Authors

Tkachev Valentin N., Sarvut Tatiana O.
REJECTION OF HARMONY

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №3 (71) September, 2020

The title of the article is inspired by the critical state of modern architecture, in particular its top (outside utilitarian architecture) echelon carrying an ideological load in accordance with the general cultural paradigm of society. The latter has reached a level of paradoxical "harmony" between high rates of technological and electronic advancement and comparable rates of social degradation in Homo sapiens. The indicator of positivity in the development of civilization has turned on the red light of alarm. The response has been an unprecedented surge of scientific publications devoted to the ongoing social crisis and search for ways to prevent the catastrophe, which the humankind gravitates to "collectively unconsciously" being perfectly aware of its possible consequences.
Visual evidence of the threat and its sign is a booming architectural activity, creating an illusion of progress and flourishing.
The article reviews concepts and publications polarized in their assessment of the so-called avant-garde phenomena of modern world architecture and predicts the immediate and long-term prospects of the profession for staying mainstream.

Tkachev Valentin N., Sarvut Tatiana O.
UNDERSTANDING HARMONY

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №2 (70) June, 2020

The orientation of modern science towards the identification of universal ties of “everything with everything else” involves considering harmony as an indicator of the level of perfection in nature and man-made works. As a universal tool of analysis, harmony tests the success of transformations aimed at achieving the unity and integrity of the systems that make up the macrocosm in the process of evolution in all its manifestations - from grandiose events in the universe to the metamorphosis of a butterfly.
One such system is architecture whose genesis implements the general cosmic laws governing the cyclicity of incoming and descending processes of morphogenesis, fully reflected in the historical dynamics of this branch of human activity.
The article attempts to highlight, from new perspectives, the processes of birth, flourishing and fading of architectural history cycles.
This is the first part of the article containing information on the emergence and application of the notion of harmony to ascending currents in the existence of architecture as a system.

Tkachev Valentin N.
WATER AND CIVILIZATION. Part II. Water World?

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №1 (49) March, 2015

The prospects for a "regular" Noah’s Flood are estimated based on a review of historical and modern experiences and alternative hypotheses concerning the feasibility of climate warming and the speed of continental inundation. The architectural utopias imagining possible forms of human living in the future are regarded as blatantly fantastic and not supported by any technological arguments; nor do they take into account the threat of flooding.

Flooding as an external environmental threat would provoke serious changes in social life, international relations, spatial planning and structural forms of architecture, urban planning concepts, and, ultimately, it would bring about a rational attitude towards the imagery of architectural objects. A number of possible transformations are predicted, such as "green architecture", "ready-to-assemble architecture", modular matrix method in urbanism, surface platforms as a living area, floating cities, a new typological classification of structures, etc. It is suggested that the process of transition to the water-world civilisation should have three stages: initial, transitional, and final.

The author raises the issue of transformation of the organismic human race into a technetronic one that would pick up the baton from the current civilisation and open up possibilities to the technoêtre that were unavailable to man, a product of biological development, and absolutely new archetypes of habitation.

Tkachev Valentin N.
WATER AND CIVILIZATION

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

This series of articles is devoted to the role of water in human life and in the forms of architectural organisation of living environments. Historically, the author states the prevalence of adaptive forms in the early civilisations which defined the contribution of water as an essential component of agricultural, industrial, and urban planning human activities. The rhythmic pattern of humidification and aridization processes adds clarity to the periodization of the centuries-old history of the Euroasian continent, providing an additional argument in favour of the hypothesis (already realised) of global warming and rising sea level and suggesting a radical review of the future of the human civilisation. The article describes an experience of standing up against the aggression of water or its deficiency, reviews local methods of struggle against hydro-disasters, and gives a futurological portrayal of the civilisation’s prospects.