close capitalist paradise, a kind of mixture of Hollywood with Russian kitsch, which people like. It’s only sad to see how Moscow, which dreamed of becoming the Third Rome, loses its face, its real history and in fact turns into a distinctive version of Disneyland”.  And further, almost declaratively: “There is a need to re-evaluate the values ​​artificially created by this century. It is extremely difficult to go against the current, against the prevailing opinion, against the convenient path. Only a few can afford it”.
  In the first major project, the Business and Cultural Center of the Syromyatniki (1996), Utkin proposed a different approach to the “New Russian Architecture”. It was a demarche against the methods of “reviving the historical city” and new construction, which are widely flourishing in Moscow. In his opinion, they are far from a true understanding of successive and evolutionary development. The concept of historicism turned into a frontal reproduction of the "old", devoid of the values ​​of authenticity. In Russia, the production of falsified copies, false-stylistic imitations, which now form entire cloned historical quarters of the city, that is, all those methods that have long received a negative assessment in the experience of European countries, has quickly paved its way. The Syromyatniki complex provided an opportunity to put into practice some of the speculative ideas about ideal urbanism of the late 20th century that were considered in the Paper Architecture projects.

  The “City of Mirage” project (1999), which was carried out as part of the reconstruction of the “Oktyabr” cinema on Novy Arbat in Moscow, is becoming a milestone. In temporary terms, this project covers a whole century - from the birth of the era of cinema, “new art”, “great utopias” of revolutionary states to the era of the establishment of the coexistence of two worlds - the real and the virtual. In a figurative sense, “Mirage City” is a legacy of Russian constructivism and aesthetics of the famous utopian F. Lang's “Metropolis” movie (1926), modern laser and holographic technologies. A virtual translucent and weightless structure, in which the silhouettes of the gigantic Metropolis of the 21st century are read - loose, dematerialized, but with a guessing city-planning history and logic - hovering over Moscow. All gravitational masses and meanings associated with architecture turn out to be upside down and pass into a different quality - the virtual reality of the world and space. The Mirage City is an image of modern chaos, the main value of which is to quench futurological ambitions with the least harm to the existing architectural stratum. Without apocalyptic violence and destruction. This project can be considered as a kind of replica of the ceramic “Portal” in Holland, but in its new, peaceful and conciliatory phase. In 1995 (a master class at the Moscow Architectural Institute) Utkin already addressed the topic “Chaos Architecture”, appealing to the constructive properties of chaos as primary matter. The project was tasked with the regeneration of urban space by means of architecture. According to the author, chaos, brought to an artistically completed image, becomes an object of art. The works of Ilya Utkin in 1995-99 revealed several important circumstances. As before, his architectural thoughts are based on the idea of ​​the city as an endlessly lasting performance, a repository of the most important values ​​related to human life. This topic is dedicated to the competition project "Monument of the Year 2000", which represents a vivid image of self-destructive human activity. “Time” and “Memory”, the dialectic of “Real” and “Imaginary” become the central categories of his urban philosophy. Utkin can be envied in the stubbornness and logic with which he develops approaches to spatial modeling, where stratigraphy becomes the main method - naturally existing in the city with all its temporal layers, artificially created by the master and its virtual metaphor. All his works are permeated with a keen sense of fleeting and endless time.

​

MELANCHOLY

​

   Ilya Utkin exhibits two concept projects in Venice (1995, 1999), united by a common name, demonstrating the external conciseness of a statement at an architectural exhibition - not a single author's drawing, sketch or layout. Photos are hung on the walls, the contents of which for the positivist-minded West at the first examination may seem like a sign of hopeless Russian despondency and chaos. Destroyed houses and churches, a mess of overturning beams and ceilings, layers of peeling plaster, pits, piles of broken stone, earth, fallen leaves, dead trees. All the decay of the past and leaving life appears before us as a reminder - “memento mori”. The classic theme of classical art, interpreted by the architect (NB: remember its essence - architekton). And here, a different slice of perception of this endless “Ruin” arises, reflecting in a concentrated form the architectural philosophy of this unusual master. According to Utkin, "melancholy is a creative state." The vector of creativity is set already in the reading of the exposition. The stereotype of perception brings to the surface thoughts about the tragic fate of heritage in the past century, about the death of the beauty of culture and the dying of architectural flesh. The visual series also reflects the architect’s negative professional reflection on the processes of cleaning out obsolete material strata, naturally formed urban chaos, against which a war has been declared in rapidly rebuilding Moscow. In philosophical terms, the presented series of architectural photographs gives rise to a gamut of experiences - from clearly read messages about the finiteness of the world, thoughts about the entropy of matter and consciousness, about the complexity of being in relationships with the outside world. Before us is an enlightened and respectful contemplation of the ruins, represented by the will of the artist as an act of higher meaning and beauty. In the center of the exposition space is a dilapidated, contemplative chair covered with the patina of time, to which Utkin ranks himself. The theme of time is the semantic core of photo exposure, which is also valuable because the images captured on it no longer exist in reality. Time froze in the uniqueness of the moment. Another conceptual project is the work of Utkin, performed at the New York Times "Time Capsule Design Competition" (1999), and is dedicated to the Millennium Monument. It consists of 8 etchings and the etching board with which they were made. The technical meaning of this project is to gradually, layer by layer fill the surface with inscriptions, using the word as an intangible symbol of memory. Layer by layer, the words overlap, gradually become indistinguishable and form a dense black color on the last print. All prints are made in one copy and unique. For Utkin, the etching board itself is the personification of the firmament of the earth, the space of the city and, at the same time, the “monument of time” on which every person wants to leave his mark. The question is how to do this - filling in the gaps or “boldly striking through the previous inscriptions?”. With the simplicity of the design, a strong artistic, semantic and ethical effect is achieved. It contains the absolute “authenticity” of the artifact and the “authenticity” of all values ​​embedded in it. An integral part of the project is the installation “Earth's crust”, which is a heavy stone block with the plan of Moscow engraved on it - a layer of land cut from the city center. On its surface are visible traces of endless urban transformations. According to the author, this is “The crust of the earth, on which the time of the Great Epochs and Great Utopias left its mark. When viewed from above, all scales merge, differences in architectural styles, vanity and debate, petty human problems disappear. The sight involuntarily glides over the very surface of the plan, resembling the beauty of an engraving board. The seeming chaos of lines, the irregularity and ruin of forms creates a beautiful pattern, unique in its originality. Drawing infinitely beautiful and expensive land”. These words are the main ethical position of the architect.

​

​

​

​

Catalog of the Venice Biennale "Ruins of Paradise", "Ilya Utkin", 2000

​

​

​

​

​