Vladimir Sedov:
How do you define your architecture?
Yuri Grigoryan:
It is not an architect's business to define. It is up to the critics or others to look at it from the outside. I would say that we are striving to find an image in the architecture of today. The figurative component is very important for us. We try to find human significance and expressiveness in simple forms. Find these shapes. If we talk about one word that defines it, then I would be at a loss to answer, I do not know this word. I have a theory (I don't have them at all, but I have one) regarding the phenomenon of pure form: pure form is the highest state of form that an architect seeks to achieve. Architecture arises at the intersection of a host of circumstances - spatial, functional, financial, political, personal, artistic, and they are very interesting. Fascinating. But in the end, they all have to be fused and translated into shape. Achieve purity of expressiveness. The random must become non-random. And this is done by the architect. And perhaps this is the form that becomes part of the history of architecture. Everything that we observe in the history of architecture - and we, in one way or another, exist in this space too - is the history of ideas, abstract forms, it is not only the history of preserved buildings. That is, of course, there is also a tourist history of architecture, when you can go and look at the ruins of Egyptian temples, at the remains of Paestum …
But is it not that important?
No, this is very important in order to understand what is the connection between pure form and landscape. After all, a form appears in a certain place and in a certain culture, at a certain time, sometimes it is useful to understand from what rubbish it grew. But it can exist, as it were, abstractly, without it. In her, her material circumstances, time and space, are translated into harmony. And not necessarily simple. Like DNA that permeates the body, from start to finish. It was very difficult to find the structure of the DNA. And the architect must find it every time.
That is, you are looking for the pure form of modernity
I would not call this a good definition. The word "modern" is worn out at the moment, in our reality, attempts to oppose the modern and the outdated are of such an odious character … This is not even quite a culture, in this there is an advertising-market character. No, in this terminology, modern is not modern, I prefer not to reason at all. For me, there is no such division, and it cannot be.
In general, if one thinks opposing the past and the present day, then everything that has been done now will certainly be worse than the past, and therefore it seems to be pointless to try. This is not encouraging. But space is valuable because it is one, history and modernity are parts of the same thing, existing in the same coordinate system. And, on the contrary, it excites. Time is canceled.
And how is this achieved?
Well, there are techniques, each one is personal. They are also meditative, there are other, almost research methods. It depends on the individual psychological pattern, I guess. I remember Salvador Dali, who has a book "50 Tips for the Beginning Artist". Brilliant work, written with a sense of humor, with a madness inherent in it, but there is a layer that describes exactly the method. There is a plot about a dream with a key in hand: before painting a picture, you need to sit in a wooden Spanish chair, take a heavy door key in your right hand, and put a saucer under it, and there should be a canvas in front of you. And the moment you fall asleep in this chair, trying to think about this picture, the key will fall out, the saucer will break, you will wake up, and at this moment you have to start painting the picture. This is a reinterpretation of the plot of The Vigil of Alexander the Great. But this is his technique. I don't use this. This is not my drawing. Without a doubt, the amount of time spent working with the form plays a role. But this, of course, is not a guarantee. Sometimes you get an unexpected solution that arises in the process of working on something else. There, let's say, things are going hard, and suddenly a solution to another problem is born - easily, freely, quickly. This unexpected form is even more valuable. At the same time, you have to constantly try to understand inside yourself - what are you doing? When I started teaching, a year or a half ago, it turned out to be a great help for me. I began to tell the students simple things (as it turned out, they have an information hunger), in particular, I told them how to make projects, as it seems to me, a methodology. And so I told and told, wrote it down on paper, and then came to the bureau and saw that we had already begun to skip over something in the speed of our lives, but we should have done it more slowly, with all the stages.
How important is the urban planning aspect of the architectural form to you?
The city is a measure, a dimension of form. Should the new building sound loud, should it be in charge, or should it not? After all, there is a situation where there are many, many ordinary buildings, and you have to do one thing, and the main thing is the same. Theater, for example. He must, just has the right to be formally more expressive than the "neighbors". Here you can draw a direct analogy with music: a city, a quarter is a kind of musical text with inner harmony, a text that can be read and to which something can be added taking into account harmony.
You are nevertheless closer to a rational model of an architect, you move methodically, step by step, checking the validity and appropriateness of each step
No, you can't say that either. The rational model is later, it is rationalization after the fact. I moved through the stages, as if I was solving a system of equations. But in fact, no, nothing like that. Everything happens at the same time, and all the time it seems that you have missed something. And then the form appears, and it doesn't matter what you missed. If appears.
For me, I have my own model of action: you must first understand what the idea, concept is. Including the concept of whether or not to build at all. Many people believe that an architect is a Kalashnikov assault rifle, give him a task and he will shoot. You just need to bring in more cartridges - and there will be a skyscraper, a summer residence, an office. But you can think - and refuse. You need to understand what the person (customer) wants to do, and what you want to do. And won't this building do much harm. We have had such cases. After all, we refuse to demolish old buildings at all, we do not even consider the situation with the demolition of the monument and its replacement with a remake. Now we are trying to persuade people to preserve their old houses.
Participation in modern purely commercial architecture (this is that development architecture, when the number of square meters is the defining idea) also does not attract us at all. The human scale is important, not the "dressing" of square meters in an architectural form. This, of course, does not mean that we are not doing projects with many meters. But if the only content of architecture is an investment void, something like the decoration of a large bank cell, then this is not at all interesting.
So, to take or not to take on a project is the first thing. The second is thinking about what it should be and why. There must be a program, one must assume what kind of life will arise in this place. Architects still largely shape human life. It is, in fact, the subject of harmonization.
The life that does not yet exist, which will be in this place later, when your building is built?
Yes. There should be a responsible program, interesting, which lifts up human life. Life scenario. It doesn't have to be a dull undertaking. Otherwise, you can drive yourself into a corner. And this is, in fact, a question that architecture should already answer. After a direct question to yourself, you should answer. Considering that you have all the information possible. There is such a definition - organic form. It can be understood in this sense - the organism, when it lives, may not know the laws by which it lives, like grass, but behaves as if it does. A clean form should ideally be informed about everything. She knows about the function, about the budget (about sad things), knows about the scale of a person, about his perception of space, both internal and external, about his fears, subconscious sensations. She knows about the history of architecture, because she cannot exist outside of it. And even refusing to know about the history of architecture, it, this form, also occupies some kind of historical niche. She absorbed all this into herself, all this information is in her DNA. The form, in my opinion, is the outline of the necessary solution, the border of necessity, so that no more and no less is necessary.
For me, there is one criterion: if you succeeded in something, even if conditionally, then at some point you realize that it was not you who did it. And the done thing acquires the right to an independent existence. It can already be given to people, it has already healed. There is a feeling of absolute freedom. But if there is no such sensation, and there are still a lot of thoughts in my head, this makes one suspect that the pure form did not work out after all.
How important is modern Western architecture to you?
I look at what catches my eye. When you see someone else's form, and when you know what question it should answer, then it is interesting to criticize it. Including modern Western architecture, because seeing the spatial result and reading the plan, I "rewind" and understand where this game of chess began: why it was done, what human attitudes were taken as the basis.
But don't you have a desire to try some of the tricks you saw there?
Watching to imitate is better not to look at all. Well, you know, there is different architecture arising from different conditions, with different approaches, social, ecological landscape. There is a Brazilian one with its vitality, there is an American one, there are various European schools. And Russian - must be. It only needs to be drawn, pulled out of space, torn away from commerce - it is still small, hiding somewhere, it is being pulled away by commercial interests now. But the fact that it will be, for me is certain. And when that happens, questions about her provinciality or imitativeness will disappear.
Where are the shoots of this school? Are there architects you could call like-minded people?
Very easy: Alexander Brodsky, Sergey Skuratov, Vladimir Plotkin, Alexey Kozyr, and a few more figures. They are all different, they are not like-minded people, but satellites, they do not form a party or a direction, but each one by himself.
And before? Is there any connection with the past, or did this new Moscow architecture grow out of nothing?
Well, what are you, our bureau is even in some captivity in the Soviet architecture of the seventies, under its strong influence, under the charm of the seventies monumentality. As you know, Sasha Pavlova, the daughter of Leonid Pavlov, works in the bureau, and this also connects us with this time. This is not a question of the school, but we feel continuity.
I will nevertheless return to the question of the West. Here we see Russian architecture - with this set of characters, thoughts and forms. And there is the West. Is there a danger that Western stars will suppress new architecture in Russia?
Working, everyday professionalism is very noticeable in the work of Western architects. They are organized, and ours often do not have this organization, they are commercially oriented. This has some advantage. But from the point of view of the development of architecture, this is normal and good, there is a dialogue, an active, even tough, but precisely the dialogue between local and alien, residents and non-residents. And there is nothing wrong with that, it causes competition, which means it wakes up the thought.
Are there creative figures in Western architecture that are close to you?
There is an interesting architecture that I watch all the time: Zumthor, Stephen Hall, people who started the practice late, who have something to say, who are not afraid to seem neither complicated nor simple, they are always trying to find the exact statement. This architecture, I would say, is professorial, in a high sense, correct.
I like the word "professor". This is similar to the methodology that you talked about - step by step, step by step. Not like the Dali you mentioned, an insight on the border of sleep and reality, but a thoughtful, calm statement
Oh no. I love and appreciate a much more spontaneous architect like Frank Gehry. Its bank façade facing the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is one of my favorites. There is a lot of drive here, and I will say that I appreciate the hidden, inner drive in architecture. And when I talk about professorial architecture, I do not like calm academicism at all. No, those people I spoke about, they are with drive. They're just smart too.
We know of two types of attitude of Russian architects to architects of the West. One - conditionally, the view of Bazhenov, who studied in France and Italy and all his life recalled everything that was beautiful there and then, during the period of study. The second, for example, Shekhtel, who studied somewhere, saw something, but lived in general without any connection with someone else's architecture. How do you see this situation now?
Architecture should not be born from outside architecture, it should be born from "here and now". It should not resemble either the old architecture or any biological forms, it itself is a new organism that was born here. Ideally, this is how unique things turn out, this is how new forms are born. But, of course, there is the phenomenon of school, apprenticeship. There are influences: through teachers, magazines, the Internet, travel. But here is the question of what to learn. In everything - at school, in influences - looking at other things, you need to learn to understand their organic nature, and not to quote and reproduce forms. You do not need to conduct a formal dialogue with what you see, you need to conduct an essential dialogue with it. I am everywhere and always rejoicing in good architecture: in the world, in the past, in Moscow, with my friends. But these good buildings, nevertheless, are few. And when you think about it, you realize that you are face to face with a problem, like any architect in the world: you have the same capabilities, the same pencil, the same brains, but a unique task and no ready-made solution. It doesn't matter if your budget is big or small. After all, a shed can be more significant than a skyscraper - if only because of the human scale of a shed. Therefore, I think that all relations with the West should develop beyond imitation.
Tell me, how relevant is the social component of architecture for you?
You know, Leonid Pavlov said that architecture is good to do either under a slave or socialist system. What Norman Foster is building now is largely due to his cooperation with developing countries, with ambitious political regimes. This is what he is going to implement in Moscow, he cannot implement anywhere in the world, he is criticized for it, but he came here for a great job, because Moscow is the Olympus of large orders. It's nice to feel like you're on Olympus.
But seriously speaking, in this regard, I regard the current situation as catastrophic. Now the situation is this: the people have no money, so they are building for the capitalists. In fact, money is a way to find out from people: how do they see their life, this territory? But for a person as a capitalist, the answer is very primitive - he sees both life and territory as a means of increasing money, for this he is invested in construction. And it is impossible to ask a person as a resident, he has no money. In principle, if you ask a person now if he wants to live in a multi-storey building on the twentieth floor with a balcony and a bathroom, he will answer: I want to. But he doesn't know anything else. After all, there could be villages hidden in forests, with good roads, with good clinics, maybe there could be low-rise dense housing. The people do not even know that they can organize a social order or form a territorial ideal: how they would like to live here.
This lack of social “voices” leads to crises. Few people know what to do with Moscow as an environment for life. There is a belt of industry along the Third Ring, one plant after another is being demolished, housing (near Kutuzovsky Avenue) or offices (near Volgogradsky Avenue) are being built. Business is inclined to replay the same schemes many times - this way there are fewer risks. But architecturally it means tautology. This place is good for housing, housing is already selling well here, we are using it, and we will sell housing here again. And this place is bad, industrial, unsuitable for life, and we will make it even worse. Nobody is involved in the rehabilitation of territories as cultural landscapes. And nobody is happy, everyone is unhappy. It’s sad. It remains to look for pure forms.
