- The history of the Senezh studio is not something that is heard now, although there are articles about it, for example, this is a retrospective recollection of Vyacheslav Glazychev. Why did you choose this topic now?
- The topic was proposed in 2007 by Andrey Vladimirovich Bokov. Although before that, of course, I was familiar with the activities of the Senezh Studio for publications in the magazine "Decorative Art", which was also a subscriber of my teacher at the art school, and later myself. The journal "Technical Aesthetics" was also a must-read for me. Probably, in part, they determined my choice of profession, because at first I entered the Sverdlovsk Architectural Institute (today USAHU - ed.) For "Design", but not having gained the required number of points, I passed the exams for "Architecture". Of course, then as a schoolboy, and later as a student, I did not imagine the full scale of the plan, just as I did not reflect the main names of this project, but later I collected an almost complete collection of the above magazines. In 2007, Andrei Vladimirovich introduced me to Igor Prokopenko, who presented to our attention a fairly large archive of materials on Senezh seminars: slides, manuscripts, video and audio recordings. Then the idea of publishing a book arose. At first, we wanted to cope with this problem within two years and at the same time launched an independent section in TATLIN NEWS magazine, where Rosenblum's articles were published, but first one crisis (2008 - editor's note), and then another (2014 - editor's note) adjusted our plans and the project was postponed. Today, on the eve of the fifteenth anniversary of the publishing house, we decided to bring the matter to the end. Amazingly, it seems to me that today the experience of the Senezh studio is more relevant than ever. After all, it was there that such concepts as "environment", "urban design", "scenario plan" and many others were born, which have become fashionable trends in modern urbanism. The people who today determine the trends of modern urban planning in Russia were once involved in one way or another in the studio's activities and many consider themselves to be Evgeny Rosenblum's students. And finally, I just fell in love with the material that ended up in my hands. Gorgeous color illustrations of projects carried out at the seminars, fascinating archival photographs, incredibly consistent and holistic texts of Rosenblum himself. This cannot be stored in a closet, firstly, because all this may just fall apart, secondly, it is selfish and, finally, thirdly, I largely disagree with the fact that modern urbanism is something new. It is necessary to show where the legs grow from! - my colleagues and I decided and put together an almost 300-page edition.
We started talking about the exhibition at Zodchestvo, but came to the book. When did it go out of print? Will it be shown at the exhibition for the first time?
- Yes.
– Tell us in more detail about the history of the studio, or rather this: what caught you in this story, what do you think is important in it?
- I have long been bothered by this word "design"! Today it is used by all and sundry. Any housewife can take short-term courses in some "hobby group" and after that call herself a "designer", talk on truly cosmic topics with cosmic stupidity. Rosenblum and his Senezh were out of fashion and possibly out of the context surrounding him at that time, despite the fact that the project seminars dealt with real problems. For him, "design" is not some remnant of another gadget or an accidentally tense line of a stamped part of a car or a teapot. Design for Rosenblum - comprehension of being, artistic construction of the world! In this sense, he is the successor of the ideas of Vladimir Tatlin, who tried to "… create art with the help of a machine, and not mechanize art."It's the most important!
– How do you yourself understand the principles of the studio: why is the basis of fine art, but design is at the same time akin to non-descriptive theatrical creativity? What is this "derelict land between architecture and traditional design"?
- The mid-1960s, when the studio appeared, is essentially the period of the birth of design as we know it now. At least it was then that the people involved in the design of industrial designs found their modern name - the designer. Prior to that, such work was carried out exclusively by architects (Corbusier, Gropius, Roe, later Eames, Colombo, Panton and others) or artists, such as, for example, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. What we call design today was once groped between architecture and the visual arts. In my opinion, for all the breadth of interpretation of the term “design” in Russian, “artistic construction” to a greater extent reflects the depth of this process. It contains not only an explanation of the essence of the lesson (construction), but also its philosophical understanding (artistic). Today, the so-called "ownerless land between architecture and design" is the essence of these two occupations, the magic component of the professions, explaining the highest goals of architecture and design in the modern world.
– The principle of "open form" appears to be akin to metabolic architecture. This is true?
-I think yes! Only if metabolism is a set of chemical reactions that occur in a living organism to sustain life, the "open form" can possibly change the very form of life. Just don't ask me how, otherwise our conversation will go into the jungle of nanotechnology …
– In your manifesto, you talk about the influence of the Senezh studio on the design of the urban environment, was there a connection between Senezh and the "New Element of Settlement" by Alexei Gutnov and Ilya Lezhava?
- This influence can be traced both in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In my native Yekaterinburg, then Sverdlovsk, in the 1980s the Literary Quarter project was implemented. He, in fact, put into practice the developments of the seminarians of Senezh for the city of Tikhvin in 1973, rethinking the chaotic historical buildings in the new scenario plan of the Museum of Ural Writers. And today the famous 130th quarter of Irkutsk is implemented in the same program, only with a predominance of the trading function. The once degrading territory with wooden buildings after the reconstruction actually became the new center of Irkutsk. Of course, today it is difficult to say whether these projects were implemented by the studio's seminarians or whether their authors read Rosenblum's articles; in any case, it is safe to say that the trends set by the Senezh seminars are in demand at the modern stage of urban studies. The new element of settlement is still a different scale, but I am sure that information exchange in one form or another took place in both cases.
– What examples of the studio's work or its impact on the urban environment and museum design would you find the most interesting?
- I am personally inspired by the projects of the seminarians who developed the Krasnoyarsk themes. It looks like they are finding their embodiment right now. Today in Krasnoyarsk, at the level of the city administration, such topics as "the ecological frame of the city", "tactile contact of the urban environment", "actualization of the historical heritage" and many others are discussed, which were topics of discussion of the Studio's field seminars on the Yenisei. Of course, the conditions have changed in forty years, but, as the president of the Union of Architects of Russia Andrei Vladimirovich Bokov, who was the former leader of one of these seminars, remarked at a round table recently organized by the mayor of Krasnoyarsk on the spatial strategy of the city, “Krasnoyarsk has retained the possibility of implementing seminarians of ideas and today has all the possibilities for their implementation”.
– If we talk about the urban environment: which of the studio's heritage is relevant, in your opinion, for modern urban fashion?
- I think the entire archive of projects of the Senezh studio is somehow relevant today. The urban environment, museum exhibitions, navigation and even visual agitation are in demand today in almost every Russian city. Of course, technologies, materials, economics have changed, but all the topics announced at Senezh are being developed today in almost any project. Take, for example, the airports that are actively being built today in Russia, there are all of the above, including museum expositions. Yes, a rare airport today does without a museum, and there is nothing to say about navigation, environment and agitation.
– How detailed is your exposition, what will it look like?
- We did not set ourselves the goal of telling in detail about the studio. The exhibition is rather an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of an imaginary seminar. It contains fragments of projects, quotes from Rosenblum's texts, photo chronicles, statements of students. A total of 50 double-sided plastic tablets. Each of them is suspended from a line by one point, which allows them to spin freely around their axis, inviting the viewer to contact with the image, thereby illustrating the main idea of the "open form" - incompleteness and creative complicity of the consumer. The basic information is, of course, in the book, which is part of the project. It presents in more detail 30 seminars that took place in the period from 1973 to 1991, published 30 articles by Evgeny Abramovich, the chronology and bibliography of the studio, the biography of Rosenblum himself. Many of the articles of the protagonist were recognized by us from the manuscripts and published for the first time. Opening and closing words belong to such people as Andrey Bokov, Evgeny Ass, Alexey Tarkhanov, Milena Orlova, Natalia Rubinstein and others. The memoirs of Vyacheslav Glazychev, recorded by him in 2001 on audio, were also published for the first time. In short, cool!
