Archi.ru: Nikita Igorevich, today the architectural studio "Studio 44" is one of the most famous not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Russia. What do you see as the main reasons for this success?
N. Yavein: I am very flattering to hear such words, but, to be honest, I myself think that outside of my native city our workshop is known much more than in St. Petersburg. Here, in the city, my name is still associated primarily with my former administrative activities, although I left the post of head of the Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments in 2004. I think the reasons lie in the not very active architectural life of St. Petersburg - unlike Moscow, we practically have no professional contests, shows, festivals, or biennials.
As for the reasons for success, I think everything is simple - the willingness to work hard and efficiently, with full creative dedication and high responsibility both for the design process and for its final result. “Studio 44” has really come a long way of formation - from a small family bureau to a powerful design company. We started our activity with projects carried out for the northern regions of the country, then we worked mainly in St. Petersburg, and in the 2000s we began to enter the Moscow, all-Russian and even foreign markets. During this time, our workshop has completed more than 80 projects, of which 26 have been successfully implemented. Among them are public buildings, business centers, shopping malls, banks, hotels, residential buildings.
Archi.ru: You mentioned the wide popularity of the workshop outside of St. Petersburg. I think that today the Studio 44 brand is associated, first of all, with a large-scale project of reconstruction of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff Building, also thanks to a very effective exposition at the Zodchestvo-2009 festival dedicated to this project. What has this project become for the workshop and for you personally?
N. Yavein: I am grateful to fate for this project - not everyone gets to work on the Russian building in the very heart of St. Petersburg - and for such a customer as Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky. His great merit is that the project from the very beginning developed in a civilized manner - without unnecessary haste, destructive for the restoration, and without ideological throwing from side to side. This is the rarest case when both the customer and the performer in the first place had reverence for history, before its monument, and everything else, despite its undoubted importance, is still in second place. We had time to feel this amazing building, we began to understand what it wants and what it resists … As for the workshop, the work on the creation of the Hermitage museum complex in the Eastern Wing of the General Staff building became a powerful catalyst for professional growth for each of the members of the creative team and for the bureau as a whole. Let me give you just such an example: we were forced to create a general design apparatus within the workshop, and then an institute of GUIs, which subsequently allowed us to significantly expand the range of design services provided. But at the same time, the Hermitage became for us almost the most difficult professional test, and in this case I am talking not so much about the process of working on a project as about the pause that came when the work finally ended. This was a very important lesson for us - no matter how difficult the project, the whole workshop team should not work on it. In the best case, a third of the team should work on one project, otherwise this is a direct path to ruin. Having miraculously stayed afloat, we now strive to have at least 2-3 large orders and several small projects at the same time.
Archi.ru: What do you call small projects? Private houses?
N. Yavein: No, we do not deal with private housing at all. Under the code name "trifle" we have piece, point objects in our workshop. For example, residential buildings of experimental typology or small centers of reconstruction in the historical center of the city.
Archi.ru: How many people work in the workshop today? How closely do you yourself participate in the creative process?
N. Yavein: Today, Studio 44 employs more than 60 architects and about 20 designers, and we also have our own model workshop. It is important that the company has had a system of creative teams for quite some time. One of them is headed by me, and, as a rule, she develops conceptual projects and the initial stages of all large projects. The second brigade is under the command of the Chief Pavel Sokolov (and is mainly engaged in reconstructive subjects, for example, "Mikhailovskaya Dacha" or the just won competition for the restoration project of the Alexander Palace). The third brigade is headed by GAP Nikolay Smolin, and its profile is large objects of new construction, for example, the medical and rehabilitation building of the Almazov Research Institute.
Of course, creative issues are tied to me as the head of the workshop, but I deliberately do not strive to participate in every project. Sometimes my participation in the process is limited to a few words: at the first stage, when we are just starting to discuss the concept, and then, when I correct something during the design process.
Archi.ru: How does the work on the project begin? What is most important about it?
N. Yavein: Everything starts quite predictably: I gather a group of architects, and we carefully analyze all the source material, that is, the place, its history and landscape, function, construction program. In the course of such "brainstorming" a general idea is born, which is then translated into manual sketches or working models, and only after that the team sits down at the computers.
If we talk about where the project begins and how the project is defined, then my answer sounds like this: "From the context." More precisely, from a variety of contexts. Today this is a very fashionable word, but, as a rule, it means only the immediate surroundings of a building site, while a city is not a dress on which you can quickly stick a patch and wear it further. For me, the context is both the history of the place, and the mythology that is necessarily associated with it, and the evolution of the surrounding buildings - and if you listen to it, things turn out to be multi-layered and multi-valued, open to a variety of interpretations.
Archi.ru: Did the economic crisis affect the work of the workshop?
N. Yavein: I would not say that something catastrophic happened to us. Of course, we were forced to slightly reduce the salaries of our employees, but on the other hand, we didn’t cut anyone. What the crisis really affected was the cost of design work on the market. That is, there is work, and there is no need to complain about its amount, but they pay for it less and less. First of all, half a year delays in payment are no longer surprising today. And secondly, if earlier the design of a square meter of an object cost about 3,000 rubles, today customers simply lower this bar by 1.5, or even 2 times! And if we are talking about a large-scale project, for example, some quarter, then the price often drops to 800 rubles per square. And then there will definitely be someone who will come running and say: "And I will do it for 300"!
Archi.ru: That is, the notorious tender system puts a spoke in your wheels?
N. Yavein: We do not play it. We had a very unpleasant experience: we did the first stage of the restoration of the General Staff building, and suddenly it turned out that the right to do the second still needs to be won, in this situation we were forced to heavily dump and, of course, this, of course, later came to our side more than once. Therefore, now we try not to participate in any tenders at all, we prefer custom-made tenders.
Returning to the topic of the impact of the crisis on the industry, I want to say that even a decrease in prices for professional services of architects is not the most sad thing. It is much more scary that we have begun to abandon our authorship more often. As a rule, this happens at the construction stage, when the customer makes such changes in the physical dimensions and architecture of the object that are incompatible with any of our ideas about what is correct and possible in architecture. Often the quality of the construction work itself becomes the reason for the refusal - the customer is so obsessed with the idea of economy that he builds a building very badly.
Archi.ru: In other words, the customer not only does not lend itself to education, but also becomes frankly uncontrollable?
N. Yavein: The client's artistic taste has fallen sharply, that's a fact. And this is due not only to the crisis and widespread dumping, but also to the fact that many nonresident entrepreneurs have come to the market. I understand that I risk being accused of snobbery, but nevertheless: in St. Petersburg today there is a crowd of people with great financial capabilities, but without an established artistic worldview. In general, they stopped walking in crimson jackets with gold buttons, but they continue to build such houses with might and main! And if in Moscow, it seems, this wave has already subsided, then in St. Petersburg, on the contrary, the dam just burst. Therefore, our strategy - I don’t know whether it is success or survival - is simple: we take on new objects only if we are dealing with an adequate customer.
