Light brutalist – Newspaper Kommersant No. 241 (7442) dated 12/27/2022

At the age of 92, Vladimir Kubasov, one of the most significant architects of the late USSR and modern Russia, the author of the Moscow Art Theater building on Tverskoy Boulevard, died in Moscow. Unlike many titans of late Soviet architecture, he absolutely organically merged into the context of the new time and continued to work actively.

Vladimir Kubasov was born in 1930 in Alma-Ata, and the beauty of the mountain landscape in the Medeo valley was the strongest aesthetic impression of his childhood. Soon the family moved to Moscow, and then Kubasov lost his father. He was raised by his mother and aunt. The architect’s childhood was marked by the Great Patriotic War and the difficulties and hardships associated with it, because of which Kubasov even had to graduate from school as an external student ahead of time. As an external student, he met a demobilized fighter who was going to enter the Architectural Institute, and Kubasov, who had not previously thought about the profession of an architect, followed his example. In 1947 he entered the Moscow Architectural Institute.

He studied in the group of Mikhail Olenev and Yuri Sheverdyaev (later Sheverdyaev took him to his studio). The main hobby of the young man in his student years was painting and watercolor. He traveled around the country, wrote a lot, improved his graphic skills and craftsmanship, without which the work of an architect is unthinkable.

Artistic talent Kubasov, his “picturesque” approach to architecture became the key to his success. Starting with a diploma and numerous competitive projects, each of his works became a living reminder that architecture is a synthesis of the arts, that not only the strength of the structure, but also every decorative detail is important in it. Kubasov always sought to cross the boundaries of genres, worked “between” specialties, was inclined to co-create with artists and sculptors. His first great success was his participation in the design and construction of the famous Palace of Pioneers on Sparrow Hills. For this building, the “Magnificent Seven”, a team of authors headed by Felix Novikov, received the State Prize of the RSFSR in 1968.

However, the most striking project in the creative biography of Vladimir Kubasov was the construction of the New Building of the Moscow Art Theater on Tverskoy Boulevard (1972). Here his synthetic approach to design manifested itself as never before. Kubasov was involved in absolutely all aspects of the project – sketches, designs, working drawings (often making them right at the construction site and immediately transferring them to the builders), he plastered, painted, carved wood and sculpted molds for casting bronze parts with his own hands. Kubasov recalled that time as the best in his professional biography. Yes, and the Moscow Art Theater remained his favorite brainchild, in which, as he himself said, “everything that is exciting, new and beautiful is mine; everything that is not good is also mine.”

Simultaneously with the construction of the theater, the theater as a kind of creativity entered his life. Friendship with the leading actors of the Moscow Art Theater, such as Alexei Gribov and Pavel Massalsky, further expanded Kubasov’s creative horizons, and he eventually even created the play “Three Long Days” as a stage director. On the stage of the new Moscow Art Theater, of course.

Memories of the work of Vladimir Kubasov on the theater building are reminiscent of fragments of Giorgio Vasari’s notes on the life of the great artists of the Renaissance. These records combine admiration for genius with very lively descriptions of the human qualities of these “titans of the Renaissance.” And it was precisely these masters, who easily juggled genres and moved from painting to architecture, then to sculpture, and then arranged a stupid brawl and quickly ran away to a neighboring city, that Vladimir Kubasov looked like (minus the brawls and flight – he was always an exemplary citizen , family man and athlete). Despite the fact that he worked mainly in the genre of so-called brutalism (a version of modernism, characterized by especially chopped lines and massive volumes), the architect and man Kubasov was light. It is no coincidence that he always became a participant in some related projects and collective exhibitions. For him, creativity was a continuous process, easy, joyful, multifaceted. And it was precisely this constant creative upsurge that provided him with the flexibility that made it possible to easily integrate into the new architectural reality after the collapse of the USSR.

Before the collapse of the country, Kubasov built a lot both in Moscow and in the regions. His most interesting regional building is the river station with a hotel in Rostov-on-Don (1977). Of the capital, the pavilion “Soviet Trade Unions” at VDNKh (1987) is extremely effective. But his most significant work in the capital is, of course, the two phases of the World Trade Center. The first was completed in 1982, and in the process of its creation, Kubasov gained unique experience working with foreign contractors, traveled to the United States and brought back the idea of ​​an office building with an atrium, which he has since promoted in every possible way. The second stage was built already in a completely different world, in 2009, and Kubasov easily and naturally connected two giant knots into a single whole.

Because even after 1991, he, in fact, still built a lot in Moscow and the regions. In the 1990s, it was he who became the author of several large McDonald’s, in particular on Prospekt Mira and in Gazetny Lane (an exceptionally spectacular building with dramatic and picturesque mirror glazing). Residential complex “Kuntsevo” (1999), retail and office complex in Khanty-Mansiysk (2007), residential complex “Volga sails” in Volgograd (2009) – in the professional biography of Vladimir Kubasov there is no pause for restructuring, for the “scrapping of the era”. He was an architect, not a philosopher, his job was to build. And he built.

And he also taught – for several decades, Vladimir Kubasov taught at the Moscow Architectural Institute. Vice President of the Union of Architects of Russia, Academician of Architecture, People’s Architect of Russia. All these are important and serious titles and words. But these are just words, there is no life behind them. And the image of a cheerful person who, having taken a spatula, with his own hands plasters the wall of a building invented by him, the image of an artist, sculptor and architect who cannot stop creating for a second, is a living image. So Vladimir Semenovich Kubasov will be remembered by everyone who knew him. And for those who did not know, his architecture remains – powerful, clean, strict and talented.

Evgenia Mikulina