The projects of the Atrium architectural bureau are complex, plastic, diverse and, apparently, reflect the personality and views of its founders: Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy, who, quite reasonably, call their bureau author's. We spoke with one of the founding partners, Anton Nadtochim, about the creative method and the principles - everything that Atrium architects consider important.
Archi.ru:
In one of the interviews you called yourself neomodernists. Do you give up this definition?
Anton Nadtochy:
Any definition in our case will probably not be complete. It is not possible to describe the scope of creative search in one word, and the terminology itself is not always unambiguous and well-established. We know for sure that we are expressing ourselves in the language of abstract geometric forms, which was invented and developed by the architecture of modernism. At the same time, we are trying to find our own field for experiments, give our own interpretations and approach architecture as an art. Since the question of style is constantly being asked, we decided that the word "neo-modernism" is the most appropriate as a conditional answer.
Are you talking about nonlinear architecture?
- Non-linearity has never been an end in itself for us, a fashionable trend that we must pursue. She visualizes one of the universals of the modern world, with which we relate. And yet our forms are not for the sake of the picture. They are born as a result of a serious and thorough analysis that takes into account a variety of criteria and parameters: functional, technological, contextual, visual, etc.
It looks like a description of parametricism
- Not that either. There are a lot of things in parametrism, but the key remains to obtain a form in a rather mechanical way, from a formula into which suitable mathematical parameters are substituted. We create it manually, by means of a meaningful author's reaction to the key criteria found during the analysis of the initial situation. At the same time, we strive to find the best shape that corresponds to these parameters, to reveal the inner diversity and contrasts, and to visualize them.
How do you start?
- At the heart of any building is a function, so we always start with a deep analysis of the problem, after which a block diagram is created that corresponds to the original program. As a rule, it gives a whole hierarchy of spaces - public and private, large and small, presentational and cozy, etc. The task of an architect is to organize these spaces correctly.
“Absolute forms” are born from the program: for example, from the point of view of lighting, one will be ideal, the relief dictates another “ideal” variant, and the species characteristics require something else. This is how several different models arise, each of which successfully meets certain requirements. Then we analyze all the obtained models, compare them, and finally, we get the form, which in this case seems to us optimal for the given site and task. Our buildings are as contextual as possible, they are literally integrated into the landscape. They cannot be taken and moved to another place.
Do your taste preferences play a role in the process of converting several absolute forms into one final one?
- Of course, there are taste preferences. However, taste is a superficial thing. Rather, it is worth talking about the conformity of the form to our inner principles. There are qualities that you want to visualize - such as heterogeneity, mutual integration of parts, their intersection and interaction, multi-layeredness, fluidity, etc. Why do we often have ceilings passing into the wall, and the wall into the ceiling? Separately existing, separated spaces are not accepted by us even at the level of sensations. Because there are certain fundamental foundations within us, a certain paradigm of the world order.
What are the basics?
- I will try to answer briefly, deliberately simplifying the globality of the discussion.
We see the peculiarity of our century in the fact that now all concepts are blurred and relative. Today's world exists simultaneously within the framework of several paradigms. One is Newtonian, which was discovered long ago, but entered everyday life only a hundred years ago, because before that, other, primarily religious, paradigms dominated. This is a "scientific" view of the world, consisting of many individual particles interacting according to mechanical laws and a world where the behavior of matter can be predicted with absolute accuracy, knowing these laws.
At the same time, all the scientific discoveries of the 20th century - the theory of relativity, quantum physics, the sciences of complexity, information and others, came to the conclusion that these mechanical laws operate only within closed systems and such concepts as consciousness, will and other subjective factors. In general, the world is not so simple and most likely not at all what it seems to us.
The world is a single whole, and the particles are just fragments of the whole, which take various forms.
But still, why do you have either indirect or rounded corners, and beveled planes?
- I will explain. Previously, the criterion of manufacturability and industry was in the first place. From this position, it was much easier to make only straight lines, which were well combined with standard projects and serial furniture. The entire 20th century was built on industrialism. Actually, modernism "invented" and curvilinearity, but basically aestheticized the orthogonal form, and only at a more mature stage of development came to a more complex form. Corbusier, Niemeyer, and all the masters of architecture of the twentieth century tried to create an artistic, artistic and somewhat closer to nature form.
Is this the victory of individualism over industry?
- Now you can build everything, manufacturability is no longer associated with minimizing the number of elements or standard sizes. Today, in a sense, we are creating an ideal form for an ideal function, as it was, for example, earlier in the construction of religious buildings.
A more complex, but also more customized form appears, and as a result, straightforwardness disappears. This does not negate the role of the function as the main criterion.
How much is it more expensive?
- If the criterion of economy for a particular project is primary, then the space can be orthogonal with one single sculptural element that forms its plastic. Approximately 5% of the object will cost 2-3 times more than the rest - in the total cost of this is a penny. However, if such a solution gives the building a new additional quality, then its value characteristics will already be measured not only by the amount of building materials spent, time and money.
Take the Olympic stadium in Beijing, the famous "nest". It is clear that the criterion of efficiency was not in the first place there. The amount of metal spent on the construction of its roof is dozens of times higher than the analogs. But whoever built this stadium strove to create a symbol of the Olympics and the country as a whole. Very different dividends were received from this project.
How often is there an understanding customer in your case who is ready to go for additional costs for the sake of plasticity and shape?
- We do not have a task to promote the customer and make him pay "extra" money for beauty. But often the area we work with poses problems that cannot be solved using traditional methods. For example, we did a project in Shchukino for two new kindergartens and a school. On this territory, which was not enough even for existing buildings, it was necessary to place objects with three times the capacity. This task is not solvable in the Cartesian system. There are school typologies that are great for an open field site. But they were not applicable for such a complex site as ours. We had to use all 100% of its potential. As a result, an unexpected and seemingly difficult solution was born, when a significant part of the building goes underground, exploitable roofs appear, broken lines (the result of insolation analysis), connecting bridges-corridors appear, etc.
Form, for all its importance, is still not an end in itself. In our case, it is the result of functional necessity, and plastic appears by itself and is the inner essence of the building.
Actually, this is why we do not like the scenery, which today is a symbol of postmodernism.
Do you not like postmodernism?
- You can't say that! It was postmodernism that created a complex space to replace the simple orthogonal system of classical modernism. Later, the quintessence of postmodernism was deconstructivism, which elevated space to a degree of super-complexity.
But if, for example, in the films of Peter Greenaway staged scenery, flirting with historical associations, theatricality, irony and grotesque - all these literary means that postmodernism actively used - are perceived quite organically, then in architecture it is a substitution of concepts.
The main instrument of architecture as an art is, first of all, space and form. Symbolism, historicism and other layers - from the evil one, they can be present only within the framework of the presence of the main volumetric-spatial solution. Yes, the boundaries between arts and genres are less strict today, but they cannot be reversed. In a sense, we advocate the purification of the architectural language.
Of course, not everything works out one hundred percent. For example, our project "Planets of KVN" as a result turned out to be populist, and in our view even decorative, because the plastic of the facade as a result turned out to be in no way connected with the internal layout. I would prefer it to be like in Bilbao, where there is a single composition and a single structure.
However, the form is justified "outside", urban planning - our facade organizes the square and the intersection in a new way. In addition, we did not have any opportunity to work with the internal structure of the building, since this reconstruction and the box of walls came to us from the old cinema, and the interiors were not made by us. We proposed a project that would make it possible to create a roll call between the external structure and the interior, but it did not go into work. Now there are monstrously tasteless pseudo-classical interiors with panels, arches and landscape paintings on the walls. This approach is not close to us, to put it mildly.
Is the connection between the facade and the interior so important for you?
- In fact, we do not have separate interiors, separate facades.
We do not draw facades, this is contrary to our understanding of architecture. The facade always turns out by itself.
A kind of volumetric composition is created - a single one inside and out. And the facade is just an orthogonal view of the house. In principle, it is absent in life as such, because a person sees everything in the process of movement, in perspective, and not frontally.
I liked the motto of one company: "We start where others stop." If a plan is usually drawn, then it rises and a form is obtained, then we begin to deal with architecture differently, when to another, it would seem that everything has already been done. The process of finding the optimal functional and formal solution goes in parallel, in volume, and goes through many iterations. Here, as in a dance, there are no separate movements, one comes from the other.
In this sense, you get such real, unclouded modernists: the absence of a facade, the principle from the inside out, abstract form, flowing space …
- The modernists also had life-sustaining ambitions. To some extent, we also have them: we also form a comfortable environment, but at the same time we provoke people to think differently, to see in architecture something more than just more or less pretty buildings. However, our emotions lack that positivism and life-affirming impulse characteristic of the beginning of the twentieth century.
We use the same formal language and techniques, but we strive to give our own, somewhat more sophisticated interpretation, to reflect other qualities.
Structurality and its articulation are still important for us, but at the same time we rarely work with one form, our building is the result of the interaction of several elements, while the forms themselves and the spaces they create are more complex, ambiguous, of different scales, and the object is less homogeneous. Its design departs from the Cartesian grid of columns. We strive to transform the usual archetypes: floor - wall - ceiling, window, roof, stairs, etc., turning the building into a single sculptural object, where the boundaries of standard elements will be as blurred as possible, or interpreted in a completely different way. This is the artistic component. If an object embodies something more than just a house, then it is already an act of creativity or art, and if not, then it is, at best, a craft object.
Modernist architecture reflected its time, we try to reflect ours.
Our architecture is an attempt to state modernity in its most current understanding.
But, if we talk about modernity, nonlinearity seems to have ended here, now other trends have come - sustainable and green architecture, urbanism …
- These are completely non-intersecting concepts.
Sustainable and green architecture is closely related to holistic concepts of the unity of the world to be protected. Everyone understands that hydrocarbon resources will run out in the next hundred years, or even earlier, and in many countries they no longer exist, which makes one think about energy consumption, durability, environmental friendliness, etc. This is more of an economic need and one of the issues of survival. All of the above contributed to a serious technological breakthrough, but all these are rather technical innovations and they have not created any new form or concept in architecture, they have not yet influenced the development of architecture as an art. Of the exceptions, only the Cloud 9 project in Barcelona is remembered, but it is full of examples of "super green" buildings that are monstrous from an architectural point of view, or, at best, are nothing. We are also doing green architecture. For example, our residential building "Barkley Park" is completely designed and built in accordance with the gold standard of the Leed system, but the formal solution in it was developed according to completely different criteria.
It is clear that with the development of technology and higher quality requirements, buildings are becoming more and more technically advanced. Today, it’s just part of the professional job. There are many of these sustainable development standards, Russia has developed its own - ATS SPSS, and these are all positive processes, of course.
As for urbanism, it has always been. Urban planning concepts were made in the twentieth century, and in the Renaissance, and in the Ancient Ages (recently in the Caucasus I saw cave cities that date back to the fourth millennium BC). Of course, as a separate direction, urban studies are developing, and its approaches are becoming more sophisticated, economically motivated, statistically and mathematically sound, socially predicted, etc. At least, I really want to believe in this.
Now in Moscow, new for the city urban planning approaches, which logically follow from the change in economic relations, have finally been declared and are being implemented. The quarter becomes a new urban planning unit. Plus, the city began to return streets and public spaces to residents, to fight for their quality, in the complex sense of the word. In creating the environment, great attention is also paid to landscaping and work with the landscape. It is very important.
However, the transition to block development alone is unlikely to solve all the problems. Urban planning should also have a place for artistry. In my opinion, if Enric Mirales, Gunther Benish and the same Herzog & de Meuron did not participate in Hafen City, then, despite the high-quality urban concept and, in general, not bad buildings, everything would be extremely boring and not interesting. The city needs contrasts, heterogeneity, activity and richness. Especially for a city like Moscow.
Today's great popularity of urbanism and green technologies, apparently, is associated with a series of global crises and the need to rethink the social and economic aspects of architecture. But they are rather looking for an answer to the question "What to do", while the question "How to do" is still in the plane of the author's decisions, regardless of the well-established typologies and regulations.
We ourselves are doing more and more urban planning projects, and we are trying to apply in them the same principles that have worked for almost twenty years in interiors and volumetric design, since these principles are quite universal, and we are trying to give our own answer "How to do". In this sense, the most programmatic work for us was the concept of a 300 hectare district in Krasnodar, which we did five years ago.
What, then, is architecture for you?
“I don’t know how seditious this idea is, but for us the essence of architecture is form creation, and the art of working with form is the main criterion for assessing its artistic quality. It would be more accurate to say not with form, but with form-space. And it doesn't matter if it happens on the scale of an interior, a building or a city.
Form can be found in urbanism and eco-architecture. In urban planning projects, we also work with the form, it just is transferred to a different scale. I see this dependence: as soon as form begins to prevail over space, design begins, when space prevails - this is an interior or a city. Designing an office multi-storey building is mostly a design, there inside a person is all the time within one floor, the building is not readable from the inside, so the most important thing is lost: the perception of form.
We tried to solve this problem in our project of a retail and office complex near the Vodny Stadium metro station. I had to make consoles, use several types of glass and finishes in order to create the plastic of really interacting volumes.
The most "correct" scale for me is a private house or a public building, because in them the ratio of space and form, emptiness and mass is approximately equal.
It turns out that you are formalists?
- Let it be so, although as I said we are against any labels.
And there is no plot in your architecture?
- The plot of our architecture is not literary, our plot is a script for reading an object and decoding it. The object does not have to be fully understood at a glance. How does fashionable architecture differ from the real one for me? Fashionable only imitates the image. When you look at the KVN building, it is read as a sign at first glance. You don't have to walk around a building for a long time to fully understand it - that's why I consider it fashionable architecture.
We, as a rule, strive to make puzzle buildings. They are different at different points. In the process of decoding, as the structure of the building is understood, the person's perception changes: this is an adventure, in the process of which more and more discoveries are made.
Zaha Hadid says that she is repelled by the Russian avant-garde. Who are you starting from? Bauhaus, Malevich, Russian constructivism?
- I graduated from the Department of Theory and History of Soviet and Contemporary Foreign Architecture at the Moscow Architectural Institute. The topic of my research work is "Transformative grammar of architecture in the work of Peter Eisenman." The very term "transformative grammar" was born when I studied the language of the masters of modern architecture and its origins. Eisenman has a project for a private house, where a simple cube that is rolling down a hill is taken as a fundamental principle, and its overlapping projections form new spaces. Approximately as in the painting by Marcel Duchamp - Nude Descending the Stairs. There, on the canvas, different phases of movement are statically captured …
Recently, I have been increasingly inspired by Soviet modernism of the 70s and 80s, which created many underrated world masterpieces. I believe that the Druzhba boarding house in Yalta is no less significant architectural work than La Turret, and the Avtodor building in Tbilisi is not inferior to the most daring concepts of metabolists.
So, if we talk about the sources, then there are many of them, probably, they intersect with those that Zaha has. We just do not like that the Western world usurped the Russian avant-garde, and if you do something with the same language - the language of abstract form, then it seems that you are already borrowing from them.
Of course, in the West, the traditions of modern architecture in the twentieth century were not interrupted, like ours. Therefore, it is clear that they managed to do much more than we in Russia. Plus, this is superimposed on a high level of education, technological development and the very system of relations, which puts professionalism and architectural quality at the forefront.
We have worked a lot with foreign architects and specialists here in Russia, and the experience of interaction is ambiguous. The most successful and useful experience for us was the experience of joint work with MVRDV on the Zaryadye competition. It is a pity that we took only third place, although I like our project the most. We tried to make the park as specific as possible for this unique historical territory of Moscow. It cannot be transferred to another place. This is a cultural and historical rebus, a landscape and architectural object and just a comfortable place for guests and residents of the city, with a set of various spaces and natural pictures. Vinnie Maas is certainly a brilliant architect. There is a lot to learn from them both in terms of conceptuality and in terms of the technological process.
Which of the fathers of abstract art is closer to you: Malevich or Kandinsky?
- From the point of view of Suprematism or Constructivism, the question would probably be more correct - Malevich or Tatlin?
Malevich. Because we do not aestheticize constructions, hi-tech is not our topic. The black square (and especially the White square) is the quintessence of an abstract mystical form, a maximum of abstraction. If you choose between Malevich and Kandinsky, then, probably, the second. Malevich, rather, has a pure declaration, a manifesto, while Kandinsky has music, life itself. True, I love Filonov more than Kandinsky.
We also respect Mies very much, because he opened up the empty space and turned everything inside out. If before him space was hermetic - the main function of architecture was considered protection from external aggressive factors, then in the 20th century the situation changed, and a “free space” appeared, the space of Mies van der Rohe.
Another hero is Hans Scharoun, due to the attitude towards the interaction of parts. He was the first to move away from orthogonality and began to make truly sculptural objects. He reacted very interestingly to the situation, discovered dynamic forms. Of the Russian architects, the closest to me is Konstantin Melnikov, whose innovation was the main characteristic of almost all of his works.
But Melnikov's form is far from abstract, on the contrary - very corporeal and plastic. Melnikov and Malevich are rather poles. And it seems to me that you are closer to Melnikov. Malevich is mysticism. Where is your mysticism?
- Yes, Malevich attracts us with the purity of abstraction, and our architecture is plastic. The language of architecture is, after all, abstract, like music: an architect, like a composer, creates his plasticity from extremely abstract primary elements.
That is, for you, abstraction is a way to abandon classical decorative architecture?
- Yes! The language is abstract, and what it says already has a form, each object is a special author's statement.
