Abstract: This article examines the cultural space of a particular university as a semiotic system characterizes by the thematic diversity, uniqueness and simultaneously typological similarity with cultural space of the city. The author analyzes the role of a university in conceptual saturation of the local text and formation of the urban environment, which under the influence of scientific and educational activity of the teachers and students undergoes improvements and enrichment with new content, becoming suitable for a worthy life. The article determines the conceptual dominants of university environment, which are viewed as the elements of local text; characterizes the means of influence of the Bryansk State Engineering and Technology Academy upon the thematic diversity of urban environment. The key research method is the semiotic interpretation of cultural landscape of the Bryansk State Engineering and Technology Academy in the context of landscape of the city of Bryansk. The author comes to the following conclusions: cultural space of the Bryansk State Engineering and Technology Academy reflects typological features of the Bryansk text; university is a major source thanks to which the mythologem of the forest materializes in the Bryansk cultural landscape; both, Bryansk text and university space gradually depict the topic of the Great Patriotic War, which is viewed in the broad context of military glory of the locals. The effective means for creating the educating environment become the elements with a symbolic nature of cultural landscape of the university: historical building of the second campus, forestry, pocket park in front of the main campus with the monument and commemorative plaque dedicated to defenders of the Motherland – university graduates. From the perspective of semantic diversity, the most interesting site is the Botanical Garden.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the metaphorical nature of ravines as a distinct element of Bryansk’s natural landscape and the conceptual constant of Bryansk text. Special attention is focused on the decoding of the hidden cultural meanings realized within the framework of spatial oppositions “top-bottom” and “periphery-center”, in which there is a clear manifestation of a ravine as a capacious symbol of border and attribute of the bottom level of earthly vertical. Academic interests lies in determination of the role of these natural dominants in revelation of the fundamental idea of Bryansk text – antiquity of topos that sealed its fate, image, and purpose. For understanding of the semantics of its cultural landscape along with the ideological-conceptual wealth of a cultural text, the author applies a metaphor. The article represents a first attempt to interpret the natural landscape of Bryansk as a metaphor that generated the cultural meanings. The author concludes that the ravines define the distinctness of natural landscape of Bryansk, and as a result, substantiate the specificity of Bryansk text. As an important element of Bryansk’s landscape, the ravines contain the information about a peculiar geopolitical location of the city, history of its origin, and dynamics of growth. Identification of metaphorical meanings of the ravines allowed concluding about their ambivalent nature, which indicated the dialectical unity of the opposites in Bryansk character, as well as predetermined the wealth of creative potential of the Bryansk cultural space.

Abstract: This article analyzes the cultural space of Bryansk from the position of reflection of the Orthodox life ans its impact upon the image and fate of the city, the foundation of which took place three years prior to the Christianization of Rus. The goal of the research consists in determination of specificity of representation of the image of Bryansk as the carrier of Christian values. Despite the variety of Christian themes, motives and images demonstrated in Bryansk text, the role of Orthodoxy in the establishment and development of the urban culture is yet to be understood. The author makes an attempt to read the Bryansk text, the sources of which include the historical myths, cultural landscape, language of the city, and literary texts that preserve the eventful four thousand year history of the topos. Semiotic reading of the Bryansk text considering its evolution, allowed determining the dominant images of the cultural space, which embody the Orthodox sacred places and reflect the fate of Christianity in Russia. Such places are the Pokrovskaya Hill with the temple complex, Svensky Uspensky Monastery, and others. The existence of godonyms formed from the names of the cathedrals testify about the structural and meaning-making role of the churches in urban space.