A. V. Shchusev, architect: biography, projects, works, photo works, family

Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, four times Stalin Prize laureate Alexei Shchusev - an architect and great creator, an excellent theorist and no less remarkable architect, whose work is the pride of the country, will be the hero of this article. Here, his work, as well as his life's path, are considered in detail.

Architecture as a process of life

Schusev, the architect, though to the last body of the body of the Soviet, but at the same time, as they say, the architect of God. He constantly persuaded his colleagues with all his creativity that artistic principles always prevail in architecture over the most daring designs, since they are most closely associated with life in all its manifestations, and life does not tolerate inexpediency. "There are no fixed forms, and architecture is the most capable to confirm this," Schusev said. The architect lived in him a seeker who constantly tries a new, never fully satisfied with the result, finding satisfaction only in cognition. Starting from Vitruvius, each architect sought to create his own theory of this art, and by the beginning of the twentieth century a great number had accumulated - the most diverse and categorical, and the breadth of the scope of their positions, with various goals and principles explaining or justifying, guiding or limiting themselves Architectural creativity.

Here on the basis of all these theories accepted by the most outstanding architects, creative directions and schools are formed. Unlike more ambitious colleagues, Shchusev (an architect very famous) has never been the founder of anything, never put forward theories, created schools. This was done by his followers, who studied its true significance in the history of both Russian and Soviet architecture, which determined the structures and buildings created by it. Of course, he expressed himself and theorized, because his understanding of architecture, taste and talent interested many and many. And these statements rise quite level with those painstaking research that other masters have built in the quiet of the offices for many decades. Now, in every possible way, according to the archives and memoirs, those grains of genius knowledge that Alexei Shchusev, an architect, accidentally dropped.

Mausoleum

His works are permeated with both simplicity and wisdom, and with absolute knowledge of the purely handicraft side of great architecture. In them - life experience, common sense, intuition and a huge investment of a purely human feeling. This allowed him to always fill his offspring with the main social idea. Applying the established, even seemingly common, forms, the architect Shusev A. V. confidently created absolutely individual images. Whether it was a historical national style, classical or modern, it did not result in abstract logical calculations, but artistic unity, aroused by the aesthetic sense of architecture, and sculpture, and painting. This is one of the most remarkable of his creations - the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow, on Red Square, created in 1926-1930. The pyramidal stepped volume, the groups of rectangular pillars that carry the top slab - all this in architecture is not new.

However, in a magical way, the Mausoleum acquired power, originality, innovative features, exceptional expressiveness of all proportions, and, most importantly, absolute connectivity with the purpose of this structure, the fusion in the ensemble with the rest of the architectural elements of the square. All this made this building the main symbol of its time. All the proportions were decided. The architect Shchusev A.V. so calculated the height and thickness of the slabs, then increasing, then shrinking, that the mourning horizons form a vertical full of energy, and the mournful closedness and compactness of the lower chamber-the fence of the sarcophagus-suddenly move into the open space of the staircases and rostrum where freedom triumphs , Wind and light. It is at the expense of this ingenious find that the mausoleum majesty of the Mausoleum is transformed into a festivity and joy of victorious demonstrations. Currently, repairs and reconstruction are being carried out in the Kremlin, and the Mausoleum was therefore closed on the last parades. The people are already bored and write a lot about this on the Internet. And indeed, in this structure the entire architect Shchusev is seen, whose works carry a high spiritual content, a complex of great social ideas.

Biography

Shchusev met the October Revolution, already an academician, a recognized architect with fifteen years of practice. In 1910, he was already honored for an exceptionally successful result with the most original methods of restoration of the temple of the twelfth century in the city of Ovruch (Volyn). And he was born in 1873, in Chisinau, the third child in a poor family of a retired official. Ability to paint appeared very early, and it was almost impossible to tear the boy from this lesson. From the age of eleven he began to study at LN Benois, in the workshop of which all received a thorough professional training. Concerning the mentors, the future architect Shchusev, whose work admired the high professionalism, was surprisingly lucky.

The canons of Russian classics and national heritage, for example, he taught Professor Kotov, whose credo was that it is impermissible to blindly copy historical monuments of architecture, it is necessary to expose contemporary understanding of Russian antiquity, and pseudo-Russian style - squalor. A great impression on the young man was made by ancient Central Asian architecture, especially Samarkand, where the budding architect Shusev Alexey Viktorovich detailed and carefully measured the colorful monuments of Bibi-Khanym and Gur-Emir. This played a huge role in his future work. For example, the Kazan Railway Station architect Shchusev designed, relying on his Asian impressions.

First works

Academician Shchusev graduated in 1897, having received the highest score for the diploma project with the Great Gold Medal and a foreign business trip. It was the "Bar Manor", which allowed him to spend almost two years studying the architecture of Vienna, Trieste, Venice and other cities in Belgium, Italy, Tunisia, France and England. Everywhere he did a lot of sketching, from which an exhibition report was compiled. IE Repin, having read these works, was delighted. Upon his return to his homeland and after the presentation of the report, Alexei Shchusev, the architect, without experience, immediately received an interesting order. It was an iconostasis in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra for the Assumption Cathedral, which had to be designed from the ground up. The talented Shchusev coped with this task perfectly, and it seemed that his work would now be permanently connected with the cult buildings.

In June 1904 the Synod entrusted him with a more responsible and complex task, he was sent to Ovruch, where the whole winter he designed a temple on the ruins of a monument of the twelfth century. It turned out a beautiful five-domed church completely in the traditions of Russian classics, but all the preserved details were included in the context so organically that the temple seemed to be a single whole. The project was immediately recognized as one of the most beautiful phenomena of modern architecture. The press started talking about Shchusev creating a new Neo-Russian style. Glory came, but the architect Shchusev, whose biography is saturated with it to the brim, until the end of his life treated it calmly and did not notice fame.

"Marfa"

In 1907 Shchusev designed the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery (community), all of its buildings. The Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fedorovna sold her jewels so that this charitable institution that was not a monastery appeared, although the nursery-sisters of mercy and vows were comparable to the monastic ones. However, after years they could leave without conflict with the church, create a family and live as laymen.

What inspired him, designing his Moscow "Marfa" with an unprecedented tenderness, the already famous architect Shchusev? Great Novgorod inspired him, Pskov monuments - this is a magnificent smooth surface with interconnected harmony volumes. This is very noticeable if compared. The large dimensions of the buildings of the monastery look cozy and homely. The temple plan is similar to a massive antique key with a beard turned westward and an eye, all three petals looking to the east. Due to these semicircular apses a feeling of comfort is created, since the main volume is hidden from the eyes, and the high drum, crowned with the pointed sphere of the dome, completes the composition.

Kishinev

The first two-story house of the architect Shchusev was built on Kerch Street (formerly the Char Valley) of his hometown - the dacha of Mikhail Karchevsky, his classmate, then the Dragoev's house at the intersection of Pushkin and Kuznechnaya streets (now Bernardazzi). And in 1912 he built a church in the village of Kuchuresti. In total, that the architect Shchusev designed and built, Orthodoxy concerned necessarily - more or less, and this applies not only to the cult buildings. Much later Shchusev was entrusted with a general scheme for the reconstruction of the dilapidated Chisinau after World War II. And in his early youth, immediately after the brilliant defense of his diploma project, Schusev was an architect for several months, an architect whose family has for all his life retained affection for this city. A few months of happiness: he not only designed a house for a classmate, but also married his sister - Maria Vikentievna Karchevskaya.

There, in the Valley of Char, in the Chisinau suburb, the personal life of the architect Shchusev began, which was reliably sheltered from strangers all the long years of his life. And now it is almost impossible to find data in his biographies, not concerning architecture. The monument to Lenin in 1991 was dismantled. He also designed a new bridge on the Byk River, at that time it was very full, and the architect actively advised colleagues in the development of projects for the reconstruction of many destroyed buildings - the station, shops, offices and other buildings. Chisinau honors the memory of his famous compatriot: his name is the street, in the house where he was born and grew up, there is a museum with his personal belongings, documents, photos.

Fashion on Schuseva

Immediately after the creation of the projects of Ovruch and the Marfinsky monastery, fame went for the architect on his heels. The rich men hunted after him in the hope of building anything on their land, but in the fashionable Shchusev style. However, it was occupied by more interesting projects. In 1913, the pavilion of the art exhibition in Venice, built according to the Shchusev's drawings, was prepared, the composition of which interpreted the national architecture of the seventeenth century. And in perfect combination with the picturesque Italian landscape. At the same time in San Remo, according to the architect's project, an Orthodox church was built, decorated with stone carvings, tiles, and a bell tower with a tent roof. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Sanremo is entirely and completely preserved in the Russian church style of the seventeenth century.

But Kazansky railway station did not interest him at once. However, all the works submitted for the contest were approximate and schematic, other prominent and experienced architects were not inspired, not only the fashionable Schusev, the architect, whose designs were original, talented, but so far few. Nevertheless, his sketch of the future Kazan Station was chosen, because the government was confident that they would be interested in the eastern gates of Moscow, not so long ago fascinated by Samarkand Shchusev. The board was not mistaken.

Kazan Station

The Moscow gates to the East are one of the most professionally verified architect's decisions from difficult tasks. Even the optimal color scheme was found. And what a brilliant decision on the integrity of the ensemble in its purely geographical essence! In October 1911, Shchusev was confirmed as the chief architect of this construction, to which they put the sum simply fabulous - three million gold royal rubles. Details of the project were worked out by the author for more than two years - this has not happened to him yet. The search was excruciating - this "pit" on Kalanchevskaya Square was not filled in until Shchusev came up with a great idea: to put the tallest building in the lowest place.

That's when the ensemble of many buildings played with unity, read easily with one glance. The tower served as a real dominant, collecting all two hundred meters of structures under its wing. The success of this project was equal to the efforts to create it. The magazine "The Architect", who placed it on his pages, was in great demand. Congratulations rained. And indeed: such a huge length of the station does not interfere with the overall perception of the whole building, because symmetry is specially broken, and a lone sharp tower helps to open all new combinations from any point of the square. So far, the architects did not manage to so freely manipulate chiaroscuro, when not only the sun, but clouds also revive stone patterns.

Multidimensionality and style freedom

With the station in Kazan, Shchusev did absolutely unconventional, it turned out to be a city building, and not as usual a slightly enriched industrial or slightly simplified palace structure. The functions of the station rooms are very heterogeneous, and this led to what the genius Schusev, the architect, projected. Works, photos of which are presented in abundance, with the same broad, confident, free interpretation (even in large, though in small forms) demonstrate Shchusev as an architect not only versatile, but also in every ingenuity of constant and true to himself, his views. This is the building of the sanatorium in Matsesta, and the Moskvoretsky bridge, and the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Opera Theater in Tashkent, and the station "Komsomolskaya" - the ring Moscow metro. Just as ingeniously and at the same time canonically rigorously built a complex of buildings of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR is a typically Russian ensemble that unites various structures. Also, Shchusev headed a team of architects who rescheduled Moscow.

It is they, and Shchusev in particular, should be thanked by drivers who are slowly moving in traffic jams. Because if it were not for them, the movement would not have been possible as such. The structure of the city was established, and there was practically no place for transportation anywhere, especially in today's number. The architects significantly expanded all the main roads, especially Leningradsky Prospekt, and linked the routes with radial-circular lines linked to railway transport. This, it should be noted, occurred immediately after the revolution and the Civil War - in 1919. The commission that hosted the project blamed the architects for the inexpediency of such wide avenues and streets, but it was precisely Shchusev that managed to persuade the members of the government.

Besides

In 1922, Shchusev as the chief architect was commissioned VDNH, which opened in August 1923. Then it was erected on the territory of the Gorky Park. Shchusev rebuilt the building of a mechanical plant under the pavilion of the handicraft industry, and he supervised almost all construction, and these were two hundred and twenty-five buildings. In 1924, already the leading architect of the country was engaged in the creation of the project of the Lenin Mausoleum. In the second half of the twenties in a number of works Shchusev designed and built in the style of constructivism: a branch of the Tbilisi Institute under the CPSU Central Committee, the State Bank on Neglinnoy and in the Okhotny Ryad, the Lenin Library, the sanatorium in Matsesta and much more.

A special case is an unfinished construction on the Tver Central Telegraph where, in response to accusations of such a strong attachment to constructivism, Shchusev proved that constructivism has the right to live if it is filled with spirituality, its special dynamics and rhythm only help to strengthen the foundation of the spiritual culture on which All architecture as such is based. In the guise of the telegraph building, not only the connection of epochs, but also others - of the international communication plan, is clearly traced, for which, in principle, it is intended - to connect countries and continents. Granite verticals, glass belts. Expanse. Monumentality. Beautiful, fascinating. Despite the fact that in the project the building was executed absolutely accurately programmatically, economically, rationally. It was too innovative for that time. Now it would be easy to build and would be right.

Pleases at least that the beautiful hotel "Moscow" was built, the Soviet Embassy in Romania and a huge number of other facilities. In addition, Alexey Shchusev led an active teaching career almost to the end of his life - in 1949, wrote more than two hundred scientific works.