Vladimir Paperny will discuss the new project for Zaryadye Park in Moscow, based on his interviews with architects Elizabeth Diller and Charles Renfro, and will evaluate the park’s role in the political and aesthetic landscape of post-1991 Moscow under Mayors Yuri Luzhkov and Sergey Sobyanin (and Presidents Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin). The title of his talk, Culture Tree, is a pun on landscape urbanism and on the titles of Paperny’s books Culture Two and Culture Three.

A Q+A session will follow the lecture.

Vladimir Paperny is the leading historian and theorist of 20th and 21st century Russian architecture. He received his MA in design from the Stroganov Art Academy in Moscow, and his PhD in Cultural Studies from the Russian State University for the Humanities. His PhD thesis Architecture in the age of Stalin. Culture Two was published in Russian (Moscow, 1996, 2006), in English (Cambridge University Press, 2003, 2011) and in Czech (Arbor Vitae, 2014). Since moving to the US in 1981, Dr. Paperny was visiting professor at USC, UCLA, Woodrow Wilson Center, and Bristol University, UK. He worked as Marketing Manager (US Gypsum, Lavi Industries) and as Art Director (Orange Coast Magazine, The Workbook). He continues working at his design studio in Los Angeles. His articles, essays and columns (in both English and Russian) appear in such publications as Snob, Architectural Digest, Project Russia, Speech and many others. His collections of essays include Mos Angleles, Mos Angeles-2 (NLO, 2004, 2009) and Fuck Context? (TATLIN, 2011).

This talk is part of a series called MOSCOW MAKEOVER: Architecture and Power in Putin’s Russia. The lectures are diverse, provocative and frank in character, and the theme of each is inter-related. On 11th May Yuri Luhzkov, the controversial Mayor of Moscow between 1992-2010 and one of Russia’s best-known political figures will be speaking at Pushkin House, followed by Charles Renfro, partner of architectural practice Dillier, Scofidio and Renfro on the 19th May. Renfro is the lead design of the high-profile Zaryadye Park project in the shadow of Moscow’s Kremlin.  In Russian and English. 

The lecture series is organized and chaired by Michał Murawski, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London; and Clementine Cecil, Director of Pushkin House. Supported by the Department of Russian, Queen Mary; Pushkin House; and the Leverhulme Trust. The Vladimir Paperny lecture is co-organised with the ARCC