Shigeru Ban

Shigeru Ban's Moscow pavilion opens

First look at Shigeru Ban's pavilion for Dasha Zhukova's Gorky Park Garage Center

The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture has unveiled its new temporary pavillion in Moscow’s Gorky Park. Designed by Shigeru Ban, the structure is some 79,000 square feet, was designed by Shigeru Ban and will host exhibitions and educational programs into next year.

The first of these exhibitions, Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban, will inaugurate the space. Showing rare archival drawings – many of which have never been seen before – the exhibition will begin by revealing the profound history of structures created in the park since the site was first developed in 1923, before moving through the Russian avant-garde period to finish with some of the most interesting contemporary unrealised designs created by Russian architects today.

 

Shigeru Ban and Dasha Zhukova pictured together earlier this year
Shigeru Ban and Dasha Zhukova pictured together earlier this year

By their nature, temporary structures erected for a specific event or happening have always encouraged indulgent experimentation, and sometimes this has resulted in ground-breaking progressive design. This exhibition recognizes such experimentation and positions the pavilion or temporary structure as an architectural typology that oscillates between art object and architectural prototype. In Russia, these structures or pavilions – often constructed of insubstantial materials – allowed Soviet architects the ability to express the aspirations of the revolution.  They frequently became vehicles for new architectural and political ideas, and they were extremely influential within Russian architectural history

The exhibition will include work by Russian architects, including Konstantin Melnikov, Ivan Zholtovsky, Alexey Shchusev, Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, Alexander Vlasov, Fyodor Osipovich Schechtel, Vladimir Schuko, Panteleimon Golosov, Ilya Golosov and Moisei Ginzburg. If you're in Moscow it sounds like one not to be missed. If you can't make it check out our monograph on Shigeru Ban worth 280 points when you join Phaidon Club.

 

Inside Shigeru Ban's pavilion
Inside Shigeru Ban's pavilion