“Images of houses from the past don’t fade in our soul because we keep inhabiting them over and over in our dreams <…> reviving our memories of home we add the value of a reverie; we are never historians — but always poets”

Gaston Bachelard. La poétique de l’espace (1957)

This research exists as a single copy on the pages of Moleskine notebook. Written in the first person, it is a travel diary about a trip to Kideksha village near Suzdal as well as a slightly poetic story about one of the village’s houses.

A large town in the past, Kideksha has lost its status after Mongol invasion — since then it has mostly been acting as a landscape of a movie, than being a prominent part of the chronicle. Apart from the film crews, Kideksha attracts archeologists and architectural historians — here is situated the Church of Boris and Gleb, one of the oldest limestone buildings in the district. Although the research is concentrated on the building near the church, the history of which is much more humble.

Hardly anything is known about the house. Small five-wall izba has been abandoned for 15 years, since its last owner’s death. The research reconstructs the biography of a house, thoroughly documenting its location on the ground, facades and remains of the interior. It is not a stiff metrics, though — it is a restoration of memory of the forgotten house that exists in the shadows of its famous neighbors.

The illustrative part of the research has embodied the archive of a building that it never had. Among its documents are the hand-drawn graphics of the house’s general panoramas, facades, swatches of building materials and textures, film photographs, herbarium of the plants found on the site, prints of maps and visualisations transfered with acetone. Use of analogue technics and the format of a travel diary become additional tools of research. We have made an attempt to get an experience of reliving the story of a house in tune with its personal time and make it more authentic by refusing the contemporary methods.

The research also includes the suggestions of the house’s return to the life of Kideksha. This river shelter can be used as a tourist station with souvenir shop as well as boats and bicycles rental. Due to its convenient location on the river Nerl it will become a meeting place for locals and tourists, new landmark of Kideksha and maybe take a leading role in a film.

Architecture: Olga Treivas, Vera Odyn, Pavel Makarchenkov, Polina Nenasheva
Status: Concept
Location: Kideksha, Vladimir oblast
Year: 2019 — 2020