House in TarussaAlexander Brodsky

There is no good or bad, execrable or exceptional architecture. There is only architecture which suits its users or not. Architecture that can, besides fulfilling its basic functional duties, give something extra to the ones that inhabit it. So how then can we judge the qualities or flaws of a building, let’s say a house, if we are never to live in it? And, as we very easily fall under destructive criticism, aren’t we as falling as easily into idolatry? This has something to do with the contemporary obsession with new-ness. If something new meets our eyes we immediately become mesmerized and very often neglect having a true productive criticism on that particular creation. Bernard Colendrander tells us that meaning can be found in “understanding the genesis of a design without prejudice” and in “explaining the possible differences between what was intended or drawn and what was built”. Moreover, just as a client does a thorough background check in the architect’s past before entrusting him with the project, maybe that’s what we should do when trying to decide on the likability of a building. How did this particular building got to be designed and built as we see it today? Indeed, I believe we can only understand Alexander Brodsky’s House in Tarussa by understanding who is this architect. Taking a look at his past, and what an interesting past that is, some issues need pointing out. Alexander Brodsky studied two years of art before joining the Moscow school of architecture. During his studies he developed a friendship with Ilya Utkyn with whom he started to work on a vast number of etchings, participating in international design competitions, some of which they have won. Pushed by the architecture crisis of late communist dictatorship, they found a niche in the system through which they could communicate their ideas to the world. They became known as the Paper Architects. The etchings are highly critical to modernism and melancholic to the loss of classical architecture that was going on in Moscow. He afterwards started doing art pieces for ten years all around the world until finally establishing his own architecture office in 2000 in Moscow, at the age of 45.

Brodsky and Utkyn's Columbarium Habitabile, 1986

Looking at this house and trying to read its story we have to take into account that it was designed by an architect who states: “it still amazes me that I became an architect”. It does not really look like a house also. It looks more like a potential house, a building that at the same time has no rules and all rules. The architectural language used by Brodsky is complex and unpredictable. It looks as if a normal house had exploded into little bits and pieces, just as he does in his art pieces or etchings, wholes made out of infinite miniature art pieces or out of an infinite number of lines. Brodsky has always been critical about the world he lives in and has a good eye for its flaws. He is also very good in imagining new, better, utopian worlds. Separating the roof structure from the main volume of the house, he creates a new, perfected habitat for the house, where the wrath of nature can no longer harm it. Also, by using a transparent material for the actual roof, he can use the terraces of the house to the fullest. He is not afraid to use cheap materials and knows exactly where details are important and where they can be left free. The idea of autonomy is further expressed by raising the house above the ground. The house it true to the eye. What you see is what you get and the material that seems to hold the house together, wood that is, actually does that. You find it as both an exterior and an interior finish, creating cozy living areas. Inside, everything is in hands reach, perfectly positioned in relation to the other objects: a perfect composition; while the spaces are inviting and roomy. I do not believe that Brodsky was looking for a certain relationship to nature, and yet I feel that it fits perfectly in its surroundings. This is probably due to a holistic natural thinking. Natural understood in materiality, necessity, usefulness and proportion. I feel this building is a natural outcome of a life of research into the creative process. While other buildings drift off into rhetoric discourse, this house stands as a landmark of architecture that does not want to say anything special, it just is what it is.

Brodsky and Utkyn's The Intelligent Market, 1987

References

Literature

http://www.designdebates.nl/_pdf/Volume-36-2013.pdf

http://www.feldmangallery.com/media/brodsky/general%20press/2008_brodsky_arkitecture_almaas.pdf

Figures

http://russianculture.wordpress.com/2011/01/http://www.archdaily.com/243403/house-in-tarussa-bureau-alexander-brodsky/