home-Accessories-Markhi is a Moscow architectural institute (state academy). Architecture in the construction of buildings and structures In construction and architecture

Markhi is a Moscow architectural institute (state academy). Architecture in the construction of buildings and structures In construction and architecture

ARCHiPEOPLE closely monitors the development of architectural topics in the Internet space. Today we have made a selection of the highest-rated foreign sites about modern architecture.

19.02.2014, 20:47 |

The popular project of Chilean architects David Assael and David Basulto ArchDaily is a successful attempt to explain that modern architects do not build in the same style, and each project has a feature, albeit sometimes not obvious. Making the most of the capabilities of the modern communication environment, ArchDaily gives an idea of ​​​​the way in which architecture is currently developing - in urban planning, in relation to the environment, in education, and so on. At the same time, the projects presented on the site are presented exclusively as unique solutions that convey the personal style of the authors.

The main page of the Architonic website looks like a furniture store product catalog. Here are the chairs, and here are the tables. Furniture for home, furniture for office... There are even school desks here! At first, it is not obvious that you need to pay attention to the “News and Trends” section. But after the crisis of perception is overcome, it turns out that the site actually contains a lot of information about innovation, unusual approaches in architecture and urban planning. Many articles are devoted to changing the environment around people not with the help of abstract urban philosophy, but with the help of interesting technical solutions. And only then will it become clear that the “product catalog”, which has captured a fair amount of territory on the main page, is just a necessary addition.



The Archinect site community has more than 200,000 members. Leafing through the pages dedicated to them, one can only rejoice at how many beautiful people there are in the world, but this is not the most important thing. The main thing is that the site unites them not on the basis of interest in the conventional “top 10 buildings of the week,” but on the basis of professional interests. Here you can find information about lectures, festivals, conferences and, most importantly, about education and employment. The objectivity in the presentation of the material is amazing. The projects of not only famous architects, but also little-known students are described in detail. If there is no need to study the process of becoming architects, then you can use the sister site Bustler, which accumulates only current information about competitions and events.



Wondering what might be published on the World Architecture News website? Wow, architecture news! Without irony, this is a very convenient site for getting acquainted with the latest news around the world. Regarding WAN ( World Architecture News) , the definition of "worldwide" is not just words. There are five main sections covering North America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South America. When was the last time you heard anything about projects being carried out in Kenya or Bolivia? Never? WAN just makes it possible to understand what the global architecture actually is, not geographically limited to the largest cities of the “golden billion”.

If you do not need the cognitive function of the site, you can go to the “Work” section. There are not very many vacancies - this is where the site loses to Bustler. But the subsidiary Wantoday offers a huge number of tenders.


What might be interesting about the Italian site Edilportale? If you are not Italian, then it is difficult to answer the question. However, it was he who gave impetus to the development of the Archilovers community with an impressive number of members of 600,000 people. What attracted them here? The opportunity to write about architecture yourself! This is a real living community, where its members more or less successfully write about what really interests them. But you should first of all pay attention to the way information about projects is presented. Information about them is grouped into sections: “Details” (for example, you can read separately about facades, terraces, green roofs, etc.), “Materials” (everything is clear here - brick, glass, etc.), “Topics "(historical context, color schemes, redevelopment, etc., etc.).

The Village continues to promote effective self-education. This week, we're working with experts to figure out what books and magazines to read, what to watch, and where to study in order to independently reinforce your knowledge of architectural trends or prepare for receiving an appropriate education.

Alexander Ostrogorsky

MARCH teacher, head of the educational programs department of the Museum of Moscow, architectural journalist

Architecture in general, like music in general or science in general, is too large a field of interest to indicate only one approach to it. Unless your first step is precisely this - studying the space of architecture and searching for your interest in it, your favorite subject. Architects and critics have been doing this for several hundred years in a row with a formula invented by the Roman architect Vitruvius, who in the 1st century BC. e. wrote his “10 books about architecture”, in which he pointed out the three main properties of architecture - benefit, strength and beauty. Although more than 2 thousand years have passed since then, it seems that a better definition has not been invented. These three criteria are both a way to evaluate any building and directions for improving your own ability to understand architecture. That is, to see how some buildings are at the same time useful, durable, and beautiful (one follows from the other), while other buildings are not (however, this is not always clearly bad).

I have come across several, perhaps universal, motives that motivate a person to be interested in architecture - although, of course, this is only my experience. But I would prefer to start from universal human ideas about what architecture provides or why it is important, rather than from the sometimes very different views of the architects themselves, the structure of architectural education, or the views of critics. I am saying this in order to ask forgiveness in advance from those readers whose interests will be outside the scheme that I am going to use, or those who already have their own or familiar scheme, which seems ideal to him or her (and mine will seem heretical) .

So, in relation to architecture, all people can be divided into those who...

...like beautiful things. Beauty is probably the most difficult category for architecture. First, architecture is not a mimetic art, that is, buildings do not represent anything (exceptions occur, although not often), so the “pleasure of recognition” that Aristotle considered the basis of aesthetic pleasure does not arise here. As in music, beauty in architecture is rhythm, proportion, relationships of shapes, colors and materials.

The famous German-English architectural historian and critic Nicholas Pevsner once said: “A bicycle shed is a structure, Lincoln Cathedral is an architecture.” In other words, all architecture is a building, but not every building is architecture. Now there are many who would like to argue with this statement, but there is some truth in this thought: architecture begins where the creators of the building - be it a famous architect or nameless masons - tried to go further than solving practical problems. The question is where exactly they wanted to go, why and what they came up with. These questions are more or less answered by the history and theory of architecture. Each era, each country and tradition offered its own programs and sets of tools. Not everything seems intuitively “beautiful” to us today - we judge Egyptian pyramids completely differently than we do Renaissance monuments, and modern architecture seems monotonous and faceless to many.

It is tempting to determine the value of buildings from one era in relation to buildings from completely different ones, especially if they stand next to each other, as is the case in the city. Well, taste is everyone’s business; some like the columns of classical facades, others like the ribbon windows of constructivist ones. But we must not forget that they are the result of different situations, and measuring them with one yardstick is not entirely correct. Another thing is surprising (however, it is the same with any other art) - the more you learn about how architects of different eras thought and strived for, the wider the corridor of individual taste preferences becomes.

...like the story. Architecture, more than any other art, is a living witness to history. Each building is a product of its time, an intersection of social, political, cultural and technological phenomena. To decipher a building as a message to the future, as an entry in a chronicle, means solving a fascinating puzzle. Oddly enough, here the formula proposed by Pevsner works rather the other way around - nondescript, utilitarian objects sometimes say more about their time than masterpieces of architecture. Compare Khrushchev and, for example, the Palace of Pioneers on Sparrow Hills - only together they can give the correct impression of Soviet culture and life in the 60s. The Old English Courtyard, miraculously preserved on Varvarka - essentially the chambers of a wealthy citizen of the 15th century - better illustrates Moscow life of that time than the nearby Faceted Chamber, built around the same time for Ivan III by Italian architects.

...like technology. Each building is also a solution to an engineering, construction problem with a large number of variables: human needs, gravity, properties of materials, price, skills of builders, and so on. Sometimes the architect finds a solution that does not interfere with aesthetics, sometimes he has to fight with technology for the artistic image. What is better - beautiful, but not too durable, or strong enough, but not pleasing to the eye? It happens both ways. The Khrushchev buildings mentioned above, like most of Soviet industrial housing construction, are the result of the almost complete victory of economic and construction technologies over aesthetics. Santiago Calatrava's projects, which delight many with their outstanding engineering solutions, are constantly reproached for the fact that they do not work as well as they look great, and besides, they cost astronomical sums. One way or another, since the end of the last century, technology and its capabilities have become one of the main topics of architecture. Whether it's building the tallest buildings (such as the Burj Khalifa) or the greenest, today's largest architectural projects in the world often rely on technology to drive the aesthetic agenda.

...I want to understand how the world works. If architecture helps us learn about the past, then it says no less about the present. Why are skyscrapers needed? Who allows old beautiful buildings to be demolished and new, ugly ones built in their place? Why do some live in luxurious mansions, while others live in slums? Strangely enough, people often address all these questions and many others to architects, including the eternal “who invented, tell me, these traffic jams.” At the same time, architects do not have such a great influence on the development of the city. Architecture and concrete buildings are illustrations, symptoms and indications of many problems of the modern world, as well as a laboratory for finding answers to them. If there was a Vitruvius oath (like the Hippocratic oath among doctors), then it would certainly have been written in it that the architect must be a little bit of a doctor, a teacher, a psychotherapist (“talk to the client about his children” - this is the advice of the German modernist architect Mies van der Rohe), policeman, politician, economist and, of course, artist, engineer, builder and so on.

What to read

What to watch

"Architecture as a means of communication"


The course by Professor Vadim Bass of the European University in St. Petersburg at Arzamas is dedicated to the messages contained in world architecture. In addition to eight small lectures, as usual at Arzamas, on the link you can find a selection of books about architecture, games and even one Monty Python sketch.

“How long does it take to run your building, Mr. Foster?”

A documentary about the career of Pritzker and Imperial Prize winner 80-year-old Briton Norman Foster, who designed Hong Kong International Airport, the Millennium Bridge in London and the Hearst Tower in New York.

"My Architect"

An Oscar-nominated film about architect Louis Kahn, directed by his son Nathaniel many years after his father's mysterious death.

"Sketches of Frank Gehry"

And another documentary about the hero of architecture - this time, directed by Sydney Pollack, the life story of the pioneer of deconstructivism Frank Gehry, who designed the famous “dancing house” in Prague, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis.

Alejandro Aravena's TED talk

The famous Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena considers it his life's work to overcome social barriers in cities. To do this, he designs houses for the poorest families, making these buildings not only inexpensive and comfortable, but also outstanding in architectural terms. Aravena became the curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, which will focus on improving the quality of the built environment and people's lives.

TED talk by Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Ingels is one of the most famous architects of the new generation. It combines bright design and functionality in its architecture without sacrificing comfort. During this talk, he talks about how easily architectural stories can be told - for example, in the form of comics.

A basic course in the history of architecture of 24 lectures covers the period from the first human settlements to the 15th century. Designed mainly to give students general knowledge of the subject. All videos are also supplemented with materials from the textbook on the world history of architecture.

Where to study

WHERE: lecture hall of the Museum of Moscow

PRICE: for free

Text and interview: Katerina Firsova, Nastya Kurganskaya

Illustration: Olya Volk

In construction, it is customary to consider two basic concepts relating to the objects being built:

. Building. This is the name for buildings whose main function is to provide conditions for the normal functioning of people, such as: training, labor and physical activity, and household needs. In most cases, they are a collection of a number of premises, each of which has its own task, related to a number of functional or technological ones;

. Facilities. For the most part, this is the name given to individual structures that carry only technical functions. These include bridges, embankments, dams, dams, etc. All these objects are usually called engineering structures.

Architecture ( architecture) in the traditional sense of the word, are erected buildings (and sometimes entire complexes of them) that harmoniously fit into the surrounding space and carry functional significance for people. By and large, this is the basis of any construction, providing for the creation and provision of conditions for normal life.

Another meaning of the word architecture becomes a set of decorative and structural elements of any building related to a certain style. In this case, architecture would be more correctly viewed as art. Because in this case, its main function becomes psycho-emotional and visual impact. Although, most of the existing styles carry a powerful charge of majesty, pomp, and sometimes a feeling of colossality of the entire building.

One of the most important tasks of architecture is the final compliance of the erected building with its main purpose. Moreover, they try to distinguish buildings that differ from each other in purpose externally. For example, you are unlikely to confuse a church with a hospital. At the same time, any building must meet all safety requirements and ensure the most comfortable conditions for people. All this can be attributed to the functional purpose of the architecture.

But, besides this, she also has artistic tasks. Because in all centuries, architects, erecting the most monumental buildings, tried to express the basic worldviews and ideology of their time. This tradition continues today, albeit in a less pronounced form. At the moment, artistic design often serves to create balanced complexes that fit into the overall picture and style of the city.

Another facet of architecture can be called a set of economic criteria. Calculations of the costs of constructing buildings in relation to its durability are not the least important. This also includes ensuring normal conditions with an uninterrupted supply of materials for the entire construction period.

But only if all aspects and requirements are met (taking into account external beauty, functionality and economic feasibility) can a building be erected that will last a long time and with great benefit. At the same time, the building should not be at odds with the rest of the buildings around it and cause a powerful imbalance of space. That is why all stages of the initial design of buildings are usually combined with their orientation to the place of proposed construction. This ultimately allows you to create a balanced compositional solution into a harmoniously connected and complete whole.



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