Round table “Architectural business. Success Strategies”was held within the framework of the Zodchestvo festival on October 18, 2016 and was organized jointly by the Union of Moscow Architects and Archi.ru. The conversation was attended by the heads of six successful bureaus that have been created over the past 15 years and have achieved professional recognition. Its essence is to discuss the experience of developing the business of design workshops in the modern market. Below is a video recording and transcript.
Elena Petukhova: Good evening! We called our round table “Architectural business. Success strategy . The name is more typical for business conferences and meetings in the development environment. But today, project practice is not much different from ordinary business. If earlier we used to talk about architectural bureaus as some kind of creative organizations, and about architects as creators, demiurges who live and think about the high, about the creation of some ideal buildings, about ideal proportions and forms, now the reality is asdfkmbvbtuiua, that the architect, especially the head of the bureau, is forced to think and solve quite mundane problems, not forgetting about creativity and about his mission. I hope we will talk about how this can be combined.
We also have architectural stars in Russia, of course. This is a cohort of very famous architects aged 50 and over. We all know them well. And these architects started, created their own bureaus, achieved success in completely different times. Now the conjuncture and market laws have changed very seriously. Both those who started 10-15 years ago and those who are starting right now have to use completely different technologies and solve completely different problems.
In order to get closer to today's realities, we invited representatives of a slightly different age group to talk. These are architects who, as it seems to us, have already achieved a lot in their profession, they all have successful architectural bureaus. But the most important thing is what they still have to do. Most likely, it is these architects who will determine how our cities will look like, how the most interesting buildings will look.
As it turned out, among our invited guests there is a clear division into those who founded their business in the early 2000s, and those who organized their architectural bureaus after the 2008 economic crisis. Therefore, we have determined the sequence of performances in chronology. And first, I would like to give the floor to Yuliy Borisov, the chief architect and partner of the UNK project architectural bureau, founded in 2000. It seems to me that it was a good time to create an architectural bureau. But there were some difficulties in the market. As far as I remember, then there was practically no large architecture, the main order went through a private client, design institutes still existed and actively worked, and there were not so many niches left for a young architect to start his own business and develop it. How it was?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: It was fun. The founders of the bureau were me and my partners - Nikolai Milovidov and Yulia Tryaskina, with whom we studied at the Moscow Architectural Institute. Nobody looked at the quality of architecture then, nobody was interested in it. Basically, there was an interest, if we talk about big architecture, in entering power, agreeing on various TEPs and buildings. And in this regard, we have chosen a principled position for ourselves: we want to do something of high quality. And at that time there was a very interesting market - a private market. He was on the rise, he was new. And the market for commercial interiors. In both markets, we have reached quite good heights during this time, built everything we could, wanted to be realized and went further. Initially, we did exhibitions, private interiors, houses, cottages, corporate interiors, small buildings, renovations. Now we are already working on the scale of large multifunctional complexes and urban planning. I know all the typologies in which an architect can work. This is both a plus and a minus. I know in detail how you can screw drywall and install door handles. On the other hand, I know how to make an urban planning scale. But this is a long process. Therefore, when you decide for yourself how you want to move, it is better to immediately set yourself some kind of goal in advance. This is my advice.
E. P.: Your private architecture was excellent, and you have been and still remain one of the leaders in the market of corporate interiors. Why did the question arise about going beyond these typological boundaries? Was it ambition or was there a feeling that there is a problem in architecture that you can solve?
Julius Borisov, UNK project: Going back to business and success, the first rule is love. Love should be for your work. And in this case, you must always understand whether you like doing this or not. In private orders, everything that is possible, as an artist, I have done, expressed myself. For me it was a certain stage passed. And so I went on. Most likely it was an internal challenge, rather than external circumstances.
E. P.: How did you get the first order, which became that very borderline for you, when UNK project reached a completely new level?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: The first order of an urban planning scale was a competition: Skolkovo, Technopark D2. There were about 350 participants in the first international tour. In the second, there were about 20 finalists. It was a tough competition.
E. P.: In it, you have combined your usual typology of a small compact house, close to private architecture, and an exit to some urban planning solutions. How difficult was it?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: We take part in a lot of competitions, and for us this is the normal way of receiving orders. This is our strategy. In contests, we always look at what the key task is. In that very competition, the task was quite dialectical. On the one hand, it was necessary to make a highly comfortable environment, on the other hand, the density for a low-rise building was prohibitive. The search for solutions and brought us to the leaders. And now, as we can see, the competition policy is no different. There are technical tasks for the competition, detailed descriptions, but no one will ever say, but what is the problem, what should you do in your minds, what puzzle to solve.
E. P.: Do you have to guess somehow? Is the ability to read between the lines at work here?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: This is the ability to think. I am often asked: an architect is the one who draws facades, plans? And I came up with the idea for myself that an architect is a person who organizes certain processes in space. Nobody, except the architect, can understand what kind of process and space is. No customer can formulate this task clearly and clearly.
E. P.: So the contests worked in your case? You have a whole series of victories in competitions, and you receive orders in this way.
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: Yes, it was our rate, it was painful, because in one of the years we, if we are talking about business, had minus 25 million rubles in competitions, although they were mostly paid. And nevertheless, we clearly know how much money we spend, we count people by the clock. And that was our investment. And when my colleagues ask me whether or not it is worth participating in competitions, I say: of course it is. But you must have a certain financial cushion. And since we had strength in those segments where we achieved success - corporate interiors, retail interiors, private ones - we made reinvestments in competitions. But any competition is like sports. This is an expensive pleasure. Like Formula 1. The motors are expensive, the wheels are expensive, and to win Formula 1, each of these elements must be the best. In this case, the most precious thing that can be is people. We purposefully spend money not on PR promotion, not on some toys, we purposefully invest in people. We believe that this is our main and expense item, but also an item of income.
E. P.: If we started talking about investments, as far as I know, it was a revelation for me: the UNK project bureau was one of the first on the market to turn to a professional advertising PR agency with a request to take over the service. This was quite unusual for the market.
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: We try to do everything professionally. And any of the business segments - either it is our insider or outsourcing, we hire professional people. Just like in architecture, we try to take the best practices, the best design engineers and specialists. It's the same in business - we put together a team of the best people. In this case, we held a tender, took a team that guaranteed us the best quality, and they were hired.
E. P.: The discovery is that the architectural bureau decided to start promoting itself. For some reason, architects are very skeptical about self-promotion, do not know these techniques and do not understand why it should be done. It is believed that his projects speak for the architect, and whoever is needed will understand. Do you disagree with this point of view?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: If we take the most successful architectural practices as an example, then team leaders know PR and self-promotion techniques better than PR agencies. We work a lot with foreign bureaus - there it is exactly the same tool for an architect as any BIM design, project management, the same PR technology. For them, this is the standard language of communication with society, the professional community, and customers. The architectural business is no different from any other. Another question - you said that the architectural business, having become a business, ceases to be art. I probably disagree with you fundamentally, because, in my opinion, now just ordinary business often becomes art and approaches architecture.
E. P.: That is, it is in no way to lose this quality, is it the value of the profession?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: I believe that an architect has such a multifunctional brain and way of thinking that he solves business problems very easily. There were such terms as restructuring architect, now there is a business architecture. All these words speak about it. I have factual evidence that architects often very easily overtake professional managers in strategic tasks.
E. P.: We continue our conversation, and I would like to give the floor to Denis Kusenkov, Arteza landscape company. When I was preparing for the round table and checking the dates of the founding of architectural firms, to my surprise, I learned that the Arteza company was founded in 2002. Why did it surprise me? Because, despite my rather serious deep immersion in the architectural market, I learned about Arteza literally 2-3 years ago and was convinced that this was one of the examples of a sprint start; an interesting bright team has appeared, they are doing a good job, they are exploring a new market in the wake of interest in public spaces and recreational areas in the city. But in fact, the bureau has existed for a long time, 14 years, and, apparently, during the same period the company went through a difficult path of development. What were the features in the field of landscape architecture, are there any?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: All landscape architecture, unfortunately, consists of features. I am one of the few people at this table who is not directly related to architecture. I treat this company as a businessman. And at one time I invested in it and I treat it like a business. It is clear that I would not have been doing this if it were not for me sincerely interested, and I would not be proud of what we get at the output. But I am a person with an economic education who has been in marketing for 20 years. Just to make it clear - I was vice president of Alfa-Bank, director of the department of Rusnano for public relations, my last project was the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, and here I am in landscape design. For me, this is a business, I look at this area of activity as a businessman, I am looking for opportunities in it for the successful development of the company in the future.
But, moving from self-advertising to specifics, we started in 2002 with friends - we are four partners - three of whom are professional landscape architects who have been in the profession for 20 years. Our business is done with their hands and heads. As I remember now, my friend and I made a frame out of a metal corner, because we could not carry the roll, which was twisted, to the customer. The first playground we collected at my dacha. The guys drew, I went to clients between meetings at Alfa-Bank. They immediately drew a project, took a shovel in their hands. This is a success story from the bottom up. Probably an illustration of faith in what you do, love for what you do. Even though I started with the fact that this is a business, the basis of all this activity is a love for the profession and a sincere desire to change the environment around me. It all started with private objects and now we have a lot of them, just in our portfolio today are objects of 6, 10 hectares, often surpassing the budgets of any city objects. Now we have about 30 properties in our portfolio, half of which are private properties and half are public. We design and simultaneously implement the reconstruction of the Luzhniki Olympic Complex, design Skolkovo, the Nagatinskaya Poima Park, and participate as experts in the DillerScofidio + Renfro consortium in Zaryadye Park.
E. P.: Today's requirements for landscaping, for working with public spaces, require a completely different professional baggage than what was enough for landscape design 20 years ago. How do you solve the problem with personnel?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: Of course, as a colleague said here, personnel is the foundation of a business. You may not have a good office, have a zero level of recognition, but at the same time be a successful company with a good team. We never stop looking for people. Now the structure of our team is as follows: we employ about 25 landscape architects. The structure of our business is structured by group. We have 6 architects, we call them GAPs inside, they are like group leaders who already have their own specialization. They are already selecting people for themselves and for those projects that exist. Returning to your question: we are looking for personnel, the landscape sphere in Russia is one of the least developed, both in terms of education, and in terms of practice, professionalism in a broad sense. The market is immature. Accordingly, there is a fairly tough competition, an unstructured market, a lack of personnel, but at the same time there is a huge potential. As we understand, in business, any void, any vacuum is a potential for development, a potential for growth.
We participate in competitions together with foreign partners. And one of the guidelines that we give our architects is, guys, we learn: we learn the approach, we learn the process, we learn the presentation. In principle, we learn to work literacy. Our study permeates all our activities. Naturally, the guys also go on business trips to the partners' offices, exchange information, thereby gaining new experience.
We are talking about business, and now I'm going to scare you a little with money. For our company to exist, simply physically exist, and people receive salaries, so that we pay for electricity, sit in the office, tens of millions of rubles are needed. I have to earn several tens of millions of rubles a year for my company to simply exist. Of course, this can be tied to some kind of motivational program: let's send you to practice. But it is better to pay a good salary, the employee himself will go and get an internship, traveling around London, traveling through the best parks. You always have to balance. All this is within reasonable limits. People learn, people develop if they need it, and they do it on their own more successfully.
E. P.: How did your qualitative leap come about?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: Our qualitative leap took place thanks to two people who do not work in our organization, but whom everyone knows - Sergey Kuznetsov and Sergey Kapkov. They opened up a new segment of the market for landscaping, specifically for parks. We are a commercial company, a private company, we respond to inquiries. A client should come to us and say: I want to make a garden, I want to make a park, a manor, whatever. Here a request arose, we, like other colleagues who evolved from interiors or something else, understood that a new market segment was opening up: either we would enter there, or some other company would enter. And we felt the strength in ourselves, we wanted to increase the staff. There is also a certain social calling bell, which, of course, is great to make a gorgeous garden and embody all your ideas, but when a family of 3-5 people uses it, this is one story, and when you make a park in which hundreds of thousands of Muscovites walk, townspeople is a slightly different story. The market has opened, we study together with it, we grow, we acquire new specialists. People come who see what we are, and what potential this business has, and want to work with us. That is, it is a whole snowball, a new absolutely new vector, and it is expressed in the public field. We could not talk about the billionaire's estate, so no one knew us, and there were no publications in the media. There is a more open story here, there is more PR, more activity. In fact, everything is simple here.
E. P.: If we go a little further, beyond the limits of purely professional knowledge, reaching new frontiers probably demanded the development of the business, the introduction of new departments. How did you solve this problem?
Denis Kusenkov, ArtezaA: I have not said about one more thing. We are not just an architectural bureau, we are also a company that builds everything. 50% of the people who work for us are people who are directly involved in construction. In addition to the fact that we must find the appropriate qualifications of architects, estimators who can work with city prices, with city structures, we still have to find a construction company that can implement all this. We are not looking in the landscape field, we are looking for people in the construction business. Learning how to plant trees is much easier than learning how to lay networks, build correct roads and carry out asphalt works.
E. P.: And working with a budget order is also a difficult story?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: From the point of view of profitability, of course, the city is much worse than private traders, this is a balance. But, if we are going in this direction, if this door opens in front of us, as in front of businessmen, it would be foolish not to try and not enter. At the same time, I repeat, money is not primary in this area of activity. We want to gain experience, acquire contacts.
E. P.: Collaboration with architects. Landscape designers and architects, how is the relationship built here?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: None of the architects would refuse to design a garden. But no landscape architect will undertake to design a house. The problem is that we ask architects to always clearly separate these things - the design of the garden should be done by professional landscape architects. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. At the same time, the best objects that we made, they are presented on our website, were created precisely in alliance with architects, when everyone was doing his own thing, and everyone heard his colleague, his partner. In this case, the customer receives the highest quality result.
E. P.: We are moving on to our next participant BuroMoscow. The bureau was founded in 2004. When BuroMoscow was created, as far as I know, there were three of you.
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: First of all, we want to say thank you for this question - what is success. This question allowed us to wonder if we are successful and what it means to us. We were founded as a bureau in 2004. In the beginning we had 4 partners: me, Olga and we had 2 German partners. We started working right away with fairly large projects, we did not have such a pre-launch site in the form of work on cottages or interiors. We were invited by the KROST company, Olga and Andreas came from Holland, where they worked at that moment. By that time we had already known each other for many, many years, I had a private practice. Thus, BuroMoscow was born. But in this composition, we did not last long. For a year we were four, then for three years we were three, and fate decreed that at the end of 2008 Olga and I were partners. A successful partnership, in our opinion, is the main component of success. You spend more than half of your life at work, and the way the office is built is largely due to such a successful union. We know that partnerships can be different, sometimes it ends in complete divorce and failure. This is always a very painful condition. We think we are lucky.
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: Partnership is not only two people, but also a team. Everyone talked about how difficult it is to recruit employees. Now, finally, after so many years, we have a team that is full of enthusiasm, a team that does any job with inhuman enthusiasm. We have very, very, very few architects in Russia. Therefore, each talented employee who, plus, fits well into the office, is simply worth its weight in gold. In Europe, after the crisis, there is another problem, they have more, on average, talented, excellent, well-educated people, but no one works after 18.00. The enthusiasm of the 90s-2000s, when everyone worked in famous offices, died at night, it all passed. We may have a little less choice, but there is a lot of enthusiasm.
E. P.: Let's go back to the customer that started BuroMoscow. As far as I understand, we are talking about the KROST company. You have worked with him for a very long time. Did you have other customers? Could you afford to work not only in the direction of residential architecture or was residential architecture your choice, a conscious specialization of your office? How did you define your typological niche?
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: At that time, we were very passionate about industrial housing. This is a task that no one was doing then. It was a powerful process in which you participate, and you see how quickly you are changing the face of the city. That house, which at first was a panel house, which seemed absolutely hopeless, with which nothing can be done, unexpectedly acquired a completely new quality. This moment gave us a lot of energy. We cooked in this for a long time, you can't get rid of it so easily. Then our relationship came to an abrupt end, then a new stage began. We realized that there is not only industrial housing, that it is possible to engage in projects that are not so gigantic, but those where other facets can be revealed.
E. P.: I understand perfectly, no matter how interesting one topic is, no matter how passionate you are, it is still quite difficult for an architect to deal with only one typology. At what point did you get tired? How did you get new orders?
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: I think the turning point is the victory in the competition for Triumfalnaya Square. We have mastered a completely new level of activity. Firstly, our office has a new niche - landscaping, urban space. We realized that we can do a lot. We do not position ourselves as a bureau that has a clear specialization, in this case we focus primarily on interesting projects and on the customer with whom we have to work. If some chemistry appears, interest appears, and it is mutual, then we understand that we can do everything.
E. P.: I just saw that you have in your portfolio and cottage villages, and private houses, interiors, and metro stations. Widest range. Which of these do you think can become your specialization? Or do you now categorically refuse to specialize in something? Is specialization in the architectural business useful at all?
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: We discussed among ourselves, we are against specialization. We are for the fact that every project is not against the grain. When the stars converge, when there is a customer, when there is a task, then everything works. We choose according to our feelings: if we like it - we do it, we don't like it - we don't.
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: Sometimes we even choose a project simply because we have employees who are simply tired of making facades. And to make their life more pleasant, to diversify the atmosphere in the office, for example, we make Christmas trees.
E. P.: Is it hard with the facades?
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: We are against routine. Once it becomes a routine, we have a department that does something fun in the office.
E. P.: Does cooperation with foreigners continue? Do you think this is a promising direction for a Russian architectural bureau?
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: With our foreign friends, we will now do a project. Any exchange is helpful. The system must always be open. And we feel by ourselves that as soon as you are too lazy to do something or you do not want to master a computer program and know less than your employees, it means that something went wrong, you need to move on.
E. P.: Let's talk about the architectural bureau Kleinewelt Architekten. You created it in 2013. Why did you decide to use the German name?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: Kleinewelt translated from German means "small world" - a certain territory, a certain outpost or substance that we can create ourselves and bear some responsibility for it. That is, some kind of world that we ourselves create. In general, German is the most architectural language. A huge number of architectural terms in Russian: vernier caliper, track. Firstly, it is the most architectural language, and secondly, we all studied in Germany. Thirdly, we just like this name.
E. P.: Let's get back to our realities. 2013 is no worse than any other year. The state of the market is not the worst, but not the best either. How did you plan the development of your company? What were you betting on? What were the first orders, and how did you see the nearest prospects for your development?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: Our first project, during which our bureau was formed, was a winery near Anapa, in the Krasnodar Territory, there is such a place as Gai-Kodzor. And it was such a closed architectural competition in which we were invited to take part. Our project was declared the winner. And since then we have been working on this project. Our team was mainly formed on this project. Since then, of course, it has grown. But in fact we had such an interesting experience, very important for us. There will be not only a winery, it will be a cultural center, a kind of core of which is a winery. That is, this is a production cycle, a showroom, and a space where you can hold presentations or watch films, relax, there will be a mini-hotel.
E. P.: When you organized the bureau, did you somehow determine the most promising areas of development for you, typological research?
Georgy Trofimov, Kleinewelt Architekten: When we were organizing the bureau, we basically didn’t want to deal with private architecture. We already had quite good experience and understood what we want to do in the future. We wanted to do public projects, we wanted to do something that has an audience of more than 3-5 people.
E. P.: Did you plan to specialize in renovations, work with historical buildings?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: We have a completed object - the reconstruction of the building. This is the first case that we have done from start to finish. This is a building on Novokuznetskaya street, house 7, the corner of Novokuznetskaya and Old Tolmachevsky lane. They wanted to demolish this building. And we were invited to participate in the development of a new concept. We analyzed, conducted a fairly serious study, realized that we did not want to demolish this building in any way. On the contrary, it must be preserved, because it is terribly interesting. Now it is the office of the United Wagon Corporation. This building is a kitchen factory built in the late 1920s. It is interesting because it is constructivism, which itself does not know about it. It was built by an unknown town-planning plant, just according to one of the standard projects. However, the entire typology and structure of facade solutions and interior spaces is an absolutely Soviet avant-garde. And, of course, we wanted to keep it. We started with a concept, and in the end we acted on this project as a general designer, then we developed all the documentation, including accompanying it in the form of field supervision, then we completed the interior design and also implemented it.
E. P.: If you recall your experience of cooperation with the Department of Cultural Heritage, do you want to move in this direction? In fact, there are not so many professional architectural firms that could make competent and correct reconstructions. There is, it seems to me, a fairly broad perspective.
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: We can really say that we consider ourselves experts in this area. My thesis was defended on this topic. We have all licenses, including qualification licenses, if we talk about the legal side of the matter. And we have a good idea of how this sphere works. On the other hand, it is not so important for us - we are architects who design residential architecture for the outskirts of Moscow, or we are architects who are very fond of business centers. We won't do that. We have very interesting projects related to places where there is no cultural heritage at all. For example, we have designed an observation deck for the Sibur company in Tobolsk, in the Urals.
Now we are designing, one might say, the whole city, producing a change in the mood in the city - also in the Urals, the city is called Krasnoturinsk. It is now such a sad city, hard, very gloomy. Many good people live there, and something needs to be done, because there is one very big city-forming enterprise there - the Russian Aluminum company, and 90% of the people who live there work there. We want them to be interested in going to work in the morning, then going for a walk in the park.
E. P.: Only recently did we talk about the important task of making a project of not one garden, but a park for a large number of people. And now you are talking about designing a whole city, changing it. Do I understand correctly that the customer is a city-forming enterprise? It is unlikely that the local mayor's office has the funds and capabilities.
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: The local mayor's office is the customer, but this work will, apparently, be sponsored by the company I named.
E. P.: During your not very long history, you have customers and commercial companies, as well as government, budgetary organizations. Do you somehow separate these categories for yourself, do you give preference to something, or do you have competencies in both areas?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: It's just a job. If we with the customer arrange each other, then what is called the word work turns out. Either we do not work, then, thank God, we have something to do, we will not interfere with each other. As for customers, we have private customers, we have government customers.
E. P.: Are there any difficulties, tricks? What could you say to your colleagues, share your advice, what absolutely should not be done in relation to a budget customer, and what should not be offered to a commercial one?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: It will turn out to be a little "head-on" conversation: with these you can do something, with these you cannot. This is a process of dialogue. This is part of our work - a conversation, sometime we convince and defend, sometime we must take a step back, sometime we must compromise. The most important thing is a separate skill - you must always be able to listen. And even disagreeing, one must be able to do what is needed; and what you want, being transformed, would fall into the mouth of the customer, as if he had invented it all. What is the fundamental difference? What will a private customer never do? A private customer will never make a project that will affect the mood, attitude, and the agenda of thousands of people. I mean, some park spaces are not interesting from the economic point of view, but from the point of view of professionalism and from the point of view of attitude towards the city, these are very important things for us. Because this is an opportunity to make a big project that will change some part in a large part of the city.
E. P.: It seems to me that the desire for some such accomplishments, for your contribution to the improvement of the world, is, as a rule, the main incentive to create your own bureau. Here I would like to address other participants of our round table, partners of the wonderful WALL bureau Ruben Arakelyan and Hayk Navasardyan. They represent the youngest architectural bureau, established in 2014. And their experience, their decision to organize their own company, it seems to me, differs from the experience of others, because Ruben worked in a very famous architectural bureau, the Meganom project bureau, and worked on very large and bright projects. And this decision to leave and start your own career, what was it connected with? With this desire to find some kind of language of your own, to find some of your problems and solve them, to do something that was not possible under the leadership of your older comrades?
Ruben Arakelyan, WALLA: We are honored to answer the kind of challenges you ask. For me, the concept of business success and the concept of good architecture are loosely coupled concepts. Paradoxically, if we look at the world history of architecture, all the best objects were made without authors and in the era of the non-market economy. We do not know the authors of the Gothic cathedrals, and nevertheless, they are masterpieces of world architecture. Success is most likely measured only by time.
As for us, Ike and I worked at Megan's bureau. I had a longer journey, Ike had a short one. I worked as an architect, grew up to be a partner of Yuri Grigoryan, Ilya Kuleshov and the late Alexandra Pavlova. And then we thought that something was too all right. 2013, the crisis is in the yard, and we are doing well. Stable salary, interest, interesting projects. I realized something was wrong. Because the worst thing in life is routine. You need to do micro-revolutions every day, to arrange stress for yourself, otherwise you will simply become sad to live. It seemed to us interesting to open our own office with my partner at the peak of the economic crisis. They looked at us like we were crazy.
We understand that today the profession of an architect has changed a lot - it has moved far from the material applied sciences, which our fathers and colleagues used to possess: drawing, drawing, sculpting models and presentations. Today the profession has become very blurred and has entered the context of the media space. Therefore, in the name of our bureau WALL - the wall is the final meaning and abbreviation, which is translated as world architecture local line. We understand that architecture is always born at the junction - it is the chemistry of different paradigms, the chemistry of different skills, the chemistry of different competencies: from global influences on the architectural processes of economics, politics, technology, to local ones - the mentality of the architect, the mentality of the customer, and so on.
We have three areas of activity. We are engaged in research, education and design. Moreover, in design, we do not share typology, we believe it is categorically wrong to divide into a designer, a city planner, an architect. We believe that all processes have one ideological structure - the formation of the human environment on a different scale. The laws of modeling a mobile phone are no different from the laws of forming a city. They are similar, in my dissertation I followed this, I understand that these processes are interconnected. That is why the bureau is called that. Interdisciplinary, we handle everything. We taught at MARCHI, now we teach at MARCH. And the second was the position - a radical change in the structure of the bureau. We categorically unaccept the story that colleagues tell about the vertical hierarchy, the leader, the CEO and the architects. It seems to us that the system has degraded, it is not flexible. Our system is horizontal. We have 2 people in charge, the rest of the employees are not employees, but junior partners. We try to ensure that they receive the same percentage on their order level, they all have their own authorship. They are fully-fledged participants in the design process. They themselves go to the customer, are completely the authors of these projects, receive a percentage of the contract. It seems to us that this motivates more, so we managed to make 60 projects in 2 years, even managed to build one, and win 10 international competitions. Therefore, we are talking about interdisciplinarity: all projects begin with research and there is always a horizontal system of hierarchy, without a vertical one.
E. P.: Hayk, will you add something?
Hayk Navasardyan, WALL: If suddenly you decide to open your own architectural bureau, then do not be afraid that in the process of architectural design you will go crazy. For example, this is already beginning to be observed in me.
E. P.: It seems to me that for the WALL bureau the material component, some forms, textures, textures, is a special magic and a special cult.
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: Yes, this is a separate topic. We consider architecture not a business, but art, and we treat it like art. We are constantly experimenting. The most important thing for a young architect is to develop his own artistic language. This is the main value that is important for an architect. We have a different form of expression. An exhibition is a separate field of activity, a separate art form, a separate way of thinking.
We do a lot, work a lot with the material. It seems that tectonics is lacking in modern space. Therefore, in our design kitchen we try to do everything in a layout, starting from the smallest layout, sometimes we even make food out of food, ending with a 1:10 layout of a building fragment. We use different materials, from wood, polystyrene to gypsum, because gypsum is tectonic. We offer our customers to hold these buildings in their hands and feel them. It seems to us that activity is what is lacking in the architectural component.
E. P.: If we continue about what the WALL bureau does and rarely does anyone else. The already mentioned exhibitions, for a young bureau to exhibit at the Museum of Architecture, it seems to me, is a sign of a very great success. And you coped with this task brilliantly. But you don't stop there. Ruben, you are the curator of the second Art Moscow festival. These time costs, efforts, your time, your efforts, in your opinion, are justified at this stage in the development of the WALL architectural bureau?
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: It amazingly helps to receive projects, to receive orders - this is one world. Another world is curatorial activity. This is an example of an equivalent bureau leadership, since it seems wrong to us to actively intervene in some ideas, in some competencies, in some worlds to our colleagues in the bureau. The same that, as a curator, I cannot interfere with the creation of a work of art. I can only guide and ask the topic. It seems to me that the way of thinking strongly correlates with the activities of the bureau. This is a very interesting experience. On the other hand, life is very short, a person is assigned an active maximum of 40 years, and all the great discoveries that were made in the world, in physics, chemistry, biology, were made by people under 30. Realizing this, we understand that we need to use every chance to do something new. The architectural profession is still chemistry. This is chemistry from physics, this is chemistry from chemistry itself, from biology, from construction, from art, from politics, from economics. And the more you master these skills, the better your design process becomes. Attempts to curate, make some installations, draw, this is an opportunity to replenish various techniques. Therefore, the more skills you master, cinema, music, dancing, whatever, the more interesting you are as a person, respectively, the more interesting you are as an architect.
E. P.: To what extent is this development of events programmed? Did you give yourself such an attitude from the very beginning, or is it such a chain of improvisations and responses to some emerging challenges of the environment around you? This struggle with routine continues, or is there still an element of strategic thinking and forward, consistent movement in the development of your architectural bureau?
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: Firstly, age is combined here. Any young man has some kind of ambition. And when you read the biography of Napoleon, who at 25 became emperor, and at 27 conquered half of Europe, and Macedonian, who at 24 conquered all of Asia, or Newton, who wrote all his laws at 22, you ask yourself the question: who are you ? You are 27-30 years old, and what do you do: write SMS or post on Facebook. And somehow it becomes boring to live and ashamed. And there is a fear of not having time for everything, and you try to fulfill all this as much as possible. While this is a drive, it feeds us, it is interesting for us to live simply.
E. P.: Now your colleagues have said that they do not want to engage in private architecture. Do you have any such taboo areas?
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: There is such a position that the architect builds buildings not on his own money. For us there are no unacceptable projects, for us there is an unacceptable person. If it is not possible to get along with a person, to understand, if our chemistry does not coincide, worldview, approach, then we just part with him. That is, the personality is more priority than the project. We do not refuse the project, we refuse to communicate with some person, because it is not always possible to find human understanding.
E. P.: Maybe something else from the participants of our round table will answer this question? Do you have to give up projects, and if so, for what reasons?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: Naturally, we select projects. We have our own understanding of which projects are interesting to us, which projects develop us, which projects are monetary for us, which projects can harm us on the contrary. Our business is large enough, under 100 employees. And this is a structured understanding, and there are special people and tablets evaluating projects. Primary screening is underway. Secondary screening usually takes place at the office manager level. These are projects that are not in line with our values. They can be found in both commercial and government projects. If the customer has the task of mastering the budget or building something just to build, then most likely we will not find a common language. If they have a goal - to create some kind of benefit for people, if they have a goal - to give us expression as architects, as people of art, then these are our clients. And it doesn't matter who they are, a private customer, government or commercial.
E. P.: Nikolay, Georgy, have you refused any orders, some projects? If so, what are the reasons?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: Yes, it was. There are people with whom we are pleased to deal, we can afford it. There are people with whom you study yourself, you feed yourself, then it turns out that they had about the same story in relation to you. There should always be some kind of giving, giving you to another person, giving from another person. Only this kind of synergy can create an amazing project in the end. In addition, there are projects that are interesting to us from a professional, from a creative point of view, there is some challenge, intrigue in this, and then it is worth participating in this. There are some projects in which we are not interested in participating. We don't even always think long about this. We just make a decision whether we refuse the project or try to work on it.
Georgy Trofimov, Kleinewelt Architekten: Sometimes there are commercial reasons: the customer wants a lot of things, and the project is interesting … But even in such situations when the project is interesting for us, sometimes we participate in commercially not very profitable projects.
E. P.: There is such a stable idea that an architect is a trade-off profession, and in order to realize his project, an architect must make certain sacrifices, certain compromises, responding to the customer's requests. I wanted to know how relevant it is now. Judging by what I heard today, this is already a bit of the past. Is the modern architect able to say hard no or soft no?
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: When you have common goals, the path to them through compromises is inevitable. We must clearly understand the boundaries of a compromise.
E. P.: I am interested in the boundaries of this compromise, especially in terms of design, architectural solutions. We often come across the fact that, considering some unsuccessful project, unsuccessful building, discussing it with the authors, we ask the question: how is it that you have happened here. And the architect answers: they wanted the best, but the customer insisted, and we were forced to make such a decision. And the building turned out the way it turned out.
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: No one is immune from this.
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: I must say that the responsibility is still with the architect. If something went wrong, the architect is responsible for it, because he is in charge of this process. This is a very important understanding - a sense of responsibility for the entire process and result.
E. P.: Is it the same in landscape architecture?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: Compromises are inevitable with us. And the main thing is that they are possible. Making a concept, making an improvement project, planning certain plantings or paths, a person is always free to choose the material he wants: granite or concrete tiles. At the same time, the concept can be preserved, and a good tile can fulfill the task that granite solved in the concept. So are the plants we plant. We are designing a prickly spruce, but what size will depend solely on the customer's budget, because a young tree can cost $ 500, and an adult one - 10 thousand. A compromise is possible here. This does not always apply to public parks; some key zones are allocated in the parks, which should have a final appearance or maximum readiness. But even in private gardens, we will not go below a certain level.
I want to give one recommendation to my colleagues on how to build relationships correctly. Analysis of the incoming client is very important. Try to pass him through the issues of economic feasibility, his interests, desire for self-development. There are projects that are just fun to do. The main thing is that they pay off. Making this analysis, making a decision at the very beginning of communication with such clients, if you see that there is no contact, that the person is not ready to open up, not ready to create with you, not ready to hear about those problems, those issues that you raise before him, I urge you, stop at this moment. You will save a lot of your time, a lot of money and client time as well. Although, of course, our sphere of activity and compromise are absolutely inseparable things.
E. P.: In conclusion, I would like to ask one more question, common to all. I hope everyone will be able to very succinctly and succinctly formulate an answer to it. What competitive advantages of your bureau do you consider to be your most important and significant? What became, in your opinion, the key to your success?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: I think the key to our success, first of all, is the team. Each team member shares goals, the first and the second, he complements it.
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that we are not afraid of anything.
Hayk Navasardyan, WALL: In fact, everything is simple, you need to understand that no reason at all can justify your mistakes that arise in the design and construction process if something goes wrong. Absolutely no reason can justify an architect. This must always be understood.
Ruben Arakelyan, bureau WALL: Actually, compromise is death, never compromise.
E. P.: Nikolay, about the competitive advantages after all. Or do you want more about compromises?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: It has already been said that compromises are death. About the benefits. We are never afraid of very difficult tasks, challenges that sometimes seem unrealistic. I will allow myself a small comment. We now have one project for which we have received the OGR and the building permit is just now starting to build. This is a dealership for the Avilon company at ZIL. It will be the largest showroom in Europe for two brands: Mercedes and Audi. This is a colossally difficult case that we have been working on for 3 years. This is an agreement with a very difficult customer, complex agreements with the city, with 38 city authorities. As well as coordination with two headquarters: Ingolstadt and Stuttgart, Audi and Mercedes. The question of compromise. The building is beginning to be built, and I really hope that you all will see it soon and appreciate the quality of the compromises. You will not notice them, it will be a cool building.
E. P.: Olga, Julia, how can you define your competitive advantages?
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: We probably inspire the customer. The people we work with manage to convey our enthusiasm for any task.
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: And the second thing that seems important to us is development. Because the tasks we undertake, all projects must take us to the next level. Different projects, whether it is another competition or teaching at MARCH, is a step up every time.
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: In our segment of landscape architecture, we are one of the few professional, passionate, constantly developing companies that have a solid resource base to solve problems of completely different scales. If we speak from this point of view, this is probably the maximum that may be of interest to our customer.
E. P.: Thank you so much. And now we turn to the questions from the audience.
Question: My name is Vitaly, I work in one of such large large bureaus, where the management is over 50. Everything that you said is very valuable. Especially, there is some feedback to Ruben for the structure of the organization of the company and for the analysis of the customer. When I came here, I had my first question, the topic was voiced - the architectural business, this is financing. Where did the original funding come from? But then it all faded into the background, and then, we all say that the team is important. The team determines the success and victory of the bureau. That is, people, personnel that we can find. We have put together a team, but it is important what structure we organize. And then I heard from Ruben just a balm for my soul, that vertical power has been outlived, although the structure of power remains, that there are circles, teams, where there are some curators. I projected the theme of curators, curators of the exhibition, on the theme of curators within the bureau. And this independence and responsibility of everyone. It's just a problem now. When such a rigid structure exists, it partly prevents each employee from within the firm from expressing themselves and makes them enslaved. What you have taken is a developmental victory. Question to everyone: what structure within the company have you taken for yourself? How do you regulate your work? I know that there are companies where we have a GAP, GAP does not draw, the GAP is responsible for 5-6 projects, a network of leaders is behind them, the leader is responsible for 3-2 projects, all the rest are only executing. Is it a rigid structure or is it non-rigid? And the second part of the question is about technology. BIM-design, which is now on everyone's lips. Everyone is interested, they ask, this unfortunate customer comes … Has this wave reached you? And what did you choose, or did you choose nothing, it does not matter to you what the customer wants, did you hire such employees who do in this or that program, or do you have any preferences?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: We have a mixed system of government, it always depends on the size of the company and the number of projects. At different times, the team must have a different structure. It is pointless to ask here. And for BIM. We have a mixed system of projects, some projects require BIM, some do not.
E. P.: I must say that UNK project is one of the first architectural companies that actively implements BIM, and this is also one of your strongest qualities.
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: We have been using it for 6 years.
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: I have already told about the bureau. As for BIM, we have now won a tender for general design for Donstroy. There you simply cannot do without BIM technology, because the deadlines are very tight. We are now using it for the first time, we have a colleague Ilya Samsonov, an architect, he helps us teach this.
E. P.: Nikolay, Georgy, about the structure. How many people do you have in your bureau?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: At the moment we officially employ 42 people. We have a fairly flexible structure with a reward system. A separate program has been written for this. It is planned for 3 years. This is a document that was formed and approved by three partners of the Bureau. In my opinion, any company has it. We partially use BIM on two of our projects.
E. P.: Probably at ZIL, you needed to use BIM?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: Partially. This was our first experience where we used it.
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: Our structure is an absolutely flat system. Any employee of our office can do absolutely everything. This is what we started with and what we are developing, can manage a project and immediately build any task. As for BIM, we are working with it, because now there is nowhere without it.
E. P.: How many people work in the bureau?
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: We have 20 architects.
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: We have an absolutely horizontal structure, a team-based management principle. There is a project, a team is assembled, a leader is determined. The leader forms a team based on full-time employees, freelancers, subcontractors. The cost price is clearly spelled out, the calendar schedule is clearly spelled out. And the motivation of the whole team was created, from the leader to every last employee. We do not motivate freelancers additionally. All permanent employees have additional motivation. In this case, the project manager determines the motivation for the project. Sometimes it is a GAP, sometimes a manager, when a project is large. But this is the only way, first, to attract quality architects, especially in our segment, where there is a very narrow circle of specialists; second, to motivate, to retain, so that the best specialists do not leave and organize their architectural bureaus.
E. P.: Do you have project managers?
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: We have 5 project managers, among whom our entire portfolio is divided. There are a lot of private clients, they require a personal relationship, communications and the like. The manager oversees managerial, administrative, contractual relations. The architect is not touched by this, the architect is engaged in the release of the project.
E. P.: How many people are currently working in the company and how are they divided? You said that you have construction departments, a design department, probably a back office.
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: We are now moving to a new building of 400 m2… I can talk about people sitting in the office. We have 25 architects, if I'm not mistaken, without partners, who are also practitioners. The construction department is full-time - about 12 people. Salaried workers this year employed 300 people. Naturally, there is a group of GUIs, there are 3 estimators, there is an administrative staff, 6 people work in the accounting department. We have a fairly classical structure, but we try to adhere to the design principle.
Question: Ivanilov Peter. Where is the subcontractor in your success story? How a beginner bureau can work with a subcontractor and develop its competencies is the first question. And the second question, what is lacking in today's established subcontractor market?
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: There is a catastrophic lack of subcontractors.
Ruben Arakelyan, bureau WALL: It seems to me that one of the troubles of construction is the complete degradation of the profession in Russia. There are already engineers, good ones are appearing, there are subcontractors, there are excellent designers, but construction is just a disaster. A gigantic problem, even on a federal scale, not a Moscow one.
E. P.: Despite the fact that, as I understand it, you have a rather saturated staff, it is nevertheless difficult to keep engineers and subcontractors on your staff?
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: The fact is that not all projects reach the project stage, where engineers, builders, and firefighters take over. But many projects end at the advanced architectural concept stage. Maybe two out of ten go further to the design stage. Therefore, it is not profitable, you keep in the state, you pay taxes for him every month, but he does nothing. It is more profitable to outsource. This is the most efficient way to work.
E. P.: Is it easy to find such subcontractors? Are there enough of them on the market?
Ruben Arakelyan, WALL: In cases of a large, commercial order, the customer usually imposes his own. In the case of a private order, you find, but not large companies, because in large companies the word “quality” is forgotten forever.
E. P.: Julius, do you have a designer and engineers on your staff?
Yuliy Borisov, UNK project: Yes, we have adopted a strategy that we complete most of the objects, and the only way to do this in Russia is to do the working documentation ourselves. In this regard, we, of course, involve subcontractors, but in our bureau, for each of the sections, we have our own specialist who controls them. With subcontractors, the trouble is complete, as with any professionals in this country. We have no infrastructure, no lawyers, no architects, no engineers, no designers. Therefore, there are very few of us here, and the number of good projects throughout Russia that have been built can fit in Berlin alone.
E. P.: Nikolay, Georgy, how are you doing with the contractors?
Nikolay Pereslegin, Kleinewelt Architekten: Initially, we had a pool of contractors. Now we are reducing it because we have our own specialists. I named the number 42 people, including those people who are engaged in networks, engineering, structures. These are the people who work in our bureau, in the state, and this is a very correct symbiosis. We are personally responsible to our customers for the result, completely, he does not care who is doing it there. And at such large facilities, where we perform work as general designers, we have learned how to do it efficiently. Plus, we just save our clients money.
Georgy Trofimovn, Kleinewelt ArchitektenA: Before we came to this evolutionarily, we had a million problems with all kinds of engineers, engineering teams, and so on.
Julia Burdova, BuroMoscow: If we talk about the niche of related design specialties, as Denis said about the niche of landscaping, in fact, this is also a free niche. Take it, develop it.
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: 3-4 companies to Moscow are nothing.
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: Do you have money for a good subcontractor?
Olga Aleksakova, BuroMoscow: In fact, for the price, they do not differ much from the bad ones.
Denis Kusenkov, Arteza: We got out this way. First, project managers have the opportunity to select subcontractors with whom they have experience, either they are recommended to them, or they can be trusted. Secondly, we have a certain pool of accredited subcontractors, which we have developed over 14 years. In many areas, we managed to find a subcontractor who sees beyond his own nose, who understands that in our person they can find good long-term partners. And, as a rule, we solve these issues. But not without problems, of course.
E. P. A: If there are no questions, I want to thank all of our participants today. Thank you very much for coming and telling about how you conduct your work, your professional activities. I hope it was also interesting and useful to everyone present. Thank you so much.
