We aimed to create an antagonist object that enters into dialogue with the landscape and the existing artworks of the Nikola-Lenivets park. Working with the context and the natural environment naturally intertwined with the task of creating a recreation area and reflecting on the idea of intersecting routes.
Drawing on the possibility of a free and critical female architect’s perspective on the phallic silhouettes of experimental objects, we propose fluid, smooth, and horizontal lines as a counterpoint to upright, orderly structures and forms. Our sources of inspiration were the literary style of Virginia Woolf and Olivia Laing, the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, the voice of Portishead’s singer Beth Gibbons, and the urban landscapes of Jaipur.
The particular sensitivity of the female body to time is our starting point. Menstrual cycles, ovulation, menopause, and childbirth mark women’s lives and allow for a more intense temporal experience. This intense experience grows with us from the very soil. The descent underground, the downward movement, is akin to a fall from grace, a lowering, a regression. The bodily = the feminine. A pink channel — river, hollow, or dam — should become a place for contemplation from below. Contemplation within the flow. At the same time, it is a trench, a territory reclaimed from male Culture for self-expression. The feminine connects us with those whose voices are unheard by Culture, whose notes always remain «in the margins» of the grand and official text. Here, the scent of lilacs and fresh soil lingers; countless channels of communication and networks emerge, from which we gaze at the lonely, cold citadels ambitiously piercing the sky.
Team: Alexandra Razina, Vladimir Bocharov
