From May 22 to 25, 2024, the capital’s Gostiny Dvor will host the XXIX International Exhibition and Forum of Architecture and design “ARCH MOSCOW – 2024”, which traditionally takes place under the patronage of the Government of Moscow and the Moscow Architecture.
12.7 thousand square meters of exhibition spaces, more than 300 participants (from government agencies, development companies and architectural bureaus to manufacturers and distributors of building materials and engineering solutions), traditional sections and fundamentally new special projects, eight discussion platforms, about 200 events — this year the attention of professionals and interested amateurs to the event is greater than ever. And not only because of its scale, the richest event and business program, or the special demands of the curators on the content of sections and expositions. First of all, the main theme of the current exhibition is of interest — “Benefit”, the third and last part of the Vitruvian triad “Strength, benefit, beauty”, which the organizers of the ARCH OF MOSCOW 2024 have been rethinking and making the thematic basis of the exposition all recent years.
“Two years ago, we already compared two key categories from Vitruvius — strength and benefit, noting that in modern reading they have become stability and functionality. Now it’s time to close the circle and look at the interaction of benefits and beauty. Having overcome the desire to write that form and function in architecture have always fought for supremacy, I note that in fact they complement and support each other,” says architect, journalist, founder of the mukosey bureau, one of the curators of the exhibition Ilya Mukosey.
Photo: Press service
Being a platform for a large, serious dialogue about the city and citizens, this year’s exhibition, on the one hand, has preserved the familiar, well—known directions – “Architecture”, “Development”, “Design”, “Education”, “Engineering Solutions”, “Architecture and Urban Planning Policy of Moscow”.
On the other hand, bright new features have appeared in the exhibition appearance: “Legends”, “Light in the City”, “Nature in the city”, “Urban textures”, “Art in the city” — sections that ARCH MOSCOW — 2024 will introduce to its guests for the first time, as it will entrust representatives of the younger generation for the first time architects will oversee part of the special projects, create an architectural and development island in the central part of the exposition and attract market headliners to its work.
However, the “oldies” sections are not at all set up to sit on the sidelines and are ready to argue with newcomers for the attention of visitors. For example, the stand of the Moscow Architecture “Campus — Field of Opportunities”, curated by the chief architect of Moscow Sergey Kuznetsov, this time resembles an open scientific space combined with urban life and tells about the three largest world-class university projects that Moscow is implementing today: These are the campuses of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Moscow State University of Civil Engineering and the innovative Scientific and Technological Center of Moscow State University “Vorobyovy Gory”.
And there will be four anniversary expositions, which, according to good tradition, are hosted by ARCH MOSCOW — 2024. Coincidentally, ATRIUM Architectural Workshop celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and Megabudka Bureau, WALL Bureau and Apex Bureau celebrate their tenth anniversaries. Anyone who is at least a little familiar with modern architecture knows that none of these names is simply impossible to ignore, not a single exhibition can be missed.
Developers at ARCH MOSCOW 2024 not only appear in the classic image of exhibitors, but also perform in an unusual exhibition role. An integral part of the developer’s work is the organization of public spaces, and so, at the suggestion of the GAFA architectural bureau, two development companies — GK “Airplane” and GK “Spectrum” — will equip two discussion platforms. As a result, a unique format, implemented for the first time in the history of the project, will appear, which will be another answer to the main question of the exhibition — about the possibility of combining form and function. And many other professional topics will be touched upon during the work of the discussion platform “Architectural and Development Club”. By the way, its partner and strategic partner of the ARCH OF MOSCOW — 2024 is the real estate forum “Movement”.
Several curatorial and special projects deserve special mention. In particular, the Context’24 project — eight mini-studies of the architecture of the BRICS member countries (except Russia) or the special project NEXT dedicated to young architects — a platform where young bureaus can express themselves, present their ideas and projects on a given topic (this year the participants were selected on a competitive basis — ten finalists will present their expositions and will compete for the title of the NEXT 2024 bureau, and in honor of the 15th anniversary of the NEXT project, a prize fund of 500 thousand rubles was established).
The opposite of NEXT and its logical continuation is the special project “Legends”, representing outstanding architects of our time: Yuri Avvakumov, Vladislav Kirpichev, Totan Kuzembaev and Ilya Utkin.
The project “Moscow: significantly XXI” sets as its main goal the identification of objects that have shaped the urban environment, significantly changing it for the better or for the worse. The special project “Nature in the City” tells about how the culture of the landscape has developed in Russia over the past 20 years. A special project of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture “The Beauty of the useful” proposes to sharpen the problem of the correlation between the functionality of the building and its artistic expressiveness and pay attention to the “beauty of the useful” — the aesthetics of utilitarian buildings. And the Art in the City project is a real dialogue between architecture and street art in the exhibition space: photographer Rustam Shagimordanov, within the framework of the Urban Textures project, will give the exhibition space maximum similarity to the urban one, and leading Moscow muralist artists (Alexey Luka, Misha Most and Alexey SE) will create works specifically for the ARCH of MOSCOW — 2024″.
Photo: Press service
Add to this the tracks of the business program (from “Children in the City” and “Youth in the City” to “Cities visiting ARCH MOSCOW” and “Urban Research”), the presentation of the ARCH MOSCOW Book Award, the tenth anniversary exhibition of the ArchIgraphy community — it’s even hard to imagine that all this you can do it in four days. Which really promise to be both useful and beautiful.
English 
Russian 
German 
Polish