In 2018 the book Krymsky Val 9/45, a Hidden Monument of Gorky Park was published. It is a joint project accomplished by the bureau, historians Marianna Evstratova and Sergey Koluzakov, the publishing group ABC design, Kuchkovo Pole publishing house and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
2012
The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art was to be relocated to Gorky park and it needed a headquarters. The park administration suggested to house it in the left half of the building next to the Krymsky Bridge.
We were invited to design the building of future office. Making a start on the three-storey building, which had accommodated a large plumbing supplies shop, the architects uncovered rich history behind the redecoration of the oughts. These discoveries provided a foundation for the book.
The project and the book were tackled simultaneously. It turned out that the small building near the Krymsky Bridge that everyone had seen but almost no one could recall was a true architectural palimpsest.
It dates back to the late 19th century, to the building of Nikolai Bromley’s shipyard on the Moskva river, a red brick industrial construction with a roofed passage leading to the river. The modern house still conserves the brick arches of the shipyard.
Gorky Park has always been a mirror of changes in Soviet and modern live. This little administrative buiding is the mirror of an epoche too.
The building had several major makeovers and at different times housed a pavilion for the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, the GOZNAK workers’ club, one of the first sound motion cinemas, public baths, a warehouse and a plumbing supplies shop.
Despite the fact that the office building is quite integral from the outside, it has existed for over half a century as two separate blocks with the cinema ruin in its centre, caused by a German air raid. The ruin can only be seen from the inside as it is divided by two blind facades.
The building was reinvented many times and quite a few prominent architects worked on its design, including Sergey Sherwood, Alexey Shchusev, El Lissitzky, Vasily Voinov and Rodrigo da Costa, the Stenberg brothers and Alexander Deineka. In order to illustrate its transformations the architects of FORM bureau created several graphic reconstructions based on plans, drawings and sectional views of each historical stage.
