background - (2020-2022)

Modernist ideas and Soviet urban planning practices of the 20th century significantly changed and formed the look of Russian cities. Standardization, simplification, urbanization of rural areas, and centrally controlled development resulted in almost identical panel neighborhoods nationwide. After the USSR collapsed, these practices and related problems, in the main, were not rethought but somehow adapted to the new economic reality.

Today, the outskirts of Russian cities continue to grow with typical high-rise panel buildings. They are often built right in the middle of the fields, torn from the rest of the city and surrounded by wastelands and industrial zones. Some might call them modern city frontiers and compare their architecture with anthills.

I grew up in a similar neighborhood, built in the early 90s on the outskirts of Samara. I lived only a few «90K-series» blocks away from the place where the «city» actually ended. Further on were rows of metal garages, ravines, and dachas drowning in greenery and emptying most of the year. That is probably why I am used to these large, unsettled spaces, wide, half-empty roads, and chaotic nature around. That is probably why I don't find these new neighborhoods disturbing, gloomy, or dystopian; on the contrary, they often evoke a sense of nostalgia and bring back some childhood memories. At the same time, I understand all the possible issues of living in these neighborhoods. Both domestic issues, like transport accessibility and lack of infrastructure, and social issues, like stress, atomization, and loneliness.

Project «background» attempts to capture the typical landscape and architecture of such new neighborhoods in Moscow, the city I've lived in for the last four years. The title «background» here can be considered on multiple levels. First, it refers to the rows of panel buildings on the horizon. Second, on a personal level, «background» is a term for one’s past - an experience of living and adapting to such an environment familiar to most Russian people, including me. And finally, «background» refers to a permanent Russian scenery, an environment where urban planning and development practices being reproduced for many years now as if time has stopped.