Authors

Steklova Irina A.
SAINT PETERSBURG VERTICALS BETWEEN POWER AND FREEDOM

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (51) September, 2015

The author presents St. Petersburg as the flagship of the Russian state’s regular transformations which gave birth to regular mythology. The history of St. Petersburg is shown to have sublimated into the metaphysics of history, dating back to the ancient heroics by the myth. Thus, the history of Alexander Column in Palace Square in St. Petersburg illustrates the mythologizing strategy of statehood continuity from antiquity, surrounded with superlatives. Alexander Column was real proof of the Empire’s power over the world, causing massive enthusiasm. Alexander Pushkin contrasted it to "monument without hands" as a speculative vertical of freedom, combining horizontal space. It marked the beginning of the freedom mythology. In particular, it is reflected in the literary debates on the prototype of the "monument without hands" opposition, which indirectly confirms the romantic understanding of architecture as concentrate symbols of the history in the second quarter of the 19th century.

Steklova Irina A.
EMPIRE AS A STYLE OF STATE POWER MYTHOLOGY

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (50) June, 2015

The author extends the understanding of one of the art styles that was fundamental for the image of St. Petersburg in the first half of the 19th century to the understanding of the style of state power mythology. The article reviews how the meanings conveyed by the state through Empire aesthetics transformed into its aesthetics, how the formal compositional solutions implemented in the tolerances of specific architectural spaces converted into the aesthetics of state power over the world. The author provides examples of Alexander Pushkin’s stereoscopic ideas concerning state power in the worldviews, architectonic modeling techniques of the integral world in the orientation, dimensions, or infinity, subordination of bearing and borne entities. The role of horizontals and verticals is highlighted. The artificial verticals of St. Petersburg which served to transform the horizontal landscape into a picturesque one are positioned as gestures of state ideology and, at the same time, as romantic resistance to it. Alexander’s Column in St. Petersburg Palace Square dedicated to the victory in the Patriotic War and to victorious Alexander I is shown as the prototype of Pushkin’s resistance to state power mythology.

Steklova Irina A.
THE CONCEPT OF LITERARY CENTRISM OF MEANING GENERATION IN ARCHITECTURE: THE PARADOXES

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (48) December, 2014

The article presents a concept of meaning generation in architecture with the help of belle-lettres literature and considers paradoxes resolved within the framework of this concept, both fundamental and specific for national culture.

Steklova Irina A., Ragujina Olesya I.
ARCHITECTONICS OF CREATIVENESS: LOFTS

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (45) March, 2014

The article discusses the concept of "creativeness" and "creative space" in an attempt to approximate the traditions of similar ideas with respect to architecture in the context of early 20th century Russian literature and Russian painting. A comparison is made with the modern concept of "creative space" as it is understood within one of the trends towards economic recovery of industrial cities through reconstruction of discontinued factories and lofts as their basic units of clusters. The authors have traced back the genesis and the development phase of this trend as a phenomenon of world culture and a professional activity of architects and designers, and the relevance of this trend for the future revival of the Russian provinces. Emphasis is made on the role of architecture and design in improving the qualities of the environment that motivate people towards creative self-expression. The basic spatial planning, imagery and semantic principles of lofts design in the world translating the architectonics of creativeness in reality. Approaches to practical implementation of the concept of "creative space" in Russia are shown with reference to the loft project “Etagi” in Saint-Petersburg.

Steklova Irina A.
ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT OF SAINT-PETERSBURG

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (42) June, 2013

The domain of architecture in Pushkin's works appears as the material aspect of Being conveying explicitly the aesthetic and ethical values. The author presents concrete characteristics of Saint-Petersburg’s architectural space expressing in a concentrated form the poet’s essential, philosophically weighty views. The article demonstrates that in his novel "Eugene Onegin" the poet focused attention on the scene of action no less passionately than on the characters. Obviously, Pushkin did not write about architecture as a self-sufficient and self-focused area. Rather, he wrote to convey the semantic messages of the architecture as part of the boundless world, either humane or inhumane, depending on the presentation of its concrete properties. The poet’s treatment of the spatial context is investigated as anticipating today's category of «architectural environment». Parallel analysis of the first chapter enacted in Saint-Petersburg and fine art works confirms the reputation of this novel as a universal model for studying various historical processes, including the history of architecture with its semantic wealth.

Steklova Irina A.
THE MAIN CHARACTERS AND THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT OF SAINT-PETERSBURG

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (41) March, 2013

The article is an attempt to reconstruct the early 19th century ideas concerning the history of architecture of Saint-Petersburg in the context of notions appearing in the poetic, prosaic, publicistic texts of Alexander Pushkin. Actual architectural spaces are compared with their literary interpretations. The article draws a reciprocal connection between the architectural environment and its actors. The main characters of the novel "Eugene Onegin" are shown as conductors, carriers and direct creators of this northern capital’s character. Drawing on her analysis of architectural and art compositions and philological and philosophical examination, the author establishes a balance between the reconstruction of exterior and interior spaces of Saint-Petersburg in 1820-1824 and the modelling of meanings in the perception of those spaces. The poetic text sets a context for unravelling how the literary characters and the author yielded to the effects of the city through specific spatial circumstances and its architectural materiality and were drawn into emotional experiences associated with its variable and diverse forms.

Steklova Irina A.
PUSHKIN’S PETERSBURG: SYNTHESIS OF WORLD ORDER

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (37) March, 2012

The article proposes an architectural critic’s comment on Alexander Pushkin's poetic, prosaic and publicistic works from the last years of his creative life, all relating to Saint-Petersburg, as a researcher’s review of projects depicted at this or that angle, which usually remain unnoticed during or after reading. Architectural analysis of speculative constructions in the texts is used to show how Pushkin's characters, despite the stereotypes of detached perception of man-made harmonies, would be overtaken by the direct effect of the architecture of this nordic city and would be drawn into emotional experiencing of its varying diversity in time. The sphere of architecture is considered as a material domain in the conceptualisation of Being with a visual expression of a set of aesthetic and ethical assets.

The author emphasises the interpretation of Saint-Petersburg’s architectural space in the poem «The Bronze Horseman» as exposure of consistent materialization of the Emperor’s unlimited will and as accentuation of the predeterminedness of the monumental cityscape of Russia’s future capital by the potency of the logically clear, self-unfolding general plan. The article describes concrete compositional characteristics of the capital’s architectural spaces that expressed in a concentrated way the ideologically weighty postulates that were of fundamental value for Pushkin. Contrary to the polar contradictions of the contemporaneity, they were integrated in a stable positive model of perception of the world rooted in the architectonic attributes of the poet’s personality. Keywords: Pushkin’s Petersburg, architectural semantics, architecture in Pushkin's poetry.

Steklova Irina A.
PUSHKIN’S PETERSBURG: THE FOURTH DIMENSION OF ARCHITECTURE

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (36) December, 2011

The issue of verbal stabilisation of meanings in architecture, which is the focus of this article, is considered in the context of fiction, which gained an exclusive status in the formation of Russian mentality owing to Alexander Pushkin’s creativity. The article shows how the literary works of this founder of contemporary national literature, who was involved in architecture no more than any other representative of the influential and demanding Russian cultural elite of the first third of the 19th century, touches upon – owing to the convergence of encyclopaedic erudition, absolute taste, internal freedom, and unsurpassed talent in the author – the intrinsic properties of architecture ensuring natural comprehension and acquisition of the multidimensionality of this phenomenon by generations of readers. The position voiced by the author is illustrated by a wide range of manually made images of Petersburg, presenting, due to a number of circumstances, a theme for a particularly thorough study. They were created by the poet over a period of 20 years, depicting the results of ardent impressions of lyceum adolescence to profound dialectic experiences of architectural space in maturity. An attempt is made to reconstruct the emotional contents and meanings of Petersburg’s architectural system in the contours of the concepts stated in the poetic, prosaic, publicist texts of Pushkin. There is objectivity identified in the accumulation of architectural semantics in reference art language associated with aesthetic and ethic national values.

Steklova Irina A.
ARCHITECTURE IN ALEXANDER PUSHKIN’S TEXTS AND GRAPHICS

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (34) June, 2011

A suggestion is made that the simultaneous surge in Russian literature spearheaded by the recognised genius and the rise of Russian architecture with a galaxy of first-class masters was not accidental. The article considers the influence of architecture on Pushkin’s gift, starting from the unique environment of Tsarskoye Selo lycée where the young man learnt to understand poetry and to contemplate the real architectural space. For six years on end did he draw it from life in order to do this later by imagination for the rest of his life.

The architecture and landscape sketches of the poet dating to different periods of his creative life demonstrate an obvious awareness of form, which was traditional for the analytical school of the Russian Academy of Art: general layout of space, outlining of perspectives, arrangement of architectural objects as formal and, simultaneously, semantic dominants. It is shown that such work was systemic for Pushkin not only in graphics but also in word, involving continuing absorption, retention in memory and reproduction of spatial dimensions fixated by architecture.

The poet mastered the metaphorical potential of architecture in so organic a manner that he used it to reconstruct the past, convey the ethical connotations of the present and even to express irony. Architecture, according to its inherent mission, imparted a human and cultural dimension to the nature, introducing elements of history and civilization into the spatial construction of literary work.

Steklova Irina A.
ARCHITECTURE DIALOGUE IN ALEXANDER PUSHKIN’S TRAGEDY "BORIS GODUNOV"

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (32) December, 2010

The author considers the issue of interspecies links in early 19th century national art in the phenomenon of interpenetration so such diverse aesthetic spheres as literature and architecture. Mechanisms of such interaction are examined with reference to Alexander Pushkin’s works as a mediator between real-life architectural forms and ordinary consumers of architectural forms, i.e. readers. The poet’s attitude to architecture and his approach to the construction of immediate architectural space are considered with reference to the scenery solution of the drama "Boris Godunov".