Archi.ru:
Why did you decide to become a tutor for the "Spring March" this year? This is your second time participating in the workshop?
Konstantin Khodnev:
- I liked everything very much last year. Energetically, it was an incredibly powerful process. To be honest, I then existed on this charge for several months. There, it seemed that time was shrinking, because in a very short time you do as much as you get in Moscow in six months. Plus a very good intellectual atmosphere of communication with colleagues. The involvement of local authorities also played a role. It was completely unexpected that only a few months had passed, and a lot had already been implemented. In the realities of Moscow, you never expect such a thing. So when I was asked if I want to go again, I just said “Yes!”. Although this year everything was a little different.
What was the difference?
- First of all, everything was shorter. Last year the workshop lasted, I think, about three and a half weeks. Now everything had to be done in a week, although the amount of work remained the same. However, many things no longer needed to be explained, because quite a few participants in this workshop were participants in the previous one. Also took part "Architectural landing", which was engaged in working documentation and supervision of what we did last year. That is, now the task was more strategic: it was required not so much to talk about specific pavilions, but about what was needed in general.
What kind of plot did you get this year?
- The village of Verkhniy Uslon, the closest site to Kazan. It is located on the opposite bank of the Volga. It is quite easy to get there, especially in summer, on a regular boat you can get there in twenty minutes. By car, the journey takes about an hour. There are beautiful landscapes, a high bank of the Volga, it offers a beautiful view of the panorama of Kazan, which is so easy to see from the inside, a long sandy beach, in fact, the only one in the district, where you can swim. There are many more advantages.
We realized that this place is a point of attraction for residents of Kazan, who come there to rest. But at the same time, there is no tourist or recreational infrastructure. Even the beach is just a strip of sand. It is officially impossible to come and stay - there are no hotels. People literally walk around the yards, knock on gates and ask if it is possible to rent a house.
– Was the task somehow formulated? Or they just gave you a plot and said, "Do what you want."
– I will not say that we have completely turned the perception of this place. Some work has already been done there. Local authorities are also well aware that tourism is now a problem that needs to be solved. But they rather saw the coastal zone as a point of application of efforts. We have approached the issue not locally, but comprehensively.
What exactly was the complexity?
“It was important for us to make not just an accomplishment from the category“We want us to have it like in Moscow”, but to outline those things that are important from the point of view of the functioning of the village. Something that will allow him to become a full-fledged modern and comfortable place to stay. So that he has some kind of goal, specialization, new jobs arise. From a social point of view, this is very important.
Now local residents, perhaps, are not very happy that some people come and grill kebabs on the beach, and then they have to clean up after them, because there is no infrastructure. If everything is revived and turned into a comfortable space, then those who come will bring money. Now they simply do not have the opportunity to do it. But when they can live in a hotel, have lunch or dinner in a restaurant, engage in water sports and so on - all this will allow small businesses to develop and maintain the quality of life in the village. Then the same improvement - starting with new lanterns and street paving - will be justified. This is how we reasoned.
What exactly did your team suggest?
- First of all, we figured out what actually needs to be done with the beach, since there was a problem with it. There is a pier, and according to the norms, there should be at least a kilometer from the pier to the beach. By the way, we suggested keeping the old wooden pier as a memory of the place, so we were going to take it apart to build a new one. Since the beach is long, we decided to turn the first kilometer from the pier into a recreational park by the water with zones for active recreation and sports, a food pavilion and playgrounds.
The beach itself, equipped for swimming, was decided to move further. There is just a beautiful bay where locals swim now. The result is a linear structure with different functional areas.
Plus we suggested planting trees. Before the appearance of the Kuibyshev reservoir, when the Volga overflowed and part of the village went under water, there was a grove here and some trees were preserved on the beach. We proposed to make a green cape, which will protect from the wind and will create more secluded areas in which you can equip, including a camping. We talked with dendrologists, found out what trees can be planted here.
Almost in the center of Verkhniy Uslon there is an abandoned factory. The former industrial area is the only more or less vacant place in the village. We proposed making a tourist center there, relatively speaking, a seating yard. So that there will be a hotel, cafes and restaurants, shops with local goods and maybe even a small manufactory. The area is famous for its agriculture - they say that the famous Usla tomatoes, berries and apples grow there. Everything that is grown there could be processed there. That is, it is quite possible to develop agritourism as well.
Is there a large seasonality in this village in terms of population?
- Yes, the seasonality is quite strong, in winter there are four to five times less people than in summer.
We realized that there is summer tourism, and the rest of the time the place does not work. Another challenge was to make this loading more even. Therefore, in addition to a beach holiday, we have proposed a program of festivals and a tourist walking route.
We walked around the village together with local architects and administration. They showed us the sights. Then we made a photoactivity map using services related to Yandex. Photo and Google Photos, which use geotags to determine in which places people are most often photographed.
We realized that it would be nice to make a circular route, which will include a local history museum, a park in the central part, which they have already begun to develop, a church, historical and cultural monuments, landscape attractions - stone ravines, a hill, a karst lake - interesting for tourism in any season. The karst lake could also be used as a skating rink in winter.
Then we analyzed the cyclist communities where they paint their tracks. We put a grid for the movement of cyclists on the village and realized that they also pass through the places that we wanted to include in the route.
By and large, the only street in the village is Chekhov Street, the highway that connects the village itself and the water. Guests arrive along it, and the future tourist center is located on the same axis. As is usually the case in villages, in terms of town planning, it is "loose", with an unclear front. It is unpleasant and uninteresting to walk on it, because there are no sidewalks, but there are some inserts from trade zones and fences. We suggested that we also do it.
Then the street goes down to the pier, the area in front of the pier is the last point that we have outlined and which also needs to be done. This is the main square of the village, which for some part of the time works as a parking lot, but fairs and city festivals with fireworks that will be held by the water can take place there. We have outlined a cultural program: holidays dedicated to the first harvests, concerts, kite festivals on Mount Sokolka, because the wind is constantly there and it would work great. That is, some events in addition to the monuments of history and culture.
– Are there any monuments of history and culture?
- There is a monument to Czech legionaries in the village. The civil war left its mark because the battle for Kazan took place here. The monument is relatively recent, minimalistic, made with money from the Czech Republic. It is located on the Verkhneuslonskaya Hill, where the battery of the Czechoslovak Corps was stationed.
There is also the Yanka Kupala Museum. It would seem that Tatarstan, the village of Verkhniy Uslon - nothing boded. But he is. It turns out that Kupala lived here in the evacuation.
The museum is located in the building of a flour mill. It is beautiful, brick, late 19th century, stands on the shore. We talked about how it would make a hotel with beautiful views of the Volga and Kazan. It could be the key point of the entire development of the village, and if you turn on your imagination, you can turn it into a world-class tourist destination - there is everything for this.
– How carefully did you manage to work out the project?
- Seven days, but in reality there were even five working days, not the time for which you can fully complete a large project. But it is possible to outline the main things. We set ourselves an ambitious task - to make both a general strategic analysis and try to get to small but important details.
We looked for certain paths and symbols to reveal identity. For example, the surfaces were analyzed in order to make the design of public beach areas associated with the place. Don't just draw some lines, wavy or straight, and say that now, let's say, there will be a park here, but understand the place with its landscape, culture and history. In my opinion, it is very important to connect ideas with context and place. In this case, indirectly, through surfaces.
On a local beach in the early 1980s, peculiar small forms of smalt were made. Now they look like the ruins of an extinct civilization. This prompted us to ensure that in the landscaping concrete surfaces have a similar raster of tiles or paving with the same pattern that forms smalt, only enlarged. The result is a kind of "super mosaic", where a large paving area has essentially turned into a "super picturesque" canvas, which visually reduces the scale and creates a unique environment.
There is also an unusual pebble, which, in principle, is a milled historical Upper Uslon. When the reservoir appeared fifty years ago, some rural streets were flooded. During this time, the water turned houses into pebbles, but this pebble is made of building materials: brick, limestone - from what these houses were made of. We also started from this pebble. We can use its pattern in landscaping as a broken fractal pattern, which is superimposed both with a large grid of the landscaping pattern and with small pixels on paving elements.
Old boats with very picturesque surfaces of several rubbed layers of paint now lie on the shore, they resemble Pollock's paintings. We suggested using a similar aged multi-layer paint for the wooden surfaces of the beach pavilions.
The design of the pavilions is absolutely calm, also partly related to the history of the beach. The tower of rescuers, welded from thin metal structures, has been partially preserved here. In the pavilions, we used a thin metal frame - a simple architecture that does not take anything upon itself, but simply creates a background.
We made several presentation pictures of a deliberately postcard nature: collages from the paintings of the Wanderers, combined with our place. For example, the illustration of the beach is made on the basis of "Barge Haulers on the Volga". This is a light humorous visualization of ideas and meanings. But in fact, it is quite deep, because these are things related both to the culture, which everyone understands, and to this context.
What did the participation in the workshop give you and what, in your opinion, did you give to your listeners?
- The workshop gave me, perhaps, even more than I did to his listeners. No, of course I tried (laughs). To be honest, I also learn a lot. First of all, this is the experience of quickly formulating problems and conducting. I, like other tutors, was not the head of the company there, as in the architectural bureau. Rather, we taught and had to tell and direct rather than suggest ideas. That is, to structure the work and ask those questions that the audience might not have asked themselves.
I tried to teach them to look at the issue more broadly. If we were talking about the beach, then we considered all the connections and in general - how the beach is connected with Kazan, how people get to it, what happens there at other times of the year, what else can happen. If we were looking at the village, then I said: "Let's look at the whole area, what else is important in the area, what is it famous for, what else can we add?" It was very useful because it differs from any project practice when we solve a specific narrow problem. The opportunity to look wider, to do a broader and more strategic analysis is very valuable.
The details are important, they certainly also need to be learned. But first you need to understand what to do and why to do it. Only by answering these questions, you can go further. But if you answer them incorrectly or do not answer them at all, and go further, then you can do things that will not work. In public spaces, the main thing is that they work. This, by the way, was not completely clear to everyone. For example, for some people the park was just a place where people come. And why they will come there, who exactly will come there, what is needed for them to come and be interesting - these very important questions often escaped attention.
How did you organize your work with the team?
- I have already said that the quick formulation of tasks was important, as well as understanding for oneself the strengths and weaknesses of the team's proposals.
When we first went to the place, I asked everyone to sketch and write down their thoughts and feelings, analyze everything online. It seems valuable to me. When we returned, I gave an hour and a half for everyone to prepare their own presentation about the place. It was very interesting how everyone revealed themselves. Brilliant things were done, which were then included in the final analysis.
And, of course, it was convenient, because it immediately became clear who was thinking what. To distribute the work, I needed to understand who had what strengths, and who could do what.
In parallel, every day I held a kind of mini-lecture: when we approached the discussion of some issue or the solution of some problem, I told what methods of solving such problems in general are, briefly described similar situations, illustrated them, starting with general examples and ending with very specific travel photographs. I was interested in guiding the team's train of thought. It included regional architects of Tatarstan, members of the "Architectural landing", and just young architects. The level of preparedness was different, but on the whole they were all quite strong. Colleagues from Tatarstan make a very favorable impression. They are very active, interested in everything and incredibly efficient. To be honest, I would love to work with them on an ongoing basis.
I think it was a very useful and interesting experience for the workshop participants and for the development of Verkhniy Uslon. ***
The composition of the team led by tutor Konstantin Khodnev at MARSH Lab 2017: Kamil Garipov, Lilia Gizzyatova, Karina Davletianova, Alexey Karasev, Anna Lazareva, Isa Magomedov, Leysan Minlibaeva, Alexander Novoselov, Aydar Nurullin, Vadim Ubeikin, Lenar Khamitov.
