You are a specific workshop. Despite the fact that you have very noticeable buildings in the city, in your image you somehow emphasize not the artistic, but the business component
Boris Levyant: This is deliberate. Bureau "ABD" is not the creative workshop of Boris Levyant. Different architects work with me, and each of them probably has his own creative credo.
But are there some general principles of the bureau?
Boris Stuchebryukov: If they exist, then they are really general, drawn specifically. We do not have a system when, say, I or Boris draw something, and then the workshop develops it. We have chief and leading architects, they develop objects with their team.
That is, you, the head of the workshop, do not participate in the creative process of the ABD workshop?
B. L.: As a rule, no. Only if some kind of extreme, dead-end situation arises, and brainstorming is needed. It does happen, but I regard it as a malfunction.
And you have no control over the final product?
B. L.: I control, but I do not impose my vision on the team. There are some general principles that are shared by the workshop, and if they are observed, then I do not interfere with the building.
That is, it makes no sense to ask about the style of the workshop?
B. L.: I think so. The word "rationalism" says enough for me. The workshop creates modern, rational architecture. I want it to be clear - we do not make extreme buildings, like Zaha Hadid or Daniel Libeskind, and probably will not. For me, there are certain fundamental categories, first of all - scale. The scale provides the building's relevance to the city. I do not share the principles of contextuality, as it is understood today by the Moscow City Architecture Committee, when some historical details are needed to comply with the context. If the building fits the scale of the city, it is appropriate.
Your rejection of the environmental approach looks somewhat unexpected - after all, you worked with the person who created the entire architectural program of today's Moscow in the 1980s, with Alexei Gutnov
B. L.: Yes, and this is the most significant professional experience for me. But it is not at all the "environmental approach" that is attributed to Gutnov today, especially in the form in which we encounter him today. The most important thing for me was the experience of team building. Gutnov had the ability to unite people of various specializations and views into one team. Creative people, managers, scientists, engineers - everyone. And this is what I learned from him in the first place. The ABD workshop is designed according to this model. We have a creative division in our team, architects who do volumetric design and those who do interiors. There are managers who lead the project in legal and administrative terms. This is a very serious aspect, because for creative people the economy, legal aspects, relations with the customer, with the city, with contractors are tasks that they do poorly by definition. Interaction of the creative, management level, interaction with engineers, designers - these are serious management tasks. Today they are built in "ABD", and I consider this to be my main achievement.
BS: In my opinion, this is an ideal situation. The architect is freed from performing management tasks unusual for him. He designs the building from concept to working documentation, accompanies the construction process, but does not deal with administrative functions.
Creative architects often blame managerial complexity. This is understandable and natural. And yet, I will allow myself to ask this question. From the relationship with the city and the customer, after all, a lot is clarified in the very nature of the building. They define the framework conditions for work. The architect and the customer, the official and the contractor - everyone speaks different languages, everyone understands each other very poorly. Endless shake-ups, negotiations, alterations - what allows in the end to find a common language. If you free your “creators” from all this, how do you manage to find a common language with all your counterparties?
B. L.: This is just the most important thing. Endless negotiations between people who do not understand each other are not the most effective way to work. The first point of our contract with any customer is the preparation of a task program. In fact, we are doing what the city regulations should give, which, in fact, Gutnov tried to introduce - regulations for each site. It is necessary for the customer. But not enough. We need a common language between him and the architect, and therefore our next task is to interpret the regulations in terms of business. Both we and the customer need a competent business plan for the use of the site. Unfortunately, our city is not only not civilized enough, but also the customer, and, as a rule, developers have little idea of how exactly they will use the acquired territory. We have to come up with this for them. I must say that after passing through these stages, the relationship between the architect, the city and the customers becomes much more effective.
And this is the stage where the architect enters?
BS: An architect enters at a very early stage, we can say that a competent design assignment appears here. And if it really meets the customer's requirements, then the degree of interference in the architecture is sharply reduced. Of course, it is impossible to completely exclude this, sometimes the customer wants to simplify everything, sometimes to do something prettier, richer. We were forced to do what we did not want, and were not allowed to do what seemed right to us - it was all there. But ideally, the system keeps these interventions to a minimum.
Allow on the other hand. Buildings built by "ABD" are clearly identifiable. Their property is European quality, these are things that, without any adjustments for local specifics, could be in Europe. And this applies to residential interiors, and business interiors, and commercial buildings - everything that you do. This is the highest level of civilization, modernity in the sense of modern Western civilization. Could you still say that this is your credo?
B. L.: Scale, rationality, modernity. I can't add anything else. It seems to me that this is none of my business. Writing styles and coming up with their interpretations is a matter of critics.
Our consumers prefer everything Western. Clothes, food, cars - all things. Items can be imported. But architecture is not transported. I think that the creation here, in Russia, of a design machine that would make it possible to create a Western level of civilization is a super difficult task. In fact, all Russian government agencies and even businesses have worked for this over the past ten years. You succeeded, and it is for this task that your design machine was created. Correctly?
B. L.: Well, this is already the critic's interpretation.
BS: Why the Western level? I made my personal retrospective exhibition "Russian rationalism" at the Polytechnic Museum as a Russian artist of the rationalist trend, one might say, the heir of our rationalism of the 1920s. At that time, the ideas of our artists and architects were not borrowed and were not inferior to the level of thinking of their colleagues from the West, but in many respects were ahead of them. Numerous catalogs issued in the pre- and post-perestroika times are vivid evidence of this. There is no such task - to transplant Western civilization here, in Russia. There is a task here to reach the modern level of civilization.
