The curious thing about Soviet brutalist architecture is that it is incredibly rich in profoundly photogenic buildings that appear simultaneously utopian in their conception and intent and distinctly dystopian in their dilapidated states of disrepair.

Soviet brutalist architecture explored

The brutalist architecture of the Soviet era has found itself fetishised in publishing and across social media and succumbing to the indignity of apparently inspiring AI to create machine hallucinations feeding off their visual vocabulary. Everything from publisher Fuel’s counterintuitively successful Soviet Bus Stops (now also a film) to massive coffee table brutalist blockbusters (the spectacular photos of Frédéric Chaubin, in particular) and their occasional appearance in the backgrounds of movies and photoshoots has created a kind of cult.

But it is based solely on the image; these remarkable buildings represent a very different moment, a late burst of optimism in socialism expressed through architecture. What, exactly, do these buildings mean? And how did they come about in such numbers and become neglected so quickly?

Soviet brutalism: the history

To understand a little, you need to read the rapid waves of change from the revolutionary architecture of the Constructivists in the 1920s, who managed to build only a small number of (albeit deeply influential) structures, and their repression by Stalin in the 1930s in favour of a stolid, hypertrophied classicism. That, in turn, gave way after Nikita Krushchev’s accession in 1953 to a concentration on addressing the huge Soviet housing problem, the construction of millions of units of mostly panel blocks over the following decades.

It was with Leonid Brezhnev’s coming to power in 1964 (he served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union till 1982) that the focus shifted to the many, vast regions of the country with a certain loosening of central control; and they, in turn, began to express emerging modern identities through architecture. At the same time, the sci-fi era had taken hold, first with the success of Sputnik and then with widespread scientific development in everything from nuclear power to virology, a new reliance on technology and a faith in the future expressed through fiction and film. There was also, contrary to the myth of a closed society, considerable exchange between East and West, with Soviet architects being well aware of the emergence of brutalism elsewhere in Europe.

Yet the Soviets developed their own remarkable genres, using expressive, sculptural language to mould a new architecture. Some of the results have become familiar. The UFO-machine gear of the Druzhba Sanatorium overlooking the beach in Yalta (Igor Vasilevsky, 1983) was so odd that the Pentagon mistook it for a new rocket launch pad. It now adorns the covers of dozens of brutalist books and regularly pops up in Instagram feeds. And the Ministry of Highway Construction in Tbilisi (George Chakhava, 1975) is an 18-storey series of interlocking blocks that can look bizarrely contemporary, even though it was completed half a century ago.

Another UFO landed in a street in Kyiv in the form of the Ukrainian Institute of Scientific and Technological Research and Development (Lev Novikov and Florian Turiev, 1971). Then there is the Polytechnic Institute of Minsk in Belarus (Igor Esman and Viktor Anikin, 1983), a space-age battleship of a building with what looks like ski slopes. These experiments illustrate the efforts across the Socialist republics to develop their own aesthetic identities.

This was also often done through the invention of wholly new building types, socialist equivalents to the cathedrals of the past. There were wedding palaces such as Tbilisi’s castle-like Palace of Ceremonies (Victor Djorbenadze, 1984) and funerary centres like the same architect's Mukhatgverdi Ceremonial Hall (also Tbilisi, 1974, and now itself looking more than a little corpse-like) and the strange, haunting Park of Memory in Kyiv (Avraam Miletskyi, Volodomyr Melnychnko and Ada Rybachuk, 1980).

Then there was a raft of memorials: powerful, theatrical gestures glorifying Soviet efforts in war, in space, in science or in ‘friendship’ with many other nations. There were also circuses (and circuses were very big in the USSR), tributes to tents reimagined in massive concrete, ‘Palaces of the Republic’, ‘Palaces of Sports’ and ‘Palaces of Lenin’, in fact, palaces for the people everywhere.

Some of these proletarian palaces also began to display intriguing inflexions, uncharacteristic of Western brutalism. The Peoples’ Friendship Palace in Tashkent (Yevgeny Rozanov, 1981) has hints of Islamic architecture, for instance; the Exhibition Hall of the Uzbek Union of Artists in the same city (R Khayrutdinov and F Tursunov, 1974), yet more so, with ogee arches and a façade like a carpet.

The expansion of holiday provision created yet more opportunities for architectural expression. The gorgeous cantilevered extension of the Union of Writers summer resort in Sevan (Gevorg Kochar, 1969) is an old favourite and the once derelict and now chi-chi Baltic Beach Hotel in Jurmala, Latvia (Normunds Pavārs, Viktors Valgums and Modris Ģelzis, 1981), with its staggered levels like a liner, remains remarkable.

Although the republics were keen to use architecture to express their burgeoning identities within the USSR, there was plenty going on in Moscow and the rest of Russia too, much of it dedicated to celebrating science, the atheist state’s religion. The astonishing bulk of the Atomic Engineers’ Building acts like a scientific city wall and the Russian State Scientific Centre for Robotics and Cybernetics (Boris Artyushin and Stanislav Savin, 1986) was a true cathedral of science, designed in the early 1970s but only completed a few years before the regime ran out of cash and Gorbachev ended it all. The slow pace of Soviet construction, a shortage of materials and labour and not a little corruption meant that brutalism flourished later here than it did elsewhere, well into the 1980s.

These sculptural spectacles, most of which survive in varying states of decay, bridged the visionary experiments of Constructivism with the more modern statement buildings used to build regional and metropolitan identity. From the most modest of bus stops to the most grandiose megablocks, they remain the representatives of a remarkable moment in which architecture’s capacity to define a place and accommodate genuine public participation was taken seriously. Many of the finest examples remain in a precarious position, crumbling and unloved, despite their global appeal and now is the time to save them.

If New York is a metaphorical melting pot,then the Russian & Turkish Baths, a New York institution for 131 years, is where the term becomes literal. There, in the basement of an East Village landmark tenement, a cacophony of citizens gather together, strip naked and sweat. Amongst the steam, you can find a tattooed skater next to an elderly rabbi, a yoga instructor next to a clean-cut finance bro, all there for the same reason, ‘the schvitz’. 

It is a New York slice of a tradition that spans continents and centuries. From Moroccan hammams, Turkish baths and Korean mogyoktangs to Japanese onsens, Finnish saunas and Hungarian thermal baths, people have long come together to purify themselves in more ways than one. The physical benefits of steaming are immense – detoxification, improved circulation and respiratory health, better skin, increased metabolism – but there is a psychological component as well. There is something freeing about entering a space where your body is pushed to the extreme of what it can handle, and your consciousness is forced to turn its attention to exactly what is happening to you in that moment. Getting together in a place of such physical and psychological exposure inevitably builds a sense of community, which is certainly the case with the Russian & Turkish Baths.

As with so many things in New York, the baths operate under their own code of illogical logic. For years, they have been run on alternate weeks by the two owners, Boris Tuberman (and more recently his grandson, Julius Tuberman-Solon, as well) and David Shapiro (whose sons Dmitry and Jack have taken over his side of operations). All bath regulars talk about ‘Boris weeks’ and ‘David weeks’, and most have a preference for the different atmosphere that is offered by each: ‘David weeks’ have digital swipe passes for admission and tend to attract the younger, Dimes Square set, while ‘Boris weeks’ are distinctly more old-school with paper or plastic punch cards and a larger proportion of the Russian and Jewish loyalists that have been visiting the baths for decades.

Prior to dividing the business in the 1990s, Boris and David had originally purchased the baths together in 1985. Then known as the 10th Street Baths, it was the last vestige of the Lower East Side’s once-vibrant bathhouse culture that began in the 19th century with a civic push to provide clean water and bathing facilities to the city’s tenement communities. From the late 19th to early 20th centuries, bathhouses played host to a vast range of citizens, particularly the Russian, Italian, Irish and Jewish gangster population.

The baths operated as neutral spaces, where gang members could strip down (no hidden guns) and privately discuss their business (many of the bath’s attendants were deaf and/or mute to prevent leaked information). According to Dmitry Shapiro, by the time his dad and Tuberman purchased the baths, they were ‘rundown and open all day, so you would pretty much just get people coming in from the streets and sleeping on the benches.’ 

But Boris and David, both Russian immigrants, saw promise there, a way to bring a tradition from their native land to their new home. At the beginning, the baths were an ‘under-the-radar men’s spa’, catering primarily to a ‘steak and vodka’ crowd, but it gradually changed in keeping with the city beyond its steamy walls. By the time the younger Shapiros took over their father’s end of the business and started offering Groupon discounts, the crowd had grown to encompass a younger, some might say less colourful, population. Nowadays, there is an aromatherapy room and mud masks as well as the more traditional platza oak leaf treatments, while the in-house café offers juices and salads alongside bagels and borscht.

And while some aspects of the Russian & Turkish Baths have changed, the fundamentals remain the same. ‘This is a social spa,’ says Dmitry. ‘You can meet new people of all ages, creeds, genders and income brackets. You can keep to yourself if you want to, but you can also just hang out. It’s healthier than going to the bar.’

As Misha Hyman, a private chef and ardent bath attendee, puts it, ‘People who come here for the first time are immediately welcomed into the family.’ He continues, ‘I travel all over the country, and the first thing I do when I come back from a long trip is to go to the bathhouse, because it will reset you. Whenever I go there, whether I’ve had an argument with my girlfriend or a bad day at work, I come there and I’m with my family. It’s hard to be a New Yorker, but it’s very easy to be a New Yorker and add that to your routine.’

russianturkishbaths.com

This article appears in the August 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, which includes the Wallpaper* USA 300, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that Japanese architecture firm SANAA will oversee the renovation of the Hexagon pavilion, converting the disused Moscow landmark into a major new exhibition hub. The Garage Museum extension heralds a new chapter for the museum in its ongoing efforts to repurpose architectural heritage in the city and revitalise it in a contemporary context.

The Hexagon – a listed 1920s Soviet structure designed by Russian architect Ivan Zholtovsky – has lived many lives. Originally constructed for 1923’s First All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Industries Exhibition, the pavilion was converted into a canteen in 1935 and repurposed for lemonade production in the 1960s. In the decades that followed, it served as a café, a restaurant, a beer garden, a cinema and a disco, until it was abandoned. The Hexagon today stands partially ruined following a series of fires.

In its newest incarnation as an exhibition centre, the Hexagon will encompass three galleries, a library, a bookstore, a café and a courtyard spanning some 9,500 sq m of functional space. ‘In keeping with the spirit of Zholtovsky’s original design, we tried to avoid partitions or different types of organisations within the space and tried to bring it back to his vision,’ explained the architects. ‘We were fascinated by the original transparency of the space. The Hexagon has a particular charm and we have tried to retain that in our design.’

To wit, SANNA’s concept is guided by six principles: geometry and proportion; connected spaces; daylight; spatial organisation; decorative and interior elements; and landscape. Moscow’s dramatic climate poses its own set of challenges too, which architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have addressed with advanced envelope and heat recovery systems, and high-performance glazing. 

Garage Museum extension set to transform the Hexagon

The Garage Museum was established in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich as the first philanthropic organisation in Russia devoted to contemporary art and culture. In 2015, the museum relocated to its permanent home in the former Vremena Goda restaurant, a Soviet-era modernist ruin resurrected by Rem Koolhaas’ firm OMA. Garage has collaborated with a number of architectural studios, including Shigeru Ban, Form Bureau, Snkh, Syndicate, and Grace.

‘The Hexagon will be revived by SANAA’s thoughtful and sensitive design, allowing Garage to ground itself in Russian history while expanding into the current global conversation,’ Zhukova says in a statement. ‘We want to ensure that our building reflects our ongoing inquiry into the function, purpose, and responsibility of the modern-day museum.’ 

INFORMATION

sanaa.co.jp

garagemca.org

Zürich’s Galerie Gmurzynska pays tribute to Zaha Hadid Design through an immersive exhibition of the late architect's work. Titled ‘Abstracting the Landscape’, the showcase presents furniture and objects created by Zaha Hadid during her six-year collaboration with the gallery as well as sketches by the late architect.

The gallery’s collaboration with Zaha Hadid started in 2010 with the idea to combine her aesthetic affinity to the Russian avant-garde with her architecture and design works. From early in her career, Hadid had been inspired by Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Suprematists, whom she also touched upon in her Architectural Association graduation thesis in 1976. 

This exhibition follows ‘Zaha Hadid and Suprematism’, a 2010 show exploring the link between Hadid’s work and Malevich, while another project by the gallery analysed affinities between Hadid and German artist Kurt Schwitters (which resulted in a permanent site-specific installation now on view at the gallery). ‘When we did the historic Suprematism exhibition with Zaha Hadid in 2010, we also published a book with Hatje Cantz for which she designed an elaborate box and three dimensional landscape. This is on display in the exhibition. Further, we are showing a video interview with Zaha as part of the BBC documentary on the Tate retrospective of Malevich, in which she speaks about her fascination with his work in particular,’ explains gallery director Mathias Rastorfer, demonstrating the multidisciplinarity of this collaboration.

‘Abstracting the Landscape’ features models and drawings from Hadid, as well as sculptural objects and never-before exhibited designs. It’s a deep dive into a dual visual universe: on one side are Hadid’s futuristic furniture designs, from the Mesa Table to the Liquid Glacial Stool or the folded metal Kuki Chair. On the other hand, are bidimensional works that speak of a more rationalist influence, including paintings and seemingly abstract drawings for projects such as Berlin’s Office Building West, the Highline condos and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

INFORMATION

Zaha Hadid Design ‘Abstracting The Landscape’ is on view until 1 July 2021
gmurzynska.com

ADDRESS

2 Paradeplatz
Zürich

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‘Good vodka! That was the beginning,’ says Renzo Piano. The 82-year-old Italian architect is dressed in a dapper suit under a high-vis jacket. We are in the atrium of what was once the GES-2 power station, built in 1907 and used to keep government officials warm as they ran the Soviet Union from the nearby Kremlin. Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) is converting the 20,000 sq m plant into a leading art venue for Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation (named after his daughter, Victoria, a graduate of London’s Courtauld Institute).

Mikhelson approached Piano in 2015 with the idea of transforming the derelict power station into a world-class space for contemporary art in the heart of Moscow. When the project was first announced, many voices in the architectural world suggested the building was unusable, and that Piano would be better off starting from scratch. But to do so would have erased a sizeable slice of Moscow’s history: the plant was once used to power Moscow’s first tram system, and the site also encompasses a former vodka warehouse.

Renovating the space, Piano admits, has been painstaking: ‘Architecture of this kind is a dangerous job; you can make big mistakes,’ he says. ‘But I believe a well-crafted public building is a serious gesture of civic pride.’ And Piano is already proving his doubters wrong: ‘When we started this job, people were saying to me: “Are you really doing this?”. Now they understand. It is a building built by lucid madness.’ As Piano shows us where the Soviet generators once stood, the grey Russian sky breaks and light streams into the construction site. The sudden presence of the sun delights him. ‘This is Moscow,’ he exclaims. ‘Cloud and then suddenly sun. The building will constantly be like this – vibrant light, vibrant shadow. And the Moscow light will be the poetry of this building. It will hold everything together. A great cathedral of light.’ He leads us through the building and into what will be a new public park. Around 90 birch trees are already planted here, but there are hundreds more on the blueprints. ‘It will be a real forest,’ Piano says. ‘Birch trees are beautiful when full in the summer, and beautiful when naked in the winter.’ 

The V-A-C Foundation has an ambitious programme planned for GES-2, including a new exhibition by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It will also be a key stop on Moscow’s new Museum Mile, which will link the gallery to Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

Mikhelson was inspired to build the gallery after visiting Piano’s iconic Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as the Tate Modern in London (itself a former power plant). ‘I wished to have such a public space for Moscow,’ he says. ‘I wanted to create a unique place, right in the centre of the city, in a historic building.’

The gallery is due to open in September 2020, but this depends on the Russian winter, and how fast it will allow works to progress on site. Not that delays, or the project’s spiralling costs, it seems, dampen Piano’s idealism and his belief in the ability of architecture to bring people together. ‘This will be a free space,’ he says. ’A place to meet people under the sky.’

INFORMATION

v-a-c.ru
rpbw.com

Moscow’s old Frunze Central Aerodrome may have been long decommissioned, but its proximity to the city centre has encouraged developers to create a new residential neighbourhood around it, whilst inspiring New York-based design studio Asthetique to inject an appropriately aeronautical spin into the décor of Café Polet.

From every angle, the interiors are head-turning cinematic set-pieces that are equal parts Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’, and David Lynch’s ‘Dune’, the retro-futuristic mood set by convex porthole windows, Martian winged goddesses rendered in six-metre-high stainless steel, flying saucers reimagined as lamps, and alien landscapes cut as wall panels.

Little wonder that head chef Aleksandr Airapetyan has to work hard to stand out from the fabulist background, the St. Petersburg native working a menu of European and Georgian standards. Recent standouts have included a salad of grilled squid, smoked baby potatoes and truffle mayonnaise, finished with a dessert of crisp biscuits sweetened with chocolate and vanilla cream.

ADDRESS

Khodynsky Bulvar, 2

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The so-called creative revitalisation of former industrial sites is a familiar refrain in Russian city-making. Moscow already counts numerous such projects under its belt – Red October, Hlebozavod and Artplay to name a few – and a few more in the making, like the 65-hectare ZilArt project, or Renzo Piano’s power-station-soon-turned-cultural-hub, GES 2.

Russia’s post-industrial landscape, however, doesn’t end on the fringes of its capital. Anachronistic, single-industry towns remain, and regions like the Middle Urals and Siberia are dotted with neglected industrial sites. Eight hundred kilometres east of Moscow, in the highly industrialised region of Tatarstan, the very topic of industrial revitalisation was recently discussed during the second Russian Architecture Biennale for Young Architects – courtesy of programme operators and urban development experts Citymakers.

Curated by Sergei Tchoban, director of SPEECH architectural office and Tchoban Voss Architekten, and directed by Natalia Fishman-Bekmambetova, aide to the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, the biennial’s theme – giving a second life to industrial sites – was presented in the format of a competition. Applicants were asked to develop proposals for the rehabilitation of two industrial sites: a former faucet factory in the capital city of Kazan, and a grain elevator in Kazan’s river port that is still operating but in a location ripe for development opportunities.

‘We wanted to give a brief that was really belonging to clear and actual problems in Russia,’ says Tchoban, who helped devised a ratio for the new site: equal parts office and housing and smaller pockets with hotel, cultural and retail functions.

The winning proposals are not guaranteed to be built – both sites are privately-owned, and the owners were not ready to commit just yet – but the topic, and the applicants’ proposals raise important questions. How do we preserve industrial heritage while catering for modern-day needs? What are the benefits of revitalised industrial spaces, and what are the challenges? The winning proposal for the factory, by Aleksandr Alyaev, seeks to make the new, mixed-use site, permeable to its surroundings while preserving all historical buildings.

Alyaev, like all other applicants, is under 35 – an age cap that underlines the biennial’s ambition to give young architects a voice. ‘In general, age is no criteria, but it’s a good criteria for a competition because this is about supporting the young,’ says Kristin Feireiss, German design curator and co-founder of the Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, who sat on the jury along with Dutch architect Michiel Riedijk and Shanghai-based Philip Yuan.

In fact, giving young creatives a voice has been front-of-mind in Tatarstan for a while. Since 2015, the region has experienced a remarkable growth in green infrastructure as part of Tatarstan’s Public Spaces Development Program, led by Fishman-Bekmambetova, then aged only 24, and a team of architects averaging 25.

As part of the programme, over 350 parks and public spaces have been developed through a participatory design approach involving local communities around Tatarstan. ‘It’s becoming an inevitable process, the engagement of young people, the creation of opportunities, the role of the architect,’ says Fishman-Bekmambetova.

In Soviet times, she explains, the role of the architect was diluted amidst the low-cost, mass-scale housing construction efforts. ‘What is happening now, is we’re giving power back to the architect, and we’re giving power back to the non-corrupt, young people.’

INFORMATION

architectbiennale.ru

The Russian Architecture Biennale for Young Architects ran from 24 – 26 October 2019 in Innopolis in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia

St Petersburg is ‘built on bones', locals say. A swampy estuary marsh of the 18th century settlement founded by Tsar Peter the Great became the modern city of today – and Europe's third largest – thanks to the toil of thousands of conscripted convicts, dissidents and prisoners of war, who were left to dig with their hands and carry the mud in the folds of their shirts. The trunks of countless trees lie in layers beneath the paved streets of today; the ground was too boggy and wet for anything to be built upon.

St Petersburg was designed to be a Janus-faced place, both the ‘window to Europe' and a fortress designed to protect Mother Russia from further Western encroachment. This is reflected in the carefully-organised complex of straight-line canals that emanate out from a fortified centre – a facsimile of the Western cities Peter visited on his travels. It’s often called The Venice of The North, but Peter was in fact inspired to create a grander, more monumental version of Amsterdam, the Dutch city in which he spent his youth working in a ship-building yard.

From this perspective, perhaps the most contemporary aspect of modern St Petersburg can be understood as a microcosm of this history. If one walks east along the banks of the Neva from the Hermitage museum, you will soon find Novaya Gollandiya – which translates, literally, as New Holland.

Whilst Moscow has always trumpeted Gorky Park, St Petersburg has never had a public, open and accessible park-space. But now, at New Holland Island, amidst the billowing skies and moody waters and grey stone, one can now find Russians from all walks of life reclining on deckchairs or arranging their picnics on the grass of this 19-acre modern oasis, nestled between the Moika river and the Kryukov and Admiralteisky canals, and offering a countless array of restaurants and shopping boutiques, exhibition and performances spaces, carefully manicured gardens and children’s play areas.

A history of New Holland

New Holland Island began life in 1719 as a military base; a garrison for the Russian navy. Separated from the mainland in 1730, it was designed to protect the city against water-based invaders, and to be an engine-room for Peter the Great’s fleet of ships.

The site was abandoned after the fall of the USSR. Modern redevelopment began after a €400 million investment from Millhouse LLC, an asset management company owned by Russian oligarch and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, in 2010. It is now owned and administered by Millhouse LLC in cooperation with the Iris Foundation, an initiative set up by Darya Zhukova, Abramovich’s former wife and founder of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. The island reopened to the public in a limited capacity in August 2011, before becoming an all-year-round public space in the summer of 2016. 

The development continues apace. The park has, this summer, also launched a performance space which is largely free to attend. Over the course of this year, visitors to New Holland have enjoyed an almost nightly programme of concerts, including a recent performance by Charlotte Gainsbourg, alongside theatre, ballet and dance productions. The space also plays host to three separate film festivals, numerous art exhibitions and installations, DJ sets and a regular vinyl market.

Although dilapidated and fallen into disrepair, the buildings of New Holland were granted UNESCO heritage status for their historical significance. As such, each building has had to be carefully restored. To do so, New York-based firm WORKac were originally consulted to build the masterplan, known for its work on Manhattan’s High Line, whilst the Dutch landscape architecture firm West 8 was recruited to restore the island’s grounds. Latterly, the redevelopment has been primarily overseen by young St Petersburg-based architects Sergey Bukin and Lyubov Leontieva of Ludi Architects.

An architects' view

In an interview, Lyubov Leontieva says the renovation project has required some creative thinking. ‘It’s the unique historical context that creates the extraordinary atmosphere of this place and has always made it so incredibly distinctive,' she says. ‘This, I think, gives rise to innovative planning and design solutions, so in the end those challenges were the reason behind some great architectural and design ideas.'

Each of the six major buildings has come with its own unique set of challenges. ‘Every building has a unique interior,' Leontieva says, ‘but there are certain design elements, textures and shapes, that echo one another and create the feeling of symbolic and stylistic connections between them'. 

Leontieva’s work has not gone unnoticed. In 2018, New Holland was awarded with the Bernhard Remmers Academy award from the European Institute for the Conservation and Maintenance of Historic Buildings in the category Best International Project. 

New Holland’s ship-building lineage is visible via the immensity of the red-brick barracks and warehouses that still stand on the northernmost side of the of the island; each are tall enough to store a ship’s mast standing upright. The whir of machinery is audible from within the barracks; whilst the island’s three smaller buildings – the Foundry, the Commandant’s House and the Bottle House – have all been successfully restored and re-opened, the larger barracks are scheduled for public perusal at some point in the mid 2020s.

Although painstaking work, Leontieva welcomes the opportunity to bring life back to buildings that form part of the city’s past. Linking two of the barracks is a grand, Roman-inspired segmental arch, named the Arch of Vallin de la Mothe. Leontieva calls it: ‘one of the symbols of St. Petersburg'.

‘The idea that it could be dismantled for the sake of some modern building of questionable architecture seems totally preposterous', she says. ‘On the contrary, it is our great fortune that we can offer people the opportunity to enjoy the historical buildings that have no analogues in St. Petersburg or anywhere else in Russia.'

To the south is a grand circular building known as the Bottle House, given its resemblance to a bottleneck. In its centre stands a theatre in the round, where, on a nightly basis, performances are staged for free. Walk along its curved interiors and one will find Israeli, Vietnamese, Georgian and Mexican restaurants on the ground floor, fashion and art boutiques, a bookshop curated by Zhukova’s Garage, and ballet, boxing and spa facilities on the top floor. What, one wonders, would the original residents of The Bottle House make of its 2019 iteration, once a naval prison.

What does the future hold for New Holland?

History presses on this city. On a boat-ride, our tour guide casually points out the former homes and hang-outs of Alexander Pushkin, Karl Fabergé, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Alexander Rodchenko. So too does history press on New Holland Island. At the heart of the island lies a large water basin on which large artificial waterlilies float and art installations emit strange, digitised noises. In the winter, it doubles as an ice-rink. Yet the basin was where the USSR’s globally-feared submarines were developed and tested. 

‘The Island is a continuous work in progress', Leontieva says. ‘Yet it has come to represent the rich and multidimensional culture of the city it was built in'. If one looks carefully amidst the high-end shops, art installations, deck-chairs and cafes, one can find the spot where Lenin first broadcast the onset of the Russian revolution. The revolution may not be continuing quite as he had in mind, but New Holland suggests St Petersburg retains a powerful global position.

INFORMATION

newhollandsp.ru

The debut of the Karelinn hotel in St Petersburg is a hopeful harbinger that more of the city’s fabulous stock of period architecture will be repurposed with equally pleasing results.

Built in 1843 by the architect Yakov Reimers for a well-heeled merchant named Pavel Karelin, the grand pile in Vosnesenckiy – a few blocks from the Yusupovsky palace – has been reimagined by Aglaia Zarubaeva of local studio Hotelsonly into a modern, brightly lit bolthole. Or, at least, the first floor has – which, along with the peculiarities of the building, does mean that Karelinn’s amenities and services are limited to a continental breakfast and an enclosed yard.

The hotel’s first phase opened last summer during the FIFA World Cup, the architects and designers taking advantage of the hiatus to fine tune the spaces and to work on the original ceilings, some of which were in poor condition and required extensive restoration. The result was worth the wait.

With just 26 rooms, the hotel’s intimate vibe is balanced by the high ceilings, bold graphic art, and a palate of bright hues mixed with muted greys and burgundy. The original arched ceilings, meanwhile, served as an inspiration for the geometry of the curvilinear furniture.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

Voznesenckiy prospect 41

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‘The Russians fascinate me,' Gabrielle Chanel remarked. ‘It is the Russians who have taught women that it is not dishonourable to work.'

Strands of Russian culture weaved through her art and life; as perfumer to the Imperial court, the Muscovite Ernest Beaux created the N°5 scent, while Chanel enjoyed an intense relationship with the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. Her friendships with Stravinksy, Diaghilev and the dancers of the Ballets Russes are also well documented. Chanel was inspired by them all. Diaghilev, in turn, was drawn to the nascent designer, engaging her to create the costumes for his ‘Le Train Bleu' production. Both had an appreciation of traditional peasant costume, from fur-lined cloaks and socks to bold-hued embroidery. 

A Russian aesthetic pervaded Chanel's apartment on the rue Cambon, too; an ornate mirror decorated with the two-headed eagle of Imperial Russia sits at the heart of the it. The mirror has been replicated in miniature, as a signature jewel from the Le Paris Russe de Chanel High Jewellery collection, revealed in Paris today.  

The collection is a heady confusion of imperial Russia and Russian folklore. The elaborate kokoshnik traditional headdress, usually made in in velvet, is translated into a trellis of diamonds laced with pearls. The bright roubachkas – vividly embroidered worker blouses – are reflected in draped necklaces of yellow sapphires, garnets, emeralds and diamonds. A favourite symbol of Chanel’s, the ear of wheat, is cast in diamonds, while the folksy motifs of peasant scarves and fabric are reappropriated in ogive cuts on head ornaments, or striking pearl sautoir necklaces. And so we are presented with Chanel’s Russian love affair rendered in jewels. 

INFORMATION

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The adage ‘go big or go home’ may not have been coined in Russia, but it may as well be the country’s motto. Take restaurateur Kira Baybakova’s newest Moscow venture, The Y – an expansive multifaceted culinary experience.

Spanning 6,000 s ft and two floors of a newly built residential structure in the city centre, the 200-cover restaurant offers big adventure in a series of small doses. The vision of New York-based design studio Asthetíque, the venue brings together a café, private and public dining rooms, a bar and a secret playroom, all of which come together in a maze of delicate pastels and a 1970s aesthetic for a sequence of larger than life encounters.

Theatrical from every angle, the variety of areas at The Y is intended to reflect the diversity of generation Y, as the name indicates. Rooms are spacious and lofty, and created to accommodate a multitude of functions and needs, while Asthetíque’s nod to the 1970s could equally be mistaken for a Wes Anderson homage, with bold hues and geometric symmetry present in every space. On the ground floor tall metal framed doors give way to a dining room defined by a rhythm of arches — seen in wall panelling and bespoke chandeliers — alongside botanical wall art and a surplus of brass, velvet and marble that together create an image reminiscent of a French bistro. Elsewhere, in The Y’s café, polished concrete flooring and brass panelled walls offer the same old-world charm, albeit with a casual accent, while an upstairs restaurant mirrors this aesthetic with the more stately addition of dark wood and steel framed internal windows.

The end result is a smooth blend of contemporary design flavoured with a dash of nostalgia on the grandest of scales that could only be pulled off with aplomb here.

ADDRESS

Malaya Pirogovskaya st. 8

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On paper, Humans’ self-described ‘underwater experience’ sounds a touch gimmicky. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth for the Moscow restaurant, where dining is shaped (but not overwhelmed by) a maritime concept. The space sees a brooding, alternative oceanic realm come to life at the hands of Russian designer Yuna Megre.

Located in the up-and-coming Patriarshiye Ponds, the space welcomes guests with multi-layered waves of textured grey mesh; a conspicuous and wholly original tribute to the sea, defined by undulating surges that drift along both the ceilings and walls. The theme continues at the tables, which feature an aquatic inlay designed by Megre to present the illusion of flowing water, while a three-metre-long oyster bar and an unmissable aquarium neatly buttress a space otherwise filled with velvet upholstered banquettes and living walls.

The motif also extends to the menu, which uses a seafood-heavy ingredient list to pull together a blend of both Mediterranean dishes and Russian specialties, while the brave can select their own molluscs, crab and lobster from the tank. A sea of change for themed restaurants. 

ADDRESS

Malaya Bronnaya, 10 str.1

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Set at the heart of Moscow's Skolkovo Innovation Centre – the city's dedicated business and innovation technology park – Matrex rises above its neighbours like a towering pyramid. The brainchild of Russian architect Boris Bernaskoni, this is not only a hard-to-miss, new architectural symbol for the wider complex; it is also an architectural exercise about bridging opposites and uniting different worlds through architecture. 

Conceived as a truly mixed-use building, Matrex was designed to house from a series of office spaces for business start-ups, to a museum and exhibition areas, a conference centre, a restaurant, and a fitness centre. 

Bernaskoni, whose relatively young but extremely dynamic practice is also behind works such as the ARC Pavilion in Nikola-Lenivets and a masterplan for New Holland Island activities in St Petersburg, leapt at the opportunity to take the challenge on and created an iconic shape that is set to become a visual shorthand for the whole Skolkovo development. His previous experience in the area included Hypercube, the first ever building to complete in the tech park (in 2012), and a multifunctional building too; albeit a rather different one, all transformable screens and new media references. 

With Matrex, Bernaskoni went for an approach designed to underline the multifunctional nature of the building's programme through a single, strong concept. He created a monolithic, pyramidal overall shape, clad in glass. This hides a much softer, curvier void inside, which can only be clearly seen during the night, when the building is dramatically illuminated from within. ‘There’s a humanitarian message in this project', he points out. ‘What’s the main thing in architecture? Many believe it’s a wall or a form. This isn’t true! The most important thing is what’s found between the walls. It’s something you never see, but only feel when you move around inside an object and are impressed by it.'

This way, he explains, the structure is both strong, through the sharp shape of the pyramid, and artful, through the connotations a matryoshka brings – since the building is quite literally many buildings within a building in the style of the famous Russian nesting doll. ‘When you look at Matrex, you see a pyramid by day and a matryoshka by night', continues Bernaskoni. ‘Optically, these are two shapes of contrasting geometry, but in the language of architecture, the pyramid is a geometric simplification of the form of the matryoshka'.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Boris Bernaskoni website

As Russia’s design scene continues to flourish, both national and international architecture and interior design practices have made their mark by transforming the country’s urban landscape. Workshop Studio founded in 2014 by interior designer Alexandra Potapova – a graduate of the Moscow Architectural Institute – is once such firm building a growing reputation.

Known nationally for both residential and public projects, Potapova’s latest initiative is Mone, an 89 sq m one-bedroom apartment housed within the newly built 18-storey premises (designed by architecture practice Aukett Swanke) of the same name, in Moscow’s upscale Presnya neighbourhood. The area surrounding Mone is home to notable city landmarks and leafy parks, including Patriarch’s Ponds, and is cherished for its diversity among the central Okrug districts. Old and new buildings sit side by side, hosting a mix of restaurants, private residences and bars, making this address a marker of luxury living.

Favouring a timeless aesthetic over trends, Potapova chose a soft colour palette for the apartment. Muted greys are paired with sky blues in the main living areas, while in the bedroom ochre and splashes of cobalt blue make a bolder statement, lending a Mediterranean feel.

Meanwhile, Scandinavian favourites by Normann Copenhagen, &tradition and Muuto fill the airy residence. The designer has also enlisted local craftspeople and firms to produce custom-made pieces, like Moscow-based Studio Stameska who crafted the apartment’s sleek mirrors.

Potapova has conceived playful yet elegant interiors for Mone that quietly promote and celebrate local creatives who are confidently paving the way for the future of Russian design.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Workshop Studio website

Propaganda today may come in a much more subtle and insidious form, but once not too long ago, nationalistic messages were sent out to the public loud and clear. The eye-catching graphic design of early 20th-century Soviet propaganda is an especially memorable example, and currently in the spotlight at The Wolfsonian – Florida International University, where two overlapping shows are in progress.

‘Red and Black: Revolution in Soviet Propaganda Graphics’ (5 April – 5 August) is an installation of 20 rare books, periodicals and book and portfolio plates, while ‘Construction Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters Between the World Wars’ (13 April – 12 August), organised by Maine’s Bowdoin College Museum of Art, shows how graphic designers interpreted the revolution’s utopian ideals for the communist dictatorship.

Together, both shows highlight the ties between culture and revolutionary ideology in the years right after the 1917 Russian Revolution – all the while showcasing the evolution and creation of a distinct graphic style.

With over 50 Soviet-era posters from the private collection of Svetlana and Eric Silverman, and rarely seen works possessed by The Wolfsonian, the ‘Construction Revolution’ exhibition includes examples by several influential members of the Soviet avant-garde, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Gustav Klutsis and Aleksandr Rodchenko.

The unique visual language of the posters not only encapsulates this volatile period in Russian history, but also shows how the communist ethos was translated into an accessible, fervent iteration of public art. Guided strictly by the state, yet still displaying a degree of artistic experimentation, the historic significance of these posters is especially poignant when viewed against the backdrop of politics today.

‘These works speak to the paradox of the Soviet Union during its early decades, when utopianism went hand-in-hand with manipulation,’ says Jon Mogul, Wolfsonian associate director of curatorial and education. ‘There is an undeniable sense of excitement, optimism, and experimentation in these images, though they also convey the sanitised and one-sided version of reality that contributed to the consolidation of a brutally repressive dictatorship.’

INFORMATION

‘Red and Black: Revolution in Soviet Propaganda Graphics’ is on view until 5 August. ‘Construction Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters Between the World Wars’ is on view until 12 August. For more information, visit The Wolfsonian website

ADDRESS

The Wolfsonian
Florida International University
1001 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach

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Hidden behind black glass doors, Big Wine Freaks is a loud name for such a discreet a venue. Located on the corner of what was Uprising Square, in the shadow of one of Stalin’s imposing seven sisters, the bar – affectionately known as Freaks by its wine trader owners – is the more glammed-up sibling of the original in St Petersburg.

Inside, old world charm meets new world cool via a chic New York loft-style interior, courtesy of Tuscany-based studio, B-Arch; bespoke Italian medusa chandeliers produce dappled light on gold-flecked cementino bar counters by ZR Lab, complemented by the glow from vintage floor lamps on an original 19th century ceiling. There’s a hint of the Ottoman in the interior with its plush red and orange Dedar fabrics and turquoise resin floor that contrast with matt metal ventilation, brick and wood in the ceiling. Yet thick pile Jan Kath designed carpets from his From Russia With Love series, hanging on walls make the place unmistakably Russian.

Bar stools rotate at a rapid rate and strangers rub shoulders, brought together by a love of wine – not any but biodynamic, organic and natural ones – selected by head sommelier Andrei Larin and served in handmade glassware on stiletto-slim stems by Zalto. Chef Marat Kalaidjian’s elegantly eclectic and constantly changing menu reflects a growing trend for tradition with a nod to the orient: kholodets (beef in aspic) with horseradish; dim sum; tempura; and sturgeon with pumpkin purée presented on crockery by Richard Ginori.

A signature scent by hand-poured candle company Great Trotter and a specially created soundtrack enhance the overall enjoyment. Far from a freak show, the vibe here is unexpected and surely here to stay.

ADDRESS

Bol’shaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa, 62/3

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‘Visiting a sanatorium is like stepping back in time,’ writes Maryam Omidi in Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums, in which she takes the reader on a health-conscious journey into a world of peeling wallpaper, statues of Lenin and alternative, new world medicine.

Part health-spa, part hospital, sanatoriums once offered a ubiquitous, ‘decidedly purposeful’ pastime, explains Omidi. Their function was ‘to provide rest and recuperation, so citizens could return to work with renewed diligence and productivity’. This rapidly developing need and popularity saw 1,829 new sanatoriums built across the USSR by 1939. Here, for the first time, is an architecturally-led account of what happened.

From Stalinist, neo-classical grandeur in Abkhazia to Khrushchyovka concrete blocks in Armenia, a bewildering array of styles is on display. There are examples of rare Soviet-era architectural flourishes – take the green-marbled walls of Tskaltubo in Georgia – which were only allowed, writes critic Diane Koenker, because sanatoriums ‘were intended to astonish, encouraging a “less traditional approach”’ to municipal building.

Despite these moments of ornamentation, cold-floored functionality prevails. This is reflected in the stoic attitude of a young Soviet Union, when every aspect of sanatorium life (from ‘sleep to sunbathing’) was strictly monitored. Since then, there’s been a gradual, century-long shift towards more relaxed sanatorium culture. Though many sanatoriums now sit in disrepair, the few that remain popular have modernised and developed to varying degrees. The pages of Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums are populated by a cast of modern day visitors: elderly women undergoing magnetic therapy in Belarus; teenagers playing ping-pong in a working salt mine near Minsk; babies in bubbling bathtubs in Alyans.

The future of these time-warped hubs remains uncertain, and this book intends to be more than just a platform for Western-purview ogling. Rather, Omidi hopes it will act as a catalyst for the renovation and preservation of the sanatorium's singular architectural history: ‘in the hope that they will be protected and restored for future generations’.

INFORMATION

Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums, published by Fuel Design

The centerpiece of a plan to increase and enhance public space in Moscow, Zaryadye Park, located just steps from Red Square, St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin, is the first large-scale green to open in the city in the past 50 years.

But while it’s called a park (and looks like a park), Zaryadye, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro together with Hargreaves Associates and Citymakers, is much more than that; stealthily encompassing five pavilions, two amphitheatres, a concert hall and an overlook cantilevering 70m over the Moscow River.

Charles Renfro, a partner at DS+R, calls this ‘wild urbanism’: a merger of nature and the city that was the primary focus of the design. ‘We’re mixing and intermingling the edges,’ explains DS+R senior associate David Chacon, walking through the site’s 14,000 sq m of enclosed space on a rainy day in mid-October.

The subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) merger of hard and soft is everywhere. Thirty-five acres of landscape winds its way down to the river, embodying several of Russia’s different regional landscapes, including wetlands, tundra, steppe and coniferous coastal and birch forests. Around, over and under this varied composition, the buildings – including a media centre, science centre, underground museum, concert hall, market hall offering foods from around Russia and a new restaurant themed on Soviet space exploration – take on an eroded profile, their entryways curving and stepping down from the ground plane, their green roofs (often installed with large skylights) merging with and sometimes becoming hillsides themselves.

A hexagonal stone paving system further knits hardscape and landscape, gradually blending with grass, dirt, gravel, trees, shrubs and other plant life. A series of vista points provide a frame for the Moscow cityscape to unfold in often surprising ways. You can, for instance, gaze at Red Square from a mossy steppe that’s actually the top of a building. Or – somewhat like an impressionist painting – through the triangular glazed panels of the ‘Crust’: a curved, partially enclosed amphitheatre at the park’s eastern end that fuses with the 2,000-seat philharmonic concert hall on its far side.

The project sits on the site of the former Rossiya Hotel. It was overseen by Moscow’s chief architect, Sergey Kuznetsov, who organised a competition drawing 90 submissions from 27 countries. The city, he says, intentionally sought to reach out beyond its local comfort zone, and chose to focus on the unifying power of the natural world over potentially divisive symbols of history and politics. It also wanted to create a much-needed connection between the city’s centrepiece, Red Square, and the Moskva River. The reinforced concrete, boomerang-shaped cantilever does that in spades, and has become the park’s must-visit destination. But just down the way, you can get lost in a colourful birch forest before getting a peek at the Kremlin, and then, around the corner, enter a building (then another, and another).

‘I call it Moscow lost and found,’ says Petr Kudryavtsev, a partner at Citymakers, the firm that consulted on urban design, programming and other key components of the park. Considering how your experience changes so profoundly moving through the new facility, it’s a perfect description.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Diller Scofidio + Renfro website, the Hargreaves Associates website and the Citymakers website

Polished concrete and buckets of sunny paint have helped give the lower-ground floor of a north London flat a new confidence. The lower reaches of the Victorian terrace duplex in Stoke Newington were suffering an inferiority complex. While the upper-ground floor was all period features and high ceilings, the floor below was a muddle of small, cramped rooms and corridors.

London design consultancy Russian For Fish (which is pronounced ‘riba’, a neat pun), reconfigured the 74 sq m space by taking down a wall between the hall and the corridor, and replacing a WC with a shower and utility room. In addition, an existing side return extension now has a roof light.

They then got to work on the aesthetic. The client was after a minimal, industrial look, so ‘we took references from commercial and gallery spaces, as opposed to residential interiors’, says RFF founder Pereen d’Avoine. ‘Not only to create the contrast with the upper-ground floor, but to allow for the client’s furniture to breathe.’ Hence the polished, light-toned concrete, which was used for the floor and the living room wall.

In contrast, the walls, ceiling and units of the galley-style kitchen and the stairwell have been coated in a vibrant yellow, which ‘not only brightens the space, but highlights the warmer tones of the natural concrete floor’, adds d’Avoine, who runs the business with co-director Nilesh Shah. What’s more, the owner intended to fill the place with houseplants, ‘so the yellow was a natural continuation of the colour range. The grey and yellow will harmonise with the greens, creating an ever-changing colourful landscape.’

The flat is typical of RFF’s work: making the capital’s small homes function better for their inhabitants. It now has three reception rooms, which act as a fitting backdrop to some very smart mid-century and contemporary furniture.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Russian For Fish website

In 2012, the Wallpaper* team had the good fortune to visit Konstantin Melnikov’s spectacular private house in Moscow (W*164). It was a rather inauspicious time for this iconic piece of residential architecture, designed in 1927 at the height of Russian Constructivism and long considered one of the totemic houses of the 20th century. Decay and neglect were evident everywhere, from the overgrown garden to the crumbling masonry and damp-streaked walls.

And yet in every corner there was a revelation – a thrilling angle, a streak of light, a bold colour or striking antique. Kitsch modern teddy bears sat next to minor masterpieces of early Soviet realism. A mighty stove stood alone like a miniature Constructivist tower in its own right. Melnikov’s great cylindrical drums were a maze of tiny cracks, a testament to the conventional construction techniques that underpinned the radical form.

In designing this house for himself, Melnikov (1880–1974) had the rare opportunity to consider every single detail, and the allocation of land and materials was a rare privilege at the time. Although structurally conventional it was formally abstract in almost every other way. In plan form the house is formed from two interlocking circles, with bedrooms and kitchen on the ground floor, leading via a central spiral stair to a  studio space on the upper floor, lit by arrays of hexagonal windows.

DOM Publishers’ monograph delves into the genesis and design of this unique building, reproducing original archive photography and a host of beautiful drawings, along with contemporary imagery of the house in its current state of preservation. Conservation work is still very much required, but the house is now a museum and its future is finally secure.

INFORMATION
The Melnikov House: Icon of the Avant-Garde, Family Home, Architecture Museum, €28, published by DOM Publishers

‘It is the first time these works have ever been in conversation together so the show has a very specific conceptual intent in calling them portraits and surrogates,’ says the New York-based artist Taryn Simon, on her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong at the Gagosian.

With Contraband (2010), she presents a selection of images from her photographic archive of 1,075 items confiscated by US customs and postal service officials. Simon lived at the airport for an entire week photographing an eclectic array of items. From counterfeit handbags and dead animals, to intricately wrapped food items and pirate videos, the resulting images are a reflection on how people at the border are defined by their objects.

‘Counterfeit goods were the battlefront of immigration services at that time,’ Simon says. ‘You’d expect more dangerous items but it was an economic battle then.’

The artist is best known for her photography paired with text, as seen in her Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015) series. Here, she worked with a botanist to meticulously reproduce the formal floral arrangements showcased at the signing of several important international agreements, accords and treaties.

The monumental photographs, accompanied by text about the treaty signing, are presented in mahogany picture frames that Simon says forms an integral part of the artwork. ‘Some of these flowers convey a certain public ceremony, but the aesthetics are completely different to what the texts are about,’ she explains. ‘For me, it is about that disruption of presumption and judgement and perception.’

The artist’s video self-portrait – made in collaboration with a Russian news programme – is the undisputed highlight of the exhibition. It shows how at the close of a video interview on Russia Prime Time, the artist was asked to sit silently and stare at the two newscasters for several minutes so that the extra footage could be used in the editing process. ‘It is about the ways in which you perform in what, at the end, looks natural but is really very awkward,’ Simon says.

Simon usually works on one project at a time – sometimes for several years carrying out painstaking research – without any idea of what the next project will be. ‘Each project is not a building block but almost a rejection. It is like the person who made that project is dead and there is a new author,’ she offers.

‘In my mind there are radical shifts that come from an exhaustion from the former project. There is a jump to a completely new construction of work.’ Good news indeed.

INFORMATION

‘Taryn Simon: Portraits and Surrogates’ is on view until 5 August. For more information, visit the Gagosian website

7/F Pedder Building
12 Pedder Street
Central
Hong Kong

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A new exhibition dedicated to unrealised Soviet architecture has opened at London’s Design Museum to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Called 'Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution', the show explores the Soviet architects’ idealistic vision of Moscow through six unbuilt architectural landmarks designed in the 1920s and 30s following the Revolution.

‘This was a time when architecture, politics and society were explicitly linked,’ says curator Eszter Steierhoffer. ‘In the period that followed the revolution, architects were trying to come up with a blueprint for a new society in order to better the world. In the later Socialist realism period when Stalin had consolidated his power it somehow shifted. It became about propaganda.’

The shift is reflected in the exhibition’s design. Conceived by Berlin studio Kuehn Malvezzi and London-based Kellenberger-White, the show’s layout takes the form of a descending spiral – a highly symbolic architectural form of the time. Large-scale elements evoke the heavy, geometric forms of the era, while imagery displayed on huge light boards encourages viewers to look up to observe the imposing buildings, just the way in which the architects had intended their designs to be seen. 

Opening with Lissitzky’s Cloud Iron – a series of eight lightweight horizontal skyscrapers that were designed to address the problem of overcrowding and the inadequacy of public transport in the city – each of the exhibition’s featured projects address the different building blocks of socialist society including communal living, work, education and communication while also touching upon current issues such as globalisation and gender politics.

‘There is an extreme freshness to the architectural language,’ says Steierhoffer, referencing in particular the work of Yakov Chernikhov, whose visionary architectural drawings inspired the likes of Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenmann. ‘But also in the ideas that they imply and the themes that they question. The work is so contemporary. The show is about architecture but really it's mostly about life and how a new life was imagined.’

Drawings and models of each of the six buildings are displayed alongside a selection of artworks and propaganda materials from the time. These reveal the increasingly controlling and dark ambitions behind the architecture. Radical thinker Nikolay Kuzmin’s 'Scientific Organization of Life' – a minute-by-minute timetable that maps out an 'ideal' daily routine for coal miners – is displayed next to the plans and drawings for Ladovsky’s Communal House. This spiral-shaped building for communal living purported to be emancipating the female from the toils of the traditional family unit, but had the ultimate goal of making women more effective members of the workforce.

The exhibition’s ascending spiral route ends with Boris Iofan’s Palace of the Soviets, which is described as ‘propaganda in built form’. Intended for one of Moscow’s most prominent sites, this ultimate monument to the State’s new centralised power would have been the tallest building in the world.

Reflecting on the lessons that can be learned from this revolutionary period, Steierhoffer reflects: ‘Today we are living in a globalised, capitalist society and one thing I fear is lost is the explicit relationship to politics and social issues when we talk about architecture. It’s interesting to be confronted by these early ideas that are so resonant.’

INFORMATION

’Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution’ is on view until 4 June. For more information, visit the Design Museum website

ADDRESS

Design Museum
24–238 Kensington High Street
London W8 6AG

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Located in a 1,097 sq ft space on Moscow’s Petrovka Street, a strip famous for its theatres, Aquazzura’s new Russian outpost is certainly full of drama. Behind the building’s original exterior, created in 1874–76 by Russian architect Boris Freidenberg, the Florentine footwear brand’s signature black and white stripes are let loose. A defining feature of all five of its existing global stores, the stripes are a nod to the black and white pillars found in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, the brand’s birth city.

In Moscow, they have been given a Russian makeover. Joined by scarlet hexagonal tiles that adorn the store’s arched ceiling and back wall, the bold stripes form archways and extend across the floor, transforming into a mesmerising woven pattern inspired by the intricate inlaid marble floors found in Saint Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum.

The bold new design is the work of sisters Cláudia and Catarina Soares Pereira of Casa Do Passadiço, who already have multiple Aquazzura interiors under their belts, including the luxury label’s Florence, London, Miami and Las Vegas stores, as well as its New York and Milan showrooms.

‘Our main concern was to translate the amazing architecture of the city and to bring its mood into the shop,’ say the Portuguese duo, who have completed over 200 projects during their 20 years in business. ‘We fell in love with the Russian architecture and wanted to reproduce this feeling in the details.’

A palette of rare marbles, golden brass, velvet, linen, handwoven carpet, glossy lacquers and decorative plasters for the ceilings and walls. An important opening for the six-year-old brand, which is already enormously popular in Russia, the Moscow store forms part of a wider expansion plan spearheaded by founder and creative director Edgardo Osorio, who hopes to turn Aquazzura into a global accessories brand with stores in every major city worldwide within the next ten years.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Aquazzura website

ADDRESS

Aquazzura
18 Petrovka Street
Moscow 127051

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It’s difficult to imagine eating out in Moscow before Russian restaurateur Andrei Dellos came along and lured us into gastronomic extravagance. Now, the man behind the city's iconic Pushkin Café shows no signs of faltering with the recent opening of his eighth restaurant in the capital, a Georgian eatery called Kazbek.

Inspired by childhood memories of his visits to the country, Dellos - a trained artist - has styled the embellished interiors in sumptuous ornate trappings, with low hanging pendant lampshades, framed mirrors and pictures that scatter the walls, a mishmash of knick-knacks that jostle for space on a grid of shelves and grand latticed door panels that divide the main restaurant from the private dining room.

Of course, Georgian food is a festive family affair and in keeping with that, Dellos has appointed Tbilisi chef Mamiya Jojua and his mother to head up the kitchen, where they cook up evocative, hearty classics; 'khachapuri' - traditional cheese filled bread - is topped with sour 'sulguni' cheese and shavings of truffle, while sweet-tooths will struggle between the richly purple 'pelamushi' - a grape juice dessert porridge - or the creamy 'matsoni' filled with young walnuts.

Leave time for an eastern-style coffee served with exquisite silver accessories and sugary sweets or raise a toast to Dellos’ latest tasty venture with a glass of crisp Tsinandali wine.

ADDRESS

1905 Street, 2
Moscow

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In 1908, the Russian industrialist and insatiable art collector Sergei Shchukin opened the painting galleries of his residence in the Trubetzkoy Palace to the public every Sunday. Now considered among the most influential patrons of the 20th century, he had already amassed a significant number of works by Monet, Rousseau, Gauguin, Matisse and Cézanne, whose vision of modernity he respected above all.

He subsequently commissioned Matisse to create several new works including Dance and Music panels for his staircase, and invited the artist to Moscow to hang his pieces in what became known as the Pink Drawing Room. Arguably his most interesting collecting period occurred between 1912–14 when he discovered cubism and purchased roughly 30 works by Picasso. This shift was largely motivated by young Russian artists, who would come to study the paintings, subsequently launching their own shape-shifting movements of futurism and supremacism.

An extraordinary exhibition organised by the Fondation Louis Vuitton brings together 127 paintings, sculptures, collages and drawings from Shchukin’s collection which, since 1948, had been divided between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (274 works belonging to Shchukin were nationalised in 1918 during the Revolution). Both museums are partners in the show, which came together in part thanks to the perseverance of his grandson, André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud.

While the temporary reunion of French masterpieces under one rather remarkable, Frank Gehry-conceived roof of glass sails might be the main draw for most visitors, the addition of 31 works from the Russian avant-garde as evidence of the collection’s influence carries no less significance. As Bernard Arnault, president of LVMH and the Fondation Louis Vutton notes in his preface, the value of this show comes partly from the desire to ‘re-create the visual and emotional “shockwave” that the collections gave rise to’.

Hence the counterpoint of Picasso’s Peasant Woman with Buckets and a Child (1912) with Malevich’s Woman with Pails, Dynamic Arrangement (1912–1913) – a cubist genre scene against a grouping of geometric shapes barely discernible as a female form. The theme ‘Prototypes of New Painting’ in the final gallery, where Cézanne’s Mardi Gras depiction and Picasso’s Green Pan and Black Bottle keep company with various works by Malevich, Olga Rozanova and Ivan Kliun, suggests all these radical proposals find new harmony from certain shared elements.

‘It was thanks to the pressure [the Russian artists] exerted that he purchased so many Picassos in such a short period of time... he was dedicated to these artists,’ explained curator Anne Baldessari to Wallpaper* during the preview. As former head of the Picasso Museum in Paris, she believes that this is the important takeaway aside from the obvious beauty of the impressionist and fauvist works. 'It was a powerful dialogue between them – he was already nearly 60 years old and these young artists wanted him to buy contemporary French art. The Picassos that were so austere, no one was buying them.’

Fast forward nearly a century, and there’s a sense that the aesthetic borrowing between Russia and France is once again in motion, only in reverse. Today, we have Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia bringing an Eastern Bloc influence to French high fashion with Balenciaga and his own Paris label, Vetements. ‘It was a perpetual confrontation,’ noted Baldessari, adding, ‘Here, we see how the history of art was built.’ She was speaking of Shchukin’s collection; but of course, out of all great art emerges so much more.

INFORMATION

’Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin Collection’ is on view until 20 February 2017. For more information, visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton website

ADDRESS

Fondation Louis Vuitton
8 avenue Mahatma Gandhi
75116, Paris

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'It's not every day that Paris acquires a new cathedral, a new library, a new auditorium and a new bilingual school,' said Paris' mayor Anne Hidalgo at the recent inauguration ceremony of the city's Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Centre.

The monument is located on a highly sensitive UNESCO site in central Paris, steps away from the Eiffel Tower, the banks of the Seine and the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum. 'The silhouette of Paris has been redrawn,' says its architect, Jean-Michel Wilmotte.

In designing the new centre, he had three principles: to respect the canons of the Russian Orthodox Church, to incorporate the centre seamlessly into a densely-built Parisian neighbourhood and to create a contemporary building inspired by medieval Orthodox churches, characterised by their sobriety.

'There was no question of creating a caricature,' said Wilmotte. 'It is essentially an urban project, one that prolongs Avenue Rapp across to the Seine, and reveals the [listed] Palais de l'Alma, previously hidden from sight behind the old Méteo France [national meteorological] building.'

These newly open grounds are landscaped by Louis Benech with Russian species, including Mongolian linden trees, red and yellow Siberian apple trees and, in front of the Cathedral, Tartarian maples. 

The centre’s minimalist volumes are orchestrated horizontally in cream-coloured Massangis stone from Burgundy, the same used for the steps of the neighbouring Eiffel Tower, the Jena Bridge and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, delicately blending it into its surroundings. The four buildings that comprise the complex are clad in 12,000 stone modules, constituting dynamically faceted facades that play with light and shadow.

The centre's focal point is the Sainte-Trinité Orthodox Cathedral with its crowning glory, five gold onion domes representing Christ and the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Wilmotte designed these in collaboration with the Patriarch of Moscow.

The gold-coloured domes are a technological and artistic tour de force. Wilmotte insisted that they be completely smooth, rather than faceted, as is their usual means of production. It was decided to use composite materials more common to the aeronautical and naval industries. Multiplast, a company in Vannes that specialises in producing catamarans and the world's first solar powered airplane, fabricated the domes, a world first in building construction.

Not only are they perfectly round, but this technique also makes them considerably lighter. The central dome is 11m in diameter and weighs 8.2 tonnes, as opposed to the 42 tonnes it would have weighed if traditionally produced; the smaller ones are 5.8m in diameter and weigh just 2 tonnes. It took 90,000 leaves of 24 carat gold to cover them in a process that lasted three months.

With the building permit secured, the work was completed in just three years. 'The quality of work has been exceptional throughout. It is, it can be said, a work of art,' concludes Wilmotte. 'Everyone involved can be very proud.'

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Wilmotte & Associés website

ADDRESS

Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Centre
2 avenue Rapp 
1-5 Quai Branly and 192 rue de l’Université 
Paris 75007

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Since the New Holland Island’s acquisition by the country's Naval forces shortly after its creation, this eight-hectare urban island in St Petersburg has been largely off limits to the general public, mostly visible from the outside through the openings on its exterior walls. However, now the island is set to fully reopen for the first time in its history.

Equipped with a new master plan, come August 2016, Dutch landscaping and urban design firm West 8 will oversee the island’s transformation into St Petersburg’s newest cultural epicentre, providing a designated space to celebrate the arts, culture, and events.

This historic triangular, man-made island was created in 1719 by the addition of the Kryukov and Admiralty canals, which connected the Moika River with the Neva. Its name was inspired by its resemblance to Amsterdam. Reopened to visitors briefly in 2011, over three seasons the island accommodated more than 900 events, attracting an impressive 760,000 visitors.

Now with the addition of a series of temporary pavilions constructed from metal, wood and concrete, the New Holland Island will once again open its grounds to the general public. A series of historical buildings – namely the former blacksmith's building, (the foundry) the administrative building, (the commandant's house) and the old naval prison – will be given a new lease of life, undergoing a comprehensive restoration and contemporary outfitting.

The rejuvenated complex and temporary pavilions will host facilities, such as a playground modeled after the historical Russian frigate ship 'Petr and Pavel', a communal herb garden, information centre, stages, restrooms, kiosks and entrance.

Even though the full restoration of the complex won't reach completion before 2025, the island will now be accessible throughout the whole year. Within the winter months, the central lawn will be replaced by an ice skating rink with a natural ice surface, accompanied with music, lighting and its own seasonal program of events. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit New Holland Island’s website and the West 8 website

'To Russia with Love' is an irresistible title for the first show in the titular country by American artist Robert Indiana, whose ubiquitous LOVE image arguably overshadows its creator in its worldwide notoriety.

LOVE, Indiana’s signature composition, was originally conceived for a  MoMA Christmas card in 1965, then made into a postage stamp and since reproduced innumerable times in paint, print and as a sculpture. Given this, it's refreshing that there's just one LOVE sculpture within Indiana's recently opened retrospective at the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg, allowing a broader view of the artist’s six decade career.

Indiana first rose to fame amid the burgeoning American pop art movement of the early 1960s, his bold graphic images inspired by both the commercial and highway signs of 60s America and more highbrow literary influences. Yet Indiana cannot by typecast as purely a pop artist, nor his work seen as paused and suspended in that decade (as is often the case with his peers).

Indiana’s love of typography is palpable in the hard edged, meaty images of the exhibition; indeed, he proudly referred to himself as a 'painter of signs'.

His admiration for signage is shown in his assemblages. In the 1950s, after he moved to the old shipping district of Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, he started scavenging old wooden stencilled and hand painted signs, and other objects, for his anthropomorphic constructions. Like much of his work they are often ironic or playful, undercut by more sober literary and historic references.

The Russian Museum show blends assemblages and sculptures with paintings and graphic works, and has been organised in collaboration with the Zurich-based Galerie Gmurzynska, who represent Indiana.

'Several years ago Robert Indiana expressed two exhibition wishes that he wanted to accomplish when he turned 80,' says Mathias Rastorfer, CEO of Gmurzynska. 'First was a major show in New York which was fulfilled with the substantial Whitney Museum of Modern Art retrospective [2013–14] and the second was an exhibition in Russia.'

Though his art was originally born of the American commercial iconography of the Cold War period, Indiana has a long held fascination with Russia and Rastorfer believes an exhibition in the country makes sense as, 'historically the artistic influences between the US and Russia in the 20th century went both ways.

'First, Russian suprematism and constructivism influenced American minimalist artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, Carl Andre [and] Brice Marden, to name only a few. Then during the second half of the 20th century, American pop art influenced Russia and movements such as Soviet nonconformist art.'

LOVE is, he says, as legendary in Russia as it is in the west, but 'there is so much more to discover about Indiana'.

INFORMATION

'To Russia with Love' is on view until 7 June. For more information, visit the State Russian Museum’s Marble Palace website

ADDRESS

State Russian Museum
4 Inzhenernaya Str.
St Petersburg

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No doubt spurred on by the success of their first restaurant, a gastropub called Duo, chefs Dmitri Blinov and Renat Malikov along with business partner Sergei Limonov have now launched their second eatery, this time focusing on a menu that showcases a rather creative variety of tartare.

Located in the centre of Saint Petersburg, a short stroll from the main shopping drag, Nevsky Prospect, the restaurant is housed on the ground floor of a residential building that used to be an army barracks, dating from 1908. Interior designer Alexei Penyuk has embellished the original exposed brick and steel-framed windows of the industrial pile, by cladding the remaining walls with concrete and smartly tempering them with live ivy, while quirky versions of Gainsborough’s Woman in Blue and Roslin’s Marquise de Becdelievre gaze down enigmatically from between perfectly placed spotlights. Meanwhile, further trimmings, from a decorative chandelier to the plush parquet flooring underfoot, add a dash of eccentricity to the eclectic mix of mid-century furnishings.

The tartare options range from the traditional steak, to venison with raisins, but if raw meat isn’t your thing, the menu has an array of options from a classic fillet of beef with cognac and bone marrow to Japanese-inspired offerings such as mushroom soup with noodles and shitake. We suggest joining the office workers at the end of the week for a long boozy lunch, followed by a stroll in the nearby Mikhailovsky Gardens, one of the many beautiful parks that dot this beautiful city.

ADDRESS

Vilenskii Pereulok 15

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It was a stint working in the kitchens at Geranium in Copenhagen that prompted Estonian chef Andrey Korobyak to team up with restaurateur Alexandr Zaturinsky and launch MØS, a Scandinavian eatery in Moscow.  

Designer Ekaterina Waltz of local firm Büroe, established the theme by taking inspiration from 1930s hotel foyers in Sweden and the functionalism of Russia’s Vyborg Library, by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. As such, an undulating timber ceiling panel hovers above a chic grey-hued space outfitted with plush custom-made seating and solid walnut tables. Meanwhile, copper pendant lighting and an angular glass-walled wine cellar add contrast and a dash of glitz.

Sip on a cocktail by Andreas Tsanos before enjoying tasty morsels such as quail eggs with summer truffle and crispy onion or smoked whitefish caviar. All washed down with a glass of wine from the extensive list which includes local labels such as Lublu by Burnier.

ADDRESS

Trubetskaya Ulitsa 10

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Slowly but surely, Moscow is shaking off its reputation for dour and unimaginative cuisine.

One of the most recent salvos, Door 19, involved a rotating cast of young international chefs cooking in a temporary loft space paired with, this being Russia after all, a book of lethal cocktails presided over by mixologist Andreas Tsanos (ex-Hix and Sketch in London).

A second pop-up has opened on Pozharsky Lane within spitting distance of the grandiose Cathedral of Christ the Saviour above an Italian family restaurant.

15, named after the street number, will feature a new chef once every three months. Hitting the first ball is French chef Jerome Rohmer whose light Spanish-inflected menu of octopus, grilled scallops and marlin tataki is the perfect foil for the rugged yet nuanced mint-hued interiors by Moscow-based PH.D. The by-now ubiquitous industrial swatch of raw exposed concrete columns and ceilings and ventilation vents is balanced by unexpected hits of pop art by Russian artists Crocodile Power, a white marble and brass bar, and chrome lamps encased in fish baskets.

Meanwhile, Tsanos whips up a batch of 15 cocktails powered by everything from wheatgrass wine, lime leaf dust and jasmine to bee pollen, wormwood and liquorice egg yolks. 

ADDRESS

15 Pozharsky Lane

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The Russian island of Vasilievsky is set for a makeover. The understated yet historically rich locale is an important port-side connection for St Petersburg, bordering the Gulf of Finland. Gearing up for the challenge are two architectural firms, KCAP and Orange, who have won the first prize for the urban and architectural competition.

In the hope of creating a buzzing new geographic sector for St Petersburg, the two Rotterdam-based enterprises are seeking to reposition the small island as a smart entrance point for the city from the water, with a mixture of layer-building concepts that will be modern while also embracing traditional Russian architecture.

Firstly, the peninsula will be enlarged to create an inviting public area, which will be further embellished with blocks to create defined courtyard spaces – a nod to the historical structure of St Petersburg. High rises will then be formed to promote a more metropolitan atmosphere, as well as allowing panoramic views of the area. However, to avoid the soulless quality of conventional tower blocks, the two architectural practices are topping the buildings with gold spires – a further reference to classicist Russian architecture.

KCAP and Orange were chosen from a shortlist of six finalists, in a competition organised by Glorax Development and the municipality of St Petersburg. ‘Our plan creates a beautiful antechamber of the majestic historical centre of St Petersburg,’ explains the winning duo.

INFORMATION

For more information visit KCAP’s website and Orange’s website

Despite Russia’s food import ban, Moscow’s restaurant scene continues to boom and can now add a top notch Lebanese dining room to its internationally diverse collection. Owner Eduard Starikov tasked designer Igor Satiskov with shaping the interiors, which featuring glass-blown pendant lighting, ornate framed mirrors and turquoise ceramic vases, is evocative of Beirut’s heyday.

Wooing head chef Basem Zai from the Middle East, the menu includes classic dishes from charcoal grilled lamb kebabs to tasty shawarmas inspired by his grandmother’s home cooked food. Preparing his own cheese, pickles, sauces and bread, Zain uses all local ingredients, bar the rose water, which he brings from home. The wine list includes a selection of Lebanese labels, but it’s the araq-based cocktail with grape and spices that is the biggest hit at the bar.

ADDRESS

Glinischevsky lane, 3

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Moscow's iconic red-brick Red October district has been slowly transforming into a vibrant neighbourhood of art, food and culture ever since its well known chocolate factory moved out, leaving a rich collection of industrial buildings behind, ripe for redevelopment. 

The area's latest ambitious project is the revival of the nearby disused GES2 power station (originally built between 1904 and 1907), which is set to be redesigned for the contemporary arts foundation V-A-C - an organisation dedicated to the growth and promotion of Russian contemporary art, across different media and channels. Heading the architectural scheme is Italian architect Renzo Piano and his Building Workshop.

The project is designed to comprise ample public space - an extensive free access area with a sculptural garden and piazza, library, bookshop, café, restaurant and auditorium. The foundation's exhibition halls will form a separate key part of the building, while there will also be a dedicated section in the complex for education programs. 

The plant's existing, dramatic chimneys - a landmark for the area - are slated to remain, also becoming, after this revamp, an indispensable part of the site' sustainability strategy, which also includes solar cells and geothermal sources. Completion is planned after the end of 2018.

One of the architect’s section sketches for the new V-A-C foundation space in Moscow

INFORMATION

Images: Courtesy of RPBW, 2015

'The subject of pain is the business I am in,' said Louise Bourgeois, the late French-American artist whose 70-year-career was driven primarily by profound anguish, anxiety, and fear. In her final decades, these feelings manifested themselves in the form of cells, sculptural compositions semi-enclosed by walls, which for her meant both a retreat from the outside world and the confines of her mental prison.

Dozens of these almost-architectural pieces are now on view now at Moscow Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s 'Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells,' alongside the early sculptures, paintings, and drawings that foreshadow this later body of work.

Additionally, the iconic and ominous nine-metre-tall bronze spider Maman greets visitors at the square in front of the museum, and the never-before-presented monumental mirror Has the day invaded the night or has the night invaded the day? will confront them as they enter the atrium.

The cells, comprising found and sculpted objects – meat grinders, mesh cages, glass orbs and stairs to nowhere – revisit recurring themes: the mirror as a symbol of both deflection and self-awareness, for example, or the spiral, which for Bourgeois represented control. Throughout, her pain is palpable: a headless wooden mannequin arches its back in agony. Elsewhere, the blade of a paper cutter is poised to fall on a small sculpture of a person.

In laying these raw emotions bare, however, the artist found comfort. 'Bourgeois always said that she made work for herself,' says Garage chief curator Kate Fowle, emphasising the freedom and autonomy inherent in creating these miniature worlds. Bourgeois expressed her need to create art explicitly in Cell I, in which she stitched a message onto the bedsheets: 'Art is the Guarantee of Sanity.'

INFORMATION

'Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells' is on view until 7 February

Photography: Egor Slizyak. Courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

ADDRESS

Moscow Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
9/32 Krimsky Val st
119049, Moscow

Fresh from her Royal Gold Medal win, Zaha Hadid has further cause for celebration: the completion of her latest project, the Dominion Tower in Moscow. 

The project, which broke ground in 2012 and was unveiled alongside the Peresvet Group last week, is the first of the new projects to be built for the growing creative and IT sectors in Moscow's southeastern corner.  

Located next to tram and trolleybus stops near Dubrovka Station, the vertically stacked off-set plates rise like a solid Tetris tower, square boxes piled up in neat – if seemingly precarious – unison. Inside, curved elements connect the fabric of the building; a central atrium rising through all levels to flood the hearth with natural light. The building itself has nine floors (seven of which are for offices and two basement levels) creating 21,184 sq m of floor space.

'Balconies at each level project into the atrium, corresponding to the displacement of the outer envelope,' explains the architectural practice. A series of staircases interconnect through this central space, making it look like a real life rendition of MC Escher's famous drawings.

The off-set floor plates are balanced between the opposite sides of the building. 'In some zones, columns are removed and replaced with transfer beams to increase the uninterrupted floor space for larger tenants or public programmes,' say the architects.

On the ground floor, a restaurant and coffee area – along with the relaxation zones on balconies – are meant to encourage interaction between employees and disciplines. Office spaces are arranged within a system of standard rectilinear bays, offering possibilities for small, expanding or larger companies as needed. The overriding concept is one of open connectivity, aiming to fuel the collective research culture and development of the companies that will take up residency here. 

INFORMATION

Photography: Hufton+Crow

Rather remarkably, 'My Red Homeland' at Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, is Anish Kapoor’s debut solo show in Russia. Part of the Moscow Biennale, and supported by the Lisson Gallery, the show includes just four pieces: from 1993’s My Body Your Body, a blue black hole in the wall; 2007’s Shelter, a wall mounted sun-cum-giant egg shell; S-Curve, 2006, a curving concave then convex mirror; and My Red Homeland, 2003, a melted red wax wall. But they are handsomely mounted in the centre’s large gallery spaces and, here, less is definitely more. Kapoor’s work demands a lot of empty space and they get it.

Established in 2012, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center has taken over – or rather reclaimed – what was home to the Garage Museum of Art until the move to its OMA-designed space in Gorky Park. Originally the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, the building is considered one the best examples of constructivist architecture in Moscow. The garage, then in a neglected state, was ‘gifted’ by the city to the Federation of Jewish Communities in 2001. The group spent the next seven years restoring the building, increasing the interior space to 15,000 sq m, in line with Melnikov’s original master plan, and drafted in London architect Jamie Fobert to work on the design of the new gallery spaces. Given the city’s cavalier approach to its 20th century architectural treasures, it’s a happy miracle that the building has survived and found new purpose.

Rather remarkably, 'My Red Homeland' at Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, is Anish Kapoor’s debut solo show in Russia. Part of the Moscow Biennale, and supported by the Lisson Gallery, the show includes just four pieces: from 1993’s My Body Your Body, a blue black hole in the wall; 2007’s Shelter, a wall mounted sun-cum-giant egg shell;

INFORMATION

’Anish Kapoor: My Red Homeland’ is on view until 17 January 2016

ADDRESS

Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre
Obraztsova Street, 11, build. 1A
Moscow

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The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow recently unveiled 'Russian Performance: A Cartography of its History' – a large-scale exhibition, curated by Yulia Aksenova and Sasha Obukhova. The exhibition covers a century of performance art from the theatrical experiments of Kazimir Malevich and Vsevolod Meyerhold to the protest works of Pussy Riot.

'Exhibitions of performance art are often monotonous and dull, with endless descriptions of the projects and low quality photographs,' says Sasha Obukhova, fellow curator of the show and head of the research department of Garage Museum. 'We aimed to make sort of a quest, so that even people who don’t care about details of history would get involved.'

That quest starts in 1913, when Russian Futurists painted their faces and went onto the streets of Moscow to 'slap public taste in the face' and ends with Pussy Riot’s performative protest at the policies of Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Between these two tension points lies 100 years of the history of Russian performance. And the Garage show is the most academically complete examination of this art form in this country: featuring the works of more than 150 artists, including the seminal Collective Actions group, created in 1970s but active for over two decades, the 1990s aggressive ‘actionism’ of Oleg Kulik, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Alexander Brener, and their contemporary followers like the Voina group and Petr Pavlensky.

The curators have smartly created 12 thematic paths through the show, from 'slogan' and 'sound' to 'city' and 'interactive object'. They are also encouraging visitors to try their hand at performance art, a tactic that may be the most revolutionary gesture in Russia’s contemporary exhibition practice.

'Performance is the most provocative and radical art form, its history is a series of scandals and conflicts,' says co-curator Yulia Aksenova of the show. 'It is always a test of the limits of what is permitted both in art and society.'

We spoke to co-curator Sasha Obukhova to find out more...

Wallpaper*: It's not the first time that Garage Museum has dedicated a show to the history of performance art, what makes this one special? 
Sasha Obukhova: Most of the previous projects were about Western experience and actual performance practices. We decided to consider the Russian history of this art form. It is also concurrent with the centenary of the first Futurist theater performances. Russian avant-garde artists revolutionised theater and drove it beyond its limits. They drew two vectors – one directed from life to art, another from art into life – and on the junction, performance emerged as the new art form.

Is there anything uniquely Russian in Russian performance art? 
We found how the so called eternal 'Russian questions' – the relationship to utopia, reality and future – are reflected in the Russian performance. The Russian tradition of performance is also more inclined to an act or deed, rather than performative mastery. The second characteristic feature of Russian performance is an almost absolute neglect of corporeality or body language. With rare exception, Russian performances are bodiless and asexual, which you can see in the legacy of Collective Actions who were a very influential group.

There was an outburst of ‘actionism’ in Russian art in the 1990s. That decade is associated with aggressive actions by Anatoly Osmolovsky, Oleg Kulik, Alexander Brener and others. While in the 2000s, artists seemed to loose interest in performance. Why do you think this is? 
For many reasons, but especially the growth of the art market. In Russia performance – as well as readymade and album art and diary graphics – has never been considered an academic. In other words: easily capitalised tradition. So the dominant positions were taken by more commercial kinds of art, like painting, installation, designer objects and such.

In contemporary Russia performance is the art of conflict. If we talk about performance today, we have to talk about Pussy Riot or Petr Pavlensky with their politically driven actions. But you are actually doing a museumification of the protest gesture. What the government brings to criminal court, you place into history...
We can't simply ignore the actions that are subject of public and art-critical debate. However, we found it difficult to represent them within the exhibition. Not that we encountered any ideological pressure from the authorities, but – strangely – we faced obstruction from the artists themselves.

This exhibition is made by the Garage Research department, based on the archive of contemporary art that you've collected for 20 years. Some time ago this archive became part of the museum and the foundation for the Research department, library and videotheque. What are your objectives today? 
The Research department is not only about collecting and archiving information on the history of contemporary Russian art. It is even more about active propagation and education through exhibitions, publications and other forms of professional activity. And ultimately, to show the world that Russia still owns the energy of post-avant-garde experiment. Performance is action, and – as it was written in the manifest of the seminal 1990s actionist group Expropriation of the Art Territory - 'action is revolution'.

ADDRESS

Garage Museum
9, Krymsky Val St
Moscow 119049

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The building that was once home to the St Petersburg University of Telecommunications has now been transformed into a slick coffee shop by the restaurateurs behind King Pong and Zig Zag. Clean lines, neutral tones, raw woods and low-slung soft lighting lend the spacious room a cosy atmosphere, perfect for long coffee-fueled Sunday brunches. Meanwhile quirky details such as a 1952 Siemens telephone behind the serving counter nod to the bar’s previous life. Not to forget the coffee, which Bonch takes seriously: choose your own brew using various filtering methods from Chemex to Hario and La Marzocco, or try a bottle of Cold Brew to accompany a menu comprising roast beef sandwiches with baked peppers and caramalised onion or a smoked turkey salad with camembert, pear and raspberry vinaigrette. We recommend the drunken pear for dessert - perhaps best savoured with a book from the library upstairs.

ADDRESS

Bolshaya Morskaya St 16
St. Petersburg 191186
Russia

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Close to the Georgian border, in a remote part of southern Russia, runs the formidable span of the Caucasus Mountains. In the centre of the range, topping nearly 6,000m is Mount Elbrus, Europe’s highest peak. The fifth member of the Seven Summits (the highest mountains in each of the continents), it is notorious for its extreme climatic conditions. Yet, perched atop the southern side of this peak, is a new eco-hotel. Determined on minimal environmental impact, the North Caucasus Mountain Club (NCMC) enlisted Italian architects LEAPfactory, who specialise in high-altitude design solutions, for this project. The result includes a purification system that uses melted snow to supply the bathroom areas with water. Fashioned from resin and fibreglass, the three cylinder-shaped units house communal bedrooms, a restaurant, lounge areas, a reception point and staff accommodation, while the remaining building houses the toilets, showers and biological depurifiers.

INFORMATION
Website

ADDRESS

Mount Elbrus
Kabardino-Balkar
Russia

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Coffeemania-mania continues apace in Moscow, with a new restaurant on Lubyanka Square in an Art Nouveau building opposite the former KGB headquarters. David Collins Studio took inspiration from the brew to develop an interior that combines practicality with art. Columns soar from marble floors complementing the creamy wood walls; mirrors amplify light; and a striking clock and brass details add weight to the coffee bar. In a cosier adjoining hall, floors are stained 'espresso brown' and tabletops are grazed for decorative effect.

ADDRESS

2 Maly Tcherkassky Pereulok Street
Moscow
Russia

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When curator and Wallpaper* editor-at-large Suzanne Trocmé was looking through Russian resumés for the designers who would ultimately form Born in the USSR, launched at Gallery Elena Shchukina as part of the London Design Festival, she noticed a peculiarity in the bio. 'It said he was born in Leningrad, but he studied in St Petersburg,' says the London-based designer and curator. 'It made me wonder what it means to be born into one cultural environment and practicing in another.'

Trocmé cast her net wider to include designers born in the former USSR before 1991, pre-Perestroika, yet on the cusp of their nation's dissolution - which eventually exposed them to a world of imagery. A student in Russia in the 1980s, she had a unique perspective in the matter. 'There was no advertising,' she says of life behind the curtain then. 'No one else's opinion got in the way. In fact, that absence of visual bombardment was a luxury.'

The final cut of 14 includes some designers who have never left what is now Russia. And yet they design with sophisticated clarity, humour and national spirit. 'The designs I found, out of hundreds of pieces,' says Trocmé, 'embrace Russian traditions but are truly contemporary.'

She points to the wood 'Dot' table by Lera Moiseeva, born to space engineers in Tarusa, Central Russia, in 1986. It is mobile, like a wheelbarrow, with a front wheel that pivots around the main surface 'like in the cosmos'. A collection of clay whistles in the shape of birds by Siberian-born Anna Denisenko reference the old acorn whistles used by Slavic watchmen to warn of approaching enemies.

The exhibition, launched in partnership with Wallpaper*, aims to upturn the stereotype of Russians in London. That the hub of Russian activity in London overlaps, Venn-like, with the Knightsbridge hub of the Design Festival is a stroke of luck.

As for the wider relationship between the two cultures, 'Sanctions are not always useful. It's important to support good talent wherever in the world you find it,' says Trocmé. 'I just wanted to show that Russian design is very cool and has a place in the world, and to support it - despite the geopolitical situation.'

ADDRESS

Gallery Elena Shchukina
18 Beauchamp Place
Knightsbridge
London SW3 1NQ

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Ever since our Russian adventure, we have been eagerly anticipating the opening of the new temporary pavilion for the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, in Moscow's Gorky Park.
 
The structure will be the temporary home of the well known cultural organisation - the brainchild of gallerist Dasha Zhukova and her charity, the Iris Foundation - for the next few months, holding the fort till next summer when works at the centre's more permanent home by Rem Koolhaas' architecture practice OMA will be completed.

Shigeru Ban has once again used his customary medium of locally sourced paper, tubes of which form the pavilion's curved exterior walls. Located near Gorky Park's Pionersky Pond, the structure spans a total area of 2,400 sq m, which includes an 800 sq m exhibition space, a bookshop and café. The pavilion will play temporary host to the centre's exhibitions and educational activities.

The inaugural exhibition 'Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban', focuses on the pavilion's typology and its impermanent nature. Touching upon realized and unrealized work, the exhibition will also show rare archival drawings and information on the numerous short-term structures installed in the park over the years, through conventional as well as multi-media and interactive elements.

The projects on display range from works by Konstantin Melnikov, Alexey Shchusev and Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Vera Mukhina.

Russian art collective AES+F have been creating their trademark large-scale video installations, as well as photographic and sculptural works, since 1987. Now, the group have not only turned their attention to architecture, but have also joined forces with one of their offspring, architect George Arzamasova, to design and develop their first house just outside of Moscow.

Comprising conceptual artists Tatiana Arzamasova and Lev Evzovich, graphic designer Evgeny Svatsky and fashion photographer Vladimir Fridkes, the group were recently recruited by Wallpaper* as advisory panellists for our Russian issue and also created a new video piece, ‘Reincarnation’- a still of which fronts our Reigning in Russia issue limited edition subscriber cover.

The new building was commissioned by photographer’s agent Vitaly Kalashnikov, who has known the members of the collective for about eight years. The house will be sited just west of Moscow in Opushenko Village and has largely been designed by George under the guidance of his parents Lev and Tatiana, who trained as architects.

Constructed from reinforced concrete, the house will comprise three floors with the five bedrooms all facing east on the top floor, apart from the master bedroom, so as to keep the morning sunlight out for Kalashnikov who is a late riser. Also included in the family home will be a gym, wine cellar, pool and sauna, along with a granny annex for Kalashnikov’s parents.

The structure is a relatively low composition of interlocking rectangular volumes spreading across multiple levels. Using a combination of strip windows and terraces, the authors are aiming to connect the life inside the house with the surrounding natural and built environment.

Energy efficient Schüco windows, natural ventilation and solar panels boost the house’s green credentials. With the building expected to be completed in the next two years, we're eager to see the finished project.

The design is a relatively low composition of interlocking rectangular volumes spread across three levels.

The building will be fashioned from reinforced concrete.

Five bedrooms all face east on the top floor, apart from the master bedroom, so as to keep the morning sunlight out for Kalashnikov, who is a late riser.

Also included in the family home will be a gym, wine cellar, pool and sauna, along with a granny annex for Kalashnikov’s parents.

Energy efficient Schüco windows, natural ventilation and solar panels boost the house’s green credentials.

Russia is famous for its grand landscapes stretching out to the horizon, free and wild. Some of these green fields and ex-farm collectives not too far from Moscow also serve as platforms for architectural experimentation. In 2005, two festivals with a truly unique format were born, where architects, designers and artists of all ages gather to build a showcase for visitors to camp around and enjoy the show.

The Goroda and Archstoyanie festivals both provide their participants with a chance to design and construct something that wouldn't be possible in an urban context. For some of its young contributors this is often their first chance to build.
 
Both events fully exploit their sites' rural potential. Goroda has previously travelled around Russia and beyond, finding its permanent home last year in an abandoned Soviet collective farm, the Archfarm. Ten structures currently remain from last year's festival, all site-specific 'answers to the place'. Some of them are playful and some truly functional - including the elegant and simple wooden huts, now rented out to frequent visitors.

Those participating in these festivals use natural local materials to full potential and build for the future. Archstoyanie, set over 120 hectares of land, is home to Alexander Brodsky's wooden Rotonda and Boris Bernaskoni's Arc. They were designed for the festival, but also help develop the surrounding national park.

Over 10,000 people visited Archstoyanie this year, joining special walks around the site and attending performances by contemporary artists. Both rural festivals are known for their thought-provoking designs, but also offer a fun day out for all; a sample of what the numerous Russian architecture and design festivals have to offer, both in town and the countryside.

Here's our pick of the top five Russian architecture festivals:

Archstoyanie festival
Organiser: Nikola-Lenivets
Curator: Anton Kochurkin  
When: Annually, every July for 3 days
Where: Kaluga's region, Dzerjinskiy district, Nikola-lenivets village

Goroda festival
Organiser: Ivan Ovchinnikov
When: biannually, every August and February, over 2 weeks in the summer and 2 weeks in the winter
Where: Tula region, Zaokskij village

Sretenka Design Week
Organiser: Andrei Samonaev
When: annually, every October for a week
Where: Moscow

Moscow Architecture Festival
Curator: Bart Goldhoorn
When: Annually, every May for 5 days
Where: Moscow

Moscow Biennale
Organiser: Vasiliy Bychkov
When: annually, over two weeks between May and June
Where: Moscow

Probka, Moscow

St Petersburg-based celebrity chef Aram Mnatsakanov has launched his first Moscow eatery. Designed by prominent local interiors specialist Albina Nazimova, the restaurant concept is a high-end trattoria, which centres around a state-of-the-art kitchen, adorned with a homely display of assorted copper utensils. Overseen by chef Valter Bizoffi, who has been relocated from one of the group's St Petersburg restaurants, Il Grappolo, the menu is a fresh assortment of traditional and modern Italian fare, ranging from dorado carpaccio with courgettes and burrata cheese to pizza with Parma ham, black truffle and spicey Salami.

Tsvetnoi Boulevard 2, Moscow; tel: 7.495 995 9045

Writer: Anna Jackson-Stevens

...

Bar-Studio Kluchi, Moscow

Arranged over two conjoined buildings in the centre of the city, the properties that house this exclusive private members' club were originally built in the 18th century, although most of it burnt down in a fire in 1812. A restoration project at the end of the 19th century saw the reconstruction of the wooden areas. Fast-forward to 2011 and the establishment landed in the capable hands of Moscow-based architects Peter Kostelov, Alexey Rozenberg and Anton Grechko. Together, the trio have overcome a number of planning restrictions to create a multi-themed party space around the building's original assets, embodying its eclectic architectural styles. Set over two storeys, Bar-Studio Kluchi is arranged as a series of three contrasting bars - two sensational main areas and a cosy chill-out room, complete with a library of books, resembling a Harry Potter fantasy world. The place is regularly packed with the Moscow elite, and you will have to buy an invitation to join them.

www.kostelov.ru

Writer: Lauren Ho

Tao, St Petersburg

A former taxi rank has been turned into a culinary strip appealing to St Petersburg gourmands, and the latest opening is Pan-Asian restaurant Tao. There is no sign on the door, and it gives little hint as to what's behind. But inside the décor, by local designer Savieli Arkhipenko, is unusually impressive. There's a bar, two dining rooms and a shisha lounge planned; and no windows, only the original parking bays holding intricate eastern wooden carvings. A slightly grotesque lion dominates, but chef Kent Lee, formerly of London's Hakkasan, steals the show, along with mixologist Alexander Pugachev who creates exotic cocktails to compliment the food.

2 Konushenny Ploschad; tel: 7.812 244 6818

Writer: Anna Jackson-Stevens

Barry Bar, Moscow

The latest project from Global Point, the St Petersburg-based group that brought us Moscow's Schastie restaurant, is a watering hole whose chief aim is to create the ultimate cocktails. Manager Andrei Dolotkazi - a former student of celebrated mixologist Alexander Kan - even has a 'samagon' (moonshine) apparatus on the bar, with which he distils alcohol to create infusions. The kitchen, which serves breakfast until 6pm on the weekends, is run by chef Maxim Kalmikov and provides a mixture of European and Russian fare, from cheeseburgers to borsch, and includes a range of favourites from the group's St Petersburg-based '22.13' restaurant. Who is Barry? The local nickname for a 'lover' has been given new meaning by the bar staff, who use it to describe the characters that frequent the bar, from the business-like 'Briefcase Barry' to the ruddy 'Red-nose Barry'.

Kuznetsky Most 1; tel: 7.495 276 0736; www.barrybar.com

Writer: Anna Jackson-Stevens

Ostrovok Terrace, Moscow

Sandro Sherents and Oleg Shtofman of local architecture firm, Shar Project, have created a new home for Ostrovok restaurant, which has been in the same place, under the same family ownership, since Soviet times. Sited by a tree-fringed lake in the recently rejuvenated Gorky Park, the angular structure is fashioned from raw wooden beams and is topped with a metallic roof. The building's large windows ensure a light-filled interior and when lit up at night, the space looks particularly inviting. Food is prepared in front of diners on an open fire, while fruit cocktails and smoothies make way for mulled wine and grog on the winter menu.

Golitsinsky Pond, Gorky Park, Krimsky Val 9, Moscow; tel: 7.495 783 0406

Writer: Anna Jackson-Stevens
Photography: Ilya Ivanov

Azimut Moscow Tulskaya, Hotel, Moscow

Housed in a former 19th century textile factory, Moscow's first loft hotel is a new offering from Russia's respected Azimut group. Sited in an emerging area on the bustling 18-lane avenue known as the Garden Ring, the 144-room lodging is a short walk away from Tulskaya Metro station, which conveniently takes you directly to the heart of the Kremlin Gardens. Inside, vaulted ceilings and cast-iron columns are combined with state of the art appliances to deliver a simple and functional service, while the restaurant serves a mixture of European and traditional Russian fare. Property prices in the area are already beginning to soar, making this a neighbourhood to watch.

Varshavskoe Shosse 9; tel:  7.495 987 2222; www.azimuthotels.ru

Writer: Anna Jackson-Stevens

Black Market café, Moscow

The latest project from New York-born Isaac Correa, the man who brought us Moscow's celebrated Correa's Café, is a new restaurant called Black Market. Located just south west of the city centre in an area called Khamovniki, the eatery - which is Correa's biggest project to date - is housed unusually inside a dark, industrial loft. With its no-frills, masculine interior, it looks like it has been transplanted directly from New York's Meat Packing District. Black Market serves hamburgers that are as delicious as those at Correa's cheerful 'Upsidedown Café', as well as a variety of vegetarian options. Meanwhile, the Sunday brunch is one of the best in the city.

Ulitsa Usacheva, 2, str; tel: 7.495 989 0445; www.blackmarketcafe.ru

Writer: Nelli Konstantinova

Mendeleev Bar, Moscow

Incongruously squeezed between an art gallery and a couple of fashionable restaurants, in one of Moscow's chicest shopping districts, is a Chinese fast-food joint named Lucky Noodles. But all is not what it seems. By day, the shabby box-sized space leads to a counter where cooks serve-up a choice of three steamy dumpling noodle dishes, but at twilight, a velvet curtain to the right reveals a staircase that leads to Mendeleev Bar, a den of funky music and decadent absinthe-based cocktails dreamt up by mixologist Roman Milostivy. Chandeliers cling to vaulted ceilings above plush sofas in this baroque basement bar, which taps into the Asian menu at neighbouring Roni's for sustenance. Mendeleev Bar stays open till the last customer leaves, which after a 'Death in the Afternoon' or two, may not be unassisted.

Petrovka 20/1; tel: 7.495 625 3385

Writer: Anna Jackson-Stevens

Watch a series of animations inspired by artworks in Erarta's permanent collection

While we were in St Petersburg putting together our extra special Russia issue, we paid a visit to Erarta, Russia's largest non-State funded contemporary art gallery.

Over five floors of what was once the Synthetic Rubber Research Institute, the museum - as it likes to call itself - presents 2,000 pieces by more than 140 artists from all over Russia.

Deliberately eclectic, non-metropolitan and at times downright eccentric, the collection is proof of how much of Russia has remained insulated from contemporary art trends in Western Europe and the States (for better or worse). Most of what is on display here is painting and much of it still explores approaches long abandoned elsewhere.

What makes Erarta interesting though is its attempts to display its works in new ways and encourage experimentation. A number of 'U-Spaces' are handed over to artists to create permanent living rooms. There are also a series of cinema spaces, one of which presents animations from local studios which riff on paintings in the permanent collection. We have picked five of our favourites to share.

ADDRESS

Erarta Museum and Galleries of Contemporary Art
Line 29th
2 Vasilyevsky island
St Petersburg 199106
Russia

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Over the last three years, James Brett's Museum of Everything has, with all the cheeky charm of its founder, raised big questions about what contemporary art is and what the contemporary art institution does and, by implication, does not. In a series of shows in the UK and Europe he has a championed non-traditional and outsider art, unearthing 100s of new self-taught artists and pulling in crowds of over 300,000.

This summer he took his operation to Russia, hitting the road in a converted truck and rolling into Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and St Petersburg before finally parking up in Moscow, an epic trek of 3,500km. Brett and his team spent three days in each city, opening their trucks to local artists and displaying their finds. The best of this haul will make up the inaugural show at the new temporary home for Dasha Zhukova's contemporary art gallery Garage, a Shigeru Ban-designed pavilion in Gorky Park in 2013.

A full report on the Museum of Everything's adventure (and much more about Zhukova and her plans for Garage) appears in our Reigning in Russia issue.

Russian art collective AES+F have created a new video piece, 'Reincarnation', exclusively for Wallpaper*. The 'digital painting' - a still of which fronts our Reigning in Russia issue limited edition subscriber cover - is now available to buy from digital art store s[edition], at a special price for Wallpaper* readers.

AES+F comprises conceptual artists, Tatiana Arzamasova and Lev Evzovich, graphic designer Evgeny Svyatsky and fashion photographer Vladimir Fridkes. The group, also recruited by Wallpaper* as advisory panellists for our Russian issue, have developed a signature style of photography and high-end production, producing surrealistic art films rife with mythological and theological imagery, leggy male and female models and sweeping scores.

The films marry the high and low, classical and contemporary, ugly and beautiful, real and artificial in what Evzovich describes as, 'the union of Calvin Klein and Caravaggio'.

'Reincarnation' itself stars white-clad stewardesses, sourced straight from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', an old man, a chubby-cheeked infant with a reptilian tail, be-suited singers, and men painted like skeletons, among others.

The still AES+F chose for Wallpaper's limited edition cover exemplifies the group's part slick, part humorous, part sadistic tone. Evzovich explains that the image - showing the child in the arms of the stewardesses - is a parody on Christmas, 'because, on the one hand, the baby is born as a reincarnation of a very old man who is present in the film,' he says. 'On the hand, this is the idea of some kind of new humanity, new man - maybe he will have a tail? We think humankind will have some kind of mutation in the future,' Evzovich adds with a chuckle.

The video work is one of growing collection of digital art pieces available to buy from s[edition]. Founded last year by Blain Southern co-founder Harry Blain and Robert Norton, it has already commissioned exclusive works from Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Bill Viola, Michael Craig-Martin and Wim Wenders. 'The digital format is one that many artists are already working in, and many more in the future will encompass as part of their practice,' says Blain.

Each piece is one of an edition of between 2,000 and 10,000 and costs from £5 to £500. Collectors get a virtual certificate signed by the artist and can store the work in a virtual vault and view it on smart phones, tablets and televisions.

Visit seditionart.com/wallpaper to buy 'Reincarnation' at the special Wallpaper* price.

Pavel Pepperstein is not just a man of the brush. The artist, intellectual and founding member of the conceptual art group Inspection Medical Hermeneutics also dabbles in novel-writing, spoken-word poetry (you might call it rap) and even cooking - he concocted a suitably surreal recipe for oatmeal for our Reigning in Russia issue (W* 164), currently on sale.

This month, however, Pepperstein is going with the title 'installation artist'. On Sunday, Moscow's Regina Gallery launches the latest show by the collective, featuring one of their most enduring works, 'The Pipe or The Alley of Longevity'.

The 1995 work by Pepperstein and his colleague Sergei Anufriev centres around a giant horizontal cylinder, inside which is a room scene furnished like a doll's house - the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. It can seem distinctly large and accessible when viewed with the binoculars provided, or microscopic and distant.

Around the perimeter of the space are framed drawings of elderly men, who get even older within each frame, and of young babies, who similarly get younger. The suggestion is that they live outside time, eternally.

The exhibition, which has travelled to galleries across Europe, cuts to the heart of the group's ideas on distance, time and disappearance, and is a departure from Pepperstein's vibrant graphic watercolours, which have earned the artist devotees worldwide.

ADDRESS

Regina Gallery
1, 4th Syromyatnichesky pereulok
105120, Moscow
Russia

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