Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya, TOTEMENT / PAPER
The history of the Totement / Paper bureau is as effective and emotional as the creative credo of its leaders Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya. Over the past 10 years since its foundation, the team has repeatedly shocked the information field with loud and bright projects, such as the competition projects of the Opera House in Busan, the Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki and the Russian Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which was implemented, but with significant deviations from the author's intention. This year, the museum-storage complex of cognac in Chernyakhovsk went around the pages of almost all leading architectural media in the world and reached the final of the World Architecture Festival (WAF), where in the nomination "Culture" it will compete with the construction of "stars" of world architecture.
Each project of the team is distinguished by an inimitable expressive manner of working with space, form and plasticity. In addition, the leaders of Totement / Paper have developed their own aesthetic and philosophical system that defines their approach to architecture and adhere to it, despite the difficulties in proving their case to customers. They admit that they work for eternity and are responsible for the quality of their work only to her and to themselves.
Attention video: 16+
Video filming and editing: Sergey Kuzmin.
Levon Airapetov and Valeria Preobrazhenskaya
Totement / Paper bureau chiefs:
Valeria Preobrazhenskaya: We do not agree in principle that architecture can be of high quality or low quality. We agree with Bulgakov.
Levon Airapetov: There is architecture or there is no architecture, that's all.
V. P.: You walk along the street, city, street, and then bam, you see - this is architecture!
L. A.: This is different. It still does not need to be assessed, qualitatively or poorly.
V. P.: Is it architecture or not. We do not assess whether it is of high quality or not? Is she in this building or not?
L. A.: From our point of view, architecture is never of high quality. It is either there or it is not. There is absolutely shitty low-quality architecture. Today the Parthenon is poor-quality architecture, it is all destroyed, does not work, there is no function, everything is lying around. What's high quality?
L. A.: What is a quality feel?
V. P.: You have a category of quality, if you determine that it is … So, then you can compare the Parthenon, for example, with the Pantheon.
L. A.: Now a man comes, he does not know at all what a detail is, whether the flute in the column is drawn correctly or not, the base, he sees it for the first time. He doesn't know, well drawn, poorly drawn. This is not Filippov. Even 80% of architects will come, show them something, and they will say: it’s probably beautiful. It's crap though. They no longer know anything about it, they remember that once at the institute, some kind of Ionic … Where this currency was wrapped, how - he does not remember. He cannot say if it is a well-made item or not.
L. A.: You can build exactly the same Parthenon. Now technology is allowed to build at least ten Parthenons.
V. P.: The question is what architecture should be attributed to. If architecture is art, then you cannot measure [its] quality.
L. A.: If - technology, then super: did the right thing, undermined.
V. P.: And we treat it as art, because everything else is a craft. It is contained in the result that the architect makes. […] Art is not [measured], and this is what defines architecture and not architecture for us.
L. A.: Must be alive. Architecture is a dumb thing, simple, but it has three qualities, without which it is not. Two artificial and one … It must have a border, a shape and must have two spaces. If the inner is, then the outer is by definition. And the person who communicates with this object. Because if he is not there, it is not clear who to take testimony from. All the rest: light, shadow, stone, iron, ecology, electricity - this is all alien. But only if there is no form and no internal space, then everything - there is no architecture. This means that apart from the form there must be something else, the space must be alive. It must breathe with me, or I must breathe with it. But if it does not breathe with me, then it is not architecture, for me it is dead. We give one example all the time. Does a stuffed owl look like an owl? This is not an owl, you can see that it is a stuffed animal. He has everything: wings, tail, feathers, but two glass eyes. You look and say: she is dead. But there, on the branch, she is alive. She doesn't move, but she's alive. And you immediately say: this is a stuffed animal, and this is an owl. And you don't need to explain anything.
[With architecture] you never know when it will turn out. You must always be ready, you must always be addicted.
V. P.: And when you do, at that moment you sometimes [think] what happened. And then you build and you understand - it didn't work out.
L. A.: There are projects when we knew for sure that it was cool, and when we built it, we understood -. And there are moments when you do it, and it seems like nothing, and then you look - and the result is completely unexpected. You can't draw everything. In principle, this is such a process - you interfere, interfere, interfere and say: "that's it, I've already mixed it, I don't have anything else." Such a dumb mysterious process.
V. P.: Sometimes you realize that you made a mistake not when you were drawing, but when you agreed with someone in the process or did not agree. This is also a risk, because if you disagree [with someone], you can lose the whole project. But if you agree, you can lose the most important thing in the project. And you think: I'll give it up, okay, okay. And then bam - I realized that I had already lost more.
L. A.: Architects have a very complex type of art, unlike musicians, for example. There are more people involved, more money, more [participants] who build crookedly, more length in time. [It happens that] your enthusiasm falls, you [no longer] can, you have no energy. A very lively thing, when you understand that a person has left five years of life, they lie in this building. He definitely left [those years] there, fought for him, gnawed at his throat, he did not sleep, he woke up at four in the morning with the thought “why am I [nothing] working out”.
… About low-quality architecture. I'm driving, building a Dynamo, let's say. They build very high quality. Very few houses are being built as qualitatively as in Moscow. I drive, and whatnots go up; I look at it and understand that it is an anthill. And then they begin to glue the facades. This is low-quality architecture, it is not connected with the interior at all. You can also change these facades. This is the same as taking and changing your face. This cannot be, because this is your face. If the element is not connected with the body, and the body has no idea, then this is not architecture.
… Here is the building [outside the window] opposite me - is this architecture? I think that if this architect is called, he will also tell what he wanted to do, what he was looking for. I believe that he should not be allowed to do this at all. Or the architects must decide: since there are seven billion people and they need to live somewhere, let's single out a certain number of people, call them something and let them build this. We will write them standards, guidelines, manuals, let them do it. And we will do architecture and we will say that it is architecture.
V. P.: Doubt [in work] is normal. If a person does not try, if he is just doing a craft, he also probably has a little doubt. The craft is always trying to surpass itself, a little bit to get out of itself, from the craft.
L. A.: There is a time during which you have to do [the project], because then the energy of the project goes away. You relax and your thought goes out of your head. You start to think: "Maybe …". And that's all. And should be concentrated like a sword.
… And this thing must be before you realize that it is, before you build it. You have to hold this thing, they will crush you, they will stab you, stab you all the time, and if you suddenly start to doubt somewhere in the middle, they will crush you, they will simply break you perpendicularly. And you yourself will leave.
V. P.: When you are already doing, there is no doubt. [You can admit doubts] when you have a choice, when you are just making a decision. But in the process, you are also forced to make decisions. What I have already said is that your thought may not live to see its realization, even if it was somewhere.
… [In the profession] there must be an ability to compromise, because otherwise you will not realize anything. You will be an architect Leonidov who has not implemented anything.
L. A.: On the other hand, he still remained an architect. You should always look at your body and understand that you yourself killed.
V. P.: And the most important thing is that you, as an architect, must also know whether you killed or not. Sometimes after the fact.
L. A.: Nobody knows except you. Outsiders don't care. These are not their children, they need some kind of results. Everyone wants results from you. Although everyone scolds and says that you imagine yourself to be gods who create some kind of things. Yes, they do not think, they are. People who create objects that are then used by billions in 500 years - naturally, they are gods. Only not those who are prayed for. They create objects that are 500 years old, you approach them, and something comes from there. After all, something is going on?
