Archi.ru: Roman, you very rarely give interviews - over the past few years I have managed to find only one, and that is dedicated to the work of your great namesake, Ivan Leonidov, about whose work you talk with great gusto. What is the reason for this dislike for conversations with journalists?
Roman Leonidov: To be honest, it's not my dislike of journalists at all. In the 1990s, when I just arrived in Moscow from my native Kharkov and organized the Shabolovka bureau, I was very often interviewed by various publications, and then the interest from the media gradually subsided. And I somehow thought that this is quite natural, because I am engaged in country cottages and private interiors, and these genres, in contrast to socially significant objects and large urban planning decisions, almost always remain in the shadows. In addition, many of my works, in principle, I cannot show - not all customers dream of publications and fame. So, in this sense, one has to restrain one's own ambitions.
Archi.ru: How did Shabolovka start? As far as I know, you are now reviving this brand, despite the fact that the Roman Leonidov Bureau is successfully functioning?
R. L.: I invented Shabolovka in 1999, in the third year of my work in Moscow. At that time I worked in the architectural and construction firm "Agora" and gradually became a de facto partner there, since most of the architectural orders went through me. However, it was not possible to formalize this status there, and therefore the need for their own business was ripe. We actually rented our first office in the Shabolovka area, although, to be honest, the name of the company is only partly related to geography. First of all, it was a commercial move - there is Ostozhenka, there is Rozhdestvenka, let it be Shabolovka. And he justified himself - within a year the bureaus knew. And the brand turned out to be so successful that at some point I realized that it was overshadowing myself. And then a midlife crisis came in time, pride leaped, I wanted to personalize my work more and in 2007 I renamed the company to Roman Leonidov Architectural Bureau. Plus, the personal brand made it possible to raise prices a little, since the design scheme itself has radically changed - if the bureau takes on a house project, then only I start to do it. In fact, I guarantee the customer that he will receive the author's architecture. True, five years later I faced another problem: now everyone comes to me. And you need to either severely limit the amount of work, or do three or four projects at the same time, which is physically possible, but extremely harmful to health. So now "Shabolovka" is being revived as a set of workshops that will deal mainly with interiors and have great creative freedom.
Archi.ru: Did you initially go to Moscow with the intention to occupy a niche of suburban construction?
R. L.: I built my first house back in Kharkov, so I went here, already well aware of how it is done. But of course, I cannot say that I have always dreamed of working in this particular genre. Like almost all architects of my generation, who left the institute with a large suitcase of theoretical knowledge and found themselves completely on their own, I was forced to independently comprehend the basics of the profession. I got to my first house only in the tenth year of practice, before that I did whatever I did - I drew signs, and designed furniture, and designed interiors. I remember that with the question "what is a working draft?" I actually had no one to turn to: the institute teachers just shrugged their shoulders. So I had to educate myself in everything: I remember that the "Draftsman's Handbook" found in the library of our university helped me tremendously - xeroxed and multiplied, it is still actively used in our workshop, and all young employees are compulsorily studying it. Having felt for myself how hard it is not to know how to translate my idea into material and into a language understandable for builders, I now work proactively, shoeing young specialists as quickly as possible.
Archi.ru: Do you prefer to hire students?
R. L.: Students or recent graduates, in general, pretty young architects, yes.
Archi.ru: And what qualities should a young architect have to be hired by your bureau?
R. L.: Probably, he should just like me in communication. Because the diploma does not interest me, I do not look at the portfolio, and almost no one keeps their sketches. Rare stupidity! For example, I do not want to study drawings and visualizations made on a computer, it is important for me to see how this particular person works and thinks, but only one out of fifty, perhaps, stores his sketches, the rest, as a rule, have nothing to show. And even in trial assignments, to be honest, I don't see much sense - most likely, the candidate will do everything out of fear, and then inevitably slow down. Therefore, I accept for work, focusing only on my inner feeling from a person, and then I begin to slowly check it in my work, starting with the simplest creative tasks. There are several simple rules in the workshop: we design only with our hands, we constantly improve our drawing skills (once a week we have group classes - a great way to get to know our colleagues better, I think), we show only one version of the work, which we ourselves consider the best. Of course, this inevitably leads to a certain turnover of staff, but those who remain form a truly strong team.
Archi.ru: How is the work in the bureau organized? If I understood correctly the scheme described by you, you have no brigades?
R. L.: There are small groups of architects who together are able to lead 5-6 projects at the same time, but I am in charge of all of them. All key issues for each of the objects are solved by me, the head of state and the head of state.
Archi.ru: On the website of your workshop, information recently appeared that you also opened your office in New York. Do you work on two continents at the same time?
R. L.: A lot of my classmates live and work in New York, the Kharkiv diaspora there is generally quite strong. I went there to live and look around, and soon the first customer appeared, with whom I had previously worked here. Of course, I have no desire to integrate into the local market - I need to throw all my strength into this and spend several years of my life, I know for sure that I can do this, but I see no particular reason to leave my established business in Moscow. In addition, the very genre of a country house in America is treated completely differently - no one there builds a house for grandchildren. A house is a thing that has been used for a maximum of 10 years, so the requirements for materials and architecture are appropriate. In other words, there are much more opportunities for creative self-expression in modern Russia, and it is more comfortable for me to work here, although I am very grateful to the universe for the very opportunity to see from the inside and compare the Russian and American real estate markets.
Archi.ru: What is the structure of the workshop order now?
R. L.: Roughly fifty-fifty between country houses and interiors. As a rule, we first build a house, then complete it from the inside. Plus we make the interiors of cafes and restaurants. But we practically do not deal with offices, apparently, we do not get into the price. And we hardly participate in competitions either, to be honest, we just don't want to storm the bureaucratic machine.
Archi.ru: How comfortable are you now, after so many years, in the genre of suburban construction?
R. L.: This genre can hardly get boring. After all, this is communication, it is always a specific person, his character, his history. To be honest, I am always surprised to hear that my houses are somewhat similar to each other. In my opinion, they are all different, and each of them absorbs the sum of different inputs and different circumstances. Unless, when I make rental houses, I operate with more universal categories. Now we have just such a project underway - we are designing a whole village, where houses will be leased out on a long-term basis. We have made a master plan for this village, developed a "line" of cottages, and now we are choosing the most budget-friendly construction method. The focus was on laconic and environmentally friendly solutions, and wood predominates in the appearance of these houses.
Archi.ru: Wood is present in one way or another in almost all your projects, and not only as a finishing material, but also as a constructive basis for a house.
R. L.: Wood is the essence of suburban architecture. You can say a lot of platitudes, like that this is the warmest, most lively, most interesting material, but for me these are all details, I perceive wood as a synonym for the genre in which I work as an architect. Therefore, I am constantly looking for new opportunities and technologies. Now I'm trying to introduce the technology for the construction of timber frame houses. I have been looking for a constructive scheme for a long time that would allow me to implement projects as quickly and efficiently as possible, and a frame made of wooden beams, the space between which can be filled with any material, turned out to be an ideal solution to this problem. The main advantage of this scheme is that the house built in this way does not need compensators - the frame does not shrink, which can significantly reduce the construction period of the house and ensure its further trouble-free operation, guaranteeing rigidity and stable stability of the structure, its exceptional reliability and durability.
Archi.ru: How does this scheme differ from half-timbered houses?
R. L.: By and large, nothing, except that we do not focus on the frame, creating an architectural image by filling it with a variety of materials. A house built according to a timber-frame scheme can be made at least completely glass. You can also use a sandwich, a beam of different types of wood, any cladding - this not only gives me, as an architect, maximum creative scope in shaping and combining textures, but also allows you to significantly vary the price of the final product, offering the customer both extremely economical solutions and expensive respectable structures … And if we talk about the long term, it seems to me that it is precisely such universal solutions that the future of the suburban real estate market is reliable, simple and as diverse as possible in terms of appearance.
