The beginning of a heated discussion was laid by the speech of Viktor Logvinov, who outlined, according to him, the alarming situation in the Russian architectural market in relation to Western colleagues. Logvinov said that instead of a dialogue between Russia and a united Europe in the profession, so far we see a situation of blatant inequality and insecurity of our architects. But before proceeding with the debriefing, we found out how the issue of professional and legal protection of architects is being resolved today in the EU countries.
The current position of the international union is to unify the activities of architects in 27 countries of the European Union through a licensing system. Since October 2007, the so-called “general horizontal” directive has come into force for the entire European market. Now an architect, having received a license in one of these countries, can work in any of them, either as a citizen or as a guest. In any case, he, first of all, must register with the Chamber or a special body and receive a license confirming his profession. We also note that the ISA continues the policy of introducing a system of continuing professional education in the EU member states. They are already thinking about making this system regular and mandatory. It will be something like a world databank, consisting of lectures by professors combining a variety of approaches in this area, and any national section, depending on its characteristics, can choose the appropriate block of lectures.
Why shouldn't Russia also join this elaborate system and play by these rules? Meanwhile, there is still no equilibrium interaction between the European Union and Russia with the adjacent territories of the CIS in the profession. This is such a one-way movement: Western colleagues are increasingly coming to work on our market, and we treat them even with excessive reverence, while the market of the entire united Europe is closed for us by the recognition of the licensing system. Meanwhile, according to V. Logvinov, we are no longer a third-world country with a third-rate architecture, and the situation of inequality that has now lined up is simply impossible. According to the President of the ISA, our legislation does not protect our market, we know examples when Western architects work here without any rules.
How did it happen that Russian architects found themselves in such a disadvantageous position? To begin with, let's recall that 5 years ago, licensing was legally abolished in our country (since architectural activity is creative), and with it the tough position in relation to foreign developers has sunk into oblivion. Today in Russia anyone can work without any licenses, which led, in particular, to a distortion in the competitive system. The latest major St. Petersburg competitions for the Okhta Center (Gazprom City) and the Konstantinovsky congress center in Strelna discovered, according to the AIA, flagrant violations of both the ethical and legal aspects of the case, which prompted a number of architects to refuse to participate altogether.
According to Andrei Kaftanov, the contests that we held as "international" were not held under the auspices of the ISA, and yet it is the only international organization authorized by the UN and UNESCO by the 1975 declaration."To the arrangement of such events on the basis of the relevant documents." As a result, we are witnessing the simultaneous holding of two parallel competitions at once in Strelna, despite the fact that this is prohibited by international rules. The main competition, designed to choose a company for the preparation of project documentation, turned out to be closed and exclusively foreign in terms of the composition of participants, and a “consolation” competition “for an idea” was arranged for ours. As we already wrote, Riccardo Bofill won in a foreign competition, and a young team led by architects Alexander Kuptsov and Sergei Gikalo won the open Russian competition. How the organizers will unite two opposite in spirit ideas, and whether they will be, is unclear.
Postscript unions are trying to correct mistakes made. According to Kaftanov, at the last council of the UIA it was possible to ensure that the final protocol of the meeting of the Turin Council included collective support for the position of the SAR on the inadmissibility of holding a tender for Gazprom City.
At the same time, for Russia, according to Andrei Kaftanov, today there is a real opportunity to form project assignments and hold competitions under the auspices of the ISA, where, according to the representatives of the union, the western level of organization, conduct, rules, standards, and a jury that can be trusted is ensured.
Undoubtedly, the experience of international cooperation is useful, but only with mutual recognition of the rights of the parties, primarily education. Now it turns out that we still cannot answer with anything to European licensing, we do not even have an authorized body, like the Chamber of Architects. Viktor Logvinov proposed to return to the practice of the early 1990s, when membership in the Union of Architects acted instead of licensing, to transfer it to the present day and conclude a bilateral agreement that would equate European licensing with our membership in the Union - in his words, this, in particular, could protect the rights of Russian architects during competitions. True, the European colleagues reacted skeptically to such a proposal.
To which the Russians replied that yes, it will probably not be possible to quickly integrate into the European system, but it is necessary to take some steps towards this on both sides, you can start at least by fulfilling the agreement on consulting services prescribed by the international union, which turns out to be is an ethical standard for foreign companies around the world. This means that when it comes to attracting local architects who are familiar with the design and construction standards in a given country, that is, we would like to support the well-known practice of "strengthening" foreigners with our colleagues.
On the other hand, the participants in the roundtable said, it may be too early to think, even hypothetically, of a broad opportunity for Russian architects to work in the West. Indeed, are we ready for full-fledged cooperation now not only in legal, but in professional terms? As Elena Bazhenova, member of the Presidium of the Board of the Agrarian Academy of Sciences, noted, our architectural profession is largely separated from the western one by its content. It is known that the list of services of a foreign architect is 45-50% more than what our professionals can offer. We are not trained to provide services in market conditions, and in the West it will be necessary not only to draw, but also to design in the budget, not to mention the fact that we even have different design stages. Perhaps, first, you should build your structure according to world standards, as Poland and China did, and only then ask to equalize us in rights with the European Union.
