Rem Koolhaas toghether art collector and philanthropist Dasha Zhukova appear on February cover WSJ Magazine as a couple of art, launching an ambitious campaign to connect Moscow to the international art world. The couple is embarks on a transformation an unmistakable landmark of the Communist past—a Soviet relic called Vremena Goda in Moscow’s Gorky Park. The name means “seasons of the year,” and it opened in 1968 as a model restaurant for the working masses. Trapped in Gorky Park’s spiral of decay, it shuttered in the early 1990s and is now a graffiti-covered ruin.
Rem Koolhaas talking about project and remembering the idea of "objet trouve" by Marcel Duchamp said.- “The building is basically a found object,” pointing with approval at the battered pillars and gaping holes. “We are embracing it as it is.”
“Rem likes to challenge the white-cube tradition of Western museums,” Zhukova adds. “The raw brick and broken tiles will be a more stimulating backdrop for art.”
As we wander the ruin, my two guides could hardly seem more different: Koolhaas, the 70-year-old Dutch design legend, towering and slim, lopes along in an austere gray coat, exuding the brooding, gnomic air of a Dostoevsky character; Zhukova, a 33-year-old Russian-born, California-raised philanthropist, has a dazzling white smile that brings to mind a young Audrey Hepburn. She’s casually glamorous in a vermilion cashmere top, sleek pants and sneakers, having kicked off her high heels with a relieved laugh after a press conference. But the unlikely pair share a vision.
By Tony Perrottet. WSJ Magaznie. 12012014. Issue February.
The intact structure will be encased in a double layer of polycarbonate plastic, a translucent box that hovers six feet above ground. Commissioned artworks will be presented on a backdrop of “raw brick and broken tiles.” Even the mosaic is being maintained in its damaged state by a conservator from Florence. In addition, one enormous wall of the new structure will slide open to reveal an atrium for large commissioned artworks. There will be a roof terrace, cafe, screening room, bookstore and outdoor sculpture—all the trappings familiar to museum-goers from Sydney to Shanghai, but lavish indulgences in Russia, where unimaginative, poorly lit institutions, with glowering babushkas guarding every room, remain the norm.
Full article about the Garage’s design, here.
