Archi.ru:
This year your workshop celebrates its anniversary: thirty years. How did it all start?
Yuri Vissarionov:
“The Kurortproekt institute gave me a lot for the start, where I, in fact, began my professional career. At the end of the eighties, when my circle of customers was accumulated and the opportunity arose to cooperate with a large construction company from Yugoslavia with its advanced experience in European design, I thought about my own bureau. We started 30 years ago together with Konstantin Savkin, with whom they studied at the same institute and lived in the same student hostel. The workshop's first office was located in a basement with small skylights. It was a time of internal development: interiors, front entrances, and superstructures available to a small team served as laboratory objects. But from that basement we had where to reach … our landmarks were upstairs. And we have successfully escaped the captivity of postmodernism, starting to search for our own, "independent" images. Of course, they depended on many circumstances and were inspired by reputable masters. But even then, one of my main ideas, and as a result, the driving forces of the workshop were the combination in the architectural object of the ordinary and the unique, the multiple and the only.
How would you describe the main stages in the development of the workshop?
Konstantin Savkin:
- Conventionally, three stages can be distinguished: laboratory (in the same basement), transcendental (before the 2008 crisis, when we were designing iconic, search objects) and earthly, when we moved on to real projects (these are large city objects - office, retail and public centers, residential complexes). In the transcendental period, much remained only on paper, but there were also noticeable realizations: for example, a shopping center in Veshnyaki, a hotel and office center on Starokashirskoye highway, a country villa in Turkey … By typology, these are very different objects: a shopping center with its hall spaces, a hotel -office with a fine-mesh structure, the villa is an open, architectural and landscape structure. By the way, the recent trade and exhibition center in Veliky Novgorod can be added to this colorful series.
What are the characteristics of the modern stage?
Yu. V.: The pre-crisis period of bright concepts gave way to the era of pragmatic and rational projects. And after 2013, urban planning became almost the main direction for us: projects of suburban settlements, planning of the territories of large microdistricts, programs for the development of urban spaces. However, it was here that I managed to return to my old, still student's topic - the ratio of ordinary and unique, in this case, residential and public spaces.
Today, the slogan of mass construction - and this is social housing and related service facilities: schools, kindergartens … - has become a kind of "reuse". This is a rework of the finished project (by 5-10-20-50%) in order to adapt it to a specific situation. And in some cases - mainly in cases of complex development "in an open field" - this approach is quite justified. The cubes of sectional housing allow you to play with the spatial composition, and the curtain facades allow you to give an original look and correct the scale of perception of buildings. Schools and kindergartens can also be originally assembled from standard educational or play blocks.
But typical design is not a discovery …
C. S.: Indeed, we already "passed" the current surge of standard design in the sixties and eighties of the last century. One of his paradoxes was the imaginary economy - in fact, in many cases, the binding of standard projects was more expensive than individual design.
The late period of that typical housing construction was characterized by attempts to move away from typical buildings to the typification and standardization of building elements. Thus, while saving on the production of conveyor construction products, the variability of the architecture was preserved, and the architect could have some influence on the compositional solution and the appearance of the new building, which is very important when working in the existing context.
Has the situation changed today or is it repeating itself?
Yu. V.: Today, standard housing, with the existing minimization of apartments, is more actively complemented by public functions and spaces. This trend is reminiscent of the construction of communal houses at the beginning of the twentieth century, where part of the apartment spaces due to poverty was "socialized" and transferred to common dining rooms, utility rooms, reading rooms; common courtyard grounds were created for sports games, recreation, and so on.
Our workshop has sufficient experience in such a "expansion" of a standard mini-dwelling at the expense of adjoining spaces as a means of achieving the uniqueness of an object with environmental or functional adaptation of a typical project baggage. Residential development in Tomilino involves not only a number of front, almost identical, towers lined up along the highway, but also the elaboration of courtyard spaces with a recreational boulevard, the construction of a shopping center that complements the new housing. Attempts to create a variety of environments from typical houses have been undertaken by us for a long time. Among them is the concept of building a residential area in the city of Volzhsky.
The park development in Ufa is an example of the settlement of the built-up area with modern houses of different types - from villas to standard sectional houses and economical towers.
What about the theme of the commune house? Have you managed to implement old student ideas in our time?
Yu. V.: A classic example of a modern commune house is student dormitories, hotel complexes, sanatoriums and boarding houses, where, in general, standard living blocks are complemented by unique public spaces. Our examples:
dormitory RSSU on the street. Wilhelm Pieck, hostel in Mytishchi.
Hotels and boarding houses are the same superior hostels, which are also typical. Although the Olympic facility implemented according to our project does not belong to them -
boarding house "Yuzhny-2" in Sochi, where a horseshoe with generally standard rooms is complemented by a unique stylobate of public functions, a health center, and recreational amenities.
But this is already an object of an urban planning scale …
C. S.: The neighborhood of typical and unique blocks or buildings is one of the rational methods of such design. Unique sports facilities
of the educational and sports complex in Kashira are taken into a ring in a generally typical accompanying building, which creates a certain environmental contrast.
The VDSK type series in Orekhovo-Zuevo made it possible to collect rather cozy quarters, complemented by a small but unique community center that unites residential formations. Landscaping of the embankment is another original addition to the typical housing construction.
Thoughtful landscape improvement gives a rather noticeable effect in the implementation of standard housing construction, even with small means, as in
development of Krasnogorsk. If the socialist neighborhoods were brought to such a level of improvement, they would look much more optimistic.
As for housing, there are situations in which the use of standard projects is almost impossible, and then the ratio of the unique and the standard changes in favor of the unique, and the standard elements are reduced to the size of an apartment or a classroom.
– But is this already a unique object?
Yu. V.: Uniqueness is often built on an original combination of standard elements. For example, in the case of
residential building on the street. Usievich was required to provide insolation to neighboring buildings by constructing a new building on a confined area, while taking into account the existing environment. We managed to answer all these questions with an extraordinary solution including, among other things, standard planning blanks.
In the same way, adding uniqueness to typical residential buildings, we have created original solutions for Arkhangelsk, Shchelkovo, Lyubertsy, and other cities of the Moscow region. This required quite insignificant from the point of view of construction, mainly creative, architectural and artistic efforts. In particular, the residential complex in Shchelkovo includes several types of sections, composed in a composition, which is due to the configuration of the site, the need for insolation of the neighboring house and other regulations. The lowered section of the new home is decorated with dark brick cladding to make a unique match to the adjacent historic building.
Does this approach work in the context of low-rise construction?
C. S.: Low-rise buildings allow you to use more diverse means to create a unique image of typical buildings. In particular, use pitched roofs. And landscape improvement here also has a more noticeable effect. IN
In the village of Venyukovo, we managed to imitate an almost European town-village on the basis of fairly standard residential sections.
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In the village of Zaitsevo, Moscow Region, uniqueness is concentrated in the center. It is a round square surrounded by public institutions - extensions to typical housing.
Residential complex in Lyubertsy (microdistrict 3-3a). Here, surrounded by "typical" houses, we create two unique public spaces-boulevards - recreational (inside the block) and shopping (along the street). Residents of typical houses have the opportunity to choose an extraordinary environment for communication. We used a similar technique for the reconstruction of the microdistrict in Tomilino.
Is it hard to believe that you have completely abandoned conceptual, exploratory design?
Yu. V.: Not at all, although the current contests are more pragmatic. Our creative finds for atypical application of typical solutions are often born in exploratory design. I try to involve architects in such non-commercial design despite the difficult economic situation. Among such recent competitions: a residential and public complex in Irkutsk,
residential development in Ilyinsky near Moscow, development in the central part of Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
Competitive developments are used in real projects. Among them -
residential complex in Murino near St. Petersburg. Recreational, promenade boulevard is a place for free communication of people. Here we have designed a kindergarten, which includes a typical block of play rooms stretched along the border of the block and an original block of halls, designed in the form of a "slide", overlooking the courtyard, to the inner promenade. The halls of the kindergarten are located on the boulevard and can be used on weekends or in the evening for "extracurricular" activities.
We hope that the solutions found in the implementation of the concept for the development of the Nagatinskaya Poima in Moscow will also find their continuation in various projects of the workshop. A recreational area is organized here on the principle of a theater auditorium. This "open theater" includes residential areas as well as public and business land. I have extensive experience in resort design, starting with student internships and assignment work in Sochi. Here, as in traditional seaside resorts, three lines can be distinguished: the first - compositionally free "landscape" houses, close to the embankment, with views of the coastal landscaping and the river; the second - free-standing oval towers with views of the river and the surrounding area; the third - respectable "quarter" houses with courtyards facing the embankment. The proposed variety of types of buildings and related environments is taken into account in the placement of apartments with different levels of comfort and "lifestyle".
