Vladimir Plotkin, Chief Architect of TPO "Reserve"
TPO Reserve is one of the undisputed leaders of the Russian architectural market, largely due to the unique gift of its chief architect Vladimir Plotkin to find a delicate balance between pragmatism and poetry, creative impulse and the effectiveness of spatial gesture. The combination of artistry and fine artistic taste with knowledge of mathematical harmonies gives a brilliant result. Projects and constructions of TPO "Reserve" are recognizable, in demand and highly appreciated, both in the professional field and by discerning customers. The principles guiding the team leader are easily translated into any typological formats from private architecture to global urban planning concepts, guaranteeing the accuracy of the answer to any, even the most complexly formulated question and a new author's reading at each next stage of the bureau's development. Let us present the answers of Vladimir Plotkin to the main questions of our special project "Standard of Quality":
Video filming and editing: Sergey Kuzmin.
Vladimir Plotkin
chief architect of TPO "Reserve":
“The product of our work is an architectural work. Our work must be of high quality. A project can be of high quality, but in any kind of activity - and in general in life, this is a philosophical law - the result is infinitely important. Ultimately, the result of our activities is implementation. The architectural product you are working on must be realized with the best possible quality. And here you need to take into account all aspects: your own capabilities, and the technical budgetary capabilities of the customer, and so on. Based on these input data, you are already making a decision about the quality of the product that you are going to sell. When it comes to simply a project that has a chance of being realized, it can be a studio project, it can be a competitive project, then it is valuable in itself. And then some other laws and some other priorities begin to work. You care about perfect shape. Architecture is a multidimensional profession: it is an ideal form, it is an ideal function, it should work ideally, it should meet all the requirements of the economy, and so on. Plus the process: it should bring emotional pleasure, and physical - in the sense that it brings money. An architect does not work in emptiness; an architect does not work alone either. He must think about himself and about his colleagues, the employees with whom he works. And if we talk simply about an ideal high-quality product, it can be reduced to completely simple elementary parameters: an ideally proportioned shape, a volume in which there is nothing superfluous and which is sufficient in itself. There is no limit to human striving for perfection.
If we talk abstractly about architectural activity, as much as possible abstracted, detached from practice, from reality, from life, then, of course, the final result of architectural activity is form. In terms of form, whatever we say, whatever aspects we take into account - social, environmental, economic, and so on - our result is evaluated in the form that we create. Form includes everything: shaping as such, and understanding how this form is made, proportioning, all other components of an architectural product, a rhythmic series. All this is of great importance to me. Some original gesture or technique that was born in the space of our bureau or specifically in my head - for me it will be very valuable and, probably, more valuable than even a perfectly executed implementation, if something turns out to be strong and good.
A form, as a final artistic product, can express or reflect that mood or that artistic world, an insight that has come, and convey some kind of message, a message to the recipient. Of course, this is impossible to measure with any formulas, no mathematics, and it is rather difficult to determine. Therefore, from time immemorial, even millennia, people have been trying to find this formula, to grope for this formula of beauty. And in some ways we can agree here that there are mathematical laws that determine what exactly human perception understands by a beautiful form, proportion, what is good, what is bad. The same rhythmic series, proportional series, I'm not talking about the Fibonacci series and so on - this has not been canceled. If something like that can be calculated in your proportioning, you can always then check yourself for coincidence with some mathematical series. If this coincidence turns out - honor and praise to you. This means that your feelings are not so much intuitive as, probably, they have already been developed; you can already feel it somewhere on the tip of the pen or on the tip of the pencil. During the years of study, I attached great importance to this, namely the mathematical or geometric search for beauty. Now to a much lesser extent, because you rely more on some other things, some other concepts. Although from time to time, sometimes for reasons of pure curiosity, let me, I think, check myself or my colleagues, why they did it, why it seems incredibly beautiful to me, or, on the contrary, extremely unsuccessful.
In our practice, my colleagues and I try to bring that architectural task or that architectural product to the maximum - as much as possible - simple, maximally expressive and optimal form appropriate for a particular situation. But life is not easy, and clear content is not packed into any form. Sometimes this content is even, homogeneous when you are dealing with residential buildings or hotels, where there is the same repeating element. But more often than not, there is something out of this range. And, as a rule, these most active elements give themselves away. And for honest architecture - why not reveal exactly this manifestation. This often works well. In principle, I discussed this topic a lot, because there is a certain geometrically verified shell and there is an inner content. The inner content must break out, it must declare itself: I am here, I am here, I am like this, do not confuse me with anyone. In some place, yes, the form breaks, breaks, something individual jumps out from there. This gives a building, an object, perhaps an urban development, the very individuality that we dream of.
In Russia, the average quality level of both architects and architecture has certainly grown. This is easy to explain, because we live in a single informational, cultural field, there is a normal process of communication with both our colleagues and foreign colleagues. There are no purely technological or purely methodological secrets anymore. And professional bureaus understand the algorithm of work, understand how to work with design assignments, how to work with technologies, how to work with materials. As for stagnation, it is certainly present. The first point is purely economic. On the one hand, there are ambitions - primarily among the customers-developers - to do something incredible that can amaze both the consumer and the buyers and the whole world. On the other hand, everything is weighed by monetary and technological capabilities. At some point it calms down. This is translated into our architectural activities. The second aspect is the aspect of mentality. Moreover, the mentality is no longer so much an architect, but a consumer and a developer. In my opinion, there is an absolutely wrong, misunderstood paradigm or calculation and orientation towards the average customer, towards the average taste of the average customer, who must be indulged in by all means. But this is a road to nowhere, it is a dead end. It's not even walking in place, it's a step back, or even two. Architects have to work, they have to get orders. Between these wishes, which must be respected, and their understanding of how it should be, they are trying to somehow maneuver, trying to find some kind of palliative compromise solution. And it turns out what it turns out. And the result is melancholy and boredom."
