Archi.ru:
How did your path to architecture begin?
Anatoly Stolyarchuk:
Since arriving in Leningrad. I was born in the small Ukrainian town of Kamenets-Podolsk and went to a regular school. And when I arrived in Leningrad, I realized that I wanted to be an architect. Before entering the Academy of Arts, I had only an art circle and private drawing lessons behind me, that is, in fact, I was a "white sheet", so I absorbed everything like a sponge. I had wonderful teachers: in addition to Sergei Borisovich Speransky, in whose workshop I got after my second year, they were famous architects Alexander Yakovlevich Macheret, Valerian Stepanovich Volonsevich, Natan Naumovich Tregubov. There was an amazing aura in the Academy that fed me afterwards.
If I ask you to name the main stages of your professional life, which ones will you name?
After the army, I worked for fourteen and a half years in our famous LENPROEKT, in workshop No. 2 of Login Loginovich Schreter (later it was headed by Zhan Matveyevich Verzhbitsky, Nikolai Illarionovich Apostol), eventually becoming deputy head. In 1989 I was invited to become the head of a workshop at LenZNIep, where I then worked for nine years. Once upon a time this workshop was directed by Speransky, my colleagues were Victoria Emmanuilovna Struzman, Mark Borisovich Serebrovsky … For me it was a high bar.
There was perestroika in the yard, there were no big projects. And yet here I got a very important experience in complex residential construction. Together with Valery Zinovievich Kaplunov, we designed a military town near Nizhny Novgorod for servicemen returning from the GDR. Then our workshop independently developed a similar town in Tver. For those times, complex design - with a school, kindergartens, not to mention cultural institutions - was a rarity. First, serial houses were built, and then the infrastructure was slowly and painfully tightened. Here, we initially designed a full-fledged complex with a luxurious school with a swimming pool, a kindergarten, a cultural center, and all this was implemented.
In 1998 I opened my own workshop, where I work to this day.
The Lenta hypermarket chain immediately became the trademark of your workshop
We have developed ten projects, of which nine have been implemented. For Russia in the early 2000s, chain hypermarkets were a new phenomenon. We considered it our task to give absolutely functional, working, up to centimeters calculated volumes of individual, recognizable, attractive features - primarily due to the organization of entrance groups. We had to convince the customer of this, but in the end he was satisfied, since our design solutions were fulfilling their “inviting” role. We worked quite a lot in the hypermarket genre (in addition to Lenta, these are the Norma, Metrika, and Kastorama chains), but we also built a lot of residential and public buildings.
Which of them do you consider to be milestone for yourself?
In addition to Lent, this is an indoor skating rink on Butlerova Street, a house on Professor Popov Street, an Olympic trade complex (Artyom shopping center) near Sportivnaya metro station, an office center at the corner of Nevsky and Suvorovsky, Pik shopping and entertainment complex and a chapel on Sennaya …
These are very different buildings. What are your professional guidelines?
I believe in honest, functional architecture. Second, architecture should be humane. I believe that an architect has no right to impose his subjective ambitions on either the customer or the consumers, his business is to immerse himself in the material as much as possible and answer the task.
“At the same time, your buildings do not resemble functionalism
Those compromises in favor of decorativeness or historicism that I had to make are a forced measure due to external circumstances. A typical example is the house on Professor Popov Street. Then, in the early nineties, we were still afraid of openly modern inculcations into the historical fabric. I went this way later, for example, in the project for Mira Street, and I do not regret it at all, although the customer pushed us in every way to stylize, which ultimately led to a conflict.
I don’t want to say that you cannot work “in styles”, but you have to be able to do it. There are very few convincing stylizations in the city, since there are few people who know how to do this: basically you have to see frank, rough kitsch.
What keeps you warm in your work?
The ability to build something really useful, socially significant. In recent years, we have had the opportunity to create projects for two youth and leisure centers, as well as a rehabilitation center for the disabled and disabled children. Realizations like this provide tremendous creative satisfaction.
You have been teaching at the Academy of Arts for many years (Repin State Academy of Architecture and Construction). What does teaching mean to you, how important is it to you?
I have been teaching at the Academy since 1999, and the further I go, the more I appreciate the time spent within its walls. I work as an assistant in the workshop of Vladimir Vasilyevich Popov: I not only teach, but also learn myself - both from students and teachers. The best practices of St. Petersburg work at the Academy, and it is also a club for communication with colleagues.
Remembering my student years, I try to give students what I myself did not receive in due time. The teachers did not come as often as we would like, Speransky's consultations were an event! Communication with students encourages to be in a constant form, to be able to answer their questions, to keep abreast of literature, architectural innovations. I see my work as a mission, I strive to help the young in every possible way, to be not so much a strict teacher as an older friend. Not a single university teaches what the Academy with its age-old traditions gives. Here the student is viewed as a "piece goods".
Currently you are the head of the Association of Architectural Workshops of St. Petersburg - an organization that is called the elite of the Union of Architects. Tell us about this social activity of yours
By nature, I'm not a boss. When I started working in my personal workshop, I sighed because I no longer had to lead a team of eighty people. In OAM I am not at all in order to "lead", but in order to solve organizational issues to the best of my ability and to be useful to the shop. I believe that in April we have successfully held the jubilee Biennale dedicated to the fifteenth anniversary of OAM. Quite recently, in autumn, Moscow hosted the PROEstate exhibition, which was attended by our young architects. Organizers included the Guild of Developers Management and OAM. The main prize - a trip to Holland - was received by the graduates of our Academy, which is especially pleasant. This is integration into European management, which is so necessary for professionals today.
What are your interests besides architecture?
I will say without any coquetry: I have no interests outside of architecture.
What would you like to wish for yourself?
Creative relevance. I would like to have time to do something necessary and useful, to realize the accumulated experience, while you feel the strength in yourself.
