- Your office is ten years old. What prompted you to found it and start working on your own?
- We have always had the desire for independence. A dream, one might say. Probably, many young architects dream about this, but our dream was clearly realized and concrete from the very beginning. All the career steps that we took before the founding of the bureau were, in one way or another, conditioned by this goal. We have never followed the path of least resistance, and we chose the place of work based on the priority of obtaining the knowledge and experience necessary in the future for independent work.
Where did you work and what did you do before the foundation of the bureau? Did you immediately work together with Ekaterina Kuznetsova?
- After graduation, both me and Katya went to work in interior design firms. But a year later, we agreed on a joint goal - we decided that independent work in large architecture is important for us. After that, we worked for three years with the architect Anatoly Klimochkin, gaining a unique experience of fast immersion in the profession. At the age of 24, we were already the chief architects of two projects under construction: a residential complex with an area of 170,000 square meters at 16 Shmitovsky Proezd and an office building in the very center of Moscow at the intersection of the Garden Ring and Malaya Bronnaya Street. You learn very quickly at a construction site, so we got tremendous experience. We formed a team of five architects, but at that moment we were not yet ready to open our own office. We wanted to first work with a master, an architect of a very high level. Our whole team joined Sergey Skuratov's bureau. I must say that this cooperation has given us a lot. First of all, we were able to find that stylistic direction in modern architecture, which is close to us in spirit. In addition, we saw an example of the highest culture of work with facade aesthetics, detail and material. The result of the joint work was the office center Danilovsky Fort and the cottage village Club 2071. And at the beginning of 2006, we finally realized our readiness for independent work and founded the ADM bureau.
For some time your workshop cooperated with international bureaus. What did this job give you?
- Yes, indeed, we had such a period. It lasted a little over two years. We have done several projects with John McAslan architects, KPF, SOM and Frank Gehry's workshop. I consider this experience to be the most valuable. It was an exciting time of frequent business trips, joint meetings and presentations. We worked with colleagues as a team. In some projects, we performed the function of a local designer, but, for example, at the Stanislavsky-11 facility, we were full-fledged co-authors and we proposed a lot in the project. But, most importantly, such work provides an opportunity to observe the approach to work of a very high level. I believed and still believe that at that moment for our young bureau, for all our employees, close cooperation with experienced and well-known companies of European and world level was a unique success. We really learned a lot from our foreign colleagues.
Your projects are invariably carefully drawn and quite recognizable. You practice your findings and techniques, you evolve slowly. Do you feel confused by the recognizability of your handwriting, or, on the contrary, you strive for it and this is the principle?
- If we are talking about architecture as a creative profession, then the recognition of projects is hardly a disadvantage. When an architect works sincerely, puts his soul into objects, all his work will directly reflect his inner world, character, temperament. Such things can, of course, change over the course of life, but this does not happen so quickly. You are probably comparing the projects that we have done over the past six or seven years … But after all, during this period we ourselves could hardly have changed so much, it is not surprising that our projects have similar features. Of course, we strive to avoid self-citation, to look for new images every time, otherwise it would be dishonest in relation to the customer, and the design process itself would become boring. But I am afraid that no matter how innovative the next new image of the project is, it will not be possible to avoid traces of the author's style, especially our sense of proportions and preferences in shaping. Yes, and not st about it.
Don't you want to sometimes make an architectural gesture, go beyond?
- We have no inclination to open architectural hooliganism. Sometimes you can get carried away by some bright idea, theme … But still, more often you just want to make a decent, well-drawn house. This desire is constantly present.
Does the label of commercial success jar?
- You, journalists, like to reduce everything to simple definitions, and I do not like labels as such. What difference does it make who says and thinks about us and what? Commercial success alone cannot harm anything. I would say - on the contrary, it often makes you more free. If you have reached a certain level where you can afford to give up any objects that you do not like, then there is little that can force you to compromise with your own conscience.
What customers do you choose? Refusing someone?
“It's not that we choose, but we prefer to work with customers for whom it is important that a good architect is involved in their project and who like our architecture. This, in my opinion, is the only correct form of cooperation. The client and the architect must actually have close positions in many areas. In addition, there must be personal empathy or a high degree of trust. This is the only way to get really good architecture. I believe that work should bring joy and pleasure to both parties, I am against the eternal struggle and breaking anyone over the knee. As a rule, I can feel in advance whether this is my customer or not. If not, it is best to give up the job immediately if possible.
What do you think is "good architecture" and "high-quality architecture"?
- The most difficult question, but also the simplest. Architecture is buildings. Good buildings are those in which people feel good and near which they feel good. But how to achieve this is the whole difficulty.
How do you achieve this, what is the method? How do you start working on a project?
- As such, there is no sequence of actions. Well, of course, first you need to study the site, the program, but then everything starts to happen by itself. We discuss each project with Ekaterina, exchange opinions, but then you sit down and do it. In absolutely any order. Sometimes you start with a layout, sometimes with zoning, sometime you try some kind of facade theme that has been flickering in your head for a long time, but the best projects are probably those where you do everything at the same time, and at some point everything just develops by itself.
And if we talk about the components of the project - what fascinates you the most, for example, plans or facades? To paraphrase a classic, are you going from the inside out or from the outside in?
- We are equally passionate about the formation of a volumetric composition, working out plans, drawing facades and working with the landscape. These four things are the constituents of the object. They are very closely related. And the most important thing is that we are doing all of this at the same time. Making them consistently is easier, but very risky. Everything must be born at the same time, otherwise there will necessarily be a failure somewhere. The volume of the building, the plan, the facade and the idea of the landscape are formed almost at the same time. Everything must be constantly kept in mind. And this is the most difficult thing in the profession.
But what is the main goal, what motivates you?
- What motivates us? - Yes, we just like to build nice houses, create an environment in which people feel good. We are interested in it and we enjoy it when the work is successful. We see a lot of imperfect things in the world, our city, after all, is imperfect. We like to try to improve what we can do. And it’s an amazing feeling when you come to some unpleasant place, do your job well, and this place suddenly becomes wonderful. People begin to live and work there, they have pleasant emotions and memories, they begin to love what you came up with. This is really great. Ultimately, what matters is what you build, what remains. If the result is good, if you managed to make some part of the city better, then you are right.
It seems we have found the key word - Wednesday, part of the city. You have been developing the actual topic of urban space improvement in your architectural projects for a long time, it seems, from the Atmosphere project on Novoslobodskaya - a project where you literally cleaned out a fragment of the city, formed a new environment in a semi-enclosed space. This is true?
- Not. Early. In earlier projects: Stanislavsky-11, business center Alcon, Hilton Double tree, the theme of the environment as a combination of landscape and facades was worked out very seriously. For a very long time, we have formed for ourselves the thesis about the exceptional importance of the landscape in any project. Landscaping is not without reason called the fifth facade. We consider it obvious that a person does not perceive a building alone. Moreover, often an ordinary person does not perceive a building as a separate object at all. Most people just live their lives and are not interested in architecture as such. But when they get into a well-designed environment, the space begins to positively influence them. At the same time, they perceive the environment as a whole. Without separating the facade from the landscape. A person is either pleasant or not very pleasant to be there. This is how we try to reason. Everything must be done at the same high level. Therefore, in most cases, we design not only buildings, but also landscaping around.
You are talking about the urban environment, but how do you relate to the context? All architecture after the eighties is in one way or another contextual, reacts to the environment, and sometimes even plunges very deeply into it. How close is the topic of context to you, do you justify your decisions by the environment? Or, on the contrary, not close at all?
- Context is important if it is valuable. If we work in a well-established environment, for example, we are building in the city center, then we try to get to the scale. We do not consider stylistic coincidence important, but we try to work with the rhythm of the facade and with the material in such a way that the new object enriches and complements the existing environment. There are, of course, sections of the city - some of them even close to the center, although this is extremely rare - where the surroundings are not valuable or fortunate, and will most likely be replaced soon. You can feel more at ease there. Look for a different scale, create a new environment.
Do you have an ideal of an urban environment, maybe some exemplary places that you would like to get closer to feeling?
- I personally think the ideal is an urban environment with a not very high density, from four to six floors and mainly with quarterly buildings. Parks and green streets are important, as well as water. And of course very low traffic. A comfortable city is a pedestrian city. If we talk about examples, then I will probably name some districts of Hamburg: Rottenbaum, Harvesthude, Winterhude. Lovely areas around Lake Alster right in the middle of a relatively large city.
On the other hand, now in your portfolio there are more and more multi-storey residential buildings. I can assume that this genre is dictated by the circumstances of the order. What scale do you think is optimal?
- We are interested in doing everything, and it does not get bored. Although, frankly, we still believe that a person is closer and more pleasant to the scale of buildings up to thirty meters high. And we really enjoy working with such projects.
Obviously, details and textures are important to you. How much do they make the project more expensive?
- The details are very important. We love when the facades are well drawn and when they have enough detail. We believe that it is not easy for a person to perceive lapidary aesthetics. The eye needs to cling to something, perhaps this is how we are made. It is more comfortable to be in an environment where there is moderate variety and sufficient detail. If so, then the question of cost is relative. Of course, measure is needed in everything, but if complex facades create a more comfortable environment than simple ones, then people will prefer them and will gladly compensate for the costs of their creation. In addition, sometimes the details even allow you to save money, allowing you to create an interesting, complex image without using very expensive materials.
Speaking of materials and techniques. Once upon a time, quite a long time ago, in 2007, I wrote about your project of a house in Gorokhovy Lane, that you did not like the plaster offered by the customer and you literally "ate" the unloved material, reduced it with panels and the proportions of the walls. Then the layering of facades became one of your favorite themes, I don’t understand what is more here: games with matching textures or a desire to make the house thin-boned, light and at the same time complex?
- I'll start with a comment about plaster. This material really does not belong to the most beloved. We prefer materials with interesting textures, which in themselves can enrich the image of a building. Obviously, an ordinary element of the facade, for example, a partition between the windows, looks completely different in polychrome brick and in plain flat plaster. And plaster on relatively large surfaces is not easy to work with. The material is flat, boring and very moody to use. In our climate, in an amicable way, it should be painted every three to four years.
The disadvantages of plaster as a material can be hidden only by a very complex plastic of the facade - practically without flat straight sections. The language of architecture of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries was rich in curvilinear details and complex plastics. If you look at any classic facade, you will see that there are practically no large flat surfaces. Everything is divided into elements, broken with rustic materials, framed with details - they helped to hide the problems of plastering technology. Despite our love for detail, we still prefer a more concise modern architectural language. More straight planes, more straight lines. And this is where the disadvantages of plaster begin to manifest themselves. The same is the case with the architecture of constructivism, where such shortcomings have become, in my opinion, a serious problem. But that is another topic.
If we analyze the example of the first version of the facade for the object on Gorokhovsky, which you mentioned, then the train of thought there was as follows. We were limited in the choice of material: the customer was ready to use only simple plaster, which, as I said, does not have a rich texture. In order to make the facade pleasing to the eye, it was necessary to enrich it - to work with the rhythm of the windows and the walls. We used the technique of "running windows", and also visually divided the blank parts of the wall into different fragments. We created two layers, differing in depth, texture and color. That made it possible to compensate for the asceticism of plastering technology.
It is also interesting that in the end the object at Gorokhovskoye was implemented in a completely different way. After many adjustments in function and composition, we ended up with a completely different look. The geometry of the new façade is much simpler. And we simplified it precisely because instead of plaster in the new version of the object, it became possible to use more interesting materials: glazed brick, arkhskin, tinted glass, as well as wooden window frames with characteristic enlarged crossbars. The new look was built around a combination of these materials. Moving windows and double-layering were no longer needed.
More about the techniques: you often use a kind of interfloor I-beam on the facades, sometimes it is metal, but sometimes it is ceramic and stone. It gives your facades, honed in detail, a light, completely non-brutal shade of prom. Where did he come from, when did he appear and why do you like him so much?
- To be honest, we never thought about the shade of prom. The horizontal element, which you are talking about, is indeed used in very many objects, although it is difficult for me to associate them with promos when I look at them on the facade of Vorobyov's house, where they are carved from volumetric natural stone. Or when I remember how similar elements were made according to our sketches at the German plant NBK Keramic for the Alcon-1 office complex. They do not always look like an I-beam. But we often articulate the horizontal in one way or another in order to structure the facade, to express its scale and tectonics. A grid of horizontal and vertical lines allows you to achieve a clear, well-organized pattern. In fact, it serves as a matrix with which we often begin to draw a facade. Further, the design of individual elements of the facade is invented, the rhythm is composed and drawn, which determines their mutual proportional relationships. So, starting with a simple and clear scheme, you can come up with completely different artistic images. Not that this scheme will always achieve the desired result, but this technique is one of our favorites.
In that case, is your horizontal line more likely a frieze from a classic order scheme? The horizontal, interwoven into the vertical and supported by it? It is known that you do not do stylizations, but at the same time you seem to be the clear representatives of the latent classics, the architecture is internally traditional, and in particular because of this, it is suitable for a historical city. How true is this?
- The language of the classics, as I said, is not close to us. But you are right that there is some commonality with the classic approach to drawing a facade. And the very term "paint the facade" refers more to the classical than to the modernist tradition. We like this approach, it seems more human to us. We never tried to crush the viewer with the purity of the modernist form.
Tell us more about the development of the grid-matrix. As far as I understand, the rhythm of the facade is very important to you. Where does it come from and what does it depend on?
- Working with rhythms on the facade is also a favorite topic. But it is not always associated with a matrix grid. These are two different techniques, which, however, can complement each other perfectly. First of all, what we call facade rhythms are combinations of facade elements that are repeated in a certain sequence. For example, we combine a window with a decorative impost, a balcony or a facade insert made of another material. And this compositional set is repeated not on every floor, but, for example, through three floors. On other floors, other combinations of elements are used - the eye unconsciously fixes the sequence of alternation. We call such repetitions rhythmic themes. Drawn convincingly and harmoniously, they greatly enrich the façade design. Which opens up a huge field for creativity. There can be several rhythmic themes, some become the main ones, others subordinate. I like to compare such a complexly drawn facade with a symphonic piece of music, in which different musical instruments play their parts and all this harmoniously adds up into a single whole.
So the complex drawing of the facade is not just chaotically shifted windows. Behind all this there is a very difficult work, inner logic and a reflection of artistic flair. Believe me, it is very difficult to put rhythms into a single harmonious whole. At the same time, rhythmic themes can be linked to the floor matrix grid, or they can be freely positioned on the field of the wall. Much depends on the image we want to create.
Do you have any favorite projects that, in your opinion, were better than others?
- It is impossible to create all objects on the same level. Sometimes it works better, sometimes worse. But I am against highlighting something. If some object turned out worse than we thought it was, then this is our fault, and not a reason not to love it. Rather, it is a cause for thought; failure is a great experience, which is why they are valuable.
The project of the school in Mamontovka turned out to be quite resonant. Are you attracted to this genre as a kind of public architecture? And by the way, what about the project of the Kitezh Children's Development Center?
- We really like the school typology. There is an opportunity and, more importantly, a need to create unusual shapes and spaces. The world of a child can and should be unusual and vivid, arouse imagination. We had two school projects and we tried to make both of them non-trivial. The project in Mamontovka, as you know, has been completed, and the Kitezh school is under construction. This is a charitable project, it is being implemented with donations and therefore, so far, only half of it has been completed. But the good news is that the construction continues, and the educational process is already underway in some of the premises.
For some time you were engaged in the reconstruction of industrial zones. What are your impressions and what are the most valuable experiences from this work? Are you ready to return to such work or is it a passed stage?
- Reclamation of old industrial zones, filling them with new functions and aesthetics is a very popular topic in Europe. In our country, there have always been an order of magnitude less such facilities. Nonetheless, this is a common job for any architectural office. The work is interesting in its own way, difficult and, as a rule, commercially not very profitable. In our portfolio of orders, the volume of such projects has never exceeded 30%, so it's difficult to talk about any particular stage. Now they are really practically nonexistent, but this is not a position, we just now have more new construction projects.
Although there are projects where we preserve some parts of historical buildings for which there are security obligations or which we simply feel sorry for demolishing. As I said, I am completely fine with this kind of work, if a project appears in which there will be nice historical buildings, and it will be necessary to breathe new life into it, we will be happy to do it.
You just mentioned working with historical buildings. In a recent project of the residential complex on Novoslobodskaya you, while preserving a fragment of the original facade of the factory building XIX century, replicate it, supplementing the original with a copy. I understand that this is done to make the building look solid, not fragmented. And yet the Venetian charter condemns the imitation of historic buildings … Wouldn't it have been better to complete it in dissimilar forms so as not to create illusions?
- I agree with the general approach, and we should try to do so. We ourselves really do not like the remake. But apparently there are no rules without exceptions. In the case of Novoslobodskaya, we faced a very difficult choice. The site housed an extremely strange conglomerate of buildings: several fragments of the walls of industrial architecture of the late 19th century, abundantly interspersed with sections of walls and a faceless mass of Soviet-era buildings. There were literally two and a half walls that we would like to keep. Moreover, this half did not adjoin the other two walls. And we needed to make a separate building with four full-fledged facades, one and a half of which never existed. The variant with inserts of modern architecture between pieces of historical walls did not convince us at all and we tried to prolong the existing rhythm, as if copying it. Moreover, we are even planning to use historical bricks obtained after dismantling old walls. A controversial method, I agree, but in this case we are sure of its correctness. However, we will see when the object is built.
How often do you participate in competitions? It seems like it happens less often now. Maybe at first you got carried away with the topic of contests, and then cooled down?
- We are more than calm about the topic of competitions. We have never relied on them, but we did not deny them in principle. It's just one way to get orders. I can only note that the competitive moment does not capture us and does not bring additional motivation. We try to do both competitive and non-competitive projects with the same quality. Actually, when a customer is ready to conclude a contract with you, focusing on your portfolio, reputation and commercial offer, then you have already won a certain "competition". And in any case, all your further work on the project should prove that you were not chosen in vain.
You can also add that participation in a competition, even in a paid one, is always a risk, and any architectural bureau is a business in which one should strive to minimize risks. But sometimes we are happy to participate in competitions if the object or customer seems interesting and promising to us.
How many people work in your office and how is the work arranged?
- We do not set ourselves the task of doing more and more projects at the same time. Our natural limiter is a condition of our direct participation in each of them. The optimal number of employees - from thirty to fifty - is determined by the number of projects that Ekaterina and I can physically create. If the bureau becomes larger, then the personal contribution to the objects decreases, and this is not what we want.
So you and Ekaterina personally control all projects?
- We not only control, but also compose. The first idea, the structure of the composition, the drawing of the facade, all the basic plans - everything comes from us and at the first stage is physically drawn by us. Although we delegate some creative tasks to a very small number of architects who have been working with us for a long time and whom we can entrust.
In what direction would you like to develop, in other words, do you strive for somewhere or do you just exist?
- There is only one direction in which we would like to move - the constant improvement of the quality of architecture. Everything else does not really concern our thoughts. We do not aim to increase the number of offices or the scale of facilities, or to capture new markets. All this - firstly, it is not so important for us, and secondly, I sincerely believe that all this comes by itself, if you just do the job sincerely and well.
