Soft Democracy of BuroMoscow

This contribution queries the relation between democracy, feminism, and welcoming design and public spaces: what "democratic/welcoming" connection is in design of public spaces, who decides what is welcoming, who makes it and who uses it. My theoretical framework will be based on the previous feminist and critical approaches to the intersection of two notions: hospitality and space. My case study in this contribution will be the most recent work of Russian design and architectural firm BuroMoscow (www.buromoscow.com). This award-winning and increasingly influential firm is run by two women architects who see their work’s aesthetic as targeting to “soften Moscow,” and the Russian built environment in general, against the backdrop of hardening political atmosphere and political and nationalistic violence. I focus on one of their projects - The Swings – in the city center of Moscow to show how this already-iconic project not only challenges Russian “hard” architecture and its corresponding social and political history but also, how critical reaction to this project highlights the power dynamics around who and how feels entitled to and welcomed in a public square in a center of an increasingly authoritarian state, Putin’s Russia - immigrants and women, for example, rather than more typical critically-minded left intelligentsia or those who support the state. At the end of my presentation, I come back to my general question about balancing positive change and feminist resistance through art and design and danger of being co-opted and complicit with the authoritarian past and present, be it socialist or capitalist.