The Architect Plays The First Violin There

The Architect Plays The First Violin There
The Architect Plays The First Violin There

Video: The Architect Plays The First Violin There

Video: The Architect Plays The First Violin There
Video: Teaching strangers how to play violin in 5 minutes! 2024, March
Anonim

Once upon a time, it seems a very long time ago, in the mid-80s, exactly at the time when the Soviet Union reached the point and needed restructuring, we graduated from the institute; a year earlier, to be precise. It was the golden age of "Grazhdanproekt" and the system of postgraduate "distribution". The best place in Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) for architects "before" and a little more "after" was, of course, "Gorkovgrazhdanproekt". The whole "color" of the architecture of Nizhny Novgorod worked in it, and by that time Alexander Kharitonov had become the chief architect. He himself selected the staff of the architects and himself distributed them to the workshops. This is how a certain "Kharitonov call" was formed: in 1985 it was B. Tarasov, O. Rybin, S. Polivanov, V. Vagin, and in 1986 - L. Kravchenko, in 1989 I returned from Tver and also got to orbit of "Grazhdanproekt". In fact, the future "Nizhny Novgorod School" was formed there. Have already worked in different positions: S. Timofeev, A. Dekhtyar, V. Bandakov, V. Nikishin, V. Bykov, A. Sazonov, Yu. Chakrygin, Yu. Kartsev, A. Stepovoy, M. Noginov, A. Khudin, A. Kopylov, E. Pestov, V. Kovalenko, S. Khvil, Yu. Bolgov. Later the picture was supplemented by D. Volkov and A. Kamenyuk. This contingent lasted until about the mid-90s. Then gradually their own architectural workshops spun off from there. And by the 2000s, our workshop looked convincing enough to be able to speak of it as a phenomenon. First, the issue of "Architectural Bulletin" by Dmitry Fesenko was published about the Nizhny Novgorod architects, and later No. 4 of the magazine "Project-Russia" by Bart Goldhoorn and it was a real benefit for the "Nizhny Novgorod School" - at that time there were awards, state awards, academic titles.

I am talking about this not so much out of nostalgia, but because these were really like-minded people and years of continuous communication, exchange of information and discussion of absolutely everything that was projected in Nizhny Novgorod at that time.

In 1999, Kharitonov left, but almost all the workshops created at that time remained and continue to work. This story may seem superfluous, but in my opinion it explains a lot in our relationships with each other and those connections that are invisibly still present.

Leonid Kravchenko became one of the leading architects of Nizhny Novgorod and one of the founders of the Nizhny Novgorod bureau "Vash Dom" (D. Volkov, A. Korolev). In 2002 Leonid continued his creative activity already in America …

We have not seen each other all these years, only observed some moments in the Facebook feed. And finally, there was an opportunity to learn firsthand about how Leonid spent these fourteen years and how the professional practice in New York works.

It seems to me that all of us who create today in Russia, looking at architectural news or traveling abroad, experience a certain inferiority complex due to our education and our not very integrated into the world practice. It was all the more interesting to find out what everyone probably thought about: can we, can I take a worthy place where the world is open and there are rules of the game in a global sense, they live and practice everywhere - on all continents.

Leonid works in a company that is not old by American standards, founded in 1978, and perhaps not the largest: about 160 people (depending on the situation in the economy, the composition changes), but this company is located in the very heart of New York on Manhattan. 14 blocks from the Empire State Building, between 5th and 6th Avenues.

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FXFOWLE Architects is guided by innovative strategies and principles of responsible planetary, sustainable development. Its founder, Bruce Fowel, was one of the first in the United States to put these principles into practice. They were implemented in the first green high-rise in Shanghai (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 1992) and in New York - Conde Nast Building at 4 Times Square (1999) - a building that was the catalyst for the LEED Green Building Certification. … Among the implementation in the company's portfolio there are already 6 platinum and 9 gold LEED certificates for various objects. The company is an expert in Green Codes for New York. Was part of Mayor Bloomberg's target group for these standards. 90% of employees are LEED accredited. The company was the first to receive the ENERGY STAR Small Business Award for Carbon Neutrality in 2008. Speaking about these facts, it should be borne in mind that not a single university of architecture or faculty prepares specialists in the field of green standards. This education can only be obtained individually on paid courses. And the certification of buildings according to standards developed in different countries has not yet received proper development in Russia.

It is all the more impressive how, in a short period of time, Leonid managed to integrate into such an “advanced” company and took a high-level place there. He is entrusted with mentoring young colleagues and solving non-trivial project problems. For example, now the design of a very complex in terms of functional saturation and complex reconstruction of a residential area in Greenwich Village is being completed - the Greenwich Lane project, in which Leonid has been directly involved from the very beginning. The huge Saint Vincent hospital complex was located on this historic site. Now it will be a multi-type high-comfort housing with a fitness center, a swimming pool, a cinema hall, a chef kitchen for receiving guests, an inner green courtyard, with a fountain on the roof of a parking and a fitness center, and even five four-story penthouse mansions, each of which is equipped with lifts, wine refrigerators. and installations for baking pizza (with a total area of 68,000 m2) - a complex of 11 buildings.

In addition to numerous projects in New York, he took part in international projects: the 34-storey high-rise building of Maritime in Dubai; office and residential buildings in King Abdullah Financial District under construction in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (62,000 m2); the tallest building in Mumbai (India) 191 m (40 floors) Ruby Mills, interesting in that elevators with cars rise to the office floors, thus parking is at hand; not yet built 60-story skyscraper in Mumbai.

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What is the difference between the design practice of an American company and our domestic one? Not only with such a global geography and a variety of climatic zones, time zones, metric and imperial systems. The main thing is that architects play the first violin there, regardless of who is appointed as the "general designer" - he may not be at all, but the architect is in any case the "first violin" - the main, leading link and all adjacent sections are coordinated with him …

The second fact, which may have the greatest influence on the quality of the object, is an extremely prepared customer and his services. There, the customer does not hide behind an "army" of managers, as we do. The customer is a person who is knowledgeable and delves into not only the economy, but also the details of the object. By the way, the customer's marketing department is one of the services that develops strategies for objects, helping the client form his design assignment plan, a very detailed, comprehensive document that differs from ours in detail.

All parts of the project are assembled like a puzzle, based on the architecture, and all details are coordinated with it, drawings are issued very detailed. Interestingly, in the United States, all materials for construction have their own digital codes and on the architectural drawings, instead of the usual specifications, there are tables with codes of almost all materials used in the object.

Of course, 2.5 hours of talking about American practice will not be able to show all the differences and features in our systems, nevertheless, some considerations can be said definitely: wherever a person is: in our environment, which seems to have received not the best architectural education, or among graduates of Harvard, Massachusetts and other famous architecture universities, his dedication, openness to communication and knowledge, the ability to set and achieve goals - depends on his successful integration into a completely different system.

Something we can confidently put in a plus to our education is our artistic component, the ability to make sketches with our hands, sketches and sketches, which are the most understandable architectural language. Leonid is a master of this craft. An exhibition of his sketches was shown in 2006 as part of the Architecture Days program in Nizhny Novgorod. And in New York, his personal exhibition of watercolors and sketches has just ended.

But otherwise, our practice loses due to the primacy of the customer's financial interests, and not the development of territories, an insane bureaucratic machine that for an infinitely long time and does not essentially agree on everything to the details, and can change its mind at any time (as in the case of competitions) … We also have expertise, which should only concern the budget, but it concerns everything in the world. In general, we can say: we cannot move forward, introduce new technologies, develop the environmental friendliness of the construction industry and our territories, because we are forced to defend the interests of developers, and they are not interested in innovations, considering them unnecessary costs that do not bring profit.

Yes, our practices are different and the level of the customer is different, but in general we are moving in the right direction, like the global world, and everything works out if we speak the same language - the language of architecture.

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