Society and Culture: Projects of Orthodox churches presented at the exhibition “Church Building. Architectural Graphics, Layouts” in St. Petersburg

The exhibition Church Building. Architectural Graphics, Layouts has opened in the Blue Hall of the Museum of the Academy of Arts. The exposition presents projects of Orthodox churches: sketches for restoration and reconstruction, both for old and new churches, including those that have been implemented or are currently being implemented. Layouts and architectural graphics created by modern architects are exhibited as well.

Since the late 1980s, the process of revival of the Russian Orthodox Church began. The earliest work presented at the exhibition is associated with this period. This is a project of a church in the village of Verkola (Arkhangelsk Region), executed by Mikhail Alexandrovich Mamoshin in 1986.

Since that time, the traditional method of the teaching system for the school of church architecture has been gradually restored. It combines two seemingly opposite trends – on the one hand, the canons and traditions of Orthodox church architecture, and on the other, modern standards and requirements for projects. The Leningrad school of restoration made an invaluable contribution to the preservation of the traditions of church architecture.

The curators of the exhibition project Church Building were tasked to show the process of “communication” between the main directions in modern church architecture and the experience of restoration, as a result of which architects manage to offer interesting solutions that do not run counter to the canonical standards of church architecture, since, despite the external variability and evolution of shaping, the integrity of the image of the Orthodox church has always remained unchanged.

The exhibition presents over 30 projects of church buildings created over the past 35 years, including layouts, sketches of projects, fragments of murals, projects for recreating paintings and others.

The exhibited sketches of Maxim Borisovich Atayants reflect the enormous creative potential and deep artistic taste of the author of the projects of numerous churches, including the five-domed Holy Spirit Church on Dolgozernaya Street in St. Petersburg, which is close to completion.

The works of diocesan architect Dmitry Alexandrovich Borunov are modestly presented in one layout. Still, the huge work of this master remains “behind the scenes” –creative on a large scale, and organizational, on the scale of the St. Petersburg Metropolis.

Alexander Grigoryevich Gorshkov, chief architect of the Research Museum at the Russian Academy of Arts, is both the curator of this exhibition and the author of one of the projects shown here – the Church of Saint Nino, Equal to Apostles in St. Petersburg. His design graphics attract special attention by the nature of the execution, which makes us recall the neo-Russian style, born at the beginning of the XX century, but invariably drawing the creative potential of our architects.

The exhibition also features the works of other architects, muralists, graphic artists.

Examples of creative works of professionals collected in this exhibition give the future architects and artists a very good lesson in preserving the skills of traditional techniques both for working on projects and for decent presentation of final results.

The exhibition will run until January 15, 2023.