Yury Avakumov. Dipositarium: Russian utopia

Muscovite Yury Avakumov is one of the founders of outstanding and original trend of national art of 1980s - the so-called paper architecture. Paper architecture is a genre of easel architecture artwork, variety of conceptual art in architecture that is orientated to exhibitions, ideas' competitions and magazine publications. It is a product of non-conformist reflection that uses architectural styles' languages and images for creating multiciphered compositions. Yury Avakumov's project Russian Utopy: Dipositarium was exhibited before at the VI International architectural exhibition (Venice Biannual), Netherlands Architectural Institute (Rotterdam) and the F. V. Shusev State Architectural Museum (Moscow). It is an original architectural dipositarium that includes 480 non-realized projects for last 300 years of Russian history - that is small part of ideas for Russia architectural reconstruction. The Dipositarium was presented as a columbarium and cemetery of ideas. Its compositional and space solution is strict and laconic. These were 16 monumental cupboards with 3 sections with 10 sliding boxes each, every box-cell keeps document evidence of the past future. There could be also found sketches of towns of the future as well as legendary projects as 400 meters high Palace of Soviets by V. Gelfreich, B. Iofan, V. Shuko and S. Merkurov as well as Monument to C. Columbus in Santo Domingo by K. Mel'nikov and Narkomtyazhprom House by I. Leonidov., The Dipositarium has its double in the Internet. Projects of this part are available for any user and open for realization. Original archive materials with a view of safety are substituted by plotter copies. The exhibition was organized with the Ludwig Museum cooperation.