Alexander Asadov. Interview With Yulia Tarabarina

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Alexander Asadov. Interview With Yulia Tarabarina
Alexander Asadov. Interview With Yulia Tarabarina

Video: Alexander Asadov. Interview With Yulia Tarabarina

Video: Alexander Asadov. Interview With Yulia Tarabarina
Video: Юлия Манагарова | Интервью 2024, March
Anonim

Who do you consider your teacher?

I decided to study architecture only in the 10th grade, at the suggestion of my mother, who, although she was a doctor, was always drawn to art. After a year of studies in the art studio, I entered the Odessa Civil Engineering Institute, from where, after 3 years of study, I moved to the Moscow Architectural Institute. At that time I did not know the profession deeply - and when I began rummaging in the library of the architectural institute, Konstantin Melnikov turned out to be an amazing discovery for me. It was a fresh impression, and his projects are very energetic, I think he "charged" my young soul. At that time there was still no monograph about Melnikov, and he himself was still alive. I walked around his house and even thought about getting to know him, but I was ashamed. Melnikov's house made an absolutely grandiose impression on me. Mysterious tower.

For myself, I have long ago determined the answer to the question why Melnikov is a very Russian architect. He has two beginnings, the first is a stunning irrational movement of the soul: why not make everything spin, or go somewhere to the side. An idea made so that everyone gasped and fell. Such is the Russian latitude and recklessness. And this is followed by ingenuity, Kulibinism, invention - that is, the irrational movement of the soul is replaced by a very rational coming up with solutions.

How does your form arise?

Probably intuitive. It is important that it is not primitive and boring.

There was a period when we said: a project is a lot of beautiful lines. Then they said: a project is a beautiful line. Then they began to say - a beautiful line is enough for several projects.

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Экспериментальный жилой квартал «Круги на воде». Фрагмент застройки квартала. 3-D визуализация
Экспериментальный жилой квартал «Круги на воде». Фрагмент застройки квартала. 3-D визуализация
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So you start with a drawing?

It so happened that the head only works with the hand. Sometimes decisions come between sleep and wake, before waking up. Then you take a pencil in your hand - everything crumbles. And suddenly something completely different turns out. Only a hand with a head. It is such a collaborative tool. At some point, I realized that the computer could not be mastered and gave up these attempts. I calmed down when I learned that Khazanov also did not know how. And I realized that without a computer, it's even faster. My task now is to generate ideas. Rocking the youth.

There was a very long period, almost a decade, when everyone worked in offices, it was necessary to raise small children - there was a lot of so-called hack-work, and for a very long time I was worried that I would plunge into this, die and create nothing creative. But apparently it was a period of accumulation. Then, having learned that after 60 to 90 years, Wright began to create his most famous works, I internally calmed down and decided that everything was ahead. And having calmed down, you just start coming up with some interesting things. Although doubts are constant, despair is constant, apparently, as a sign of a creative profession.

Although I would say that the most difficult thing in the profession is inner freedom. Then the decisions seem easy and there is no sweat or blood visible in them. She gives a lot. It gives the opportunity to rise to a new step every time, and this is probably the most valuable thing. We can say that all our life we are moving towards a state of inner freedom and only after achieving it does normal design begin. Maybe, if there is something in some of our projects, then these were moments when we suddenly became internally liberated.

And what constrains - customers, context, approval?

We tend to shackle ourselves. It is very convenient to refer to something - they say, customers, technologies … I realized that I should only blame myself. Even if you were hacked to death, it means that he did not protect you. Although it happens that if the customer imposes his decision - you have to accept it, digest and straighten the situation. By the way, I collect all the materials, all the information that is relevant to the project, even the handwritings of customers and everything that someone did before us - because it is all digested.

It turns out that external factors are even useful for you?

After graduation, I ended up in the experimental sector of the Moszhilniiproekt, which was headed by Evgeny Borisovich Pkhor. There, having made several reconstruction projects, having cooked in the old city, we learned the complexity, diversity, ambiguity - in contrast to the dominant at that time orthodox modernism, which then seemed impossibly dry and emasculated. Thus, I received an upbringing in reconstruction.

For me to see what it was and then grind it up and do something new is the perfect direction to work with. The initial impulse from the outside is very important - the customer, the site, or even the idea of one of the employees, which I digest in my own way. It doesn't have to be my idea first. I take it calmly.

Your reconstructions and buildings in the historic center are not hidden in context, they are very noticeable. Is this a principle?

This is a completely conscious principle. We immediately said to ourselves that the old must be old, and the new must be new. But the new must be such that it is worthy of the old. It should exist normally without adjusting. Although earlier, due to small volumes of work, the old and the new were mixed inside one house, the new was piled on top of the old, crawled, leaned against the old. Now, as the projects have become larger, we can afford, for example, to make a stylized superstructure over the old house - as we did before and after the war. And next, or in the depths of the complex, build something completely new. The contrast has shifted - it is now not inside one house, but between two buildings.

In the early 1980s, you participated in the competition for the Arch of Defense. What did it give you?

It was excitement and a kind of outlet at that time, the first opportunity to participate in an international competition at all. A small detective story is connected with this: in order to get the competition program, we met near the monument to Tchaikovsky with the attaché of the French embassy. Half an hour later, some people disguised as firemen came to the workshop, supposedly to check security and looked through all the papers.

To participate, a serious certified architect was needed and Professor Golzamdt became the leader, and the team of authors included 10 young people - Khazanov, Skuratov, and Mikhail Kokoshkin, all were doing the same project. Therefore, there are a lot of topics in it. The project did not get anywhere, entered the qualifying category. The most surprising thing is that when we recently got it from the archive, it turned out that it is still interesting, it is not a shame to show it.

Then, out of inertia, they took part in the Opera Bastille. There Skuratov came up with an interesting thing - he replayed the typological scheme, proposed a good idea, however, then it was amicably ditched by "freaky" architecture.

Then did you feel yourself in a global context?

No, then we didn’t feel it yet.

What do you find interesting now in the global context?

The most interesting thing is what is interesting with us now. It's just a gift from fate. Everyone who has remained in the profession is rewarded with what is interesting here now. And in the beginning we had a foreign echelon of the second caliber, now the first one. Then there were sketches just for the name, now everything is serious, Foster works here. This is probably the most interesting thing.

That is, do you assess the presence of stars as positive, and not as competition?

I even got into competition somewhere and something even flew away from me because of this competition. I felt it on my own skin. Therefore, I treat it as a natural phenomenon, as an element. Winter was supposed to come, but suddenly it snowed unexpectedly. Well.

How do you feel about curvilinear architecture?

The most dangerous thing is to allow the reception to become self-sufficient. Curvilinear shapes were a reaction to boring rectangular ones, then I got tired of curves very quickly, and I somehow distanced myself from them, especially when there were a lot of them, including in Moscow. Now I work more with diagonal grids, some kind of natural elements. Although each time this presupposes a collision with technology, as, for example, in a theater project in Kaliningrad, there are technologically complex solutions that, if we are removed from the project (and this is already happening) cannot be well implemented. Without authors, it can end in everyone's ashamed …

Музыкальный театр «Балтийский форум» © Архитектурное бюро Асадова
Музыкальный театр «Балтийский форум» © Архитектурное бюро Асадова
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Besides the theater, you have a house with a media screen and a house above the railway. Are you striving for modern technological solutions?

Certainly. It does not work, of course, so that each project carries an innovative element, but we are striving for this. This sometimes helps in promoting the project and in communicating with the customer. Innovative pathos is now more and more loved.

Isn't it scary to build a house over the railway?

Somehow it's not scary at all. Maybe because we have already seen such houses. We made a special trip to Belgium, there we looked at large such complexes on purpose, there are consultants on this matter.

You say that the plastic technique should not prevail, but what then prevails?

Everything is different in different projects. We are now expanding our palette and strive for each project, especially a commercial one, to come up with a logo, name, image - in order for this to help and extend the architecture. Now at MIPIM a project was exhibited, which we called a pearl.

Поселок «Жемчужина Ильинки» © Архитектурное бюро Асадова
Поселок «Жемчужина Ильинки» © Архитектурное бюро Асадова
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This is a village surrounded by a kilometer-long wave-like house. Inside are cottages, community center, lake. A restaurant on the water, under a dome of mother-of-pearl triangles, translucent like a pergola. A real gem in a real shell. It is under this name that it now goes, "the pearl on Ilyinka". We were pushed by the fact that it was supposed to be a competition between us and Zaha Hadid. We were so scared, we tried so hard - then Hadid, for some reason, did not participate. But it stimulated us. If possible, there will be an event.

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таунхаусы
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Your architecture is sculptural, you can see it from the very beginning. Is sculpturality your theme?

Probably. Earlier it was less realized, now it is more aware. There are a number of projects where the form is rigid, even, and still it is sculpted a little.

On the other hand, your architecture is wireframe. Probably because of this, the word "deconstructivism" appeared …

Wireframe has two faces. The first is a readable wireframe. From experience and growing up, I understand that this is a very southern approach. Only in the south can you put a frame and then fill it. And in my early projects, these elements were imitations. The outer column was actually carried by the inner one, but the impression was created that the structure was breaking out. This is a spectacular technique, it is now used in Moscow - torn off and floating cornices, pergolas - all these are southern techniques.

It is much harder to make your own, northern trick. Such "wrapped" architecture, the insides of which do not break out. This is what is associated with some kind of cocoons, potatoes. This is closer to us, because our direct prototypes are northern huts, where housing and production are all collected in one building. Everything there is calm and closer to the natural lines, covered and united. It is much more difficult to create architecture without spectacular ejection of columns, structures, without exposing the frame. But this is what is characteristic of us and could designate our architecture as unlike any other. I probably haven't done a single one of these at home, but I understand that if you go, then in this direction.

And the second skeleton is internal self-discipline. Plans, regularity. When there is some kind of regular grid, the structural construction of the plan. The lack of such a framework seems to me to be negligence. All good architectural things are structured, internally modulated, proportioned.

The last question is the architect's dream. What would you like to build?

Once, when in 2000 we began to design an alluvial island, then it was not in the Emirates - there was a dream to build it. In 1998 we came up with a sail on Kalininsky Prospekt. The sail appeared in Dubai, the dream disappeared. When we designed the Yugra Island near Tuapse, we dreamed of making an alluvial territory. It even seemed that as the Lord you were creating a piece of reality, and then when it didn't work out, other projects were launched, the dream disappeared. It turns out that she is always changeable, an elusive dream. Probably the dream is to achieve inner freedom. And what to build at the same time is no longer so important.

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