Grigory Revzin:
You are the director of the Institute for the General Plan of Moscow, that is, you are the manager of the brain that determines the strategic lines of the city's development. How do you assess the current state of Moscow?
Sergey Tkachenko:
Actually, a lot has been done. In place, so to speak, the capital of the world's first socialist state, a metropolis of capitalism arose. This is a serious infrastructural action. The city of fifteen million - in terms of scale, it is, in fact, the modernization of a decent state. Of course, many problems have arisen as a result. But any modernization creates problems.
Let's talk about the problems. I will try to list them. Social: Moscow housing has become a financial instrument, while the housing problem is not being resolved. Transport: Moscow traffic jams have become a standard sore subject. The legacy problem: it is believed that we have already lost historical Moscow, replacing it with dummies. Energy and environmental. I'm wrong?
I will not argue. Yes, Moscow is a city with a lot of problems. As for the solutions … You see, we experienced modernization in specific conditions. We had a difficult period when it was necessary to involve investors in solving urban problems. Well, the city had no funds. Moscow had to attract money - to grow, teach, attract, lick, provide conditions for growth. The conditions were that in the same housing thirty percent went to the city budget, seventy percent - to the investor. In fact, every urban problem - the same transport or energy - was solved through the burden of the investor, and this, in turn, gave rise to new problems. Like building a road at the expense of a shopping center that stands on it. The road is being built, but the load on it multiplies.
We will assume that this period has passed. Now we - not me, but the Moscow government - declare that up to half of any construction should be carried out by municipal orders. This does not mean that all these will be social houses in which pensioners will live - no, unfortunately. The city will simply act as an investor, build houses and sell at a commercial price.
How is it better?
Basically, this is a more manageable situation. The city actually does not need to build as much as we did. There is no need to re-consolidate the territory, to be led by the interests of the business. But I must honestly say that this is only a declaration so far. This is included in the updated city master plan, but this is only the beginning of the process.
In general, urban planning is a slow thing. The decisions that are made today will be visible at the earliest in five years. In the meantime, we will see what was invented - designed and agreed - five to ten years ago. So it will only get worse in the next five years. Now we have a lot of problems, there will be a collapse.
You have to understand that the city is always done in the mode of reconstruction and restoration. Not individual objects, but the entire city. I somehow managed to understand Moscow city planning because I was involved in reconstruction a lot. There cannot be such a situation that now we have finished reconstructing the city, and it just stands still. It is always broken and always needs to be repaired. Problems are not an extraordinary state of the city, they are the norm of its life.
Are there any ideas how to resist the collapse of problems?
We will carefully preserve green spaces. Resist attempts to build them up. Places of employment of labor should partly change, it is necessary to move to cleaner production. After all, it is not necessary for everyone to work in factories … It is necessary to try to bring places of employment closer to the place of human life. In general, these are all well-known measures. It's like with transport - you can come up with many concepts, but in general, elementary observance of the existing rules - the same parking rules - can already have a great effect. In most areas, we have invented good rules of the game, sometimes even very good ones. It makes sense to try to comply with them to a greater extent.
It seems to me that these are mostly questions of social behavior - power, business, residents. Are there any ideas for proper urban development? The most recent urban paradigm that determined the development of Moscow is the environmental approach. What comes in its place?
As a matter of curiosity, what are the complaints about the environmental approach? Don't you like, say, Ostozhenka?
From the point of view of architecture, there are many interesting things there. From the point of view of urbanism, Ostozhenka is a bank vault stretched over an urban area, where instead of banknotes there are square meters. The idea was to create an environment for life, but life is not there, no one lives there. Only the guards
In 1984, I worked in the workshop of Andrei Vladimirovich Ganeshin, and it was we who were engaged in the environmental reconstruction of the center. I have preserved these drawings - at the same time everyone drew. I studied Zayauziy, Petrovka, Sretenka. Then it was possible to make pedestrian areas. It was possible to make a city for residents. But it all died. What are the pedestrian zones, when there are solid fences, each section is fenced off from the city? The problem of Ostozhenka is that it was invented as a city for residents, but works as a city for property. In this sense, the environment is dying.
Actually, we missed a lot of forks. After all, the Soviet city was really designed for the good of the inhabitants - there were streets, courtyards, public buildings, we were going to make inner boulevards, open the first floors to the city. I am now omitting the fact that these streets were designed for the passage of demonstrations, although there was this. But in the 90s, with some even enthusiasm, we allowed to build up what the Soviet city planners allotted for citywide purposes. And this blocked the development opportunities for 100 years. In fact, today we cannot return to urban planning for humans.
Is there a new paradigm that can do something about the city?
In the modern Western paradigm, this is an eco-city. Ecology is understood broadly - not only as a reduction in emissions, although, of course, this is also, but as a principle of maximum saving of resources. Within the framework of this ideology, a person is a creature that spends useful resources and degrades the environment. Ideally, therefore, human activity should be minimal. He has to work where he lives. And consume everything within walking distance. Zero waste of resources on transport. Everything should be done over the Internet. But then sociality also tends to zero, in my opinion, this is a dead end - the city in this case dies. Although it may be that I am old-fashioned and cannot fully migrate to the network.
And in Russia, what are the ideas?
In general, in my opinion, a new city development strategy is always paper architecture. Strategy is always paper architecture. Someone drew that, and here it is a strategy. These can be completely unrealizable ideas, naive, impractical, meaningless at first glance. The initial thought is important, and then a long cycle of bringing it to mind, it can take twenty years. But I must say that today I do not see such a thought at all. No. In Russia today there is no conceptual architecture, or at least it is very little noticeable.
You are participating in the process of approving projects at the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Architecture, that is, you see most of the projects that appear in Moscow. And what, no new ideas?
This process must be imagined. He's not too creative.
Continuing about the same paper architecture - we had a period of "wallets" of the 80s, and in a sense they began to be realized in the post-perestroika period. They are not always literal, and their ideas are not always literal, but if we talk about stage-by-stage processes, then we will get just such a picture - in the 80s there was an explosion of ideas, in the 90s - implementation. I said that it was a period of something unfortunate for the city, but that does not mean that it was unhappy for the architects. For specific architects, this could be good, because extraordinary ideas were in demand.
And now Moscow architecture is developing further. Everything becomes more rigid, clear, natural. This is neither good nor bad, it is just that. Architecture, as an art that is responsible for a lot of money, naturally strives for everything orderly and predictable. When projects are being approved by the Moscow City Architecture Committee today, it is a machine that coordinates three or four objects per minute. When there are no special considerations from any of the coordinating authorities, then all this flies by instantly. Something average lives in this stream. This is not a place for extraordinary ideas - this is a machine for the production of ordinary. There is nothing to wait for any new concepts here. They are not found in this river.
Someone - let's call him Alexey Miller - was driving through the city of St. Petersburg, looking at the horizon, and suddenly realized how great a single skyscraper would look here - he would have subdued the whole city. This is how the Okhta Center project arose. Someone - let's call him Shalva Chigirinsky - was driving along the Crimean bridge, and suddenly realized that if the Central House of Artists was demolished and replaced by the Crystal Orange, Elena Baturina's dream, it would be incredibly cool. I'm not talking about the quality of these projects now, something else is important to me. Don't you think that, in the absence of ideas from architects, business is shaping the urban planning agenda? He dreams, he himself finds a place for a dream, means, ways of realization
Beautiful stories, but not true. In Moscow, at least, this is not entirely the case. In Moscow, there is generally little space left for building. All of these places are serious assets, so they are well described, understood, known. We know roughly what can in principle be built there. And then various businessmen go to the mayor and convince him that they will master these assets best of all.
Better theoretically means more profitable for the city, practically - well, how it goes. Then they receive an assignment from us for the site and begin to work with it. In the process, it turns out that this task does not suit them, because if you change the function, density, altitude regulations, then you can win a lot. They go to the mayor and begin to accuse the city planners of being unprofessional. And we answer them in greed and disregard for the interests of the city. In theory, we are the law, and we must defeat them, in practice, they are money, so it turns out differently. What is always the same is a conflict of interest. This is how the agenda is formed.
You have painted some extremely bleak picture. Sorry, but I have a feeling that you are not giving this interview. We met ten years ago, and I know you as an extremely ironic person. Do you remember how we met?
I remember very well - at the "Manilovsky Project". Together with the artists, the Mitki, we had a utopian tea party in the Toko Bank tower.
The idea then was that you then called the architecture of Moscow the realization of Manilov's dreams from Gogol's Dead Souls. We gathered in the Toko Bank tower for a pleasant tea-drinking with a conversation about the fate of Moscow city planning in the Manilov perspective. At Manilov there was an underground passage, and a bridge over a pond, and on this bridge merchants (in Moscow logic, they probably should have been co-investors of the bridge), and the "Temple of Solitary Reflection", and so on
I remember this with pleasure. Actually, from this, and then from working with "mitki" over Gostiny Dvor, I began a new life. Lev Melikhov introduced me to photography, since then I have become very carried away, began to do this professionally. In general, it was some kind of direction in my life, which, in fact, partly determined my Moscow studies.
When your houses, which amazed the general imagination, appeared - the egg house and the “Patriarch” house - I just thought that this was a continuation of the same line. After all, this aspect of irony is very noticeable in them. Combining dreams and naivety with historical hobbies. Manilov, I think, would have liked them immensely. Remember he has children - Alcides and Themistoclus. Egg and Patriarch
Irony is one of the facets of architecture, which, alas, never comes down to this. Architecture is something that people or the state invest in crazy money, and they are not up to jokes. Money that those who actually do it will never have. But something can be done. And the deeper the architecture, the more it should have different facets and levels. The plane of irony, history, subconscious meanings, dreams is also possible. From my point of view, if this is present, then the image itself turns out to be more interesting. It hurts people, it can also jar. A person will see a thing, and he will not like it, actively. And he will even leave the country, and all the time he remembers that, for some reason, I cannot forget this thing. So there is something in it. When people - not necessarily specialists - look at this object and cannot immediately determine how to relate to it, yes - no, but see a wide range, then this is interesting. This creates a layered structure.
But such a view is hardly possible in your current occupations
Then there was euphoria from some possibility. Now this is unrealistic to break through. The Manilov Project is pure dreaming. It was able to be realized in Moscow in some objects. Now this is no longer possible.
Wouldn't you build an egg house now?
Well, you have to push the tank to build half of the shell.
And that's why you moved away from “pure dreaming” to bureaucratic urbanism?
I honestly told you how the machine works on project approval. Three to four projects per minute, conveyor belt for the production of standard products. It is very important here who can stop the conveyor. Complete with a custom project. Who is eligible for off-system action. Now, to build an egg house, you need to be Foster or Zaha Hadid.
That is, only foreigners are allowed to dream in our country?
Everyone is allowed to dream. But now tickets for the realization of the dream are now sold only at the box office for foreign tourists. However, as has always been the case with these cash desks, if you have some administrative resources, you can also get through there. That's what I'm doing about this. I understand very well that such a project as a house in Khlynovsky impasse, which we are now finishing building, I would never have been able to implement without my current administrative position.
And that's why you are doing urbanism?
No, of course, not only for this. Urbanism is fascinating in itself. But the opportunities that open up really give me great pleasure.
I love my workshop, I like direct communication with people. I like to discuss the project, to speak it out, to draw, to see how it is born. I like architecture as art, and in art there should always be something immediate, something direct from the author. You know, Matisse made decoupage - compositions from cut-out colored paper - but he painted the paper himself. It is not technologically advanced, does not fit into a conveyor belt. This means that special conditions must be created for this to exist. I also created.
