- Well, you just have a very tempting topic. I don’t pretend to know everything - we’ll wait until the exhibition, but now name two or three methods or elements that “vividly reflect the collective image” of the national architectural school, which have grown as a result of the evolutionary process.
- Thank you very much for the appreciation of the proposed topic. It may seem obvious, taking into account the general theme of the festival "Zodchestvo" "Actual Identical", and even populist, taking into account the ideas that have been actively promoted recently in the media and political circles as PR tools.
But in fact, the proposed concept is based on problems associated exclusively with professional architectural activity and with those issues that, in my opinion, are high time to become the subject of general discussion. What factors determine the specifics of the architecture of this or that state? How much does it depend on the social, political, financial and ideological (including confessional) conjuncture? Or is it a product of the actual needs of society at a certain moment in history, supported by a specific level of development of technologies and the construction process? And where to get away from the objective given of the geographical and climatic originality of our country? Do these factors give a tangible difference, which can be characterized as a national tradition, or do they not go beyond the individuality of the author's reading within the boundaries of common cross-national stylistic trends? How decisive are the global aesthetic and methodological trends? Are we just borrowing and endlessly catching up? Perhaps we nevertheless creatively rework the ideas and forms that have come to us so that from time to time, in some of the brightest (usually, crisis periods of our history) to break forward, creating something that rightfully takes its place in the textbooks of world architecture, so that later slide back into the routine of imitation? How are these generally recognized masterpieces created, whose appearance becomes the presentation image of the entire country and markers of its national identity? Is it a sign of an established national school or masterpieces - are they single bursts of genius of individual personalities, whose fate often testifies to their unrecognition by their contemporaries and confrontation with the dominant architectural trends?
Of course, this list of questions can be continued for a long time. I have no doubt that every architect sooner or later asked about them. And what answers he found for himself, what landmarks he chose, largely determined his creative path and became part of the general evolutionary process. Thus, each answer is like a piece of a mosaic, like a piece of DNA that folds into a genetic code that, we sincerely hope, defines the general concept of Russian architecture.
Our project is an attempt to talk about it. Not to declare your own vision, but to collect opinions and try to analyze them. We ask questions and ask them exactly to those people who have devoted themselves to the difficult task (oh, how difficult it is in our country) of creating architecture. It seems to us that this is the most correct way. And the question of what techniques, forms or samples each architect defines for himself as most vividly and fully embodying the national tradition is just a catalyst for talking about larger-scale problems and phenomena, the key to launching a comprehensive analysis of the specifics of Russian architecture and its current status. in the general evolutionary chain (if any).
We turned to a number of prominent Russian architects with a proposal to comprehend the questions posed within the framework of the project, try to formulate an answer for ourselves, reflect it in the form of an installation and comment on it in video interviews, which will not only be included in the exhibition project at the Zodchestvo Festival, but and will be published on the site Archplatforma.ru - the project partner, thanks to the efforts of the team from the editor-in-chief of the site Ekaterina Shalina, director Elena Galyanina, photographer and cameraman Gleb Anfilov.
I would like to especially thank all the architects who, despite their busyness, and often incomplete agreement with the initial formulation of the question, agreed to take part in the project and spent their time preparing the exhibition installation and recording video interviews. This is infinitely valuable for all of us, the authors of the project. Every meeting, every conversation has become something of a revelation. Even if it began with the assertion that there is little originality in Russian architecture, very deep topics were revealed in the conversation and it became obvious that the issues raised within the framework of the project are really important for architects and they feel the need to comprehend their place in the global architectural process.
Each of the participants found interesting formulations and interpretations of the specifics of Russian architecture. Someone went from the most striking stylistically phenomena in its history, someone was looking for commonality in the mentality of its creators and customers, someone in emotional aspects or political conjuncture. Each answer added a new dimension to the folding image.
It seems to me that the most important thing in our project is that there can be no right or wrong answers in it. Each participant is free to imagine exactly what he thinks that appears before his mind when pronouncing two words "Russian architecture", and each answer is material for analysis and a key to the next chain of comprehension, each statement is another element of the general genetic code.
I have no doubt that the results of the open poster competition (we came up with this format in order to maximize the circle of project participants and give every architect, designer and artist an opportunity to express their point of view) will add many interesting interpretations of the given topic. Let me remind you that you can submit works for the competition until December 10, and the best of them will be included in the exposition at Zodchestvo.
Architects and not only have been fighting over the theme of originality / identity for two hundred years, if not more. Isn't it scary to tackle such a topic?
- Scary - no, hard - yes. Not scary, because we do not pretend to formulate the final answer. It is difficult - because the conceived project consists of several components, in each of which many people are involved, and the time and resources are catastrophically short. For example, now we have one more element of the project "hanging" - a printed catalog in which we could present all statements and all works, installations, and posters collected within the framework of the competition. The publication of the catalog requires funds that we are looking for and, I hope, will find, so that the result of the efforts of so many people will receive material embodiment and a chance to continue.
Don't you think that the declared principle - the selection of elements characteristic of the national school - repeats the path traveled, and quite successfully, by historicism 19th century and early modern XX century? Why go through it again? Here you will find these elements, and what will you do with them next, how can this search be reflected in the present day?
- It does not seem to me that we are now doing something similar to those searches for a national architectural language that manifested themselves so vividly in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Then the Russian Empire was on the rise and its successes needed to find an adequate form. In addition, a new financially successful class of manufacturers and entrepreneurs was formed, rising from the merchant environment. As a result, on the part of the state and a private customer, there was a need for a certain style. And we must pay tribute to the architects of that time, they coped with the adaptation of historical prototypes to the functions and scales of the new time more than successfully. In contrast, for example, from the Moscow experiments with "Luzhkov" turrets.
Nowadays, the request for the revival of historical prototypes exists only in cult architecture. I don't think we can expect a renaissance of "neo-Russian" architecture. Over the past hundred years, the tradition of working with detail, with decor and forms characteristic of ancient Russian architecture, has been thoroughly lost. And the customer is not ready to pay for "decorative weights" per square meter.
What we are trying to do now within the framework of the "Genetic Code" project is about something else altogether. We ask all these questions and collect answers to them in order to make them part of the professional consciousness, so that the architects who participate in the project or all those who learn about it on the Internet can turn to the cultural and material massif of Russian architecture, in the further formation of which they are participating right now, have comprehended it and formulated for themselves the laws by which its development is going.
It does not matter what their answer will be: there is a specificity in Russian architecture, there is none, we have something to be proud of, or we are hopelessly secondary. The main thing is to find the answer to this question within ourselves and free ourselves from incessant reflections: either we are the most brilliant, but the socialist system prevents us from creating, then we could shake the world, but we have no technology, then we are forced to protect the market from foreign architectural intervention (by the way, and where is she?), then we become victims of the unassuming taste of the customer or the city authorities, who understand better than us what architecture the city needs, then universities graduate worthless young specialists, then …
This is like the first of nine steps to combat alcohol addiction - you have to admit that the problem exists. Likewise, in our architecture, it seems to me, we must admit that at some point the priorities shifted from understanding who you are, what you do, how and why, to looking for excuses why nothing happened again. It would be great to close this question.
In the above long list of explanations of why Russian architecture is what it is, there is no main thing - the question of the personal responsibility of each architect for the quality of his projects. And responsibility comes with the awareness of their place in architecture, and the need to respond to the experience of previous generations, whose working conditions were much more difficult, but whose professionalism, nevertheless, did not allow them to lower the quality bar below the level that guarantees the creation, if not a masterpiece, then, in any case, an object that forms a harmonious environment, the level that we now characterize as rarely attainable.
There is an opinion that the Russian school of architecture developed for a long time, strictly speaking, according to the provincial logic: by adapting successful borrowings and their gradual "dissolution" in the inertial mass. To me personally, this view seems very convincing, but what do you think?
- Yes, we have borrowed architectural techniques and styles from other cultures and other countries for centuries. There is nothing strange or vicious about this. This does not in the least cancel our originality. Imagine the entire vast array of factors that determine the appearance of each building built. I listed some of these factors at the beginning of our conversation. Imagine that a Russian architect, commissioned by the emperor, for example, has to build a palace in the classical style using Italian prototypes. What is the likelihood that he will build a copy? 0% - the whole system of differences between Russia and Italy will turn on, including the tyranny of the customer, Orthodoxy instead of Catholicism, the climate, the lack of qualified builders, the presence of other building materials, etc. etc.
But trying to understand what will change during adaptation and under the greatest influence of which factors, and whether these factors can be regarded as permanent or, say, typical enough to claim the status of specificity of Russian architecture - this is interesting. There is something to think about.
Will you look for the origins of other national schools of the Russian Federation, besides the Russian one?
- To be honest, I did not set myself the goal of researching national schools. I am not interested in the question of national identity. The theme of our project is "Russian architecture". For me, this means the architectural culture of the entire post-Soviet space or the opinions of all those architects, no matter what nationality, who define themselves as a Russian architect. If it is more important for an architect to realize himself as a part of a certain national tradition, no matter whether Jewish, Tatar or Nanai, this is his right, but in this case he simply does not fall into the field of our research.
How do you personally define for yourself the uniqueness of the Russian architectural school?
- It is difficult to choose just a few characteristics. And I would not like to do this at all, since my role in this project is only coordinating. I repeat once again that the most important feature of the "Genetic Code" project is that its speakers, whose opinions we broadcast, are practitioners, first of all, architects - authors of installations, and of course, all those who want to take part in the poster competition …
