Postmodernism in Russian Metropolitan Architecture in the 1990s—2010s: Rethinking as a Leading Principle

Philosophical thought was one of the factors influencing Russian and, in particular, metropolitan architecture — sometimes explicitly, consciously, more often “by naivety” or with reference to world architectural practice. It formed the cultural atmosphere, the intellectual movement, which in fact disavowed the cultural tautology of the matrix of modernism and, more broadly, the ideological framework of the Art Nouveau era. Just as Romanticism, and later Neo-Romanticism, turned to different epochs and cultures, so postmodernism is inclined to stare intensely into the horizon, to wander, to perceive the old as an occasion for the creation of the new. Hence its keen interest in such literary tropes as metaphor and allusion, its penchant for quotations and references, its acceptance of bricolage as a projection of a mythological type of consciousness. The author categorizes postmodern concepts that have influenced architecture into two groups: established concepts reinterpreted in postmodernism and new postmodern ideas. This article is devoted to the former, in which such concepts as metaphor, quotation, allusion, collage and bricolage are considered in their reflection on the Moscow architecture at the turn of the 20th—21st centuries. Their brief characterization is given, and examples of their embodiment in architectural practice are considered in more detail, in particular, if we talk about the metaphor of the catamaran house, the hill house, the ship house, etc. It is emphasized that the influence of postmodernist concepts on Russian capital architecture is uneven: while the stage of the 1990s — early 2000s is marked by an appeal to quotation, metaphor, allusion, collage and bricolage remain relevant throughout the 1990s—2010s. In addition to architecture, the identified postmodernist ideas have influenced other types of Russian artistic practice, from literature and music to cinema and visual arts. This list can be extended to include other postmodernist concepts reflected in Russian capital architecture of the turn of the 20th—21st centuries, among them irony, play, double coding, nostalgia, palimpsest.

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