Archi.ru:
– How did the A. Len company start its work?
Sergey Oreshkin:
- In the West, it often happens that an architect somehow immediately and brightly grows up. Many well-known European companies now announced themselves through competitions in their young years - Bjarke Ingels from BIG, the guys from Snohatt, someone else. The second group consists of large companies that were born after the war: gmp Architekten, Foster, and so on. They were created by people who are now deeply over 70. And we in Russia have other ways of growth. For example, there are architects who, after entering certain design institutes, grew up, because they immediately began to deal with large objects. This is one story. The second story is ours, Alenov's, when the company grows gradually: it starts with cottages, then takes larger and larger objects, and eventually grows to some kind of peak. I hope we have just matured. I started studying architecture at the age of 14 (technical school-work-army-institute), graduated at 28, now I'm 54. Immediately after graduating from the university (perhaps I already looked mature then) they began to offer me the position of the chief architect of Vologda and Cherepovets, but I preferred the design institute, where, I must say, I was very much appreciated. Meanwhile, after opening his own workshop ["A. Len" was created in 1991 - approx. Ed.] at first it turned out that we had to take small orders - cottages, cottage settlements, and were very busy. It was a great school, which is why I often think of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose career was a revelation to me. Wright's fate is somewhat similar to ours, when you recognize the author by his mature works, and it turns out that when he was 20 years old he painted cottages.
– In which direction is the company evolving now, how would you define today's stage?
- Today, the most worrisome question is whether it will be possible to maintain the further growth of the company, despite the economic crises and turmoil in the country. Will the state of health, creative energy allow solving new problems? Growth occurs gradually - for years you gain weight bit by bit and only then you start to feel light in your specialty, you understand what needs to be done, how to realize yourself, the difficulties of buildings cease to scare you. Now there is a feeling that we are reaching a new level. Strange, but with the crisis came a period of emancipation. Maybe because it became impossible to predict anything: if there will be work - good, if not - we will come up with it ourselves. Now we paint the way we like. Doesn't suit the client - and it's not scary, he will then understand that he was wrong, but liked it very well. This attitude allows you to raise the level. If you always try to please the client, it is difficult to give the best, maximum result. Fortunately, today another customer comes along - he is ready to listen to what we are saying. And we refuse from the works that will interfere with the accumulation of the portfolio's weight, the image. Now we have a good period, guys who are burning with architecture come. We are now in a period of upholding the creative ego.
– What is the essence of your creative ego?
- The classic scheme: up to forty years old you want shocking, but now there is a desire to do balanced work, clean and bright, but at the same time reasoned. But I personally will be sorry if I lose my spontaneity and even a certain naivety in my work in the pursuit of purity. I think this is very important. Even in my student years, I was interested in exactly not expected things. Today Russian architecture is expected in 90% of cases. But an unexpected thing is by no means always a curve, oblique, extravagant. Today, young (and even middle-aged) architects appear who, unexpectedly in economy class, when there is only one plaster in the resource, give birth to the right things. This is practically the 30s, when the resource was extremely small, but the work was carried out with a volume, an urban planning idea, as a result, an incredible emotional effect was achieved. Therefore, today our motto is: maturity without loss of balanced architecture, clean architecture without loss of individuality and some naivety.
– The name "A. Len" stands for "Architectural Leningrad". Is it worth looking for nostalgic notes in such a name, and how did it appear at all?
- The company appeared in the early 90s, when the city was still called Leningrad. Almost all the names then were abbreviations: Lenspessmu, Lentek, A. Len. These companies positioned themselves as regional. We didn't change anything, I never put out my name. Today the name clearly says that the company is not young.
– Do you have any favorite projects and buildings?
- I am not ashamed of my work, there were no completely shameful projects here. There are things that get better over the years. There is a regret when someone wedged in - either the coordinating authority, or the builder, whose hands were itching, and he took away the individuality from the project. It happens that the customer could not be convinced to do what is needed, but every year it becomes easier to do this, because it is in their interests.
With age, of course, you change: at thirty I would have done this, and at forty in a different way, no one draws architecture from nineteen to eighty in the same way. Therefore, my favorite works are probably the last ones. You burn with them. The project of the residential complex "I am a romantic", made by us in economy class, I really like. It was underestimated, but I already noticed that some of the solutions found there inspired my fellow architects.
A business center for Gazprom on Varshavskaya Street - its morphology has already been tested by different teams, but everyone succeeds in their own way: it is a grid, inside which a huge ball of volumes is placed. A mysterious project, like the client company itself.
Sometimes you slip into neo-modern nostalgia: we are now making a house for YIT on Chapaev Street - such a fabulous house-tower, a heap of masses, some kind of knitted lace architecture. The romanticism of the Petrograd side - I would like to draw on this topic. This is not really our approach, we are more avant-garde, but there is also something in romantic architecture.
The house on Konstantinovsky Prospekt was painted as frank European modernism. They used copper, natural stone, the facade of a very free, picturesque drawing was obtained. The house even has its own fan club, as there is very little such architecture in the city. It is drawn mainly by very young architects who do not always get to the city, and from the venerable in this vein only Muscovites work: Skuratov, Levyant, Skokan. The modernism of this house is based on our Russian avant-garde and constructivism, volumetric design, work with form.
The house on Graftio Street is also very interesting - the house-plate, the house-cabbage, which has many, many layers, each of which is slightly removed and reveals the next thickness, depth of space. There is something from Paul Rudolph, something from Richard Meyer. The house continues to receive awards, last year it was awarded the Diamond Diploma of the World Club of Petersburgers.
– Do you like building in the historic center?
- Yes of course. Here you feel the environment, the aura with your skin. There are two main approaches - to stand out from the surrounding historical buildings and hide behind them. Contextual work, or non-contextual. They usually scold non-contextual architecture when an architect cuts, but on the other hand, one can recall positive examples: the odious dancing house of Frank Gary in Prague, or the mirror house of Hans Hollein in Vienna opposite the cathedral. There is another approach - you come to a place and understand that if it requires accentuation, you accentuate it, and if there is enough rich environment there, then you do not need to saturate it further, so you try to approach delicately. For example, we made the house "Egoist" - there is a very rich environment, everything is decorated, we wanted to make a calm house, as Leonid Pavlovich Lavrov later called it - eclectic constructivism. In fact, it was based on a constructivist house, but then in the course of debates with city officials, with KGIOP, we had to hear them and sharpen the house a little according to their requirements.
– You work a lot in the regions - what is the difference between the specifics of work there and work in St. Petersburg?
- We were often invited - Saransk, Ufa, Kazan, Yaroslavl, Novosibirsk - and these are the consequences of fame. For regional customers, this is prestigious, we are sometimes even considered a capital company. The attitude in the regions to the architect from St. Petersburg is many times more respectful than here. They can teach us how to draw facades, they promise to bend them into a horn, there is no such thing.
– What are you working on now?
- We have a large block in Ufa, very interesting, I am sure it will be a beautiful job. We do not begin work until we dig up a bunch of historical literature, we do not find out what happened on this spot. In Ufa, we got a place that for some reason frightened off local architects. It turned out that there was a Kremlin, several rivers converged, a huge mosque for 3000 worshipers had just been built next to it, a mountain nearby, an entrance to the city, everything odious, the terrain is terrible. But we entered the competition. Ufa has a very progressive atmosphere, if the city continues in the same vein, it can become a strong competitor to Moscow in terms of architecture. People there draw very correctly now. Also at one time the strongest Nizhny Novgorod school was born, which is now in some desolation. Under Governor Nemtsov and the then chief architect of the city, Alexander Kharitonov, it sparkled. Now there are fewer and fewer flashes in Nizhny Novgorod, but then there was total burning, a small city in which there were about 10-15 architects competing with each other, among whom there were 5 strong ones. Now Ufa is in the same position as Nizhny Novgorod was about 15 years ago.
– What do you think about the practice of holding architectural competitions?
- For the last two years we have been totally participating in competitions, at least ten a year. We assess this experience very positively: the competition does not put pressure on us, we can do what we want, complete the implementation of things that have not been completed here. Some projects turn out to be very bright.
– You have a blog in the livejournal (oreshkin.livejournal.com), why did you start it?
- We view a very large flow of information, and some of it could be of interest to a large number of people. Many posts appear when we do a competitive work - this is the first sign that we are preparing something, some of the material is sent to LJ. This is a very handy tool, it is chronological, the topics are formed in the tags. The magazine educates people, and colleagues are watching. In the beginning it was a blog about my personal work at A. Lena, but not much is going on, so now there is material that forms the basis for the design. We select an architecture that does not raise questions in terms of quality. If someone is interested, he will look at the blog and understand where A. Len is looking and what we like.
