Grigory Revzin:
Architecture today is developing according to the laws of show business - everyone is looking for stars. Several times I was asked to name some Russian architect, from whom it would be possible to make a world star, and I mentioned your name several times.
Mikhail Belov:
Are you out of your mind? Why on earth?
Well, you have 27 won international competitions. And the path you followed in the late 80s - early 90s is exactly the movement towards an international star
Nothing in common. The contests that I won in the 80s were essentially student contests. Conceptual contests for Japanese magazines. It was, of course, nice, but it has nothing to do with anything. Neither real construction nor stellar projects. Just your own little playground for the little ones in the architectural zoo.
But then more serious contests started. EXPO in Vienna. Hall in Nara, Japan
You know, there was some kind of caricature in it. As if on purpose someone showed me at an accelerated pace how it happens - takeoff and … nothing. Every person is susceptible to flattery, but here they come to me from the Austrian embassy, and they say - we believe that you are the best architect in the USSR. I was stunned, I say - where did you get the idea? And they say - there were 24 experts, they wrote the names, chose 10 architects, then the other 10 experts chose two, then there was only one left, and that's you. My wings have grown, of course.
I then invented a system that I call "Explosive-dynamic statics". I tried to apply it in many projects, until I implemented it anywhere, and I like it. I came up with the idea of creating a flying building. Not like in deconstruction, like a house after an explosion, but during an explosion, when everything is scattered in different directions. An explosion is a colossal energy. And I wanted to convey this feeling of energy with architecture.
I am doing this competition for the World Expo, and I am getting one of the awards! It was amazing. Well, everything, well, another life begins! I was given a credit card! In 1990! I didn’t even show it to anyone, to me it seemed like a magical object. And then the first blow - according to rumors, this competition was generally conceived under the fact that it would be won by Hans Hollein, and he received only second place. And so it turned out that the motley laureates had to unite in an international team and make a joint project. I was very worried, but survived, I was even going to open a workshop in Vienna. But then the Viennese came up with the idea of holding a referendum on whether they really need a world EXPO with all kinds of corrupt stuffing. You are saying that everything is developing according to the laws of show business - maybe something is developing, but the crowns did not want to develop that way. They gave up on this idea. And everything disappeared, as if there was nothing.
Did it really disappoint you?
I don’t know … no. I was on the rise then, I did not have time to be disappointed. Japan began immediately.
There was a very specific idea. Actually, not competitive. Each invited architect was given an island across from Yokohama. It was called "Yokohama 2050", it was believed that this is the plan for the development of Yokohama until 2050. So it might still be built. Can you imagine if they build it? That will be a comedy! Various stars and Rem Koolhaas really did projects there - where can we go without him. I was invited by a Chinese man, a very strange person, his name was Shi Yu Chen. His bureau was called, for a laugh, "CIA", just like the American CIA, only it was deciphered in a different way - Creative Intelligence Association. He was like a person from another world. For example, he was talking on a cell phone - then it was a terrible rarity, I saw it for the first time. He had a car, he made himself an English cab, and inside everything was littered with green plastic dinosaurs. On the floor, on the seats. It was three years before Spielberg filmed Jurassic Park. Very impressive. This Shi Yu Chen invited different architects, there was then a terribly famous Englishman Nigel Coates, he is now more involved in teaching in the UK, then a famous Spaniard … In general, it was very cool at first. I come to Japan, this is all on Ginza, the main street of Tokyo, I come, Peter Eisenmann and such a large oriental woman, as they say, "you-know-who," are sitting with me in the dressing room.
Well, there you clearly acted as a Russian star or even a Soviet one at that time?
Don't forget - it's 1990 and the USSR is still intact. I do not know. I probably misunderstood something. There, this Chen had such a plan - while we are doing this Yokagama 2050, in parallel it is proposed to do something else. Nigel Coates was building a restaurant in Tokyo called The Wall, and I was also offered to do a restaurant. In the style of Russian constructivism. And we even went to a meeting with the person who was supposed to finance all this. It was in a restaurant, he came with three girls. There it was necessary to eat such huge crabs, break them with your hands and eat, very inconvenient. So we eat, and these girls lick him all the time, as he gets smeared with a crab. And he nibbles them from time to time. I looked closely, I look, and they are all bruised. And I was terribly scared. I thought that this person would pay me money, and I … Well, in general, it didn't work out. I didn't like him, he didn't like me. After a while, Chen says to me - it's time to go to his office. And I say - I can’t. I have to work, this competition is here, I'm busy. He - how to work? And I just rested, I say, terribly busy, not a single free minute. And it won't. Well, he wondered, and then somehow fell behind.
I went to Yokohama. There is a lot of water, islands. And I have already been to Venice, and there were a lot of Japanese. They were straight in the eye. Here, I thought, the Japanese. They go to Venice, which means they like it. And they don't have Venice. I started drawing canals, but at the same time I wanted to be a little Kazimir Malevich, so I made Suprematist canals. I drew 700 such sketches. And then I thought, why is that? There is Venice, there is Rome, and there is no need to repeat them. But what if Rome was made in the middle of Venice? Coliseum? Maybe it's nothing? And that's how this project came about.
I liked everything at first. Kurokawa somehow appreciated me, invited me to his office, showed me something. Eisenmann presented a booklet, I gave him mine, it's okay too. But everything quickly became uninteresting. I had to joyfully communicate with all this motley world, but I, on the contrary, closed myself off and, like a madman, thrashed this project for days on end. Everyone seemed to like it, but I was less and less. There is no one to talk to, I have a wife and a little son in Moscow, I missed them, and even to call is a problem. To be honest, I was terribly bad. I bought a video camera, said something into it, watched it, and spoke back - well, a terrible thing. It was quiet madness. And I worked everything, and it so happened that only half of the term has passed, and I have everything ready. Both the layout and all the documentation are everything. The rest are still swinging, and I have already finished. I came to them and said, listen, can I go home, huh? Let me go, please, I really want to go home.
They tell me - what are you, you fool? Literally so. After all, now the most important thing will be. The most important thing for them is the party. Ram Koolhaas arrived, some theories, seminars began, and I - well, let go, please. And all the time he complained over the phone to Moscow. And this Chen, indeed, turned out to be a difficult fellow. It turns out that he was a "Chinese with a biography", studied in Bulgaria, knew Russian perfectly, but pretended not to know. Well, after one of my conversations, he says - you know, come on, leave. Can.
So I barely carried my feet away from them and did not become an international star in 1991.
And, frankly, I am very happy about this, although it is a pity, of course, if you start to reason …
That is, you simply did not want to communicate with this world
Everything is intuitive for me. Well, yes, I arrived, sniffed it - I feel that it smells not mine. Even before that in Moscow, somehow it didn’t work out very well with them. Then, in 1987, Thomas Krenz, the head of the Guggenheim Foundation, and Nick Ilyin, who also seemed to be connected with the Guggenheim, often came to Moscow, and they somehow too actively communicated with us, "paper architects" who participated in Japanese competitions. Well, it seemed like it was necessary to hang out with them all the time. Although the word "tusovka" did not exist then. And I feel - well, this is wrong. And he stopped.
Can you still formulate what you didn't like?
I do not know. I say - it was somehow felt. You do not need to get along with them, they will not teach what is mine and for me. And what is not to me is still incomprehensible to the end. Although they treated me very well, I can't say anything bad about them - they are good people, tolerant and cheerful …
After all, this idea is architecture as show business. There was such an Athenian sage - Salon. The Athenians were very fond of the theater, and he shouted at them: "You will soon turn the whole world into a theater!" And they turned it! What's good about the theater? This is a farce, nothing genuine. A star is a magician, a trick. So they came up with a trick - Bilbao is considered a terribly successful project. Because two million tourists have come there. But if two million came there, they probably did not come somewhere. To Madrid, for example. And what is the use of this, I do not understand. All together - what good is it?
Well, you've returned to Moscow, to your familiar world. But he didn't. He left for Germany
Oh, it was just really bad here. 1991 - there is nothing to eat. The wife was completely worried. The child is small. And I had invitations. I was invited to Austria, to England. By the way, in England, by the way, I think everything might have grown together - I was very much appreciated there by such Alvin Boyarsky, the head of the Architectural Association. He then somehow unexpectedly died. Well, there was an invitation to Munich. We took it, packed our things, and drove off.
I started teaching there and at the same time doing contests. And suddenly he stopped winning. I'm used to winning, but here I seem to do everything very well, I try, everyone around me likes it, everything seems to be good, but there are no victories. None. I was very worried. Oh, I've had enough! Because at first such a fantastic success - I won two contests out of three in which I participated, but here - everything is complete zero. And it is completely incomprehensible why.
This is on the one hand. On the other hand, I realized with horror that I didn't like living here. That everything is foreign to me. Again - here I sniffed, and I feel - not that.
Most importantly, I stopped liking their architecture. In general, it seems to me that every person is trying to realize what he thought was good in childhood. Here are the Americans - they were taught democracy in childhood, and now they are all over the world … And as a child, my father took me to VDNKh. My father was a military man, we traveled all over the country, and then we got to Moscow, and he took me there. I was ten years old. And it seemed wonderful to me. Until now, by the way, it seems. At the institute, of course, they explained to me that there is good architecture, but there is not even architecture, but so - monuments with columns. And if you do now look like monuments, then this is bad architecture. And I knew it well and firmly learned it. But here, in Germany, I come to some city, go to watch an important modern thing, and I understand that I do not like it. The head itself looks at something nearby, old. I know that you can't look, I turn it where it is necessary, and it back. They tell me - it's yours, yours, you have to love it, but I don't, I don't like it. And I realized that I had to return. That I can't live there.
You returned to Russia in 1995
Completely crushed. I understood that I went to this Europe, so wonderful, and it did not accept me. I could not. I had the feeling that I was unfit for the job.
Your first works in Russia were in some unexpected genre. Back then, everyone was doing interiors or banks, and you took up urban landscaping. I would say a social area. Was it a deliberate move after Germany?
Not. I was just looking for a job, and no one would let me into banks or interiors. And there Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov had such a fantastic idea - to build 200 fountains in Moscow. He then cooled down, and then there was such a city order, which was given to Mosproekt-2, Mikhail Posokhin. By their standards, it was a penniless order. And I had friends there, and they suggested that I think. There was the Princess Turandot fountain on the Arbat. I drew, and it was accepted, and only then I found out that many drew a project for this place, and the mayor did not like it all the time. And here I liked it. This raised my stakes a lot. And then I realized that Pushkin's jubilee is coming soon, and if we make a fountain associated with Pushkin, then it will probably enjoy some kind of favor. And he suggested the fountain "Pushkin and Natalie" on Nikitskaya.
I'm not even asking about fountains, but about the playgrounds that are built up throughout Moscow
Well, this is a completely random story. It seems that someone was going to be a deputy, or something else like that - in general, for some reason he needed to do something good for the residents. And I was known in this department of communal services because of the fountains, because they were involved in the implementation of projects. Well, they recommended contacting me. I came up with something like "Lego" - a constructor from which you can assemble different types of sites. Children like constructors. But it turned out to be very convenient in production, and healed pretty quickly without me. And he has been living for more than ten years. Now it is called "the designer of Professor Belov," and it still hangs on the Internet, but it has nothing to do with me. This, indeed, built up hundreds of Moscow courtyards. But I had no conscious social task. It’s just that some unusual kind of social order suddenly appeared, and then disappeared - this often happens with us.
In Moscow, you were finally able to make the architecture that you liked as a child
Not at all right away. This also happened by accident. This was my first serious order - a house in Filippovsky Lane. He also came from Mosproekt-2 - it was designed there for a long time, everything was changing all the time, people were leaving, and, finally, I almost accidentally got it. And I have been designing this thing for a long time, more than a year. She was constructivist by design. In fact, apart from the classics, I also love the architecture of Russian constructivism, and I have many such projects, but for some reason they are not yet implemented. They are not in demand. Well, now, a serious project was done, everything was agreed, they should have already built, and suddenly everything stopped. The project costs a year, and then a new customer appears, PIK, Yuri Zhukov. And he somehow humanly explained everything to me. “I don’t like this architecture,” he says. It is dry. And I want to live in this house. I found myself in a difficult situation. Of course, I had to say that now, you outraged me, I made such a wonderful project. And refuse. But I liked his approach to me. I began to do another project, and it fascinated me terribly. And so the Pompeian house was born.
And, it seems, made an impression in Moscow. They began to order something for me, and quite unexpectedly for myself, within three years I built two large houses in Moscow - "Pompeisky", and a house on Kosygin, and then - a whole city with a temple and a school, the estate "Residence-Monolith" in outskirts of Moscow.
In connection with this jerk, I wanted to ask this. You have practically not changed the type of your work. Despite the fact that today the level of your orders is 200-300 thousand square meters per year, you still not only have no serious workshop, but none at all, and you do everything alone. How does it work?
I'm a marginal here. Nobody in the architectural world seems to work this way. Not in Germany, not in England, not in Japan. But I have an inner stupor … I feel that a big workshop is something that is not something that I don’t need to do. I have always been terribly annoyed by exploitation. I hated this. In the USSR, when it was necessary to sit for weeks at a design institute, and there was no way out. And then, in Germany, and everywhere. And I don't want to do it myself.
I came up with a different system. It seems to me that it is correct when an architect develops an idea alone. He doesn't need anyone else - he's the author of the building. And then he passes it on to those who can saturate it with the other thirteen sections, bring it to the project. And then I don't exploit anyone, and the funds are properly distributed.
But by doing so, you let go of everything. How can you keep control of a project if other people start doing it?
Actually, I must say that this is not at all as difficult to do as it seems. I have my own strategy here. Experience shows that you need to create an idea that simply captivates everyone else. And if this is a beautiful project, then everyone wants to participate in it themselves. It turns them on, inspires them. The same "Pompeian House" - it was made in monstrous conditions. No matter how much you talk about the technological cycle, no matter how much you convince - all the same, this facade was started to be installed in November. And immediately frost hit, and just when it got warmer - finished. 4 years have passed since then. And at least one crack! Viktor Trishin, who edited all this there, he gave all his best. And I would never have received such an effect if I had a workshop, it would make all the working drawings, transfer them to production, and I would accept products in accordance with the specification. Maxim Kharitonov and I, when we were making the rotunda at the Nikitsky Gate, made a board on which were written all the people who were involved in making it. And when they opened it, they did not know that this board would be there. And they absolutely … They were crying. I realized how important this is for people. Local artisans, they go all out when they work for what they like and how they feel. But this, of course, is not suitable for all architecture. Here are these glasses - well, they will not be made in Russia. No matter how hard the workers try, they themselves do not like it, and therefore nothing comes of it.
That is, you seduce subcontractors with the quality of the project. And it turns out that the return to classical architecture is not the taste of power and not the violence of the architect, but, so to speak, the national taste
The violence of an architect is precisely modern architecture. Few people here feel and understand it, mostly professionals. And ordinary people have a simple taste. And not only among the people - I noticed that many intellectuals, both engineers and humanitarians, all like order architecture. Everyone except the architects.
As for the violence of the authorities, this is generally a delusion. They say that Yuri Luzhkov is instilling historicism. And it seems to me that he has no architectural preferences at all. On the one hand, he is restoring the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, on the other, he is building the City. He wants to be both conservative and innovative at the same time. It's so cute, so Russian! Well, where is this violence of power? For eight years, Putin had nothing to do with architecture. Incidentally, it seems to me that we shouldn't be talking about dictatorship. A dictator - he is always interested in architecture. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. And here there is nothing of the kind, she just does not want to know anything.
