Architect Mikhail Filippov is a famous domestic artist who works in a neoclassical style. He is a member of the Union of Architects and Artists of the Russian Federation. Its most important and most famous projects include multifunctional residential complexes, the Roman House, Marshall, and the Gorki Gorod media village. In this article we will talk about the main stages of his biography and the buildings of the master.
"Paper architecture"
The architect Mikhail Filippov was born in Leningrad in 1954. He followed in the footsteps of mother Tamara Filippova, who also designed houses. In 1979, he graduated from the Leningrad State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. I.E. Repin. In the next decade, he joined a group of Soviet architects who organized the paper architecture movement. This was the first example in the history of the Soviet Union, when the projects of domestic artists began to win at international exhibitions and receive prizes.
“Paper architecture” is used to call projects that were never realized in reality due to their incredible technical complexity, high cost and censorship considerations. At the same time, they reflect the rich imagination of the authors, becoming a platform for formal searches for an individual artistic style. This direction is also called the art of utopia.
This trend, which originated in France, began to develop in the USSR in the 80s, becoming an alternative to Soviet official architecture. All projects existed only in the heads of artists and on sheets of Whatman paper, becoming a real "paper architecture". Due to this, the authors, among whom was Mikhail Anatolyevich Filippov, were able to untie their hands, develop ideas, invent their own architectural world, which could never be realized in construction.
“Paper architecture” was actively developing amid the rise of free thinking in the USSR, when the communist regime was weakening more and more.
Participation in international exhibitions
Mikhail Anatolyevich Filippov himself, in parallel with the creation of speculative projects, developed as a graphic artist. His exhibitions were held in London, Helsinki, Paris, Cologne, Ljubljana, New York, Boston. In 1983, he became a member of the Union of Architects of Russia, and the next year joined the Union of Artists.
In 1994, a significant event took place in the creative career of architect Mikhail Filippov - he opens his own creative workshop. It works successfully today. Without exception, all the works that left the walls of this workshop were awarded at architecture or design competitions.
Leader of neoclassicism
Today, architect Mikhail Filippov is considered the recognized leader of the neoclassical trend in Russian architecture. Many people note that the majority of foreign connoisseurs of this art associate the national style of modern Russian architecture exclusively with the classical works of Filippov.
Among the features of his author's style, one can distinguish a fundamentally new look at the classical composition, which he manages to achieve, while preserving the traditional architectural forms and the very foundation. He is looking for new opportunities for creative self-realization among a rich arsenal of classical techniques, which always gives “modernity” to his buildings and projects.
Experts say that Filippov remains one of the few architects in Russia who still have preserved the phenomenon of an artist in their works, constantly looking for beauty in every project in the classical museum sense of the word.
Architect's work
Filippov repeatedly emphasized that graphic skill is an important and necessary quality of an architect, only with its help it is possible to create truly high-quality and unique architectural projects. The hero of our article is considered a recognized watercolorist and graphic artist. Exhibitions of the architect Mikhail Filippov with his architectural fantasies and landscape works took place in all major cities of Russia and Europe. In 2000, he represented our country at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. He has seven international awards, including the prestigious 2001 Style Award, which was presented to him in 1984 in Japan.
In recent years, his work has been connected with the construction and design of public buildings. It is noteworthy that most of the projects of Mikhail Anatolyevich Filippov, whose biography is presented in this article, are implemented on key undeveloped sites in the center of Moscow, St. Petersburg, the cities of Moscow Region, Sochi, Siberia, in particular, Khanty-Mansiysk and Omsk.
It is considered unique that the so-called economic and even social housing he manages to design in such a way that these quarters become real examples of the architecture of the future. In his own style, he has already built about 800 thousand square meters of housing, now his workshop is building and designing as many more buildings and structures.
2001 Style Award
Filippov received his very prestigious award in Japan in 1984. It was announced by two prestigious Japanese architectural magazines.
The project of the hero of our article was software, in fact, it was a plan for a radical revision of the architectural paradigm. In the explanatory note to the project, the author himself specified that he proposed abandoning industrial civilization, since this should become the basis for shaping the style of the future. In his works, modernist architecture was identified with industrial production. At the same time, he proposed a return to historical architecture; he adheres to this thesis throughout his career.
The project presented at the competition consisted of three series, each of which was dedicated to a specific plot. It was a city, a house and a club.
In the city of Filippov, he first proposed a quarter of faceless modernist houses with an industrial zone. Then, at the site of the industrial zone, a complex of church-monastery buildings appeared, and in the third composition, historical architecture completely replaced modernist architecture. As a result, an environment appeared that fully corresponded to the concept of the “historical city center”.
The series "House" was decided as a project of a residential complex, the key meaning of which was to return the concept of "quarter". The houses included in it limited this quarter around the perimeter, forming a courtyard, which was decided as a covered courtyard-atrium. The facades of the houses that looked onto the street were different versions of historical styles, creating the effect of a palimpsest. At the same time, the courtyard is connected into a single gallery in the spirit of the Italian palazzo.
The "Club" series was decided as a development of a closed quarter with strict observance of the perimeter principle. In the inner part of the courtyard was a kind of auditorium. Such a building was more like a monastery complex that arose in the Baroque era. Different parts of the club performed all kinds of functions, were performed in different historical styles, which created the impression of an accidental overlap of one historical era with another.
The work was impressed by the chairman of the jury of the Italian postmodernist competition Aldo Russia. Filippov received one of the first ten prizes.
Award "House of the 20th anniversary"
In 2005, Filippov’s workshop designed the multifunctional residential complex “Roman House” (2nd Cossack Lane, Moscow). For this work, the prestigious "House of the 20th Anniversary" prize was received.
The competition was attended by buildings built in Russia from 1991 to 2011. The finals were mainly metropolitan buildings, implemented in a modernist manner. Therefore, the victory of Filippov, who always worked in neoclassicism, was especially surprising. This is his first major project, which critics immediately appreciated as an exceptional phenomenon.
Critics even called this house the best in Moscow in the last hundred years, argued that this is an event of international importance, which proves that the classics can be reborn.
The architect himself noted that the main difficulty was to design a building that would grow from four to seven floors. It was possible to do this due to a stepped lift. And so that the oval yard facing south did not look like a hopeless well, it was opened with a slice. This was not the tough completeness that is so characteristic of Stalinist architecture.
House on Rybalko street
The next large-scale project of Filippov was the multi-functional residential complex "Marshall", which was implemented on Marshal Rybalko Street, 2. It was a social housing for military personnel.
This is a unique residential complex, which is a "city in the city." At the exhibition "Domexpo" he received an award as "The Best Business Class Project in Moscow".
In the old, beautiful and well-maintained area of the capital, Shchukino managed to build a complex with developed commercial and social infrastructure, supermarkets, small shops, kindergartens, schools, sports clubs and sections. There are a huge number of plans, so everyone can choose something for themselves: inexpensive apartments or a multi-level business-class apartment.
In place of the industrial zone
In 2012, on Fadeeva street 4, another project was implemented, called the Italian Quarter. This area of almost two and a half hectares was previously occupied by a factory for the production of tools and non-standard equipment. When he was transferred to the ring road, it was decided to give up the vacated territory for housing. It was decided to completely demolish the factory buildings and begin new construction. Although the concepts were considered with the renovation of existing industrial premises with their conversion into offices and lofts.
The selected Italian Quarter classic style is associated with the stability and respectability that Muscovites value so much. The concept for this project was the grandiose ruins of the Marcellus Theater. The result is a centric terrace composition with three courtyards. This is one of the main buildings of Mikhail Anatolyevich Filippov.
Four more radial buildings adjoin the 10-story building, curved by an arc, which consists of three buildings. At the same time, their height gradually decreases from 9 to 4 floors. Three courtyards overlook the square with a fountain, and the bell tower of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker becomes a vertical dominant.
Interestingly, the entrances to the residential and business areas are spaced. You can get into apartments only from the courtyards, and into offices from the outside of the building. The sections of the complex are decorated in a style that corresponds to the seven most beautiful buildings in Italy - these are Genoa, Rome, Milan, Florence, Verona, Turin and Naples. In addition, some parts of the residential complex become original quotes from different stylistic eras to give historical authenticity.
Olympic Village
On the eve of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Filippov implemented the Gorki-Gorod Olympic media village project. Then the author managed to create the color of the Mediterranean city with a hint of the Black Sea coast.
All buildings are as if reconstructed and modernized old buildings, which on the one hand look attractive in the old style of romantic architecture, and on the other - have a high level of comfort, these are modern apartments that have everything you need for a full life.
Using the cable car, guests rise to a height of 960 meters above sea level, finding themselves on the plateau of the Upper Town, which is also made in the style of ancient architecture of the Mediterranean coast.
The main task that the author strove to solve was to create a unique Russian city on the Black Sea coast, which at the same time combined domestic and Mediterranean colors.
Individual projects
In addition to large-scale projects, residential complexes and blocks of multi-storey buildings, Filippov also works with individual customers. An example is a country house in Kratovo, Moscow Region, in which the architect himself lives.
The village itself was built at the beginning of the 20th century for workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway. This was the first garden city project in Russia, which was never implemented due to the outbreak of the First World War.
Filippov managed to organically arrange his own space in this place. As soon as the wicket of a three-meter fence opens, there is a feeling that a person was in the city square.
It is noteworthy that in a sense, the house is not at all. Moreover, there is a round square with a column in the center, which at first seems much larger than its actual size. The circle itself is adjacent to the house itself, a barn, a bathhouse, a boiler room. Inside, the guest finds himself in the interiors of classic Italian villas. An architect masterfully plays with scales.
Filippov was able to fully realize his most ambitious ideas in this project, creating a composition on the theme of a historic city that is as isolated from the world around it as a result of free play with space and, again, scale.
In fact, the house is made in the form of a semicircular colonnade of Doric wooden columns that surround the entire plot along the perimeter. So the author manages to revive the forgotten ancient tradition of villas, which were so common in the Roman Mediterranean. The main decorative element is the view from the window to the garden and the surrounding nature.