The Wowhaus bureau, which seemed to be founded not very long ago - nine years ago, quickly became famous thanks to cleverly and carefully implemented projects of public spaces and buildings, such as the Strelka Institute, the Crimean Embankment or the Farm at VDNKh. Wowhaus seems to be the offspring of Kapkov's Moscow, the hero of The-Village, the team transforming the city for hipsters, and a living example for many young bureaus. They win competitions for the concept of park development, for example, Sokolnikov, they are ordered cycling routes. Meanwhile, on account of the architects Wowhaus - a carefully verified, beautiful and, as the authors themselves admit, an expensive project for the restoration and adaptation of the theater. K. S. Stanislavsky with its transformation into the "Electrotheatre".
With Anna Ishchenko, director of the Wowhaus bureau since its foundation, who, before joining the creation of the bureau, was the publisher of the Bolshoi Gorod magazine, we talked about plans, the development of business priorities, the history of some projects, and also about where the specialization of an architect ends and work with partners of other specialties begins.
Archi.ru:
– Wowhaus is known primarily by the names of Likina and Shapiro. What does the director of such a bureau do?
Anna Ischenko:
- The director deals with everything except design. In 2007, when Dima and Oleg decided to create a bureau, they invited me to help them organize it. Since then, I have been doing this, although the scale of events has changed slightly. Now I'm not the only one helping to organize, but with the team. The company is developing and we are exploring new markets, developing our business.
But the main thing: we build our work according to the templates of a properly organized client business. In my opinion, architecture as a type of professional activity is quite suitable for this definition, albeit with reservations: it is not only a business, but also an author's product. Russia traditionally makes b about Greater emphasis on the word "author": I am the author, I am the artist, I create. We are not canceling this, but we also want it to work like a business. Actually, this is what I am doing.
– How do you develop your business and master the new markets that you mentioned?
- This is work with new customers. Actually, this is a classic of the genre, it is accepted in any type of client creative business, for example, in advertising, where I and our development director Olga Mashinina worked. But in architecture, especially in Russian architecture, it is not customary to do this. While the years were fat, no one thought about it: you occupied some niche, you got a circle of customers, and you work with them. When we all entered a situation of global uncertainty, it became clear that sitting and waiting for the weather by the sea or hoping for regular customers is hardly reasonable if you want to survive, and even feed a lot of people. Therefore, we decided to slightly activate our position, start moving in new directions, create new connections, look for new markets and new customers.
– You are very intriguing. What exactly are you doing to look for these new markets?
- First of all, we try to understand what niches we have not covered, what we can offer, who may be useful and interested in our ideas. And there is a reverse process, there are people who come to us with a variety of requests. Sometimes the initial request of the customer, after careful study and discussion of the problem, is fundamentally different from what we ultimately design for him. It is very important here from the very beginning to correctly build communication and understand how we can be useful to each other. This initial stage of work is negotiation, it traditionally falls on the shoulders of the chief architect of the bureau. But our partners and chief architects want to focus on something else, on the design itself. Therefore, they partially delegated this interesting task to us.
– Are you the person who primarily communicates with the customer?
- Of course, both partners and leading architects do this, since no one except the architect will tell about what is in his head and how he sees it. But there is still a lot of everything else that needs to be agreed with the customer, starting with an understanding of what he still needs, whether he is aware of the scale of the task he has set - sometimes it happens that he does not. And other organizational and commercial matters and conversations. All this is organized by me, the development department, headed by Olga Mashinina, helps me. Shapiro and Likin appear when you need to talk about a project.
There is also another story about strategic planning: who we are, what we are, where we are going, why do we need it, where do we want to go. When we think of ourselves as a bureau, we get together with Oleg and Dima, think, and I try to structure it and direct it somewhere further.
– How exactly do you change direction, where do you turn?
- Now the economic situation and the business of our customers are changing dramatically; so far we are observing only the first phase of this process. Development obviously will not be able to develop further in the same way as in the last fifteen to twenty years. The architect's task will change accordingly. We must understand and anticipate changes and offer the market what it needs.
Imagine a very simple situation. People bought land, hoping that they would build a business center there, or that they would divide it into plots and sell it for cottages, or simply build a cottage community. As a rule, all this land was bought long ago, when it was clear what to do with it. And now it turned out that what the owners planned to do has become economically ineffective. We, using the accumulated experience, as well as the experience of colleagues who are engaged in sociology, economics and marketing - we propose not only to design something that we are asked for, but also try to come up with what exactly should be placed in this place and why, how it is there will work.
– You take over the marketing function.
- Of course, we work together with the customer's marketing, because the final decision is in their hands anyway. They can only calculate their money themselves. What we do, we call the concept of development or socio-cultural programming: something that tells not only about the form, but also about the content.
I will give an example - not very correct, but very typical. We have one project, which AGR recently received, at the Architectural Council
they wrote about him, this is the market near the Bagrationovskaya metro station. The usual one, where potatoes, cucumbers, large bras are sold … A business center of 40,000 m was planned there.2… A long time ago, our customer purchased this land and received a GPZU for this place, according to which an ordinary class B business center was supposed to appear there. Now, having received all the documents, they calculated how much construction would be built, including land tax; there is no demand for this type of real estate at all, but they are obliged to liquidate the container market. And if they don't build anything, they will take away their land. Then the customers thought: the market already exists, it is functioning, they manage it themselves, there are tenants, people come - why get rid of it, we will create the same market, only a good one. Great idea. And now we are designing it. Here they are great, they came up with a brilliant idea, but we sometimes help our customers come up with ideas of this kind.
– Can you give an example of where exactly you helped?
- A farm at VDNKh. We came up with it. Not that it occurred to us that in the city it would be nice for children to go to the so-called city farm; in world practice there are such stories, most often they are very small, they are almost in the yards, they are organized by the inhabitants themselves. Our girls specially traveled to Germany, watched, learned from experience. Our farm is ten times larger.
– How did it start? Did the VDNKh leadership come to you with this site?
- The leadership of VDNKh came to us with a question: think of something for us somewhere. It is clear that we cannot make radical innovations in the structure of VDNKh for many reasons: it is a monument, and besides, it has a memory of the place. But on this site there were agricultural pavilions - it is clear that it is impossible to show in them what used to be: some cow with a miraculous udder or the largest pig in the world - it is impossible, no one will go to look at it.
Nevertheless, we wanted to leave the agricultural theme in this place, filling it with new content. And it seemed to us that a city farm would be the best fit. For many reasons: because children in the city do not understand where food comes from, they lack tactile sensations, they press a button all the time …
Then we calculated the economics of the project. We analyzed how many people can come there, where they will come from, how much they will be willing to pay for a ticket, what services to receive for a fee, what services are free, what services are needed there in principle. The result is a little book that we call the Functional Service Model. Together with this book, VDNKh was already looking for an operator. Because in the beginning, to be honest, it was quite difficult for them when they came to someone with the idea of a farm - people did not quite understand what it was, they said: this is some kind of nonsense, not a business at all, we will lose money there.
– And to what extent the expectations of your business plan coincided with reality
functioning of the first stage?
- I know for sure that the VDNKh leadership is happy. On weekends, there are queues of children at the farm, they come in whole school classes. Everyone is happy. We have programmed everything correctly.
– Wowhaus is known as a bureau specializing in squares and parks. Will this specialization now fade into the background?
- Not at all. Coincidentally, at some point we made a significant number of projects in this area. First of all, the Crimean embankment and the Revolution Square project, which has not yet been implemented. Now we are working with the Museum Park next to the Polytechnic Museum, adapting the Ishigami concept. We were able to propose an idea that made it possible to realize the main idea of the Japanese architect, with whom he won the international competition in 2011, and at the same time preserve the park in front of the museum from the side of Lubyanskaya Square, as well as solve transport problems. Our concept was agreed upon in all relevant departments of the Moscow government. Now the project is being carried out by Mosproject-3, and we continue to work with them as authors of the updated concept, now once again adapting the concept to the requirements of designers, general planners and budgetary constraints.
I can say for sure that this specialization does not leave our spectrum of interests. If someone ever suggests us to design a park or a city square, we will gladly do it. Moreover, our immediate plans are now to start work on large public areas in two Russian cities. I cannot disclose the details yet, but these are interesting and ambitious projects, and we are glad that the philosophy of the development of public spaces, which we are promoting, has finally gone beyond Moscow.
At the same time, we are actively cooperating with major developers, developing concepts for the improvement and development of the territory for several residential complexes. We also made several projects for the Mosgorpark, which will be implemented in the near future. For the Department of Transport, we have made a very promising and important for the city project of the cycle route "Green Ring". So far, about half of the ring has been developed, about 64 km. It runs mainly through parks, somewhere from Sokolniki to the University on the upper side. We came up with a cycling recreational transit route with infrastructure, crossings - one that, firstly, would use the existing routes and bike paths, and secondly, it would itself be connected - there are quite a few gaps that we are splicing. Hopefully this will be implemented.
Public spaces and parks remain a specialty, but now they are just one of the areas we are working on.
– How often do you propose a project to the customer in advance, without a competition or order? As far as I understand, it was like this with Revolution Square.
- So it was with the Crimean embankment. The improvement of the Revolution Square was in the plan of the city, we were asked to draw a sketch in order to draw up the technical task more accurately, then there was a tender, which we won, and therefore we managed to finish the sketches. We love to invent such interesting and important things, in our opinion, for the city, but it is impossible to carry out such activities in a systematic way. It is impossible to predict which idea will go into further work, how much effort, time and successful coincidences of circumstances will be needed to move from an abstract idea to its implementation.
– And how is the production of ideas in the bureau generally set up? I know that somewhere in the bureau they organize internal competitions; others send their young architects to participate in any competitions in the world …
- We will definitely create a competition department within the bureau this year, because we want to participate in them more.
As far as internal competitions are concerned, we do not encourage competition, but joint work. Here we rather use the format of internal workshops: when a task is set, people get together and work out a solution together. We organize the same workshops not only for working with orders, but for internal "brainstorming".
A very important moment for us is the search for new talented employees, contact with young architects. In the summer, we conduct internships for students of specialized universities. And this year we decided to launch a three-month internship for young architects - now the work of our first stream is coming to an end, but we will definitely continue. The idea of an internship came a long time ago, but before, when we sat on Red October, there was no place for an internship. We took students for practice, but we could not do more. When we arrived at the new, more spacious office at Artplay, we thought: now we can implement this long-standing idea. The internship is conducted by our employee - Olya Rokal, a good architect, and also an excellent organizer and curator of such programs. The first serious task for our interns was a workshop on the object in Nikola-Lenivets, which is planned to be implemented this summer. Oleg Shapiro gave an assignment, suggested an idea, they went to think, Olya worked with them. Then in a week I come, - says Oleg, - I thought there would be 8 options, each would bring something of their own, would not share with anyone, - I was amazed: they were able, all 8 people, to develop one idea in different aspects. They worked together as a team on one project: just one did the visualization, the second did another visualization, the third came up with the design, the fourth did something else. And we are very happy with the result. As a result of the internship, we plan to offer some of the children a job in our office.
– Do you pay interns?
- We pay, a little, but we pay.
– Summer internship also with payment?
- Unfortunately, we cannot pay for summer practice. Interns are bachelors, they already know a little more than third-year students, although some students are also very good. Once a boy came to practice, a third-year student, and stayed to work after the practice. This, however, rarely happens. We pay interns because they are almost adults, and we expect that later we will take some of these people into our state. Trainees, who are also interns, are just students, so sometimes they are more of a hassle than a benefit.
– Who are your main customers now?
- Now we have a big customer - the Polytechnic Museum, more precisely Mosproject-2, which performs the functions of a general designer. He is engaged in the adjustment of project documentation. Polytech is a big story. A new concept of a world-class science museum is being implemented there. Bureau Wowhaus takes part in the work on the exposition, planning and thematic zoning of exhibition spaces, makes a project of multifunctional spaces in overlapped courtyards, restoration and adaptation of the Large Auditorium, on the basis of which a modern concert and theater complex is being created.
This year's trend is the appearance of large orders from the regions: these are non-state companies that are interested in a new round of urban development and are ready to invest in development, this trend gives us hope that things are not so bad. I can't tell you more yet, but literally in 1-2 months, I hope we will be able to share interesting news.
In addition, among our customers there are several large developers, such as MR-Group, Donstroy-invest in Moscow, Forum Group in Yekaterinburg and others, for whom we develop improvement projects.
We are completing the project of the children's zoo: it occupies a part of the territory of the Moscow Zoo, which overlooks the Garden Ring.
– Will there be something like a farm?
- In general, yes, but not quite. Like a farm - in the sense that there are pets, this is a children's educational story about the domestication of animals: how it happened, and so on. In a zoo, we cannot do everything like on a farm, there is a colossal flow of people, and besides, we must follow the rules: formally, a zoo is a museum, it has an exposition and funds; we had to study and understand all this.
– Did you write a program for the zoo too?
- Yes, we are together with the zoologists of the zoo and with involved biologists - popularizers of science, teachers and sociologists. We thought over not only the organization of streams, but also educational programs for children and other meaningful things. There are quite a lot of things invented.
– Why did you decide to do programming as well?
- The trend has been outlined for a long time. Often a customer comes to us and sets a task very broadly, broader than the architect usually answers it. At first we resisted, and then we thought: why do we say “no”, if we do not know how to do something, we will learn to do it better.
– Do you propose and do you plan to offer such conceptual work to the customer separately?
- Quite separately, without architecture, probably not. We do not do everything related to the research part, sociology, economics ourselves: we have outsourced partners, we order them work. Moreover, for some customers they work under a separate contract. For example, we agree that the customer is engaged in marketing and other things separately, and then gives it to us as a technical specification. Although it often happens that we deliver a single product to the customer. But separately, without architecture, we will definitely not do this. We are not interested in being resellers.
– What kind of specialists do you involve if you work, for example, with the improvement of a residential complex?
- The same. We had an illustrative story with the Donstroyevsky residential complex "Heart of the Capital". This is a large quarter, built around the perimeter of houses, and inside a 14 hectare yard, a school and a kindergarten. Quarter with a very large yard. On the ground floors there are public and commercial functions, their location came to us as a baseline. Here, the data of sociology and sociological modeling were very important for us, because without this we would not have understood what and where these people would be popular. Of course, we can come up with something based on common sense, but this is wrong.
For example, our colleagues looked at where what kind of transport is functioning and what is planned; what institutions are there, how people go to work past these houses, predicted flows. It turned out that not a single person would go where the supermarket was planned. The customer listened to us and began to rent another area for a supermarket. In a similar way, we came up with landscaping: together with sociologists, we predicted a scenario for kids, for adolescents - by day, we understood where which group of people hangs out so that they do not intersect with each other. What is usually the problem? Teenagers have nowhere to sit, so they sit on the playground, which is not for them, next to their grandmothers, who are not very pleased with this neighborhood. We tried to dilute everyone as much as possible. But we did it on the model that sociologists gave us.
– The stories you tell are pretty pragmatic. Are you trying to offer some kind of cultural function: museums, libraries, exhibition halls? To what extent is it necessary, and to what extent it turns out?
- We are trying to interest the customer. During the first conversation, we talk about all the variety of social functions that could be, and we look at the reaction. Unfortunately, any social function only lives when there is someone who is engaged in it. A library cannot exist without a librarian and library fund. This means that additional resources will be needed. If we see that the customer is ready to go for something like that, then we start a discussion and try to implement these ideas. If it is clear that the reactions are zero, then we do not impose our point of view. This happens quite often, because developers have just begun to realize that for a person it is important not only the square meter and the price for it, but also how he got from his car or from the metro to the house, what he saw around, and where his child walks with a nanny or grandmother.
