Arriving for an interview with Andrei Gnezdilov at the Ostozhenka bureau, I managed to catch a fragment of an internal seminar - a discussion of the concept of the Moscow agglomeration. The Bureau, as you know, was included in one of ten architectural teams working with this concept, and at the fourth seminar, according to the results of the experts' vote, it took an honorable second place.
The discussion was like a mini-seminar: detailed and crowded, with reports and slides, with conflicting opinions. It immediately became clear that Andrei Gnezdilov is now actively working on this project, and therefore the conversation inevitably began with Greater Moscow.
Archi.ru:
Andrey Leonidovich, please tell me: now, when more than half of the concept has already been completed, what are your impressions of working on the concept of the Moscow agglomeration?
Andrey Gnezdilov:
To be honest, I am very glad that we have this work, we have never had such a platform as an agglomeration. Moscow together with the Moscow region is a wildly interesting project. It is interesting to study her: I was born in Moscow, and I used to think that I knew her quite well - but over the past few months I have learned a lot of interesting things, which is both surprising and pleasing.
And what do bureau discussions give?
Conversation is a characteristic feature of this work. We are constantly discussing everything. We are talking with the writer, historian and architect Andrei Baldin. With Arkady Tishkov, Deputy Director of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences. We work with French colleagues. We talk a lot - in order to find the right move.
You don't need to create a project here. Rather, it is necessary to diagnose and offer treatment: it is obvious that the city is sick. And the treatment, strictly speaking, consists of platitudes: airing, water procedures, proper nutrition, quiet music - it seems that all this is not difficult, but this is what health consists in, in the correct way and organization of life. The city is an organism, not a mechanism: many interconnected systems. You need to consider these systems separately, send them to different doctors for different studies, and then just as carefully study the connections between them - you now probably understood from the discussion how closely everything is interconnected.
I was particularly impressed that within the workshop there are several opposing opinions on different key issues. There are, for example, categorical opponents of cars, but there are more practical people who recently got behind the wheel and understood how a car is needed, if only to take a child to a hospital. Are you a supporter or opponent of cars?
In some case, I will go by car, in some - by public transport.
Our city is poorly suited for life, both for road transport and for public transport. The situation is noticeably better in the center, and behind the Third Ring a completely different life begins with different principles. However, there it is no longer quite a city, namely an agglomeration, assembled from microdistricts built on the site of former villages and settlements. They are poorly connected to each other: the city developed as a star, like any single-core metropolis. In addition, the star-shaped structure of the city is characteristic of a centralized government - and we have a very centralized government.
By the way, are you going to literally react to the decision of the authorities and are you using in your version of the concept the territory of the southwestern "prominence" recently annexed to Moscow?
In the regulation on the competition there is no specific requirement to place anything in this particular territory. The task is set as follows: the development of the annexed territories in connection with the old Moscow. There is not a single word that we should relocate someone, build something up, and so on. We need to consider this territory, and we consider it: like a garden in front of a house. It turns out a city with two poles - stone and green, these are opposites, and tension arises between them. Green city and stone city.
Is the "prominence" becoming a parkland?
Not only him, all the Moscow region. The city will perish in the products of its vital activity, if it does not have green recreation nearby. We were asked as architects: where are the reserves for development, and we answer that the reserves are not outside, but inside the city. In order to develop new territories, you need to build a lot of infrastructure, at least roads. Railways run along the borders of this "wedge", and Troitsk is connected with Moscow only by the Kaluzhskoye highway, and is very poorly connected: both the interchange near Teply Stan and traffic along Profsoyuznaya street were unsuccessfully solved.
But in fact, the Moscow region is still used as recreation. It is being built up with cottage settlements, and no agriculture is developing there.
Agriculture in the open air in our climate is generally poorly developed: this is a zone of unstable farming. Here you can develop animal husbandry in some of its modern forms, and production for processing agricultural products that cannot be located in the city. Such examples already exist - in particular, one can name the complex of the Danone factory on the M2-Crimea highway. After this factory was built, jobs appeared in the city of Chekhov and people stopped traveling to Moscow. Also Obninsk, Serpukhov, Pushchino, Kashira, in our opinion, should become points of growth, nuclei of mini-agglomerations, where people from nearby villages will come to work.
We propose to locate logistics terminals in the area of the large railway ring. The city consumes a lot of goods, which means that it is necessary to determine the places where these goods will be processed, sorted and packaged.
Now, it seems, from the cities near Moscow they go to work in Moscow, and to these cities summer residents go from the villages.
There is no reliable statistics on commuting, there is no information about the number of jobs, about who works where - the society in this sense is not completely transparent. Although Yandex, for example, already has a lot of data - such systems track a lot of movements. A surprising amount of information has been found on the Internet, for example, in resources such as openStreetMap or wikiMapia.
Now you are working with a gigantic project of the Moscow agglomeration, and you started with the planning of the Ostozhenka district. What was, in your opinion, the main thing in that long-standing work?
The key idea was that the city cannot be reconstructed according to principles alien to it, imposed from the outside. And we turned to the old "Moscow charter", which was adopted in the middle of the 19th century and contained the simplest but wise rules. For example, an important rule of the firewall, according to which the wall of the house on the border of the site should be made deaf, devoid of windows, so that in the event of a fire the fire would not spread to the neighboring house. Or, if the owner is poor and the house is small, he could retreat from the edge, but in this case the indent should have been at least two fathoms.
Historically, city quarters have always been divided into households, plots, which, in fact, formed the basis of the city's fabric. In Soviet times, this fabric was broken: we lived in a socialist city, where the neighborhoods were cut through the courtyards, you could walk anywhere through the courtyard. The fences that surrounded the property disappeared: they were burned, mainly during the war. Having studied the history of the district, we decided that it was the old households that would become the module of our planning of the Ostozhenka district, we began to look for their boundaries and draw a layout according to these boundaries.
It was 1989. It was as if we had foreseen the development of events: in fact, while still living in a Soviet country, we drew and agreed on the capitalist parceling of neighborhoods. Several years passed and capitalist demands became a reality. It is possible that Ostozhenka was developing so rapidly and successfully for this very reason: everything was ready, contracts were concluded very simply, and the concepts of their development were very simply approved. Because we thought of everything in such a way that the neighbors did not interfere with each other.
Later, we also worked with the restoration of urban tissue, for example, in Samara, where the historical parceling was preserved much better than in Ostozhenka. Now a former employee of our bureau Vitaly Stadnikov has become the chief architect of Samara - now, here, we are waiting for the development of events! (laughs)
Can you compare your work with Greater Moscow and Ostozhenka?
We apply approximately the same method to the Moscow agglomeration as to Ostozhenka: the main task is to understand the body, to understand how it works.
Is your approach to urban planning historicized?
We have never made tracing paper. We try to work according to historical principles and rules.
Why did you rely on the “Moscow City Charter”?
In order to understand why the city is exactly like that. There are many circumstances: a river that flows in its own bed; landscape; history, starting with the Moscow principality. We went to historians to understand the logic of the city's development, to understand what prompts it to form in this way and not otherwise.
But history is a lot of layers: a medieval city, then a capitalist city, then a modernist city planning …
This is a scratch. It will overgrow.
In general, there is no heroism in changing the landscape by man. The landscape is always stronger. In this sense, I am a fatalist. I believe that any result always arises as a consequence of the interaction of a host of circumstances.
But the circumstances are different: there is a landscape, hills and rivers. And there is a human will - for example, Stalin wanted to build a prospect and they built it.
Not quite so - just look at the Moscow Ring Road: it is no longer visible on the map of Moscow. Khrushchev decided that this would be the border of Moscow, and where is it? Crumbled. In many places it has been violated, there are new quarters and the border is already in a completely different place. Will - Khrushchev, or there is an abstract "sovereign" will - it does not mean anything to the body of the city, the city grows according to its own laws.
We encountered the sovereign's will on the example of Ostozhenka. Why did it turn out to be undeveloped? Because according to the general plan of 1935, the entire area was to be demolished: a wide avenue was planned here, leading to the Palace of Soviets. It was impossible to build - during all Soviet times, two houses and one school were built. And this Stalinist "sovereign's will" did not take place, everything went differently. But, as my friend Alexander Skokan jokes: Lenin should be standing on the building of the Palace of Soviets, with his hand; this did not happen - but here you are, Peter I appeared next to him, the same gigantic and almost in the same pose.
Also, by the way, quite a "sovereign" will set him up!
I believe that if something in the city should take place, then it will happen one way or another. Some things just happen the way they should. The prospectus did not materialize. And the temple returned: we started designing when there was a pool. When we analyzed the historical buildings, we noticed that closer to the temple its density increased - because it was more prestigious to settle there, and housing was more expensive. And now again those houses that are closer to the temple have become more prestigious. How can we do without metaphysics?
If you are interested in the history of the city, why do the planning projects of the Ostozhenka bureau often use orthogonal planning, a simple grid, and do not imitate, for example, the curved streets of a medieval city?
Don't think that checkered layout is boring. The orthogonal grid is a very powerful topic - if only because it has such a thing as a diagonal. In my opinion, the best orthogonal quarter is the Khavsko-Shabolovsky complex, where the houses are set diagonally with check marks. The orientation of the courtyards, the transition from one courtyard to another create a very interesting spatial intrigue there. We used this theme in Krasnodar.
In addition, it must be said that it is almost impossible to navigate in a city with a picturesque layout. A person has in his subconsciousness that the turn is ninety degrees. Otherwise, if the layout is, for example, triangular, a person gets confused like in a forest. A regular grid of streets is a sign of a city, a man-made space. It helps a person to orientate himself and to feel himself within the rational urban fabric. True, where the avenues begin, the city ends.
The buildings built by the Ostozhenka bureau are also often geometrical simple, rectangular, cubic, take at least the towers on Dmitrovskoe highway. Why?
This is a lean architecture. This is a classic example of a situation in which a customer required maximum square meters with minimum costs. The result is the most decent facial expression that we managed to preserve during such a task. Because of the economy, loggias appeared there: the walls were laid directly from the loggias, which made it possible not to spend money on the construction of scaffolding, and then also sell these loggias as an additional area.
Your project for an office building on Belorusskaya is another example of a simple form. We can say that Ostozhenka is famous for its laconic solutions. How is this combined: on the one hand, the revival of historical parcelling, and on the other hand, a very laconic form, downright cube?
Again, everything follows from the context and the requirements of the customer (who, as a rule, need the same thing: as many square meters as possible). Do you remember what Belorusskaya Square was then with its small factories and shallow market atmosphere. Then our building became the background of the church. Making a house just glass is very small-scale, it gets lost, it becomes a bar of soap. I am sure that the best background would be a simple strip, a "boatswain's vest", as simple and horizontal as possible, and not fractionally vertical.
Do you have a favorite project?
Yes, that's Big Moscow. This is probably the most interesting project. I loved my city even more, with all its flaws. And from individual projects - it's hard to say. When you build a house, you somehow cool down to it, let go. There was even an episode when one of my house was about to be demolished, so I was not upset at all.
That is not a pity?
Absolutely. When you build a house, it takes out all your strength, so that when the construction is finished, it would seem that you feel nothing but relief.
For example, the Ambassador House promised to be loved, there were excellent relations with the customer, but in terms of the quality of construction, especially in the details, it turned out to be unsatisfactory.
Critics liked the house …
I know, but what everyone says about Melnikov is not true.
Have you thought about Melnikov at all?
Not at all, I have always denied it.
Our facade with triangular and diamond-shaped windows is a structure, a farm: the site was very cramped, so we arranged a pedestrian walkway at the ground floor level under the house - the outer wall of the house hangs above this walkway. We turned the wall into a curved truss, consisting of "stiffening triangles" laid along the diagram of the moment: it is similar to the construction of a bridge. The magnificent designer Mityukov worked here, unfortunately later tragically died. He took up the task very enthusiastically, and the result was a very constructively beautiful house. I think that all his artistic merit stems from a successful constructive solution. This house is probably my favorite.
With the same interest, can you be engaged in one passage along the house and solve the problems of microdistricts and cities?
Yes, and as a rule, both have to be dealt with at the same time.
It is wrong to think of architects as people who paint facades. We always use urban principles. We work with a mass of information, subtract patterns from it in order to understand exactly how this or that place should be arranged. Feel the inner logic of development. This can be conditionally compared with an inner voice that you need to hear, or with a text that you need to read in order to see something important in it.
I recently bought special glasses against sun glare. Such glasses are made for drivers, or, for example, for fishermen. You put them on - they filter out glare, everything superfluous, and allow you to see what was previously not read behind their ripples. We do approximately the same thing: we try to correctly see the course of things, to foresee, to predict the logic of development, if you like. It is foolish for a person to contradict the logic of nature, of which he himself is a part - he must try to understand it and calculate his actions accordingly.
There is no mysticism here, everything is extremely rational, although it requires a certain amount of intuition. Imagine, for example, that you have bought a train ticket for the fourth carriage - you will not run to the end of the platform, but try to get up approximately to the place where the carriage will approach.
It's the same with the city. It is necessary to understand what the logic of development is pushing him to. Most of all it looks like the work of an archaeologist, just the opposite. The archaeologist guesses what happened from the remains of the past. We are trying to predict the possible future of the city from the available data.
How did Alexander Andreevich Skokan influence you?
We began to communicate so long ago, you can say that I grew up next to him: then I was 30 years old, and now I am 55 - almost my whole life. I liked Skokan's human and creative position, although I certainly argued about something, I was not ready for something. But I can say that now we are close comrades.
No controversy?
It happens, of course, we argue.
If you want to know about Skokan, I'll tell you this - he has amazing intuition. To see a possible future - in my opinion, no one knows how to do this better than Skokan. It conquers and inspires me. He feels very accurately. He is not some kind of medium, of course, just a very intelligent person.
In addition, in our communication, I am inspired by the fact that our interest is mutual: he often sees in me some important features that I myself do not see. I think I am very lucky.
Are your parents architects?
Not. My mother graduated from the Faculty of Geography of Rostov University, but did not work for a single day in her specialty, she was an economist at the Soyuzglavkhimkomplekt, was engaged in the assembly of chemical industry enterprises. Once I, already studying at the institute, asked if she was bored at such a job? And she answered me: I am never bored in life, everything in life is interesting to me. Mom had such a feeling of the world, when it is interesting to observe, it is interesting to build the world around herself so that she would not be ashamed. This taught me a lot - after all, it happens that a person, without teaching or teaching anything, transmits, practically without words, a lot.
What profession would you choose if you had not become an architect? What are you interesting in?
Maybe I would become a doctor, maybe an engineer.
Of course, I went to an art school, to the pioneers' palace on Leninsky. It was very interesting to draw, especially the figure from different angles. Then, at the Moscow Architectural Institute, I liked to study the history of architecture, constantly learning that all architecture is not accidental. Yes, my favorite game was in my childhood, at the age of 12 - in Sherlock Holmes. Maybe from there such a passion for investigation and research …
