For your reference:
Andrey Bokov – the President of the Russian Architects Union, Doctor of Architecture, academician of the Russian Academy of architecture and construction sciences, honored architect of the Russian Federation, honored Builder of Moscow, member of Union of artists of Russia.
The lecture has broken all the records of the project by its duration. It lasted about two and a half hours. Judging by attention and final stormy applause, the lecture could last much longer, because it was delivered by a well-known all over the world architect Andrey Bokov in a fun, professional and interesting manner.
A.Bokov’s lecture consisted of three main parts:
At first he presented his main realized architect projects (including the State Museum of Mayakovsky, a football stadium Locomotive, an Indoor Skating Center in Krylatskoye (Moscow), the Ice Palace "Megasport" (Moscow), the Theatre "Et cetera" and so on).
The second part was devoted to the prehistoric "wood-stone" Russian period.
And the third – to the problems of architecture and construction of modern Russian cities.
What is the modern city’s need today? An artist or an engineer - architect? These were the questions to the audience. The task of an architect is to be involved in the creation of the city’s world picture. According to Andrey Bokov the creative process is in the special arrangement of colors, geometric shapes, lines and angles used in formation of the cultural landscape. As a result a general model is created, with a gate, a centre, suburbs, a local area, a house, and, finally, an apartment as consistent parts.
The world picture must include one more very important element – a human being, a resident of the city. All the various architectural forms are constructed for him and around him. A man must live in a harmonious environment, which is not contrary to neither living nature, nor human nature.
"People need to see the sun!" Andrey Bokov says. The architect is nostalgic: all the liveable, balanced cities have gone, we have lost them.
The Russian government has changed the pattern of urban construction radically and dramatically since 1917.
Architecture has become a victim of ideology – it was used to recode people consciousness to a certain ideological model. But, paradoxically, the person’s point of view has never been taken into consideration. All questions have been solved only unilaterally. As a result we’ve got “patchwork-quilt-like-cities” that have lost any harmony.
Today the method of open planning is actively used for urban development of neighborhoods. But this trend will stay in the past. The big problem is urbanization. It erases the individuality not only of large cities’ construction, but of Russian province as well.
"But not everything is so sad – Andrey Bokov summed up. – Now we can see the signs of another attitude to the city; it is more human-proportionate".
The lecturer encourages us to return to harmony: between the nature and culture, between the authorities and professional architects, developers and citizens. We need to make cities convenient again: to achieve quality, diversity and affordability of living space, and to provide decent infrastructure.
What is the role of an architect? At all times an architect carried primarily social responsibility for a city, for its image and its unique individuality, because a city is a living organism. Today, unfortunately, city authorities do not need professionals for urban construction. An architect needs to be returned back to modern Russian cities, to be returned his opportunity to fulfill his mission to serve citizens, to design living space for people according to harmonies of the past, present and future.
Artyom Moskvin,
Сandidate of Culturology,
Associate Professor at the Department of Culturology, VyatSU
Read in Russian: https://www.vyatsu.ru/internet-gazeta/andrey-bokov-sovremennyiy-gorod-eto-loskutnoe-odey.html
