The fist manefestation of my manefesto

LOST MOUMENTS – Making & Breaking the Icon,

'History is not continuous. It is made up of stops and starts, of presences and absences. The presences are the times when history is vital, is "running" is feeding on itself and deriving it's energy from its own momentum. The absences are the times when the propulsive organism is dead, the voids in between one "run" of history and the next. These are filled by memory. Where history ends, memory begins.'

Peter Eisenman, Essay ‘The Fluidity of Objects’

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At the heart of the Russian Bear, the Moskova Bank Site is a location of destruction and resurgence, where the battle for monumental permanence is clearly recognized. The transformations of this site in the last two centuries have been a formal manifestation of the turbulent history of Russia. 

 The ruthlessly defacing or dismantling of one icon has secured the iconic status of its successor. It is not the formal expression of the monument itself that makes it iconic but the ceremonious annihilation of one icon in order to set the stage for the creation of another. ‘The visual defacement of a monument in an attempt to erase it from history serves only to preserve the memory of the ill fated through the very act of its obliteration’. The ’new’ monument is defined by its difference from the ‘old’ monument. Absence is more noticeable than presence, so through the act of eradication we place the condemned in the category of memory where it is further elevated towards the iconic, the unforgettable.

The site represents the sum of all the buildings which have occupied it. It becomes a site of ‘invisible archeology’, a documentation of all the phases that have passed over it. In other words the site has the power of ‘perpetual prestige’ a node drawing the focus of the city irresistibly towards it.  It encompasses the memory of all the buildings that have left there traced on its soil. Each building erected on the site is monumental either through intent or though the passage of time which has increased its significance, bestowing it with monumental standing. These two typologies are both seen in the Palace of the Soviets, a hybrid between a monument that is created to commemorate and skyscraper which incubates its monumentality.

The destruction or resurgence of a monument is a marker in time, a formal documentation of an event.  Today the Moskova Bank, arguable one of Moscow’s most prestigious sites is occupied by the Orthodox Church but this can not be its final state. In a time when Russia is the second country on the Forbes rich list and Moscow has been declared the most expensive city in the world while the majority of its people live below the poverty line a new container must be built.  The current condition is volatile turbulent and weird.  The new container will not only have to represent contemporary Russia but it will also assume the aura of generations of buildings that where demolished on the site, connecting with the historic memory of past buildings, it will end the cycle of architectural cannibalism through its ability to adapt and re-adapt to the abrasive winds of change that regularly pass along the banks of the Moskova River.

The exterior shell should be a symbol of strength that connects to the DNA of Moscow.   The people require a pillar of stability, the ultimate social condenser, able to incubate any programmatic agenda, ending to the perpetual transformations on the site of architectural reincarnation.