Welcome to Cardboardia – Moscow’s alternative city
Published: 15 June, 2009, 20:18
Edited: 27 September, 2009, 10:37
TAGS: Art, Show, Russia, Holiday
A team of professionals and creative amateurs spent the past week with scissors and glue building a cardboard city at a factory in Moscow.
It’s the fifth “Cardboardia” festival held in the capital, uniting people of all ages and backgrounds in realizing architectural fantasies.
This year’s event – featuring cardboard houses, monuments, shops and banks – was held at the Krasny Oktyabr factory.
The festival also offered a number of extras to visitors: master-classes, lectures, performances and even fashion shows.
Traditionally the project brings to life a wonderland of imaginary mayors, bankers, money – all real, but living just for a week within the territory of the project.
This year, for the first time, there was a cardboard version of a real building. This year’s “House of the year” was the "Kitezh" Trading-business centre in Moscow, originally designed by Andrey Bokov and Dmitry Bush.
Cardbordia also appointed a main architect for the first time.
The local “Tyrant”, project founder Sergey Korsakov, told Myarchipress architectural magazine that he wanted to see “scale and beauty from the project.”
“I have bad taste and it shouldn’t be relied on. Thus, I invited professionals. Besides, in case of failure, responsibility can be laid on their shoulders – at least for some of the buildings they’ve constructed,” Korsakov joked.
From Day One of Cardboardia’s existence, a special Architectural Bureau, led by chief architect Edward Khaimon, began operating and distributing “orders and licenses” for buildings.
The list of “state ordered” buildings included a tyrant’s throne, a town hall, a branch of the First Bank of Cardboardia, a central department store (Bad Taste Shop), a warehouse, a media centre and television tower, a “voluntary” cardboard prison, a stadium, a House of Cardboard Fashion, a post and printing office, a national tourist office and many other municipal buildings with weird names.
One of the unique features of Cardboard City is that it ignores many of the boring aspects of everyday life. So, almost every day is a holiday. This year there was a Marriage Day, Day of Cardboard Dependence, a Cardboard City Parade Day, Additional Birthday Day, the Holiday of Uncontested Tyrant’s Elections and others.
The festival also put on theatre performances, fashion parades, concerts, parties, children’s holidays, lectures, master classes, doll performances and street processions.
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How cool is that! What a great contest. They say the best gift for children is a big cardboard appliance box, like the ones washing machines come in. Instant fort! Of course, here at home we are also seeing other cities made of cardboard, usually on the edge of real towns and full of people who got foreclosed out of their other houses. Nice to see cardboard being used for a happier occasion.
Too bad I can't upload photos. I build model cars from cardboard.