Before us is the first serious publication of works by the architectural company ABD architects, consisting of two books, one devoted to interiors, the other to buildings. This reflects the specifics of ABD's interior design, with its internal division into architectural and interior divisions. The books are filled with beautiful pictures, the colorful architecture is interspersed with black-and-white photographs of the workshop and simply - of the city. They are very well published by the prestigious foreign publishing house SpringerWienNewYork, which specializes in literature in the field of science and culture. This means that the ABD book has entered a very good society. The publishing house, in the words of its representative, at first strongly doubted whether it was worth getting involved with Russian material at all. However, having become acquainted with the architecture proposed for publication, he radically changed his mind - ABD once again managed to convince the West, this time in the person of the publishing house, of their solvency. The effectiveness of this belief is eloquently expressed by the annotation given to the architectural company on the website of the SpringerWienNewYork publishing house: 'surely one of the most innovative and respected architectural practices in Moscow of today' (… certainly one of the most innovative and recognized in Moscow …) - two highest praises for modern architecture, on the one hand it is innovative, and on the other - solid; Such a characterization from the Western cultural community is worth something.
The introductory texts, dedicated primarily to the new works of 2005, were written by two researchers of the architecture of post-war modernism, Andrei Kaftanov and Andrei Gozak. Accordingly, the ABD architecture appears to be rooted in “our local” context, continuing the work of the Russian avant-garde, responding to the challenges of the space of the post-Soviet city - which looks a little unexpected, because, admittedly, it is least thought of as a product of the context, but rather the opposite - more familiar to consider it as something otherworldly-Western, inoculation of a properly debugged process that confidently and purposefully delivers a high-quality architectural product in all respects.
The book shows that this is an apparent contradiction. Rather, this is not a contradiction at all, because well-organized work is a mechanism, a means, and belonging to one's own culture, of course, at a deep level, which is the correct one - this is creative content. Just like luxury printing is a means to summarize ABD's 15 years of work. Such a book shows the resulting architecture as a beautiful frame is a picture, allowing you to look at the framed works a little differently. For example, to feel that the roots of all modern architecture, both Russian and Western, belong first to the avant-garde, including Russian, and then to post-war modernism. And that any self-respecting modern architecture considers it necessary to build connections with the environment and any context it inherits, avoiding mimicry and imitation.
And it turns out that we have “just” one of the good architectural workshops working in its own country. And this makes the country seem not to be some kind of special or, even more so, semi-feudal, but “just” one of the civilized countries in which one can work the same way as in any other. What it costs is impossible to imagine. But it must be admitted that the book looks like a summary of the successful experience of such an activity.
