Historical buildings to become museums

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Udarnik cinema, opened in 1931, will be transformed into a private art museum.

Darya (Dasha) Zhukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture will reopen this summer in Moscow’s historic Gorky Park, according to a report in Artnews.

The popular arts complex, established in 2008 by the partner of Russian billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich, was originally housed in a former bus depot designed by the famous Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov in 1926. The center will occupy a temporary structure designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, while its permanent home, the pavilion of the former Seasons of the Year restaurant, is being restored.

“The pavilion will be built by the end of the summer, and in the beginning of the autumn we will start the exhibition program,” Zhukova said at a presentation in Moscow, Artnews reported.

The center has already held several events in Gorky Park, including a performance last year by the Italian sculptor Fabio Viale, who launched a marble boat on one of its ponds. A new series of outdoor events began in June, when the Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner brought his Bodies in Urban Spaces performance to Moscow, with people squeezing themselves into unlikely nooks and crannies.
The 1960s-era Seasons pavilion has been derelict since the 90s and is still just a concrete shell without a facade. It will be rebuilt according to a design by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which is involved in a number of projects in Moscow. The two-story building, with 60,000 square feet of space, will have an open-plan ground floor and a “more traditional” gallery area upstairs. Transparent polycarbonate walls will allow views of the park all around. “The design incorporates Soviet-era design elements such as tiles, mosaic and brick,” according to a gallery statement. A large existing mosaic on the ground floor will also be incorporated into the design, and the theme will be echoed in a café furnished in a 1960s style.