The structure of the first book is extremely laconic and informative. Each object has three to seven spreads, all information (address, year of creation, status (project or construction), customer) is focused on the first, the rest are reserved for illustrations. A brief description of each project is given in two languages, and TEPs, instead of a dry table, are presented in the form of amusing and visual infographics that turn the study of the bureau's work into a fascinating process. In total, there are about 80 objects here, from a residential building in Zagorskiy Passage to the latest competition concepts that have recently become the heroes of our publications (for example, a pop music center in Taipei or a residential complex on Savvinskaya embankment). They are sorted by typological principle, so that by studying the table of contents of the book, you can quickly understand which objects in the portfolio of TPO "Reserve" are the most. The undisputed leaders here are residential complexes, in second place are office and administrative buildings, and the list of the most mastered typologies by the bureau is closed by shopping and entertainment and multifunctional complexes.
Perhaps what is most interesting in the book is the absence of any distinction between projects that have remained on paper and completed projects. Leafing through the catalog, sometimes you cannot immediately distinguish the former from the latter, but the gradual, but steady evolution of the architectural language of TPO "Reserve" with each new spread becomes more and more obvious. The bureau, which in terms of its scale is more comparable to a design institute, does not stand still and does not reproduce its own projects of some years ago, on the contrary, the team of architects under the leadership of Vladimir Plotkin is in constant search, scrupulously honing their professionalism on dozens of functional options. schemes and plastic systems, modules and grids.
These studio works - sketches, 3D graphics, mock-ups - which usually do not leave the walls of the workshop, formed the frame of the second book. “Vladimir Plotkin. Architecture”is no longer a catalog striving to cover the maximum number of works, but an author's anthology of the most interesting projects and realizations. There is no longer any unity of the layout and the rigidly fixed number of spreads for a particular project - they are freely strung on the core of Plotkin's graphics.
Vladimir Plotkin himself says that this, the second, book at one time was invented by him as an alternative to the official catalog, which had been made for several years and at some point seemed to be hopelessly stalled. It was then that the chief architect of TPO "Reserve" sat down at the monitor himself, went through his presentations and lecture texts and began to collect his own book, coming up with it right away either in spreads or in whole sections. At the same time, Plotkin deliberately abandoned both the genre of the monograph and the idea of hiring a professional editor to formulate his thoughts - this book was entirely made by himself, from the general structure and all texts to the layout of each individual page. In terms of genre, it is, rather, a diary or an artbook, where there is no hierarchy, and graphics born in the margins are sometimes an order of magnitude more complex and multi-layered than architectural projects.
What immediately catches the eye here is the variety of methods of illustration: somewhere there are drawings, somewhere only visualizations and photographs, on some pages they literally crowd, and on others there is only one picture,but very effective. Sketches here are mixed with explications, and explanatory notes are interspersed with author's comments. Moreover, the latter can be both expanded (real "debriefing"), and, conversely, extremely brief, like those that are left in the fields of photo albums by their owners, when they draw an arrow to a particular picture and mark "this is there, then -that ". Particularly amusing are Plotkin's remarks about the renders: “A dull perspective, but the picture is mesmerizing” (about the Kamushka quarter) or “Glamorous picture on the right, the most lyrical picture on the left” (about a residential complex in the District).
About "Airbus", which due to its superdense mass remains one of the most controversial residential buildings of the last decade, Plotkin says that at first there were "cute, innocent graphic rantings about the metropolis, about misanthropy and the inevitability of collective living", and then the investor decided to implement an invented concept literally: "One cell module, multiplied a thousandfold, is an investor's dream!" It was then that "in fear of what had been done, exercises began to humanize the living matrix": torn fractures appeared at the ends, and the "divine" proportion was designated by a horizontal thickened belt and several plugs. However, as the architect notes in parentheses: "It is in vain: in the process, for some reason, everything has shifted." And yet to the author himself, this project seems to be a very accurate reflection of the current urban planning situation: "If we have a city with ten million inhabitants, then this should somehow be expressed in architecture."
In general, the quality of implementation is one of the most painful and acute topics for an architect, which rises in relation to almost every building. Unexpectedly, there is a lot of self-criticism here: analyzing the erected objects, Plotkin without embellishment lists their weaknesses, taking full responsibility for the mistakes made. So, the residential part of Fusion_park, in his opinion, is distinguished by "an indefinite pattern of perforation of walls and window openings", at the headquarters of Aeroflot, "the decorativeness of white horizontal stripes somewhat" vulgarizes "the whole theme of the facade", and about the interior of the repeatedly sung shopping center "The Four Seasons" he dryly remarks: "Too luxury, everything is emasculated and boring." It’s even a little pity that the architect is much, much more modest in his assessments of his indisputable successes: Plotkin’s highest praise for the building is the adverbs “not bad” and “acceptable,” and the author ascribes the success of the Arbitration Court building to critics: “Praise for its cleanliness and openness, permeability, lightness and rationalism, as well as respect for everything - for the monuments around, and for the people inside - all this revolves around the image of an ideal court, humane, reasonable, open … I even wanted to believe and repeat that these theses were the super idea of this project”.
Most of all from the author goes to the building of territorial tax inspectorates on Zemlyanoy Val. This long-lived project (developed in 2001, implemented in 2008) is shown in dynamics: first there are sketches, then drawings (“beautifully drawn facades promise successful implementation”) and renders (“draw in - everything works in the pictures”), and then photographs of the constructed object and the statement: "The house fell out of the environment without creating a super interesting new situation." And then - work on the mistakes, conclusions for the future: “The multi-layered contextuality of the main facade had to be squeezed by traditional materials (stone, plaster). When working with the selected composition, it would be necessary to stop at something completely unusual, not a ribbon, albeit a very well-drawn theme. True, you always want this and it must be done somehow."
Leafing through the book further, you understand that Plotkin keeps his promise to himself: in the project of a business center on Dubininskaya square, a round is opposed, and a glass plane is opposed to lamellas (in this volume, the prototype of the building of the Arbitration Court is guessed),the towers of the administrative and business complex on Khodynskaya Street dynamically “dodge” from each other, and the buildings of the service center on the Moscow Ring Road resemble sharp-angled “slices”. The architect sets himself tasks for the future: “The hexagonal grid in architectural and planning schemes, as a rule, is far-fetched formal and, most often, because of its geometric rigidity, is irrational. Performed many times in the 1950s-1960s. For some reason, in this project, at the stage of a volumetric solution, it works in a very modern way (in the project of the Kamushki quarter - AM). Probably, dynamic shifts of volumes in the plan, multidirectional bevels and textures, glamorous rendering help. In a couple of years I will have to figure it out."
There are no manifestos, no program interviews, or even the official biography of the architect so familiar for this genre - instead of the information that is already available on the Internet, Vladimir Plotkin published a voluminous essay in pictures about his work and profession. “Perhaps, in architecture, as well as in the fine arts in general, some kind of super-political idea is harmful,” he casually notes in a commentary on one of the projects. "It's more beneficial to focus on relevance and beauty." The book “Vladimir Plotkin. Architecture "convincingly proves that its author is faithful to this postulate with all his heart.
