'Both modern and with echoes of the past': Time and Nostalgia in Wooden Architecture Regeneration Projects in Russian Cities

• In Event: Cities Lost and Found: Ruptures of Memory, and Nostalgia as Future Making

Abstract

In this presentation, I analyze regeneration projects for historic wooden neighborhoods in Russian cities and offer a detailed perspective on the transformation of buildings and the complex relationship between the logic of heritage conservation and the creation of economically successful projects. I turn to the notion of "working surfaces of the social" (Bennett, 2007), which reveals the mechanism of transforming the social aspects of the wooden houses and related memories into cultural products within the framework of specific tasks and politics of nostalgia, touristification and development, local patriotism, etc. Drawing on data from 35 semi-structured interviews with local officials, investors, activists, historians, restorers, and residents of wooden houses, I demonstrate how the actors involved create socio-technical networks and mobilize heterogeneous elements to transform the building, redefining its meaning as a museum, a residential neighborhood monument, a commercially successful service, an urban cultural engine, etc. (Yaneva, 2008; Ederson, 2013). To grasp how the actors deal with the historical value of a building and use it in realizing their project, I turn to the concept of nostalgia (Farrar, 2011; Kannike, 2013; Boym, 2001). Demonstrating how nostalgia becomes a mediator in assembling house transformation projects, I tend to contribute to an understanding of producing a specific cultural product - the historic wooden house - that stays beyond 'pure' museum-ness or commercial adaptation of buildings.