Intro to Bornhouse

Yuri Avvakumov, Moscow, 2006

The first maternity homes/hospitals in Russia and the world in general made their appearance in the middle of XVIII Century, and were initially for those women who wanted to give birth «in secret», «illegitimately» or «not wanting to keep the child». All other women, naturally enough, gave birth at home. «Secrecy» has been maintained behind the closed doors of the maternity homes even up to the present day, for outwardly they were not in the least different from other houses in which people lived or convalesced. In the female body nature created the perfect form for conception and carrying of a new life. For long years babies were born in natural surroundings until people began building places to live in. Long ago the architect creating places of worship, burial vaults, museums and villas, have not thought of anything more adequate than a nature for giving birth to a new life, apart from the medical conveyor. How newborn babies perceive (hear, see, or smell) the space, where they first see the light of day is an open question. Whether the new architectural form should be anthropomorphic of the newborn is another question. We must not forget that besides normal boys and girls, children with autism or serious handicap and conjoined twins may be born also.

«BornHouse» considers the maternity home as a metaphor for «a form that gives birth to a new form». But the participating architects were not asked to design an actual maternity home; rather, they could submit any artistic object as long as it fits the exhibition path and title. The only requirement was that the works dimensions approximate the height and weight of newborn babies.

History of Exhibition

Yuri Avvakumov, Moscow - Venice, 2008

The first exhibition of «BornHouse» took place at the former department of sculpture at the Moscow Architecture Institute, once the legendary Vkhutemas. Before that it housed the Stroganov Imperial Institute of Industrial Art, and even earlier the building – a late eighteenth-century design of the great Russian architect Matvei Kazakov – was the Medical and Surgical Academy, which trained more than two thousand doctors and pharmacists in a little less than a century...

History of Exhibition.pdf (193 Kb)

Architecture Born of Disillusionment and Hope

Ivan Chechot

As the proverb says, «Hope for God’s help and rely on yourself…» For all their vitality, art and ar chitecture are not quite satisfied with themselves. They are jaded by their own potency, their play, their sophistication. Individual artists prove this by directing their attention to old concepts, ones long ago exposed as naпve or malignant. One such concept is that of birth as a metaphor for artistic creation. The word creation was also long ago discarded for its inadequacy, but the old place of the creative organ still bothers. Acute disillusionment, inner conflict, and self-dissatisfaction can generate nothing but these feelings themselves, or a fruitless new radicalism. In order to apprehend the creative act as a kind of birth, one must believe in it, one must believe that no phase of history is final, one must believe in history...

Architecture Born of Disillusionment and Hope.pdf (744 Kb)