Right to the City: Program of Open City Festival of Architecture Education and Career
Private and public interests in the improvement of residential courtyards. The right to remember and preserve the habitual environment. Urban art interventions and the citizen’s right to criticism. The right to the city from the perspective of a relevant gender, age and inclusive agenda. These and other topics will be touched upon by the public program of the Open City architectural education and career festival from October 19 to November 16.
The Open City is an annual educational project of Moskomarkhitektura, which takes place from June to November and includes lectures, excursions and workshops by leading architectural firms. This year the workshops have been curated by Genplan of Moscow Institute, Gradplan of Moscow, architectural bureaus — Zaha Hadid Architect, Kleinewelt Architekten, Citizenstudio, UNK project, Nowadays office, Druzhba, YOarchitects, Workshop of Sergey Malakhov and Evgenia Repina, and also by Aleksander Ponomarev, artist, Yulia Shishalova, Chief Editor of Project Russia, Anna Martovitskaya, author of a video blog on architecture.
The results of their joint work with students-architects can be seen at the exhibition in the A.V. Shchusev Museum of Architecture on November 16-17. The public program of the festival started on October 19 with an excursion to the largest transport hub in Moscow — TPU Nizhegorodskaya, guided by Timur Bashkaev, architect, the author of the project.
October 20. Granat Space of the Moscow Union of Architects. «My yard is my fortress?» discussion. Participants: Sergey Nikitin, historian, head of the «Courtyard Studies Laboratory» at the Museum of Moscow, Alexandra Chertkova, partner of Druzhba architectural bureau, Lyubov Gurary expert in participatory design and work with communities, co-founder of the City Friend project, creative producer of the Rayonnale festival, Elena Vereshchagina, journalist, deputy of the Troitsk Council of Deputies (New Moscow), Maria Mogilevtseva-Golovina, product director of City 21st Century, official partner of the festival. The conversation was moderated by Ilya Mukosey, curator of the Open City festival program.
On the same day, October 20, the festival focuses on the case of creating a business environment in a formed urban development without interfering with its historical and architectural meaning. An excursion to the new Supermetal space on Baumanskaya from the team that created the Khlebozavod, the Bryusov ship and the Krasnaya Strela (Red Arrow) residential complex. The discussion program continues on October 22 at the MARCH school with a public talk «LongLiveBuilding. A building as a long-lasting object». Invited to participate are: Natalia Mastalerzh and Nata Tatunashvili, Nowadays Office, Narine Tyutcheva, Ostozhenka Bank, Roman Ushakov, Manager of the Attention Historical Heritage Preservation Fund, Sergey Desyatov, ArtPlay General Director, representatives of the KR properties development company.
On Saturday, October 30, we ‘walk along Chagall’. The partner of the festival, GC Etalon, has organized a tour of its new project of a residential multifunctional cluster on Marc Chagall embankment. At the beginning of November, in the showroom of ROCA | Laufen, another permanent partner of the festival, we will discuss with artists and curators of contemporary art the right to the city as an artistic space, as well as ‘what architecture is for contemporary art’ - a material and medium or entourage, an environment for public artistic practices. The subject of discussion will be the temporality of street objects as a sign and an important quality of contemporary art, as opposed to the «classical» approach, in which monuments are erected «forever».
The final discussion of the festival will take place on November 16 — at the opening of the Open City exhibition at the Shchusev Museum of Architecture. A case session that opens the exhibition and summarizes the results of the festival is «City for Everyone»: the right to a city from the perspective of a relevant gender, age and inclusive agenda. Admission to all festival events is free, by prior registration on the website https://opencityfest.ru/ The program will be updated, follow the news of the Open City in social networks and on the website.
