Architectural and planning organization of peasant (farmer) farms in the conditions of socio-economic transformations in Russia: current trends and prospects for the development of farms

Bubenchikov Eduard Aleksandrovich Master's degree, Department of Building Design and Real Estate Expertise, Siberian Federal University. Leading Engineer, Krasnoyarsk CHPP-3 construction project. 663180, Russia, Krasnoyarskii krai, g. Krasnoyarsk, ul. Gagarina, 19, Of. 203 ediks2016@mail.ru

1.      Introduction

Socio-economic changes in Russia, the country's transition to the route of a market economy are more concerned with the life of the farming population and rural life in general. It was the villagers who experienced the consequences of experiments in the agricultural sector of Soviet Russia, which were carried out during the period from 1917 to 1990. By the end of the eighties of the XX century, the agricultural sector of the country had reached the stage of collapse, which in fact led to a shortage of food in the largest state in the world by acreage ^[1]. Russia, which until 1917 supplied grain, meat and other foodstuffs to European countries, by the nineties of the XX century was buying agricultural food in Canada, the USA and other Western countries ^[1,2].

            For 80 years, architects have been trying to create optimal working and living conditions for a rural resident. The resolutions of the party and the government (Lenin's cooperative plan, Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature, N.S. Khrushchev's "corn" company, the raising of virgin and fallow lands, the enlargement of villages, and others) aimed at improving rural production and bringing the standard of living of rural people to the level of the urban population did not help in achieving the intended goals.

Over the years, the socio-economic situation in the agricultural sector of the country's economy has changed significantly – agricultural production has become multi-layered, private ownership of land has been recognized, purchase and sale has been allowed. This soon made it possible to improve the economic indicators of agriculture in our country, an example is the record harvests of recent years, despite the reduction in the output of the agricultural sector in 2021 by 1.3% for the first time since 2012 ^[3].

This study is aimed at considering such aspects of the development of peasant (farm) farms as: the architectural and planning organization of the production environment, the influence of the diversity of regions on the planning scheme, the formation of the planning structure of farms, emerging trends in the planning organization of the rural environment. These aspects are currently relevant due to the rapid pace of changes in world patterns, socio-economic requirements for architectural objects and new aesthetic requirements for farm facilities.

The study of the architectural and planning organization of farms without considering agriculture in the conditions of periodization does not allow us to describe the above aspects of the rural environment that require a comprehensive analysis. Therefore, the methodological basis will be the environmental approach ^[4] to solving all problems of the organization of the farm habitat, which is based on a critical understanding of the experience of planning, architecture of rural settlements in Russia, the construction of the periodization of farms, as well as the identification of emerging trends in the architecture of farms.

Well-known scientists and architects played an important role in the development of architectural practice of rural environment formation: Avdotin L., Atabaev M., Ashchepkov E., Breslavtsev O., Vinshu I., Geraskin N., Demidova M., Konchukov N., Kudinenko A., Latan N., Lezhaeva I., etc. When preparing the article, the experience of designing and building farm enterprises in Russia and abroad, scientific developments and projects were used ^[5,6].

2.      Object of architectural research

            One of the elements of the production environment and a kind of peasant economy is a farm that produces agricultural products not only for its family, but also for sale.

In the total global volume of agricultural production, a significant share is made up of the products of farms. The first peasant (farmer) farms (KFH) in the modern history of Russia, appeared before the collapse of the USSR, in 1990. Despite this, farming in Russia is at the stage of initial development, but has great prospects, and the architecture of farms is one of the most significant parts of the architecture of the agro-industrial complex of the country ^[1,9].

As of December 2021, according to the results of the annual agricultural micro-census, there were 102.4 thousand farms in our country. The micro-census showed that in five years the number of farm facilities in Russia has decreased by 34.3 thousand units. This adversely affects the overall development of the agricultural agro-complex of Russia ^[3].

            In Western European countries, the farm has from 20 to 80 hectares of land, in the USA and Canada – from 200 to 250 hectares. In addition, farmers often rent the land closest to them from neighbors who do not use it at this time. World experience shows that the size of farms and the forms of organization of the technological process in them depend on the natural and economic, socio-economic legal conditions of the region and the peculiarities of the country ^[7,8]. 

Farms are located both in the structure of rural settlements (most often on their outskirts due to significant land plots) and autonomously in the form of farms. A common form of agricultural organization is one in which several farms combine to form nests of farms or a farming village. In the USA, Canada and England, farms are often located along highways. The house is located by the road, outbuildings are in the depths, and behind them are fields. In our rural environment, farmland is often located at considerable distances from the place of residence of farmers, which causes a lot of inconveniences associated with logistics ^[10].

Depending on the size of farmland belonging to the farm, they are divided into small (10-20 hectares), medium (40-50 hectares) and large (more than 50 hectares).

Based on the experience studied , the territory of the farm has the following functional zones:

a) a residential building with a recreation area;

b) a private plot with a vegetable garden, a garden and household buildings necessary for a farming family (a summer kitchen, a bathhouse, a cellar, etc.)

c) production zone, which includes all production buildings and structures, as well as farm land – arable land, meadows, pastures, forest, etc.

            Thus, the main architectural task of forming an ensemble of planning and development of a peasant (farmer) economy is the architectural and landscape organization of 3 interconnected groups of agricultural buildings - a residential building, household buildings, industrial buildings and structures.

          As an example, we will give the nomenclature of premises and structures of a peasant (farmer) farm built according to a standard USSR project in 1990 in the Toguchinsky district in the village of "Yurty" ^[15]. Such an organization of the farming environment is typical, which most clearly reflects the functional zoning of the territory into residential, household and industrial zones. 

1) residential building at the rate of 220 m2 of living space;

2) garden and vegetable garden for the needs of the family – 0.22 ha;

3) complex of household facilities (summer kitchen, shed, cellar, sheds, greenhouse, garage, etc.) – 25-30 m2 per person;

4) production buildings: cowshed for 50 heads – 500 m2; cowshed for calves – 38 m2; bull room - 30 m2; stall – 20 m2; dairy – 18 m2; feed – 30 m2; silos – 45 m2; hayloft – 580 m2; manure storage – 26 m2; liquid collector – 12 m2; biogas plant (2 pcs.) – 20 m2; compost pits (4 pcs.) – 40 m2.

5) garage for agricultural machinery – 134 m2;

6) sunny vegetarian – 157.5 m2;

7) wind power plant – 1 pc.;

8) a well or well with a water tower;

9) land – 80 hectares.

Production facilities of a farm should be located at a sanitary distance from a residential building, they should be as mechanized and automated as possible. In order to save territory and construction costs, they try to block production buildings as much as possible in one monoblock.

3. Formation of architectural and planning organization of peasant (farm) farms

In the circumstances of the transition to a market economy and the multiplicity of ownership forms, the agricultural complex of the country has acquired new features. There are new features of its organization. There is a wide variety of forms of farms. All forms are based on an inseparable combination of agricultural production, residential settlements, systems and facilities of industrial and public services.

Architectural and planning solutions for the organization of farms, for objective and individual reasons, can have a very diverse organization ^{[13, 14]}. We will form the most characteristic typological features of the architectural and planning organization of farms:

- A type of architectural and planning organization of a farm, in which the farmer's space is a single blocked volume formed by three components - residential, household and industrial – a "compact" planning scheme (Figure 1, a). This principle of architectural and planning organization most fully reflects the traditions of the Russian farm dwelling and the modern stage of development of the domestic rural environment.

- The type of architectural and planning organization of a farm, as a single territory on which separate buildings and structures have been built (a farmer's house, outbuildings for various household purposes), livestock or other farm production buildings with feed storages and animal husbandry in separate objects - a "cluster" planning scheme (Figure 1, b). This type most often occurs in the process of spontaneous economic activity rather than as a result of planned design decisions.

- A type of architectural and planning organization of a farm in which the farmer's territory consists of two or three separate plots with the location of residential, household and industrial buildings on them, respectively - a "nest" planning scheme (Figure 1, c). Functional areas of a farm can be located at a significant distance from each other and in various spheres, for example, the residential part with household outbuildings should be located in the planning structure of a rural settlement, and the industrial part should be located in the natural landscape, etc.

The first two of the above architectural and planning solutions are most characteristic of small farms, and the third is more typical of medium and, especially, large farms. Let's form a detailed diagram of the types of planning structures of farms in Figure 1.

The initial positions indicated in the scheme determine the stable architectural direction of farms, the main condition of which is the rural environment, on which are located: open agricultural production, closed agricultural and production facilities, residential settlements of various composition, zones of personal subsidiary farming, household premises ^[16].

Figure 1 – Types of planning structures of farms (a – compact; b – cluster; c – nest).

Studying the experience of placing peasant (farm) farms on farms in the period 1965-1990, it can be considered quite acceptable for modern farmers. The space of such a farm is not constrained by the existing development of the village and rural settlement, and the construction of a farm can be carried out with decent gaps between individual buildings, while carrying out the phased construction of a farmstead, which is more efficient from the standpoint of economy. In addition, the farmstead location of the farm is more convenient from the point of view of filling the territory with various industries that process agricultural products into any product, and also determines the possibilities of a more free compositional planning solution and achieving aesthetic, as well as ecological unity of the architecture of the farm and the existing landscape.

Thus, the process of forming the latest topology of farms introduces adjustments to the functional orientation of rural settlements, causing the need to solve in a new way both the general architectural and construction principles of building rural settlements and the problems of architectural and planning organization of their elements.

The historical development of farming settlements demonstrates that the rural environment functions in inseparable unity with nature and the anthropogenic environment, in which the objects of housing, production, and public services are closely interrelated ^[16,17]. In this regard, their research and design is a non-trivial task that needs to be solved based on the use of an environmental approach.

 Based on the conducted research, it is possible to divide the architectural organization of the rural environment into several levels, namely:

- the level of territorial organization (district planning, rural settlement schemes, architectural and planning organization of agricultural territory);

- architectural organization (planning and development of settlements);

- at the object level (residential, public, industrial buildings and structures)

- at the level of structural elements of rural environment objects (environment design, workplace organization, etc.).

The general infographic of the architectural and planning organization of peasant (farm) farms is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 – Infographic of architectural and planning organization of farms

4. Planning of peasant (farm) farms in conditions of multiculturalism of agriculture

New socio-economic conditions have led to new trends in district planning and rural settlement, which can be briefly described as a transition from a total hierarchy to a local system. The system that has developed over the decades: "the district center – the central estate of the farm – the branches of the central estate – the brigade settlement – the field camp" with the hierarchy of industrial and social services has changed towards the formation of democratic ties and relations between settlements of different sizes based on equal partnership industrial, trade and cultural relations with relatively equal living conditions ^[12,19,20].

Over the decades, the principle of the formation of the architectural and planning organization of the settlement has significantly changed - the principle of zoning, which determines the structure of the general plan of the settlement and its elements (residential area, production, community center) and individual structural elements (street, square, manor, house). In the "rural settlement planning" system, the main direction of development is the transition from end-to-end zoning to a dispersed-modular scheme of planning and organization of the rural environment based on smaller planning modules ^[19]. The prerequisites for this are: the gradual unbundling of existing production nodes, zones and enterprises, the creation of medium-sized and small enterprises in the settlement, which will serve to form production complexes of various sizes and specialization within the settlements ^[20,21,23].

As a conclusion, we present the overall impact of trends on the topology of farms in the form of a table. To do this, consider three layouts of peasant farms built in Western Siberia with different time intervals:

Table – Periodization of farms

            The table shows that in the "transitional" period from 1917-1965, spatial organization was carried out by expanding personal multidisciplinary subsidiary farms to the level of commodity production, during this period the farms had a compact or cluster planning structure. After the "transition" period, the classical type of farming began to emerge, which is often still used today. It is characterized by the use in architecture of exemplary building techniques, constructive and decorative solutions of peasant farms of the early XX century, with a closed layout of an open courtyard and a multi-yard solution of a production zone, sometimes characterized by free zoning of the territory. At the end of the 90s, a modernization type of farming began to emerge ^[25], to which the estates correspond, the architectural and planning solution and design solutions of which reflect technological innovations, the introduction of energy-saving systems, alternative energy sources. It is the modernization type that is the sustainable direction of the development of farming in our country ^[24].

5. Conclusion and prospects

The development of the architecture of a new generation farm will follow the path of improving its structure, spatial organization and comfort: the tasks of organizing a "growing house", creating a universal flexible space with appropriate equipment are very relevant here; optimizing the ratio of closed, open and semi-open space when planning a farm.

When considering the periodization of farms, the influence of socio-economic legal conditions of the region and the country is noticeable. In the "transitional" period, totalitarianism in the settlement system, total zoning of industrial and public zones, the emergence of interuniverse connections, the use of a compact or cluster architectural and planning scheme can be distinguished. The period of the classical type of farms has a settlement system, as in the previous period, but this period has its own characteristics, namely: the reduction of unpromising settlements, the emergence of specialized production zones and the construction of farms with a "nest" architectural and planning structure. The modernization type of farms is distinguished by the transition from a total hierarchy to local associations for production and other reasons, the complexity of management, the tendency to expand the typology of settlements, the dispersion of zones and objects, as well as construction on individual projects, which allows the use of any type of architectural and planning structure. This type of farming should further increase the degree of freedom of designing the planning elements of a rural settlement and serve as an incentive to create memorable architectural ensembles of development, which will contribute to the development of a variety of structural, spatial organization of the rural environment, will determine a new aesthetic quality of the residential environment of the entire settlement. The material embodiment of architectural and design searches for the image and structure of residential buildings and all other buildings of the residential environment, which will allow both traditional and new architectural and structural systems to be implemented, the search for which continues both abroad and in our country.