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Designers invading the city
While celebrating the Day of the City Moscow citizens will have the opportunity to have a look at creations of Russian designers and take part in unusual events. Beginning with September 4 and through to September 12 within the “Days of Design in Moscow” programme with the support of the Moscow Government the first Festival of object and environmental design dubbed Sretenka Design Week will take place. The festival will be held in the ancient historical district of the city, Sretenka street and adjacent side streets. The organizers did everything to take the festival out into the city streets — festival events will take place not only on the territories of exhibitions and galleries, but in cafes, shops, restaurants and just in the street. For example, “Skromnoye obayaniye burzhuazii” (“Modest charm of the bourgeoisie”) restaurant, “Dodo” book store, “Zhate” confectionery, JNBY shop, Coffee Bean coffee house and many other places will turn into exhibition areas. Sretenka Design Week festival includes several projects united with the common idea — to show the spectators the possibilities of modern design. One of the projects is dubbed “Arkhsretenka”. The organizers intend to create a new urban environment by integrating various minor architectural forms into the urban “fabric” with congruous alteration of the spaces of streets, boulevards, public gardens and yards and preserving the historical and cultural image of the area. 
This was the idea of the project participants. These are, in particular, respected Russian architects Totan Kuzembayev, Vladimir Kuzmin and Vlada Savinkina, artists Nikolay Polissky, Dmitry Sukhov, Anton Kochurkin, and young authors from “Deti Iofana” (“Jothan’s Children”) group, Praktika bureau,RedKod, Yunaya bureau, students from Moscow Architectural Institute and anOtherArchitect bureau from Germany. “The City of the Future” is a game with leading Russian and European architects, designers and specialists in historic heritage, representatives of the local administration and even inhabitants of the festival microdistrict acting as players. The main objective of the game to make the street and adjacent area a convenient place for living. One of the aspects of the game is creating of a designer’s quarter and supporting small creative business projects in the area. Such an approach proved to be very successful in European countries. The organizers of the game hope that international expertise will be useful for Moscow, too. The organizers of the festival did not forget about the children. One of the projects is a children-dedicated special project and it bears an appropriate name — “d. е.t.i.” (“children”). As a result of its implementation, a new playground and an open stage will be built, master classes for children and a theatrical performance will be held, an exhibition of schools and architecture-and-art clubs will take place. One will be able not only to see and touch design items showcased at the festival, but also to buy them. For example, at the Seasons Market. The exhibition dubbed “MIR: made in Russia” that will be held at DesignBoom gallery is intended to demonstrate over two hundred items of industrial design created by the best Russian designers. The gallery of the Higher Art and Technical Studios will host an exhibition dedicated to the search for the image of the Museum of Design which does not yet exist in Russia. “Most European countries have museums dedicated to design that reflect the evolution of things and culture of the XX and XXI centuries,” the festival director Andrey Samonayev explains. “Each has its own concept, display, purpose. The key event, the highlight of the festival, will be the retrospective exhibition “Russian Design Phenomenon” that will be held in М’АRS Centre for Contemporary Arts. The display demonstrates the history of the Russian design thought. It is peculiar, as the organizers stress it, in that the Russian design creative community has an inherent desire not so much for implementation of concepts as for their intentional production. One will be able to see exercises and design projects that influenced the evolution of the artistic culture in the ХХ century. “All the projects of Sretenka Design Week festival are aimed at breaking stereotypes in thinking, overcoming a significant lag in many areas related both to the industry and aesthetic education,” A. Samonayev notes. Every project of the festival makes it its goal to provide an opportunity to integrate the Russian design into the pan-European cultural process. *Based on the materials provided by the organizers of the Sretenka Design Week festival
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The organizers of the festival note the its peculiarity — the task of enhancing the quality of education and aesthetic development of children is performed here using architecture and design means.
It is time to set up such a museum in Russia so as to foster aesthetics of understanding design as a sphere of the material culture using examples of the best samples in the industry, to show what has been created in this country, to tell people about the authors,” he adds.
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© 2010 Department of Foreign Economic |