Archi.ru:
- The first question I would like to ask is from us and from our readers at the same time. The list of new industries that will be discussed at Zodchestvo -2015 is very wide, it includes almost all spheres of activity, not only urban, but also rural: the agricultural industry is also represented there. It turns out that for Russia at the moment, almost all areas, except for the mining industry and development, are to some extent new and progressive, and they need to be supported
Andrey and Nikita Asadov:
- For the exhibition project "Zodchestvo" this year we are trying to select everything that, in our opinion, drives the business, vital activity of the city, without which it cannot exist. Now the main problem, if we consider the architecture of the country as a whole, is that active people from the regions first move to large cities, regional centers, then to Moscow, and then, if they are lucky, to the West. And one of the tasks of the festival is to try to start the reverse process - it is already starting to go, but so far it has affected a few people - the transformation of small towns into popular and attractive for life, including due to new industries, what we call new industries. With their help, there will appear business activity of a completely new quality, because there already exists a whole class of people who are tired of doing in Moscow what can be easily done in a small town in much more comfortable conditions. Both for these cities and for the country as a whole, this will be, in a certain sense, salvation, because it will launch a fundamentally different mechanism of development, and architecture will serve as a tool for launching this mechanism.
The new industry is a means of attracting people to small towns, and architecture is a tool for keeping people there and creating a "new quality of life", since now production is not so much about quantity as about quality; it is a production of a new format: creative, high-tech, intellectual. Why else is this topic relevant: now, due to the crisis, the former sources of get rich quick have disappeared, and technologies of slow or sustainable development are starting to work. We see this situation as a chance to launch new industries, popularize and accelerate this process.
By new industries, we mean the entire spectrum of intellectual and creative activities. It is for them that the future lies. How soon Russia will switch to this "new industrial" economy depends on how quickly it will be able to "reformat", including society and culture. Accordingly, if architects now begin to think about how to adapt existing spaces in cities and outside cities to this new economy, then architecture can become one of the flagships of the transformation process. Everyone has already understood that it is time to start this process from the beginning of this year. And we propose to do this with the help of architecture.
- However, on the list you have not only science and culture, there is also the service sector, the tourism industry, for example, as well as transport
- It all "hits one point." New industries are like “points of growth” in Russian cities. What is needed for the “growth point” in the city to work? It is necessary for it to form an effective space for development or to renovate the existing one. For this purpose, it is possible to "reformat" the abandoned factories that are in the center of many medium and small towns in Russia, to "reformat" both the space and production there - into creative, media-intensive, intellectual-intensive. Further, in order for highly professional specialists working in the new "production" to be interested in the city, it is necessary to improve the quality of life there, to create a comfortable environment. To do this, you need to update public spaces or create them from scratch. The tourism industry is also working towards this goal: if there is no suitable factory in the city, but there is a wonderful architectural monument, a Kremlin or a monastery, it can also become a “growth point”.
A monastery - as a museum or as a religious object transferred to the church?
- With the monasteries transferred to the church, everything is fine, they themselves have become real cultural clusters - and there are many examples of this. They form a community around themselves, do what post-Soviet city authorities often fail to cope with: in the case of monasteries, there is a strong spiritual component, and all systems start to work much easier and more naturally.
As for transport, in order to move as quickly as possible in such a new "network" community of cities - after all, even if everyone is constantly online, sometimes you still need to visit each other - you need appropriate transport systems - high-speed, comfortable … Starting from the renovation of roads and ending with alternative modes of transport, including high-speed string transport.
- The festival manifesto focuses on human capital. On the one hand, there is enough of it in Russia, but on the other hand, you can notice a shortage of this capital: this applies, say, to the circle of your colleagues - organizers of architectural events - festivals, exhibitions: it is rather narrow. This observation is true in other areas as well. Really active people, ready to go beyond the limits of their ordinary life, the circle of work - study - family, as it seems, are still few
“And according to our feelings, an order of magnitude more“initiative”projects have begun to appear in the Russian architectural sphere lately. This, on the one hand, is due to the growing popularity of urbanism, near-architectural movements. And the architects themselves began to act as activists, initiators, "initiators" of the renovation of the urban space. Here is a living example of such an initiative - the Chair of the Environment, launched by a young team of architects "Megabudka". They come up with a project in a network format, discuss it and then implement it in the city. And we know a number of such initiatives.
So, the main exposition of Zodchestvo will be devoted to new industries. And what kind of special projects will supplement it?
- Yes, the main place at the exhibition will be taken by examples of architectural renovation of urban areas and individual objects. Moreover, the composition of the participants during the exhibition tour in Russia planned after the festival will change - local examples will be added to the existing projects.
Another special project - "Anatomy of the City" by Ilya Zalivukhin - will show the city as a living organism, with its own skeleton, nervous and circulatory systems.
Traditionally, there will be a special educational project that brings together the best architectural schools in Russia. It is handled by Oscar Mamleev and the MARSH School represented by its leaders Evgeny Assa and Nikita Tokarev.
A special project of an unusual, "verbal" format is also planned. This is a joint project with the Forum of Living Cities. We will put up a large poster with the principles of the Charter of Living Cities proposed by various experts, and any visitor to Zodchestvo can add his own five principles. The Living Cities Forum is an initiative originally from Izhevsk, proposed by Lev Gordon and his colleagues. Using the example of their city, they showed that with the help of active residents, a city can come to life, collect its internal resources and transform its space through the energy of its citizens. And this initiative has already gone across the country.
In your interviews, you often say that Zodchestvo should be a PR platform for promoting architecture in general. But this is the problem of any architectural exhibitions and festivals, including the Venice Biennale: they are, in essence, for “their own”, for architects and students, and “Zodchestvo” also comes mainly from “their own”, as well as on Arch -Moscow. How do you lure a wider audience there?
- To begin with, in our opinion, we need a “non-architectural” theme. The theme "New Industries" was just conceived to attract not only architects, but also the creators and participants of new industries, the creative class, and urban activists. By the way, we invited both architects and creators of various creative projects and platforms to participate in the main exhibition, and all of them - on an equal footing - make models for the exposition, which is also very interesting.
At the same time, we want to show that architects are specialists who think comprehensively, synthetically and can unite the interests of all participants in the process.
Where is the boundary of the architect's responsibility?
- This is a different, but also important topic. In Russia, architects are very often perceived as "designers" of facades, ready-made volumes, predetermined by urban planning parameters. And we show that an architect initially has the potential of a “conductor”, an organizer of space, a creator of a strategy for its renewal. He is the author of the "script", according to which the whole concept of the introduction and development of new industries is launched, up to the fact that he can write a script for the renovation of an entire city. An architect, as a doctor, senses which points need to be touched, like in acupuncture, “press” which specific places to renovate within the framework of any, even a modest budget, so that the city immediately revives.
The architect comprehends the interests of all participants in the process: the city administration, its residents, investors, developers. And, having passed them through himself, he creates a product that is useful for the entire city. This synthetic quality of architectural thinking can be salutary precisely today when it is necessary to formulate complex strategies.
We have a feeling that few people have come across the process of reformatting cities that is now beginning, and therefore few know how to deal with it. What needs to be done with the space of the city so that it renews itself, “restarts” - not a separate building or public space, but its entire mechanism as a whole? Architects have a chance to initiate this process by showing that they can do much more than what they have been doing for the past 20 years.
Your exposition will coexist with the traditional Zodchestvo review of projects from all over the country. How do the two fit together in your concept?
- In addition to our reasoning, you need to understand what is the reality in which we exist. And it is Zodchestvo that gives this necessary picture of the world, it is not a cut of the most prestigious projects in the capital, but the average indicator of architecture in the country. This "knocks down" any possible pathos. We have no illusions, we understand that today the country is working in such conditions, with such consumers, in such a reality. This is very important, because you always need to understand where you are, what is the context that needs to be taken into account, and this context, by the way, will not perceive any super-radical changes, it simply will not understand them.
There is this context, but there is a theme for this year. We all - the curators, the expert council, the festival as a whole - propose a vector of development - what kind of future we see in modern reality, and we propose to think and act in this direction - no matter what.
