Archi.ru:
How did you come to architecture?
Sergey Tsytsin:
- I came to architecture very simply: my father, Viktor Nikolaevich Tsytsin, was an architect, he graduated first from an art school, and then from the Academy of Arts. My brother and I (artist Nikita Viktorovich Tsytsin) have been drawing since childhood, so the choice of profession came absolutely naturally. After school I entered the Academy of Arts, where I studied in the studio of Igor Ivanovich Fomin. He was an aristocrat in architecture, and the most important thing, perhaps, was communication with him as a person. My other teacher was Alexander Vladimirovich Zhuk, with whom I had a very warm relationship. In addition, the very walls of the Academy and its unique spirit raised us no less than the teachers. A very important point was also free communication between students of different courses, we also learned from each other.
In those years, did you already have any priorities, professional guidelines in architecture?
Maybe I'm an atypical option, but during my years of study, I just absorbed everything I heard from the teachers. At the same time, I often asked questions, and sometimes the teachers were surprised, admitting that they had never thought about the things that interested me.
How did your professional life develop after graduation?
- I consulted with my colleagues and in the end I deliberately chose Lengrazhdanproekt for myself. Firstly, I have always liked and like everything related to urban planning, with the formation of space, with functional zones, the ratio of the artificial and natural environment. In addition, by that time I had already developed certain positions related to deurbanization. I was lucky: by the time I arrived at the institute, a competition was organized for the village of Imochenitsy, next to the estate of Vasily Polenov. I won this competition, and then this project was named the best in the USSR - I won the Best Project of the Year competition, first city, then republican, then union. I was engaged in integrated design: I made the volume and layout of the village with administrative and shopping centers, a kindergarten, a school, and engineering facilities. At the same time, I studied the traditions of the Russian north, the composition of villages … Unfortunately, Agroprom was only interested in typical construction at that time, and despite the orders of the ministers, the experimental settlement was never built at that time. It was possible to realize it only partially, during perestroika, already with the "new wave". In total, I worked at Lengrazhdanproject for six years, having completed many planning and volumetric decisions.
After that, I moved to the workshop of Veniamin Fabritsky, where Sergei Tchoban was one of my colleagues for three years. When we meet, we remember those years with invariable warmth.
Then perestroika began, and I was invited to LISS, where I taught at SKB (student design bureau). Mark Khidekel, the son of the famous avant-garde artist, and Oleg Romanov, the current president of the Union of Architects of St. Petersburg, also worked there at that time. After some time, the moment came for the creation of private architectural firms, and in 1988 I opened my own studio.
What are some significant milestones in her work?
- Probably, the 2000s were marked with the most active movement against the background of growing development activity. The first significant leap took place in 1999, when we built the Korona complex in Moscow. In comparison with the then St. Petersburg practice, this was a very complex set of tasks, with an underground garage and other functions that were new for that time.
Gradually, the team grew both professionally and numerically. In 2002, the "Tsytsin Architectural Workshop" opened a joint company in Moscow - "MonArkhAMTs"; in 2008 - "Tsytsin and Biktashev Architects"; in 2009 - "CV2" (Tsytsin and Balsky "). When faced with large objects, I understood that architects and designers alone would not be enough. Therefore, we have our own staff for each area of work. Currently, our workshop employs about 100 people.
– In your catalog, the main priorities of the workshop are named efficiency, stability and harmony as a projection of the Vitruvian triad onto modern realities. Tell me, what does the classic category of beauty mean to you? Is her nature absolute or relative? And is there a place for it in modern times?
Of course, there is a deep connection between the "Tsytsin triad" (smiles) and the Vitruvius triad. “Beauty will save the world,” Dostoevsky said. Hegel (following Plato) defined beauty as "the transmission of the Idea through the object." Of course, in the age of postmodernism, total pluralism, relativity of everything, and all absolute categories are rarely in circulation now. However, natural or man-made beauty is a reflection of the timeless divine world.
What are your main creative principles?
- The first is contextuality. The building must properly interact with both the artificial and the natural environment. We have to catch this music of space: rhythms, stylistics, scale relationships of buildings and individual elements. Without an exact hit in these parameters, the object cannot take place in principle. The stylistics can be different: in the historical center, both modern architecture and historical stylization may be appropriate.
I can cite as an example our facility on Maly Prospekt on Vasilyevsky Island - this is a modern building, but it supports the context with its scale, plastering technique, and some elements. I believe that the imitation of the historical style, made in modern materials and technologies, is bad, false. You can also work in contrast: everything depends on the specific case.
The continuity of space, the connection between the exterior and the interior (I am a member of the Union of Interior Artists), with the landscape is very important for me. There are volumes, and facades, and parks, and lighting … The design should be global, permeating all levels of space, possessing both eternal and modern meanings. It plays both a symbolic and informational role. Therefore, our task is twofold and even threefold: on the one hand, to understand the customer as best as possible and answer his specific task, on the other hand, to broadcast some eternal laws in our work, and at the same time reflect our time.
What are the main difficulties that you have to face as an architect?
- There are a lot of problems, and they must be solved in a complex.
One of the main ones is the lack of rights of architects. This is a huge loss not only for future residents, users, but even for investors. When an investor begins to dictate, he does not understand what he ultimately loses, and what the quality of the environment could be. And this is not even always a matter of price, although most often it is he. However, direct arithmetic does not always allow you to correctly correlate the two scales: it happens that additional investments increase the attractiveness of the object so much that they pay off well and successfully work for the investor's image.
Second: if at the beginning of perestroika there was excessive freedom, now there is a reverse wave, when everything is too bureaucratic. Those. consistency should be, but at such a high level that it would not be a barrier, but a "crutch", help - both for the investor and for the architect. Now this system is building formidable barriers, and the design process is turning into a run (or labyrinth) with obstacles and traps.
Another problem is very expensive lending in our country. And when the percentage is large, the investor can have no other goal than to quickly build something and leave the process. As a rule, he is not interested in either a quality environment or its efficient operation.
In the fall of this year, you became a member of the Ecos group - a new urban planning section of the Union of Architects of St. Petersburg, which forms proposals for improving urban planning policy. What does this job mean to you?
- At the beginning of perestroika, there was a directive according to which the market itself must regulate urban planning processes. However, time has shown that this is the deepest delusion. In fact, the manifestation of free will must be combined with strategic planning and prioritization. The role of the state is precisely to create conditions so that by investing, building and making a profit, developers thereby improve our lives. In other words, development interests should be channeled into the mainstream of the city's global interests. Unfortunately, today the state and city authorities have largely lost the mechanisms for regulating development activity. It is extremely difficult to reverse this situation, and the further - the more difficult, because the direction is incorrectly set. We are trying to make our contribution to changing this situation for the better.
What would you like to wish for yourself?
- Stable work, understanding customers, well-coordinated team of employees. A project is a clearly expressed collective work, therefore a good team with individually trained personnel is the most important condition for successful work.
