Stop 4: Garage
Welcome to Gorky Park and the Garage!
Gorky Park was the first park built in Russia that was not intended for royalty. It was created in 1923 by Stalin. We are standing in front of Rem Koolhaas’ Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum was originally not supposed to be built here. It was originally situated in the nearby 1920s industrial garage entitled the Bakhmetievsky Bus Garage, although the project was ultimately moved in 2008 to this site, a Soviet restaurant entitled Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) (Witcher). The museum itself was only opened last year!
The restaurant building had been left abandoned for 20 years prior to its repurposing into the museum. In the building, many of the original Soviet mosaics, decorative tiles, and brickwork have been preserved. The outside of the building, however, has been covered in a shimmering polycarbonate skin. The building is largely unrecognizable from the outside, despite the maintenance of its original interior features. The inside of the building features 5 exhibition galleries, an auditorium, an educational area, as well as a bookshop and a café. There is a red metal staircase that provides access to the roof terrace.
What is perhaps most fascinating is the attitude of the architect, Rem Koolhaas:
Rem Koolhaas, for his part, stressed the life-changing effect that a formative visit to Moscow in the late 60s—when he was still working as a journalist—had on him: “I saw the work of Soviet and modern Russian architects and realized that architecture could be … an art that shapes possibilities and the nature of life. Once I realized that, I decided to become an architect.”
(Perlson)
Koolhaas took much of his inspiration to return to Moscow and design this project as a tribute to the history of the city and nation. However, when we look at these elements, most of them embrace the modern – which is quite fitting for a contemporary museum. Perhaps most extremely of all, the building’s original façade is literally shrouded in a contemporary material. What does this suggest to us about Koolhaas’ approach towards the past? It feels in many ways as if something is being covered up and ignored. Apart from the token elements that have been maintained within the building – such as the mosaics – how does the building’s history come through? If a visitor were to see these mosaics without knowing their Soviet history, would they even come across as Soviet?
Arguably, the only element of the gallery that pays homage to its past is the choice of red in the staircase. The staircase provides access to the roof terrace, suggesting some notion of upwards motion. Most likely Koolhaas uses the red to index the Soviet history of the space, though the fact that he chooses to use it to lead to “liberation” (i.e. the roof terrace with open air, beyond the constraints of the building) perhaps points to an implicit message of transcending the barriers of the Soviet era.