Peteris Bayars is a participant of the Nordic Wood festival held at the Moscow Central House of Architects, organized by the ARCHIWOOD project with the support of the Union of Moscow Architects (CMA), Project Baltia magazine, as well as with partner participation of HONKA, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway in Russia, the Velsky Les company and the "Rules of Communication" agency.
Archi.ru: As far as I know, you are not only one of the founders of the Latvian wooden architecture award Latvijas koka arhitektūras gada balva, but also a practicing architect who works with wood?
Peteris Bayars: Yes, our bureau INDIA Architects has wooden structures, but we work not only with this material. As for wooden architecture, our niche is the restoration of historical buildings, a very relevant topic for Latvia. These old houses are usually in very poor condition, many of them were rebuilt several times during the Soviet era, and these modifications were of low quality, both in terms of design and technology: not all materials can be combined with wood, and then they did not pay for it. attention. In addition to the actual restoration, we also adapt these houses to modern standards, sometimes new functions, sometimes we make a new layout, etc.
Archi.ru: How long have you been restoring buildings?
P. B.: Our latest project is a building from 1835, a small classicist manor that was rebuilt in the Art Nouveau era: terraces and decor in this style were added, then rebuilt. All these changes only spoiled this classicist building: for example, Art Nouveau additions made it asymmetrical. Of course, they were not allowed to remove them, but we still managed to restore the balance necessary for classicism, adding two new galleries on the opposite side from the terrace at the turn of the century. They are quite modern in form, but they maintain the same quality of material and level of detail as in the historical part of the estate.
Archi.ru: As you know, in Russia old wooden buildings are often destroyed, and one of the main complaints about them is the high risk of fire. How does Latvia combine modern fire safety requirements with timber construction?
P. B.: We also have problems similar to those in Russia: they try to get rid of historical wooden houses, set up fires, leave them open for a long time so that all valuable parts can be cut down there … And with the requirements for fire safety, we have exactly the same situation: we cannot build wooden buildings above 2 floors. The first Latvian standards were simply a translation of the Soviet SNIPs, but it soon became clear that they were very far behind the times, and then a transition period began when we could use the standards of any of the EU countries. We chose Finnish standards, the most liberal of all, and then we managed to agree on the project of a 6-storey building with a wooden facade. But very soon a new code was approved, and such projects again ceased to be coordinated. The main argument in support of this approach I heard from the chief of the fire department: "Maybe the Finns have firemen and they will arrive in 5 minutes, and they will appear in our country in half an hour."
Archi.ru: Who are your customers? To restore old houses you need a large budget and a lot of effort and time, probably these are people who are interested in history and have considerable funds to realize their interest?
P. B.: Recently, a positive trend can be observed in Latvia: living in a renovated old wooden house is considered very prestigious. In the very center of Riga, in the middle of the river, there is the island of Kipsala, where there are a lot of historic wooden houses, even the 17th century, and so they began to be restored, and these houses on the island quickly turned into a sign of the great life success of their current owners. After all the houses in Kipsala were restored, wooden houses from other parts of the city were brought there, which caused a lot of controversy. On the one hand, it is as if an artificial ensemble was being created there - a museum or a preserve of wooden architecture, on the other hand, it is a chance to preserve such buildings, and they are still not museum exhibits, since people live in them. Kipsala was the first example of this approach, and now there is also the very famous Kalnciema kvartals. It is located almost on the outskirts, on the left bank, where various enterprises were historically located, and the wooden houses that make up it are barracks for workers, built during the industrial revolution, in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. And in this quarter, two brothers-developers began to restore houses and arrange apartments and offices there. This is a very lively place, concerts and fairs are held in the courtyards every week, there is a good restaurant occupying a small residential building, and a new building where the brothers themselves are located, and next to it is a former garage turned into an architect's workshop with whom they work all the time.
Archi.ru: Now Latvia is going through a rather difficult period for wooden architecture, possibly similar to the Russian one, but is there any positive dynamics?
P. B.: Yes, of course there is! Here at the exhibition are shown objects that received the Latvian Wood Architecture Prize 6 years ago, but over the years since then, the practice of building from wood has stepped forward: now there are many new excellent buildings, including even public ones. For example, a school of arts and music is currently under construction in the town of Saldus: it has a glass facade, but all load-bearing elements are made of solid wood (bureau MADE
www.made.lv). There is a designer, exclusive prefabricated house ESCLICE. Its first prototype was made on a wooden frame, but then the authors decided to experiment with traditional techniques, focused on log houses, and the last version was already made in solid wood.
Also, positive changes in recent years are associated with eco-construction and the PassivHaus standard. Energy efficient buildings are most easily erected from wood, and our office also has two such projects, one of which is already under construction. Initially, the task was not to bring them to any eco-standard, but when we began to study the possibilities of wooden architecture in combination with other environmentally friendly materials, it turned out that one house itself turned out to be very effective, and the second even fell into the category of low-energy house: Its heat loss is so low that PassivHaus standard was just a stone's throw away, but the client did not go to the additional costs associated with it.
Archi.ru: How is ecological construction developing in Latvia? Do the current regulations support it, are the more and more "green" EU regulations influencing?
P. B.: Our energy efficiency guidelines are quite inefficient: you can strictly follow them, but the result is a not very efficient building. Our standards do not yet correspond to the plans of the European Union to reduce CO2 emissions to zero by 2030, but people themselves understood: why pay a lot for heating, if you can, by slightly increasing the construction budget, make yourself an efficient home. As I said, one of our projects - a small, compact house made of wood - fell slightly short of the PassivHaus level. But the difficulty is that the last step to this standard required a lot of effort and money to be invested there. But it is very easy to bring the project to the level of low-energy house we have reached, and it turns out to be no more expensive than an ordinary house. But it is important to note: this house turned out to be so effective because before it we were engaged in restoration and gained a lot of experience working with traditional materials that can last for several centuries and go well with wood. If Latvia has problems with the woodworking industry, and many products have to be brought from Estonia, Sweden or Switzerland (although we have our own raw materials), then all these traditional materials, insulation materials are produced in Latvia itself and have already gained popularity there. This insulation made of cellulose is recycled paper, this is Portland cement with chips, etc. And, as we prove with our projects, you can get a building with excellent energy efficiency using traditional materials - and why then you need to use something else, more difficult to manufacture?
Peteris Bajars was born in 1975. Graduated from Riga Technical University in 2002. Since 1997 he worked in various architectural bureaus: AKA, KUBS, ACG (including in the office in Moscow). He opened his own studio INDIA Architects in 2004.
