Hardly another European capital has had so turbulent a history as Berlin. Especially in the twentieth century, tumultuous historical events have left their mark on the city: its growth, the golden 1920s, the dictatorships, the scars of war, reconstruction, division and then reunification. All this called for new planning and offered architects and city planners room and occasion for new projects, new ideas, new visions for Berlin. The city continues to grow and develop, so that the discussion about the future appearance of the German capital is still going on.
Towering like an infinite mountain of stone, a building devoid of windows and doors is hand-drawn in the tradition of the old masters. Elsewhere, colored strips of tape address the same project, visualized as a sequence of stacked layers. In yet another image, this time presented in a more realistic style, the cityscape is framed by two men gazing out at the viewer with a grin.
It’s a daring experiment that Tchoban Voss Architekten undertake in their exhibition “Images from Berlin.” Instead of presenting their projects with the usual means, they have delegated this task to 11 visual artists. The aforementioned works stem from a confrontation by Gottfried Müller and Valery Koshlyakov with the Museum for Architectural Drawing. Meanwhile, the Living Levels are approached by the duo Vrubel & Timofeeva as an everyday urban environment.
After receiving his education at the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in St. Petersburg, Sergei Tchoban moved to Germany at the age of 30. He now runs parallel practices in both Berlin and Moscow, after becoming managing partner of nps tchoban voss in 2003 and co-founding SPEECH with Sergey Kuznetsov in 2006. In 2009, the Tchoban Foundation was formed in Berlin to celebrate the lost art of drawing through exhibitions and publications. The Foundation’s Museum for Architectural Drawing was built in Berlin in 2013 to Tchoban’s design. In this latest interview for his “City of Ideas” series, Vladimir Belogolovsky spoke to Tchoban during their recent meeting in Paris about architectural identities, inspirations, the architect’s fanatical passion for drawing, and such intangibles as beauty.
Standing tall in the expansive landscape of Western Russia, the monolithic Museum for Rural Labor is an architectural beacon for the Kaluga Oblast region. Built of local straw and clay, the eight meter tower is comprised of one round sunlit room adorned with the instruments of manual labor. Jarring, unexpected and mysterious, the museum was conceived by Russian architects Sergei Tchoban and Agniya Sterligova to pay homage to the region's deep agricultural history. Defined by a stark and unorthodox form, the tower disrupts the Russian landscape while simultaneously serving as a wayfinding device for residents from the nearby village of Zvizzhi.
Enter the rudimentary world of the Museum for Rural Labour after the break.
Realtà e Fantasia. Cartoline dall’Italia exhibition conveys a selection of Sergei Tchoban’s architectural drawings. The walls of of the gallery will be covered with 60 sketches – depicting landscapes and fantasies. As a part of the exhibition installation pictures shot in Tchoban’s Berlin atelier – nps tchoban voss –, document some of his completed architectural projects, will give a good idea about the artists visions not only as an architect, but also as someone whose passion is architectural drawing.
