Archi.ru
Sergei Alexandrovich, tell us about your impressions of your participation in the Tsarev's Garden competition. How do you assess its results?
Sergey Skuratov
- I believe that the competition had its results, just neither the organizers, nor the members of the jury, nor the customers could or did not want to see these results and make a decision. When, before starting the design, the chief architect of the city met with the participants of the competition, he said that the situation was extremely neglected and required a new, fresh solution. I absolutely agreed with him on this. Actually, this is the solution I proposed. But we were the only team that developed a new building with new layouts without being tied to the existing project. The conditions of the competition, of course, did not envision this, we violated them, and therefore lost. But I could participate in this competition only on such conditions. For me, drawing other facades to someone else's house is impossible - neither from an ethical point of view, nor from a professional one. I immediately made my position clear by announcing that I would design a new building. At the same time, we fully fulfilled the technical wishes of Kalinka specialists, designed all the necessary premises specified in the assignment. Moreover, our project turned out to be much more economical than the previous one, we preserved the old building of the Kokorevsky courtyard, provided for a functional and clean entrance to the parking lot. If the customer had the determination to start everything from scratch, then he could do it quite painlessly, since it would be much cheaper and easier to implement our project. However, the customer did not want to hold this competition at all. This was the initiative of Sergei Kuznetsov.
I regret that the jury was not formed, which could professionally delve into the essence of the problem and compare possible options for solving a complex urban planning situation.
Nevertheless, I do not regret at all that I took part in the competition. Recently, I have been designing mainly residential complexes. And, of course, I would like to build a large public building in Moscow. For me, this competition became an opportunity to show my urban planning approach and view of this space, or even just – draw something beautiful.
Tell us more about your project
- The most important thing that I wanted to achieve and therefore deliberately intensified the effect was to create an image of the house. In my opinion, a large modern and even innovative public building should be built on this site, which could be compared, for example, with the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris.
What dictated the silhouette of the complex?
- First, we took into account the scale transition from Bolotnaya embankment to Sofiyskaya embankment. Secondly, it was necessary to preserve the views from the direction of Ordynka and Pyatnitskaya Street to our complex. I wanted the smooth silhouette line to remind of the nearby Moskvoretsky Bridge. In addition, the smoothness and flexibility of modern architecture is contrasted with the orthogonality and straightforwardness of historical architecture. Such a soft volume of the complex is also a sign of the times. The fracture of the facade is a continuation of the same theme. At first, the facade runs parallel to the bridge, and then at the break point, it smoothly turns and follows parallel to the line of the Kremlin wall. The fact that the facade tilts to the left, opening views from Ordynka to the St. Basil's Cathedral is a gift to the city and space.
There is no stone in our project, the building is completely made of white, transparent and translucent high-tech materials - such as glass with a white silkscreen gradient, burnished glass and a translucent stone glass that starts to glow in the evening. A facade made of such materials looks white from the outside, but from the inside the glass is completely transparent. This is the Flying Dutchman, the ship that sailed into the city's environment and took its place.
I tried to make the architecture a bit leftist, open and modernist. But this is not modernism of the 1960s, these are not Sochi boarding houses. The building seems to be dematerialized. It seems completely white from the side of Bolotnaya embankment and almost transparent from the side of Sofiyskaya embankment. On renders, this dissolution effect is quite difficult to show, the technical possibilities are still very limited. But the complex disappears like a phantom. It is very important that architecture does not impose itself.
Why did you decide to make a whole volume, and did not divide it into several parts, as the other participants did?
- I had a lot of temptations to divide the building into three or four parts, to make it more contextual, I can do this very well. But in this case, I deliberately abandoned this idea. Sketches were attached to my competition project, offering various scenarios for the transformation of the complex, allowing for a slightly greater adaptation to the historical setting, including its breakdown into several volumes - in case the customer does not have the courage to implement the project in its original form. But in general, I am against all sorts of adaptations. When the Kremlin or St. Basil's Cathedral was being built, no one adapted them to anything. On the contrary, the entire urban environment reacted to them. That is why they are still outstanding architectural monuments.
Of course, the project takes into account all the restrictions and regulations, but I figured that in this case there is no need to adapt to the surrounding situation, no need to copy it. The only nod to the historical buildings besides the town-planning axes is the white color of the complex. This is a kind of bridge between the past and the future, a reference to the white-stone walls of the Kremlin, white cathedrals and the Ivan the Great bell tower. In addition, the colors in this space are already abundant. Our snow-white building is made in contrast to the multicolor of the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed and the bright terracotta of the Kremlin wall.
I repeat once again - there should not be any imitations in this place, categorically there cannot be classical and pseudo-classical architecture. It should be a monument to an era and time. If today's time corresponds to the winning projects in this competition, then I am very sorry that I live in such a time. I do not profess this religion, I do not belong to this faith and to such facades that are counterfeited to historicism. To build classical architecture, you have to live in the 19th century. And in the 21st century it is necessary to build modern architecture and speak a modern language.
What did you suggest as an urban planning solution, given the rather difficult situation on the site?
- Our house is very delicately placed on the site. There are two main urban planning axes that set the direction of the main facade of the complex: the axis of the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge and the axis of the Kremlin wall along the Vasilyevsky Spusk from the Spasskaya to the Beklemishevskaya Tower.
We organized a passage and a passage between the courtyard and the building of the complex, thanks to which another facade appeared.
Yaroslav Kovalchuk, in his commentary, very correctly wrote that this place lacks transverse driveways. We organized through traffic, the possibility of entering the territory from two sides, and not from one, arranged a fairly wide courtyard. The complex and the space around it must be absolutely open. We made a green "esplanade", organized open public spaces. There is a restaurant on the roof of the house with magnificent views - this is also a public part. It is categorically impossible to make a closed complex in such a place, it is immoral.
The project also envisaged the restoration of the Kokorevsky courtyard, the restoration of its facades and the integrity of the historical ensemble. What is now being proposed by other participants is a parasitic fungus on the body of the building. I am not their judge, but why they do not understand this, I do not know.
How do you think, how will the project develop with the current outcome of the competition?
- In the current situation, nothing depends on me. When meeting with me, the customer immediately asked what I would do if I won the competition. I said that the first thing, of course, is to change the team, that I will not work with the previous author, because it is strange to work as a sub-designer for a general designer who professes a completely different system of values. Probably, this scared the customer from the very beginning, and he turned his back on my project.
I am convinced that there can only be one author at home. The situation that has arisen today with both the Tsarev Garden and the Tretyakov Gallery, when one architect draws the plans and another does the facades, is unacceptable for me.
And most of all I am saddened by the tendency to return to pseudo-historicalism. This is happening all over the place. Stone carvings, turrets, columns and lions with golden hair begin again. Good modern architecture tends to democratize, but we are now sliding back to totalitarianism.
