Stylish, trendy, Orthodox: the experience of researching the coffee shop “ANTIПА”

Abstract

The article describes the experience of field research conducted during 2023–2024 on the territory of the church of the Holy Martyr Antipas of Pergamon in Kolymazhny Dvor (Moscow), where the “ANTIPA” coffee shop is located. The research addresses the issues of creation, organization, functioning and structure of the public space initiated and supervised by a religious community, as well as social agents who interact with it. The coffee shop “ANTIPA” is proposed to be examined through the lens of five aspects: 1) spatial, 2) social, 3) aesthetic, 4) organizational, 5) economic and labor. The church complex’s adjacent territory can be characterized as a secular space with religious elements, which performs the following functions: 1) a meeting place (as a point on the map where people can meet), 2) a place of communication (as a place where one can spend time socializing), 3) a mediator between the city and religion (as a place that allows residents and visitors of the capital to encounter the religious).