Sponsor of the special project “Future. Method "at the festival" Zodchestvo "2014 - Roca company.
Archi.ru:
How did you decide to become the curator of the exhibition as part of Zodchestvo? And what is the main idea behind your exposition?
Oscar Mamleev:
- The perception of this festival as a very traditional “exhibition of the achievements of the national economy” is widespread, and I myself had the same attitude to “Zodchestvo”. But I like Andrey and Nikita Asadov - very energetic people and very different. When I found out that this year they are curating the festival, and got acquainted with their concept, I agreed to take part, as I always try to support those who are trying to bring newness to the unchanging stereotypes over the years.
It is assumed that the festival, timed this time to the centenary of constructivism, will have three sections - about the past, present and future of Russian architecture. What is the past, we know, we can now see the present around us, and the future is a difficult question. I was entrusted with a section with the conventional name “Future. Method". In fact, the question "What is the architecture of the future in Russia?" somewhat rhetorical, and other colleagues answered it to me with great surprise, and the very idea of the specifics of Russian architecture caused surprise. So, one German architect, with whom I agree, objected that in the 19th century, in Vienna, in Moscow, in other European cities, there were similar trends at every stage, from Empire to Art Nouveau. And we in Russia are always trying to find our specificity not only in architecture, but also in all other areas.
Seriously speaking, our future is young people, students, young architects. Everything will depend on how correctly they will be taught, how responsibly and with understanding they will approach their profession. What they will be, such will be our life and our architecture. And speaking with a smile, I recall the book by Georgy Golubev "Underground Urbanism", where the first illustration is a 1906 painting called "Moscow 1966". It is very funny: slightly modernized machines of the early 20th century, airships. And it is just as difficult to predict, with all the accelerating, exponential changes taking place, what actually awaits us tomorrow. Technology is evolving very quickly, which greatly affects architecture.
Then what will you show at your exhibition?
- The first section - "Method" - is devoted to three, from my point of view, the most characteristic educational workshops - TAF and the architecture college of Alexander Ermolaev, the MARCH school of Evgeny Ass and the Samara workshop of Sergei Malakhov and Evgenia Repina. Of course, there are wonderful teachers at the Moscow Architectural Institute, but they work according to a method that was invented many years ago and is very difficult to change: they are sometimes even criticized for violating the order that reigns in the Moscow Architectural Institute. And of the three workshops I have named, each has its own original methodology, and that is why I wanted to show these particular training centers.
The second part of the exhibition can be ironically called "Provocation". There are such architects as Alexander Brodsky, whose works cause a smile: looking at them, one can assume that in the future we will collect old frames in the garbage and build vodka pavilions from them. In addition to Brodsky, I asked Vasily Soshnikov about the architecture of the future great company - Architects Icing, young architects - participants and winners of the NEXT competition and other important competitions. Very interesting sketches by Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya for their Russian pavilion at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai will also be shown. It is clear that during the implementation, some of the initial ideas, nuances were lost, and therefore it is very interesting to look at those first sketches - how the authors interpreted the image of Russia. The final section of the exposition is the answers of famous Russian and foreign, eminent and young architects to the question - what is the architecture of the future.
However, I want the exposition to be alive. I would like to invite students from several cities to work on the image of the future architecture of Russia during the three days of the festival. I really look forward to this live seminar, because we already have the experience of last summer, when at the Art-Ovrag festival in the city of Vyksa we invited guys from several architectural schools. And they made very interesting proposals on the theme of the festival within five days "from scratch".
But how exactly do the theme of the method and the theme of the future correlate - after all, judging by your idea, the exhibition will cover wider strata than architectural education?
- I wanted this exhibition and its main idea not to be a direct answer to the question about Russian architecture of the future. Rather, it is a formulation of a question that makes one think and answer each in his own way. After all, the opinions of the architects I interviewed also differ: each “respondent” touches on its own aspect. And this turns out to be very pedagogical when we do not say that it should be just this way and nothing else. In fact, a teacher is not a mentor who tells a student how to do so that he can follow his instructions unquestioningly. The teacher is a navigator who guides the student in a certain direction, constantly makes him think, look for solutions. I would like this section to observe this principle, for people to see the exhibition and absorb what they saw there, smile somewhere, think somewhere and make their own conclusion. This is much more important than confronting them with the fact.
Who will be these people who will reflect on your exposition?
- It is addressed to everyone who is interested in architecture, but primarily to young people.
To the architectural youth?
- Not only to her. I see how successfully the Strelka Institute is functioning, where people of completely different professions who graduated from different institutes receive a sum of diverse knowledge. And, in the same way, any creative people would be interested to see this exhibition, get information and draw a conclusion.
That is, it is addressed to the "audience of the future"?
- Yes. The main focus and hope is on the young.
How does your exhibition - and you yourself - relate to the theme of "Architecture" this year - "actual identical"?
- I do not really understand the meaning of the search for the identity of Russian architecture. I cannot imagine that all architects work in the same vein and embody some Russian specifics, no matter what it may be - good or bad. There are Russian architects who have “their own face” and differ from their Western colleagues - Alexander Brodsky, Alexey Bavykin, Levon Airapetov, neoclassics … It seems to me that identity is contained in personalities, each of which is something unusual. Roots and habitat can give rise to the architecture of specific architects, individuals, and not a common "denominator" for all. If we talk about me, then my favorite architects were and remain Yuri Grigoryan and Sergei Skuratov. I will not say that they are specifically Russian architects, they are architects of a very high European level, and I love them personally and their architecture very much.
Should we now look for identity and uniqueness, or would it be more logical to focus on the quality of life? Or on universal human problems, forgetting about originality?
- It is more logical to focus just on the quality of life and on common human problems. You should probably not forget about the originality, but devote yourself to creating a comfortable living environment. Beautiful new residential areas in Helsinki and Stockholm are ideal for me. There is nothing there that would shock from the point of view of architecture, but the quality of the environment there is very high. And here is the alternative: I have just been in Baku, I saw the Zakhi Hadid Heydar Aliyev Center, a rather strange object for Azerbaijan, although Hadid is undoubtedly a wonderful architect. But I was shocked by another structure -
"Flame Towers" designed by the international company HOK as a symbol of Azerbaijan. When you look at the city from the side of the embankment, calm buildings rise into the mountains, and suddenly - such a kraken that is ready to swallow Old Baku. Especially in the evening, with dynamic lighting, it is an eerie sight. Of course, architecture needs to be made more humane.
What is the peculiarity and uniqueness of your method?
- My method has no peculiarities, let alone uniqueness. Like the master teachers who will be presented at the exhibition, I believe that the most important thing is to educate creative, thinking and responsible people.
