“The architecture being poor means us being poor”
At a session of the Cultural Forum which was opened today in Saint Petersburg, the Saint Petersburg architect Evgeny Gerasimov expressed his views on the mass-scale architecture and explained how it reflects the situation in the modern society:
For me, mass-scale architecture means architecture for many, its essence being reflected by the term; in other words, it is something many people use. This architecture is more or less always the same: the apartment may be somewhat bigger or smaller, the ceiling may be higher or lower, the windows may be wider, the buildings taller, but it still will be the mass-scale architecture. This is how it always were, and, I think, it will be the same.
There were log cabins, of course, they were mass-scale, the names of their architects are not known to us. Then there were merchants’ houses, which filled Russian towns; this also was the mass-scale architecture, and everyone was happy with it at the time when it emerged.
We should be aware that architecture reflects life. Just like in a droplet of water, through the architecture you can see the social advancement of the time when this architecture emerged, the society with its economic opportunities, esthetic paradigms, and philosophy. One cannot override this. We should be aware that the architecture is like a mirror reflection. If it is clumsy or cock-eyed, this is not because the architecture itself is bad, it is because that is how we are. It means we are cack-handed and cock-eyed. The architecture being poor means us being poor. The architecture being ugly means we are happy with it.
A common street in the 19th century Petersburg would reflect its society, its economic and esthetic opportunities. The architecture of 1930s would reflect the esthetics, the economics, and the ideology at the same time. We use several names for our panel buildings: ‘stalinka’, ‘khrushchevka’, ‘brezhnevka’. We do not use their architects’ names, which reflects those times as in a way being always defined by the leaders, by their epochs.
What will they call our times? We will see. Today’s city development is mass-scale; this is neither good, nor bad, this is just how it is. We should take it easy. When someone wants to override the time, this does not work, the developer would simply be ruined.
And the question, what do people want, is meaningless. Of course, everyone wants a vast apartment with a view to a park and 4.5-meter ceilings. But when you call the price, you hear ‘Oh, sorry, thanks, I am not ready for it right now’.
Of course, everyone wants the best. But we will have it only if the economics and the social advancement will allow us to.
Mass-scale architecture may be low-height or like that of Asian cities studded with towers. All that is mass-scale architecture. What do we do with it? Nothing. Calm down. Let the architects draw, and the constructors build.
At the extreme, we must understand, that a coffin is mass-scale architecture, too. This is what awaits us all in the end. It can be a modest wooden or a deluxe gilded one, can be spacious or more of a narrow one. This does not change the essential. So, what we should do is calm down and take the reality calmly, and the formula is still the same: do what you must, come what may.