The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker

2017

Location: Tatarstan, Naberezhnye Chelny, HPP settlement, 73 Frunze str.

Status: Project

XXI

The shape of the space is changeable. The space is constant.

Uso Watsuke, a thinker of the Kodai era

There is a cross above the dome. This is how the temple is designated.

Hundreds of years of emptiness and the dome is destroyed, and there is no cross, only an eternally silent skeleton in indelible streaks of rain on the darkened grout. The forgotten faces of the saints look into the surrounding steppe, creeping over the ruins of neighboring houses. The images on the red stone are rock carvings of a bygone time.

There are no bells in the belfry – the blue sky in the high arches is the same as a hundred years ago, the same as thousands of years ago. The wind sways the remnants of the glass in the windows, finding its way through the temple. There is no singing and no service either, her language is forever forgotten, as is the person who came here. But the right angles, eaten away by the indifferent wind, indicate that the man was.

Someone's hand is under the same sky. There are no more faces. There is no belfry, no right angles. Arches can be seen through the grass and bushes, which have lost their direct purpose. Now they are the gateway to a promised world that may never have existed. The fingers of the hand will wipe the dust from the palm, put paper in it, take a pencil, and someone will present the temple of the XXI century.

The author of the text: Dmitry Maltsev