Archi.ru: Alexander Andreevich, let's start from the very beginning. How did the bureau, named after a particular district of Moscow, come about?
Alexander Skokan: In the late 1980s, the Council of Ministers of the USSR acted as the customer for the project of the Ostozhenka district planning. As you know, this territory has not been built up since the 1930s - the general plan of 1937 provided that an avenue from the Palace of Soviets to Luzhniki would run through the Ostozhenka area. As a result, the palace was not built, and the area remained untouched, overgrown with weeds and was, I must say, very picturesque and truly Moscow. And the Council of Ministers needed to build houses for its bumps somewhere - by that time the fashion for living in the very center of the city was already flourishing with might and main - so the choice fell on Ostozhenka. The plan for the reconstruction of this territory was ordered by the Moscow Architectural Institute, and a special team was created at the institute for this. In particular, it included Andrei Gnezdilov and Rais Baishev, who, in turn, invited me. At first it was the Scientific and Research Center MARCHI, and then, when the project was defended and approved, we decided to exist independently, and the institute graciously let us go. Then the unexpected happened: the Council of Ministers was disbanded, the political system changed, and we were left with our project in our hands and sort of became the main specialists in the development of Ostozhenka. A lot of investors immediately rushed to this area, and at first they all listened to us, and we advised them, guided and corrected them. It was an amazing time!
Archi.ru: The project for the reconstruction of Ostozhenka that you developed had a huge resonance in the professional community. What exactly, in your opinion, were the reasons for this success?
A. S.: We then set ourselves a very specific, but not typical for that time, task - to restore the historical environment, and in this concept we didn’t mean the restoration of mansions or the construction of new objects of similar dimensions, but the restoration of the urban planning fabric of the district. In Moscow at the time, it was customary to think either in separate plots or in blocks, but we actually introduced an additional scale, proving that each block consists of land holdings with their unique boundaries and proportions. True, instead of the bourgeois word "land tenure" we then said "compositional-urban-planning module", but the essence of this did not change - in fact, we tried to restore the original town-planning rules, according to which cities have always existed. We did not dictate to developers what exactly can be built on this or that site, and what is not, but we, as we would say now, have determined the urban planning potential of each site. Considering insolation, surroundings, etc. determined the density, number of storeys, etc. Then, of course, we started having problems - investors constantly came and asked to throw a hundred or two square meters. Gradually, the situation changed, projects were coordinated without us, and we stood on the sidelines and watched what a terrible force it was - money. And yet I am convinced: if initially there had not been a project that served as a limiting factor for the development of the area, everything would have been much worse.
Archi.ru: Do you yourself agree with the definition of today's Ostozhenka as a "golden mile"?
A. S.: I agree that this area is not like all the others. True, this dissimilarity has both positive and negative sides. The desert of Ostozhenka in the evenings and on weekends has become a proverb in the tongues, and this, alas, is a result that we did not expect at all. But as a part of the urban environment, it seems to me that this is a very intelligible and interesting place. It was thanks to the developed rules that were followed and ensured a logical development. A similar attempt was later made on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, but with less success. Plus, we once made a similar proposal for Zamoskvorechye, but there we did not become general designers of the district and, again, things did not go further than conceptual developments. So, yes, Ostozhenka is a completely unique place for Moscow.
Archi.ru: Your bureau has built about 10 buildings in the Ostozhenka area, and in total there are about 60 in Moscow, but in recent years you have been working more in the region. What is the reason for this?
A. S.: Well, I would say we were driven out of the city. The style in which we work was somehow not very consistent with Luzhkov's environment, we have always suffered from flat-mindedness, which the former mayor did not like so much. True, we are still doing single projects in the capital - now, for example, houses on Smolensky Boulevard and on Prechistenskaya Embankment are being completed. But the main work site is now, indeed, in the Moscow region - we are designing in Vidnoye, Odintsovo, Balashikha, Mytishchi, Lyubertsy.
Archi.ru: Alexander Andreevich, you are considered one of the founders of the environmental approach in architecture, and it was he who formed the basis of most of your projects carried out for the historical center of Moscow. But, obviously, work in the Moscow region requires some completely different algorithms?
A. S.: There is only one algorithm - the fight against the excessive desires of the investor, who, having seized a piece of land, is trying to squeeze the maximum out of it. Unfortunately, the norms existing today are so vague that it is impossible to prohibit the developer from doing this. As a result, we continually design more than the space can handle, and much more than is necessary to create a humane environment. Of course, we are trying to dodge and find solutions that at least somehow compensate for this excess density. For example, a house in Odintsovo is over 180 thousand square meters. As a plastic form, it is interesting - giant openings, consoles, play with silhouette and color. But how cozy and comfortable it will be to live in is unknown?
Of course, at such a scale, it is strange and stupid to talk about the environmental approach, but its key quality - relevance - can and should be used by an architect, I am sure of this. This house, for example, was conceived as one of the first in the city, at the entrance to the Mozhaisk highway. A kind of capital letter. And the capital letter can be spectacular, ornate, although we follow not only the logic of the location of the object, but also the building site itself. An architectural structure always grows out of place, out of the dimensions of the site, out of insolation. Even if it is a monster, it is a monster for a specific place. So basically my approach to design has not changed - you take into account all the circumstances related to place, time, situation, spatial and temporal context.
Archi.ru: In general, in your opinion, is the environmental approach still relevant as a creative method?
A. S.: The essence of the environmental approach was that the environment is more than architecture, in fact it is social life. We never designed exquisite things that would inspire architects - we tried to create a space for living. Now, it seems to me, the environmental approach has largely become a political slogan, a convenient basis for an architectural bureaucracy and is used as a justification for a system of agreements. Plus, now in domestic architecture, a more design approach is in fashion, i.e. the design of the "stuff". Personally, I repeat, it seems to me that this is not an option - you can make a wonderful car - and it will look catchy against any background, both historical and high-tech, but the building is always dictated by the place in which it is being built.
Archi.ru: As I understand it, the design approach is not close to you, but is it clearer than, say, historicism? I know that once you refused to design at the beginning of Ostozhenka an object on the site of a burnt-out dispensary, arguing that there is too much modern architecture there, and you do not want to do historical architecture and will not.
A. S.: Yes, I am convinced that architecture should reflect its time. However, once we nevertheless sinned. They designed a building on Turgenevskaya Square and, among many options, drew one a la historical one, and the chief architect of the city said that he could agree on this particular option without submitting it to the Public Council and the investor immediately agreed to it. We refused to implement this option and left the project, and according to our sketches, the project was brought to mind by someone else - it turned out to be a typical such pseudo-historical building. Honestly, personally, I always try to bypass her.
Archi.ru: To be honest, I remembered the story about the dispensary in order to ask you: that is, in your opinion, there can be a lot of modern architecture?
AS: Of course it can. Nobody canceled the concept of measure. And then, a modern building must be of impeccable quality in order to have the right to exist in the historical environment, and the issue of quality - not even design, but implementation - is perhaps the most painful for our industry. Unlike their Western colleagues, Russian architects cannot control the choice of a contractor and materials, and the so-called architectural supervision often comes down to an empty formality. In fact, our responsibility ends in the drawings, and if the worker was not allowed to do it, then everything, consider, you can put an end to the object.
Archi.ru: Having built more than 60 objects, how many of them are you completely satisfied with?
A. S.: One! The bank is impeccably built on Prechistenskaya embankment, our first implementation. All other objects have quality claims and considerable ones.
Archi.ru: Wow! After such recognition, I am even scared to ask you what, in your opinion, are the prospects for the profession of an architect in Russia …
A. S.: In terms of the amount of work, the prospects are good. It will take a very long time to design and build. But to what extent the construction will be of high quality is a big question, since the architect has no real mechanisms to force the developer to issue a high-quality construction. And the current housing shortage only contributes to this situation. So for the architecture itself, I see nothing good. Of course, there is also private architecture - expensive, refined, exemplary, but here the customer's taste, which is still far from ideal, often becomes a problem.
Archi.ru: And in conclusion, I would like to ask about the work on the project for the planning of the territory of the Moscow agglomeration. The contract for its implementation has already been concluded?
A. S.: Yes. And the materials have been received. Now we have formulated the main problems of our city and are trying to understand which of them are amenable to architectural "treatment". The crisis of the transport system, poor management of the territory, the ecological situation - they all lie on the surface. In general, we are looking for what and how architecture can help to cope with. It is still very early to talk about any concrete proposals - we have just started working together with our partners, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and French urban planners - but I welcome the very idea of expanding Moscow. And not in its present form, when a huge prominence rushes to the southwest, but in principle - the city has finally broken through the ring. In fact, a precedent has been created, a legal opportunity to consider the city and the region as a single organism. And this prominence is only the first stage on the way of connecting the city and its environs.
