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Once they were condemned bus garages and gas works, now they’re hot galleries and nightclubs. Kevin O’Flynn explains why Russians are holding back the wrecking ball
Moscow
Once they were condemned bus garages and gas works, now they’re hot galleries and nightclubs. Kevin O’Flynn explains why Russians are holding back the wrecking ball
ONCE UPON A TIME you could come out of a club in the early morning near the Kremlin and be hit by the sickly sweet smell of chocolate in the air. The unexpected odour seemed to fi t with Moscow’s surreal night life. It came from the Krasny Oktyabr or Red October factory, an enormous late 19th-century red-brick building that dominates an embankment nearby.
But it no longer churns out chocolate. A few years ago, the closing down of the factory would have meant certain demolition for the building, never mind its historical and architectural value, but Moscow is slowly waking up to the value of its industrial history.
New York art dealer Larry Gagosian held a monumental exhibition in the grand space inside the factory in September and October, showing off an array of contemporary artists including Jeff Koons and Willem de Kooning. Elsewherein the building, the club Rai (‘paradise’) has become famous for door control that is stricter than Saint Peter, for its €5,000 tables and shows which involve leopards and scantily clad men and women. The old factory has been given a new life, just as Tate Modern took a disused electricity power station and made it one of London’s biggest attractions.
Winzavod is an old winery near Kursk train station in the west of Moscow, which used to make portvein, a noxious concoction that has only a fleeting relationship to port, and which was loved in the Soviet Union as a cheap drink for students and intellectuals. Empty after going bankrupt in the 1990s, it was turned into a thriving arts centre in 2007. Lord Norman Foster has lectured there and every weekend you can see a young crowd visiting its galleries. It’s also a good place for music and art festivals.
Just round the corner, Yakut gallery has taken up residence in a former gasholder. The complex here has one of the city’s coolest clubs, called Gasholder. Most famously, Dasha Zhukova, the girlfriend of billionaire and football club owner Roman Abramovich, has opened a gallery in the Bakhmetevsky bus garage near Savyolovskaya metro station. The garage was designed in 1926 by constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov and, despite being considered a masterpiece, was under threat of demolition. The contemporary art gallery opened last September with a spectacular party which involved hundreds of bright young things flying in from all over Europe, a performance by Amy Winehouse and an opening retrospective from non-conformist artists Emilia and Ilya Kabakov.
Project Fabrika has taken over part of a 19thcentury paper factory, near Baumanskaya metro, and holds theatrical shows and exhibitions and provides space for artists’ studios. Liquid Theatre, an inspiring theatre company which plays in odd spaces, like museum staircases or hotel lobbies, often perform here.
It may not sound like much that a few industrial buildings have been saved in a city that has seen hundreds of historical buildings demolished in the rampant capitalism of the last 17 years. But after so many buildings from the 17th century onwards have been destroyed, it’s heartening that people now see the wonderful buildings themselves as spaces to be exploited, and therefore save.
And with developers having little money to demolish and build because of the fi nancial crisis, Moscow, if it is lucky, might get even more inventive uses of its industrial buildings.
