Russian wooden architecture. Wooden masterpieces of Russia Which architectural structure is a masterpiece of wooden architecture

MONUMENTS OF WOODEN ARCHITECTURE.

Turning to the history of primordially Russian wooden housing construction, one can be convinced that the most extensive and unique reserve of folk art is the Russian North. It is in the Arkhangelsk province that you can find more wooden buildings than anywhere else in Russia. They were located on a fairly large area, so it was physically impossible to inspect all of them. That is why it was decided to transfer some of these monuments of wooden architecture to the famous architectural museum of Russia in the village of Malye Korely, which is located near Arkhangelsk.

In this museum, a successful attempt was made to recreate the residential complexes of different districts - Mezensky, Kargopol-Onega, Severo-Dvinsky and Pinezhsky. It should be said that all the buildings in the museum are grouped according to the "geographical" feature. This helped create an excellent model of the Russian North in a small area.

Not far from the village of Kizhi, there is another architectural ensemble of incredible beauty. If we talk about the Kizhi historical and cultural natural complex in terms of the concentration of architectural heritage objects, then this complex can be called unique and unparalleled throughout the European North of Russia. This is the oldest open-air museum in the Russian Federation, which attracts the attention of many domestic and foreign tourists. Along with architectural monuments that have been preserved unchanged since the time of construction or were moved from other regions and recreated already in the open spaces of the reserve, the Kizhi Museum illustrates the main aspects of the traditional culture for the indigenous population of Karelia (Vepsians, Karelians, Russians).

Also enough excellent material, which makes it possible to study the main directions of wooden housing construction of the Middle Ages, is also represented by the city of Kostroma. This settlement was founded in the Middle Volga region, which is famous for its rich forests. This was the main factor that determined the nature of urban development. It should be noted that until the 17th century, stone architecture was a very rare occurrence in Kostroma. Even the houses of the richest merchants and representatives of the nobility, as well as the dwelling place of the mother of Tsar Michael, were built exclusively from wood. Kostroma architectural monuments, which are preserved in the Museum of Wooden Architecture and in the region, provide an excellent opportunity to restore the image of ancient wooden temples.

An ancient Russian city like Suzdal can also boast of unprecedented architectural richness. Architectural monuments are evenly and picturesquely located throughout the territory of Suzdal, forming an integral and incredibly beautiful architectural ensemble. The style chosen by the architects of antiquity gives a special charm to this ancient city, whose history dates back thousands of years.

Some photographs of monuments of wooden architecture, which combined the uniqueness and beauty of Russian architectural ensembles of wooden housing construction in Kizhi, Small Korel, Kostroma and Suzdal.

In this collection, photographs were used from the album "Russian Wooden Architecture", published by the Producer Center "M + K" in 2002. Editor Rumyantsev V. N. Master photographers: Fetisov R. O., Fetisov O. V. and Belkin A.

In the northern countries, where forests occupy a large part of the territory, they have become an important part of the life of local peoples. The forest was a source of food - they hunted wild animals, gathered berries, mushrooms and herbs. Wood has become the main building material, and constantly improving technologies have led to the emergence of real architectural masterpieces.

Benefits of using wood

The tree has many advantages appreciated by builders. First of all, it is excellent thermal insulation. In houses made of this material, heat is retained even in severe frosts, provided that the room is heated. Another important quality of wood is its ease of processing. With the help of metal tools, it can be given any shape and highly artistic sculptures, carved elements can be created.

Our ancestors could build truly grandiose wooden structures without a single nail. Unfortunately, the tree has an important drawback - it is easily amenable to fire, so we will never see many amazingly beautiful buildings built by ancient masters. Individual examples of such architecture can be seen in open-air museums.

As examples, we can cite the wooden buildings of the Scandinavian countries, where harsh Vikings once ruled, or architectural monuments in Russia. But not only the northern countries can boast of unique wooden buildings. In the southern countries, rich in forests, there are also amazing houses. For example, in Thailand, in the resort of Pattaya, one of the local attractions is the cult building Sanctuary of Truth, built without a single nail from precious wood.

Even a religion such as Islam, where stone was traditionally used in architecture, was not spared the influence of local traditions. So, in Russia, on the territory of the Volga Bulgaria, a specific style appeared - wooden mosques. Experts note their appearance in the 10th century and, obviously, it was based on earlier methods of building buildings from wood.

Old Russian wooden masterpieces

Separately, it is worth talking about the masterpieces of ancient Russian architecture. They can be conditionally divided into places of worship and residential buildings. And although most of the surviving architectural monuments are wooden temples, enough ancient residential buildings remain in the north of the country.

For different types there is a certain classification. There are types of buildings: cage, tent, multi-roof, tiered, multi-domed, frame and others. Most of the surviving buildings made in this style date back to the 15th-17th centuries.

One of the most famous monuments of ancient Russian wooden architecture is Kizhi. Here are the grandiose churches - the Transfiguration of the Lord (22 domes, height - 37 meters) and Pokrovskaya, which harmoniously complements the first. Together with the hipped bell tower, they form a single complex that will not leave indifferent connoisseurs of architecture. On the territory of the open-air museum there are also samples of Karelian architecture brought there from other places.

Another museum of wooden architecture is located in the village of Malye Korely, in the Arkhangelsk region. Many buildings from different places were also brought here so that tourists could see a variety of styles that have found distribution in the Russian North. The museum is divided into zones and repeats a miniature map of the region.

If we move further south, to the Volga region, here we can find a huge number of preserved wooden masterpieces. First of all, this is Kostroma, where stone houses began to appear only from the 17th century. Another museum center is the ancient city of Suzdal.

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Wooden churches of Russia,
Warped ancient walls.
Come and ask a lot, -
These log cabins have a heart and veins.

A.Shaganov

Kizhi churchyard

The preservation of cultural heritage is one of the important tasks of mankind. On the territory of Russia, exposed in the XX century. grandiose upheavals, this task was and is especially acute - not only the enemies, but also the ignorance and thoughtlessness of those in power put the existence of the monuments themselves under the threat of loss.

Church of the Nativity of the Virgin of 1539 from the village of Peredki, Borovichi District

In the forest zone of the European territory of Russia, there are many abandoned temples, chapels, bell towers, and beyond the Urals, in Siberia, unique objects of wooden architecture have been preserved. For a long time, the difficulties of the path closed access to them, allowing them to slowly grow old and decrepit.

Tiered church of St. Nicholas in 1757 from the village of Vysoky Ostrov, Okulovsky district

But not only time destroyed the monuments of wooden architecture, but also lightning strikes set fire to the bell towers proudly rising above the surrounding landscape, huge huts with vzvozami. They were also defenseless from vagrants who found temporary shelter under their roofs, and later from tourists who forgot to put out a fire or a half-smoked cigarette.

Church of the Assumption of 1595 from the village of Kuritsko, Novgorod region

Monuments of wooden architecture are a very fragile part of the historical and cultural heritage. Only a complete list of losses - a kind of martyrology, includes hundreds of monuments. All these religious buildings were created in the XVII-XVIII centuries. and they can probably be attributed to a kind of "Russian baroque", as it seems to me. It took less than a century and a half for this type of building to flourish. Then stone architecture supplanted wood as a building material in the construction of temples.

Chapel of the Holy Trinity from the village of Valtevo, Pinezhsky district (Arkhangelsk region, Novodvinsk, the village of Malye Karely

Another part of the monuments was transported under museum protection, to open-air museums, the most famous of which are Kizhi and Malye Korely. Dozens of museums of wooden architecture appeared on the territory of the Russian Federation. Objects of wooden architecture were carefully studied on the ground, dismantled piece by piece with marks of their original location, replaced in cases of need with similar material and reassembled on the territories of museums occupying areas of tens and even hundreds of hectares.

Of course, at the same time, they lost touch with the landscape that once surrounded them, the man-made decoration of which they were. But on the other hand, they were saved from the effects of the elements and no less dangerous acts of people who do not know what they are doing. Let us dwell on the original location of the objects of wooden architecture, bearing in mind that of all types of artistic creativity, architecture is the most material element of the cultural landscape most closely associated with a given everyday environment.

Wooden house "Vologda type" in 1895 after restoration

Architecture is in the strongest dependence on local conditions, for example, climate, topography, vegetation, available building materials, habits and needs of the population. The peasant, adapting the arrangement of his village hut to local conditions, of course, did not think at all that he was creating a special national type of building. Meanwhile, and not without reason, many researchers consider such huts to be the prototype of Russian national architecture.

Churches of the North

The development of the territories of the north-west, north and Siberia by the Slavs took more than a thousand years. There were many obstacles: the wilds of the forest taiga zone, the swampiness of grandiose spaces. It was possible to settle along the banks of rivers, near numerous lakes.

"Russian Pavilion" at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878

The emergence of ancient Novgorod and the colonization policy of its rulers led to the development and almost bloodless annexation of the north and northeast of the Russian Plain up to the Urals. Finno-Ugric tribes easily entered the younger Slavic ethnos. The advance of the Slavs beyond the Urals was stopped for more than three centuries by the Mongol invasion. But even later, in the 16th-17th centuries, the development of the Siberian expanses proceeded along the rivers. But not villages and towns stood in the way of explorers, but fortresses, in which the houses of service people, governors and merchants crowded.

Church of the Transfiguration. Kizhi

The evolution of wooden buildings can be perfectly traced in large open-air museums of wooden architecture, primarily in Kizhi and Malyye Korel, where dozens of various structures are presented.

Church of the Intercession of the Virgin
Ancient Russia, although it had many cities, but its foundation was a village. It was in it that the construction and architectural features of wooden architecture were formed, ranging from architectural and planning solutions to the choice of standards - modules for the construction of various types of buildings.

In Small Korela

Church of St. George in Malye Koreli

Windmill-pillar from the village of Kalgachikha, Onega district (Arkhangelsk region, Novodvinsk, village of Malye Karely)
Villages gravitated towards river valleys and in the north of European Russia were spatially, architecturally, connected with each other and with the surrounding landscape. In the organization of housing and household services, a system was created to protect humans and domestic animals from adverse natural conditions - moisture and cold.

Fedotov's house from the village of Lebskoye, Leshukonsky district (Arkhangelsk region, Novodvinsk, the village of Malye Karely)

Windmill "on a frame" from the village of Medlesh, Shenkur district (Arkhangelsk region, Novodvinsk, the village of Malye Karely, transported from the village of Medlesh, Shenkur district)
Let us dwell on the principles of construction of residential and commercial buildings. The first is the compactness of structures, in order to lose as little heat as possible in harsh climatic conditions. The principle of living nature is used here - the minimum ratio of body surface to volume, since heat is lost through the surface. Generations of master carpenters have searched for and found ways to correlate them, bringing man-made structures closer to the natural optimum.

Two-story house on a non-residential basement. On the outside, there is a basement wall without windows. Second half of the 19th century. Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of Transbaikalia.

Wooden house in Russian style, House in Russian traditions, Tetyushinov's House - an architectural monument
The second - the house was placed on a high basement, which separated the residential part from the surface of the earth with an air cushion, a kind of heat insulator, and at the same time the air isolated the housing from moisture coming from the ground. The logs were separated by birch bark and moss spacers. Moisture almost did not enter the log house, which was facilitated by various methods of processing logs. Carpentry was carried out only with an ax (water will not go into a chopped log), wood vessels and pores were clogged with ax blows. The saw did not give the desired effect, the sawn log drew in water, like a dry mushroom. Often the log house was placed on boulders. In the north, they were more than enough - the memory of the glaciers that covered the northwest and north of Russia in the past.

Thirdly, the roof visor extended up to one and a half meters above the walls, it served as protection from atmospheric precipitation.
Fourthly, all outbuildings were assembled under one roof. With the help of a variety of transitions, it was easy to get from the hut to the barn, to the barn, to the utility rooms. A special, very valuable type of residential complex arose - the "house-yard", represented in the Russian north by numerous varieties.

The hut of Ekimova Maria Dmitrievna from the village of Ryshevo, Novgorod region
But what village and what kind of economy did without a threshing floor, barns, barns, sheds, baths, glaciers and many other buildings? There were also public engineering buildings - bridges, windmills and watermills. Perhaps the most diverse were windmills, their types and sizes vary considerably.

Early 20th century windmill from the village of Ladoshchina in the Solets district
They were always placed on the most elevated, ventilated place - the top of a hill, on a high river cape - a steep hill, where the wind had room to roam. I.E. Grabar notes the differences between windmills along the Onega and Podvinya rivers: the first ones are shorter and squat, the second ones are taller and slimmer, which is associated with the peculiarities of the wind regime. But both of them were placed on the dominant heights near the villages and, waving their wings-blades, attracted travelers from afar.

Chapel
The house, or, more broadly speaking, the dwelling, worked as a filter in relation to the environment: it warmed in the winter, kept cool on the hot days of summer, and did not allow dampness or stuffiness. The design of the house created the main transition from the inner space to the outer space through a series of gateways, for example, a vestibule. The house was like a part of the surrounding nature. The size of the trees determined the size of the house, its length and height. The basis was a cage, in terms of having the shape of a rectangle, sometimes a square. Depending on the state of the owner, his income, the houses could be five- and six-walled, spacious, with mezzanines, balconies, intricate porches, which testified to the wealth of the owner.

Decor of a wooden house in Vologda
From extremely distant times, both carpentry techniques themselves and the terminology that has survived in the north to this day have been developed. The words "foot", "log house", "cage" speak of the form and method of building wooden structures. The ancient term "mansions" meant a group of rich residential premises connected into one whole. From here came the word “temple”, in which (be it stone or wooden) “the definition of a rich dwelling is hidden” (I.E. Grabar).

Mezzanine of a wooden house in Vologda

Tomsk

The villages were not just a collection of houses, they lined up along the banks of rivers and lakes, as if admiring their beauty in the mirror of the waters. In the north, the significant width of the streets was determined by the height of the sun, since the shading carried an additional impulse of cold. The choice of the location of the settlement was influenced by the following factors: ease of communication (rivers, lakes), features of the river valley (narrowing, widening, sharp bends), and other characteristics of the relief. In addition, we took into account the exposure of the slope, the direction of the prevailing winds, the level of rise of river waters in spring, during floods. They were protected from heavy ice drifts by ribbed walls.Each building, from a simple poor hut, to a choir and temples, is decorated and decorated with carvings. Blind and later sawn carving encircles the house.

The facade of the house is brow, decorated with carved wooden "towels", the windows are framed with patterned platbands. In the houses of rich peasants - intricate, in the poor - simpler, but everywhere the eye is attracted by carved lace. The origins of Russian folk carving, according to experts, are rooted in Scandinavian mythology and paganism. The solar circle is a solar sign - an obvious pagan symbol. The completion of the roof of the house - a stump in the form of a carved horse - obviously comes from pre-Christian customs. The horse protected the house and owners from evil spirits, diseases, crop failures.

Shallow deaf carving has become widespread. Obviously, in a humid and cold climate, bas-relief, and even more so high-relief carving, is destroyed faster. On wooden posts, props and balusters, either shallow "intercepts" and "belts" were cut, then round logs, from which "melons", "fungi", "poppy seeds" and similar charms appeared. Russian carving was done “by eye”, “by feeling”, hence its freedom. The eye of the master, verified by nature, softens the geometric ornament and enlivens the rhythm of the pattern

One can admire the creations of architects and carpenters for a long time, who created magnificent examples of wooden architecture of villages and villages, but one should also remember the defensive architecture, also characteristic of medieval Russia. The fortresses-fortresses of European Russia have practically not been preserved. Rarely, their ruins can be seen in old photographs of the 19th century. or on the plans of ancient cities. Such, for example, is the plan of the city of Olonets in Karelia. Most of the remains of defense architecture are in Siberia.

The wooden Afanasievskaya church of the early 19th century stands in the cemetery, south of the village of Posad, right next to the road

Yakut prison
At present, there are five surviving towers: two of the Bratsk and one each of the Ilim, Belsky and Yakutsk prisons. However, as early as the beginning of the 20th century. From the sixteen-tower Yakut fortress, five towers and two strands of a wooden wall have been preserved. Tower of the Yakut prison in the 90s. of the past century burned down, but now it has been restored. A number of towers were created according to measurements and drawings, one of them is located in the village of Torgovishche, Perm Region. Similar towers exist in museums of wooden architecture, for example, in Talitsy, near Irkutsk.

Church of St. Nicholas from the village of Myakishevo

In total, there are several dozen museums of wooden architecture in our country. One of the first open-air museums arose on the island of Kizhi in Lake Onega, around the Kizhi churchyard, which includes two temples of fabulous beauty and a bell tower that links them into an architectural, unique ensemble.In the 60s and 70s architects-restorers took care of collecting and preserving the whole variety of wooden architecture. XX century. Separate monuments of civil and religious architecture, as a reflection of people's life, were taken, disassembled piece by piece, to especially remarkable landscapes - riverside, lakeside, where they were carefully collected and restored along the way.

Kolomenskoye
After that, they became part of the museums of wooden architecture, occupying an area from several to tens of hectares. Some of the monuments were hidden behind the walls of monasteries, such as Spaso-Prilutsky or Kirillovo-Belozersky in the Vologda region, some were brought to Moscow, where in Kolomenskoye, walking and resting citizens could admire the skills of Russian city planners and carpenters.

Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery
In the European North, rural settlements were preserved, where the entire set of residential, utility and religious buildings amazed at first the “wild”, and later organized tourists, with the ability to create amazingly beautiful and comfortable structures with the help of an ax. Kargopolye and Pinezhye, Podvinye and some other regions delighted the eye with expressive silhouettes of temples, bell towers and richly carved peasant yards.

Kargopolye.Sauninskaya Church

Church of the Epiphany. Kargopolye

Pinezhye
The loss of many aspects of northern life, architectural monuments, required the creation of an open-air scientific ethnographic museum, where masterpieces of Russian wooden architecture would be preserved. The choice of location was made very well - not far from the city of Arkhangelsk, in a picturesque landscape near the village of Malye Korely.

The center of any estate in the North was a house. The variety of huts raised on high basements above the ground is amazing. Here are “chicken” and “white” Kargopol, Osheven huts - four-walled, heated “black”, from the village of Gar, with a one and a half meter visor that protects the facade of the house from precipitation, as well as other types of huts, including a two-story, summer a hut with an unheated upper room. The author managed to visit Kargopol in the late 70s. and see in the villages of Niz, Gar, Pogost surprisingly harmoniously built into the landscape houses, grain barns, wells, as well as bathhouses running down to the river.

Let's turn to another museum of wooden architecture "Vitoslavlitsy", which is located in the vicinity of Veliky Novgorod, not far from the St. George's Monastery, on the banks of the Volkhov River.

The place for the open-air museum was chosen by the connoisseur of wooden architecture A.V. Opolovnikov, and its main organizer was the Novgorod restorer L.E. Krasnorechev. The chosen place turned out to be successful: wooden buildings fit into the historical landscape of the southern suburbs of Novgorod, enriching it with beautiful silhouettes of the churches brought here.
The compositional core of the museum is three closely placed temples, which, as it were, recreate the ancient churchyard - the public and administrative center of the rural district. Temples represent different types of cult wooden buildings from the point of view of volume-spatial construction. The simplest is the Kletskaya Church of the Assumption of the Theotokos built in 1599. A small frame for the altar adjoins the raised frame, covered with two slopes, from the east, and from the west - for the porch. The bypass open gallery and the porch enliven the rather austere composition of the temple. Similar temples were widespread in the northwest. The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin (XVI century) is festively beautiful and built according to the composition. An octagon topped with a large tent rests on a groin (in plan) frame. Small domes of prirubs emphasize the majesty of the central tent. On three sides, the main volume is surrounded by a gallery-ambulance, arranged on brackets, which gives the temple elegance. Porch for two shoots - an invitation to enter the temple. The Nikolskaya Church from the village of Vysokiy Ostrov belongs to the type of tiered buildings of the 17th-18th centuries, which arose after Nikon's ban on the construction of churches with a hipped roof; he saw a pagan beginning in them. The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is four-tiered: three octagons decreasing towards the top are placed on a four-sided base. The tiered composition of the church is echoed by a tall bell tower with a hipped roof.

Kostroma. Museum of Wooden Architecture. Church of the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God from the village. Hill. Year built: 1552.

The main territory of the museum is located behind the southern wall of the Ipatiev Monastery, on the Strelka, at the confluence of the Kostroma River into the Volga. Now this site is the main exposition area of the Architectural, Ethnographic and Landscape Museum-Reserve "Kostroma Sloboda". Under the walls of the famous Ipatiev Monastery, which is located at the confluence of the Kostroma River with the Volga River, a museum of wooden architecture has emerged, which receives a significant flow of tourists from Russia and abroad. It began with the Church of the Transfiguration hidden behind the walls of the monastery from the village of Spas-Vezhi (1628). She stood on stilts, and next to her were huts-bathhouses, raised high on “chicken legs”. He sang the village of Spas-Vezhi, from where the wonderful works of Kostroma carpenters were delivered to the museum, N.A. Nekrasov in the poem "Grandfather Mazai and Hares":

Irkutsk Architectural and Ethnographic Museum "Taltsy"

Architectural and ethnographic museum "Khokhlovka". Church of the Transfiguration (1707) and watchtower (XVII century).
But it's time to move on. And we will visit a very peculiar museum of wooden architecture "Khokhlovka" near the city of Perm. The place chosen for it is characteristically elevated, open to the Kama reservoir: a bald slope “sunny” and an opposite slope shaded by fir trees, typical for the landscapes of the Kama region. At the entrance to the museum there are peasant houses brought from different regions of the Cis-Urals. Climbing to the top of the hill, where the bell tower and the temple are located ..., you are amazed at the expanse that opens from the top. Going down the hill along the path, you come to the hunting lodges and storehouses. Here are various types of hunting and fishing facilities - from a shed-canopy to huts with stoves, where you can relax, get an overnight stay, and check supplies. The prey was placed in the storehouses, placed on piles, with notches so that the rodents could not get to the harvested meat. Below the slope is a fire station with an observation tower, a shed, pumps, carts, hooks and other necessary devices.

Architectural and ethnographic museum "Khokhlovka". Watchtower from Trading house of the Suksunsky district. Copy of the beginning of the XX century. 17th century buildings Restoration 1972, 2005 Author of the restoration project GD Kantorovich Photo by NS Knyazeva, Sept. 2008

In Eastern Siberia, the Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture, located in the Irkutsk region, on the Irkutsk-Listvyanka highway, stands out for its representativeness. On the banks of the Angara, or rather the Irkutsk reservoir, since the river here is flooded by the constructed hydroelectric power station, there is a museum-reserve. Perhaps its main attraction is the towers and spinning walls of the wooden Ust-Ilimsk prison. The formidable silhouette of the towers, the tyn-wall made of pointed logs, narrow loopholes of different levels of combat take visitors back to the 17th-18th centuries - the time of the development of the territory of the Baikal region. Along the prison, below its walls, there is a street running down to the Angara. It is interrupted by a square, on which, in addition to administrative and retail outlets, a wooden building of a tavern rises. Religious architecture is not as widely represented as in the museums of European Russia. Apparently, they lived according to the principle - "Trust in God, but don't make a mistake yourself."

Suzdal
If we recognize that Russian wooden architecture is a holistic cultural and historical phenomenon that embodies the tastes and views of the Russian people, then we should distinguish it and not confuse with it works that are only similar in some respects, but essentially related to others. cultural traditions and styles. For example, many mansions and palaces of the 18th and 19th centuries were built of wood, but it serves only as a building material in them, but not as a material of art. The log walls of such buildings are usually sheathed or plastered and painted, and in terms of their forms and figurative sound, these stylistic works of architecture have nothing in common with folk architecture. The works of Russian modernism should not be confused with him. And, of course, modern ridiculous and eclectic wooden buildings, completely devoid of architectural and artistic image, cannot be attributed to Russian wooden architecture. Although in our time there is a lot of talk about the revival of traditions, but in reality this is very rare.
ruskline.ru

Starting a conversation about Russian wooden architecture, it is necessary, first of all, to decide on the concept of this subject. For in our time, there are many architectural styles and production technologies associated with the construction of wood. It is clear that not every wooden building in Russia can be attributed to the works of Russian wooden architecture.

If we recognize that Russian wooden architecture is a holistic cultural and historical phenomenon that embodies the tastes and views of the Russian people, then we should distinguish it and not confuse with it works that are only similar in some respects, but essentially related to others. cultural traditions and styles. For example, many mansions and palaces of the 18th and 19th centuries were built of wood, but it serves only as a building material in them, but not as a material of art. The log walls of such buildings are usually sheathed or plastered and painted, and in terms of their forms and figurative sound, these stylistic works of architecture have nothing in common with folk architecture. The works of Russian modernism should not be confused with him. And, of course, many modern wooden buildings, ridiculous and eclectic or completely devoid of architectural and artistic image, cannot be attributed to Russian wooden architecture. Although in our time there is a lot of talk about the revival of traditions, but in reality this is very rare.

What is Russian wooden architecture? What are its main features?

A distinctive feature of Russian folk wooden architecture is, first of all, the attitude to wood not only as a building material, but also as a material of art. All the natural constructive and aesthetic qualities of wood are not hidden here, but on the contrary, they are revealed and emphasized. At the same time, as a rule, structural elements and techniques are at the same time decorative. So, felling of a log house is done to increase the overhangs of the roof and protect the walls from precipitation, while emphasizing the beauty and expressiveness of the completion of the log walls; console releases of logs, bearing porches, walkways and balconies, are decorated with expressive undercuts; powerful pillars are carved; massive window and door jambs are not covered with platbands, but are themselves decoration of openings; reliable plank roofs with helmets, streams and chickens fascinate with the unity of the original constructive solution with the beauty and expressiveness of forms. Everything that is constructive and functional is made architectural and artistic at the same time.

The variety of forms is made up of different combinations of the same, repeatedly repeated in different buildings, developed and honed over the centuries, traditional architectural and constructive techniques. The uniqueness of the whole with the repetition of details is one of the principles of traditional architecture. Many buildings are very similar, but no two are exactly the same.

An important property of traditional wooden buildings is their collapsibility and the possibility of transportation.

In the old days in Russia, everything was built from wood - temples and chapels, fortresses and palaces, houses and outbuildings, cities and villages, and all of the above determined the appearance of not only individual buildings, but also entire settlements. The picturesque silhouettes of the buildings, surprisingly in harmony with each other and the surrounding landscape, formed into wonderful architectural ensembles.

Russian wooden architecture is a folk art that has reached heights that amaze the imagination, truly fabulous, which has revealed many masterpieces of world architecture. Built in the 17th century, the palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in Kolomenskoye was called by contemporaries the eighth wonder of the world, and the amazing architectural ensemble of the Kizhi churchyard annually attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world.

Summing up what has been said, we can try to formulate the signs and characteristics of Russian wooden architecture. This is an original Russian folk architecture, which is characterized by following the tradition, the unity of the material, the attitude to the building material - wood - as the material of art, the integrity and expressiveness of forms, the fusion of utility and beauty, constructiveness and aesthetics, harmony with nature, reliability and durability, and also the possibility of dismantling and transportation of buildings.

The fate of Russian wooden architecture, like all Russian traditional culture, is complex and tragic. In ancient Russia, wooden architecture was ubiquitous, since wood was the main building material, and most men mastered carpentry to one degree or another. But wooden buildings often suffered from fires, so the most important buildings are cathedrals, and over time, fortresses were also built of stone. Gradually, the construction of stone, brick buildings became more and more accessible, and there were less and less good scaffolding. Wooden architecture gradually moved to the northern lands, which are hard to reach and rich in timber. At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, Peter's reforms began in Russia, radically changing the whole way of life, customs and tastes of the upper stratum of Russian society. Russian customs were forgotten for a long time, Western European culture was planted in every possible way. In Russian wooden architecture, this was reflected in the most unfavorable way. It completely disappeared from the life of the Russian nobility, and in the peasant environment of central Russia, although it continued to live, it no longer developed, and over time it became simpler, smaller and degraded. However, in the Russian north, rich in forests, populated mainly by free peasants and artisans, wooden architecture continued to develop in the 18th century. Most of the masterpieces of wooden architecture in the Russian north were built in the 17th and 18th centuries. This is the world-famous ensemble of the Kizhi churchyard, and the Assumption Cathedral in Kem, and the Church of the Assumption in Kondopoga, and the majestic temples of Poonezhie and Dvina. But in the 19th century, new trends reached these remote lands. New temples began to be built either from brick or wooden in a new taste, far from the age-old traditions of the people. They tried to remake the ancient churches, changing both the appearance and the interior decoration in accordance with the new tastes inspired by the European architecture of the northern capital. The log walls of ancient buildings were covered with plank sheathing with painting, plank and plowshare roofs were replaced with iron ones, traditional tents on the bell towers were replaced by spiers, interiors changed beyond recognition - sheathing, painting, wallpaper, gilded iconostasis and icon cases with glass, paneled doors, etc. In the language of those who created it was the merchants and clergy of that time that all these alterations were called "splendid renewal."

In the second half of the 19th century, the enlightened Russian society awakened interest in folk culture and Russian antiquities. A gradual revival of original Russian culture begins, architects and art historians begin to study Russian folk wooden architecture, travel around the Russian north, making measurements and sketches of ancient wooden buildings. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first attempts were made to restore the wooden churches of the Russian north.

In the 20-30s of the last century, temples were closed everywhere, turned into clubs, warehouses, or simply abandoned, while others were destroyed. An abandoned wooden building cannot be preserved for a long time, it requires supervision, maintenance and periodic repairs. The rotten roofs begin to leak, the lower crowns of log cabins rot, debris from bird nests accumulates under the cladding. In addition, many buildings suffer from fires. As a result, by the end of the 20th century, the vast majority of monuments of wooden architecture were lost. However, many monuments were saved, restored on the spot or transported to open-air museums of wooden architecture. Thanks to the efforts of the architects-restorers of the second half of the 20th century, of which A.V.Opolovnikov should be noted first of all, many masterpieces of wooden architecture were carefully studied, measured, and projects for their restoration were completed; many have been restored, put on record under state protection. Museums, scientific and restoration design and production workshops, institutes were created, books on wooden architecture were published.

During the period of “perestroika and reforms”, the situation in the restoration of monuments of wooden architecture deteriorated sharply. State funding has been reduced many times, the quality of restoration work has deteriorated, wrong laws and corruption actually block the development of the restoration work and contribute to the destruction of monuments that continue to perish everywhere. We risk losing our most valuable cultural heritage.

Ensemble of the Kizhi Pogost. Transfiguration and Pokrovsky churches, 18th century. Bell tower, 19th century.