Julius Borisov, co-founder and chief architect of UNK project bureau
Bureau UNK project is an energetic, talented team, in a short period between 2013 and 2015, it made an image revolution, winning several high-profile competitions: for residential quarters in Skolkovo, the second stage of the Empire tower and the Metropolis shopping center, reconstruction of the swimming pool in Luzhniki. And not only won - some of the projects have already been implemented, some are under construction. So, without parting with the status of one of the leaders in the field of corporate and commercial interiors, the team confidently reached the level of “stars of great Russian architecture”. Now, more and more often taking places in the jury of competitions, UNK project is already setting themselves the ambitious task of conquering the western market as well.
Possession of modern technologies and materials, proven project management, the ability to build a dialogue with customers, as well as invest in "tomorrow's selves" - all this allowed the bureau to achieve success. But these qualities, important for the project business, do not overlap the main thing - the bureau measures its success not by the amount of profit and built square meters, but by the benefit that they bring to people and the city. It is to this criterion that b about For the most part of his interview for the "Standard of Quality" project, co-founder and chief architect of UNK project Yuliy Borisov.
Video filming and editing: Sergey Kuzmin.
Julius Borisov
co-founder and chief architect of the UNK project bureau:
“I will quote the ISO 8402-86 standard:“Quality is a set of properties and characteristics of a product or service that give them the ability to satisfy the conditioned or implied needs of the consumer”. Perfectly. All clear. There is a triad: benefit, strength, beauty. Accordingly, we arrange all projects exactly according to this triad. What is the use of this project? How can this thing be done as efficiently as possible? We cut off all unnecessary.
Efficiency is the achievement of a goal at the lowest cost. If we can plan the area as efficiently as possible, provide more square meters with the same level of comfort, we do it. If we can plan a room to make it more efficient, more people could be accommodated there while maintaining all the consumer qualities of this room, then this is great.
We constantly check the quality of the project, not in relation to some ephemeral architecture. Architecture is only a tool. And we look at the end user, at those people who use it. And if we do not indicate this in generally accepted standards, some customer requirements, then we just try it on ourselves. And we consider every thing, every aspect of our activity under such an eye: is it possible, for example, not to do this? And if you don't, will it get better or worse? If it gets worse, we must do it; if it gets better, the more we must do it. These are the things that are interesting. Strength - everything is clear here: you use less reinforced concrete, less reinforcement, the building is worth it - great. More efficient engineering systems, for example. You consume less energy, more insulation, mineral wool - less harm to the environment. This is an understandable story, here everything is just numbers. And the main thing here is simply to take the best practices, world standards.
And then the most difficult parameter is beauty. Can it be digitized? In my opinion, it is practically possible. Because the most important thing for us in terms of aesthetics is harmony. We do not use the concept of beauty. Beautiful and ugly - I banned this word in the bureau, and harmony is already a more understandable thing, because harmony is also described in formulas. This is mathematics, this is an algorithm. And there are patterns there, because sometimes, in some areas, it makes no sense to put beautiful houses, canonical, author's architecture, but it is better to make ordinary buildings. And it will be more harmonious for this place. It is easy to test it: I put a model of one house, another, and you see that it is a cool house, but the environment has not improved. This means that you don't need to do that, you need to be calmer. The same is true from the consumer's point of view. They should feel that this is their home.
Aerobatics - when we not only satisfy their natural, everyday needs, or these, that they like this house, but if we raise them a little. We lay down meanings and ideas, with the prospect that they will think about something. If they are formed even by a millimeter (this is a frequent story, by the way, the environment very well forms the consciousness of people) - this also has the value and quality of the project.
Architecture is a science that deals with vast amounts of data and spaces. We use three-dimensional space, we use time, because our projects live and develop in time, they have an algorithm. Like people, any building has its own life cycle, and we plan for that. It has a financial component, there is a whole business model, a huge amount of data, and a simple search of options on a computer cannot solve an architectural problem. I'm afraid that even the entire neural network is not able to do even one small project. A good architect knows everything about everything. Maybe not deep, but he knows. On the other hand, he has technical tools, so he can implement these things with the help of tools peculiar only to architectural thinking. No wonder in my childhood there was such an expression as "the architect of perestroika". When is it necessary to create a new socio-economic model of the state, who can do it? An engineer cannot do it, a politician cannot do it, but an architect!.. There is a "microcircuit architect", a "program architect" - this is a person who has completely different knowledge, different techniques. He, on the one hand, has rational thinking, half of the brain, on the other hand, is irrational. In principle, a good architect, like a simultaneous interpreter who translates in real time, must be a little schizophrenic. They have two hemispheres of the brain that must work with two different tasks at the same time and then add them. I operate with a strange KPI (key performance indicator - approx. Archi.ru) - good. We will make a thousand sketches, choose five of them, and you can just look at each of the solutions: will it bring good to people or not, and how much good there is of it. Each person can determine absolutely exactly whether people have become better or worse, if we compare two material things.
Our main problem in achieving quality is not the customer. All our customers understand this clearly, especially if we explain it to them. Our biggest problem is time. Because the development of high-quality solutions, assemblies, even the development of a door handle can be viewed from this angle - it is simply colossal time, and therefore financial, design costs. Although then it pays off even from the point of view of investing money. High-quality solutions for us are not that long-lasting, but expensive, we look at these things together. Compared to the best Western practices, their design process takes much longer. There is no situation that a residential building is designed in four months, and then construction begins. There, the process of coordination with society, including government agencies - but mainly with society - is extremely long. The interests of the owners of some dovecote are taken into account, it takes a lot of time. All consumers there are people with disabilities, people with different views, from different communities. An analysis of needs is in progress, then a design solution is issued that satisfies them, then the grinding of these processes goes. And then, when the idea of the project, its functional programming, is created, the process of working design there, of course, goes easier.
In Europe, customization, in my opinion, is higher, and the level of preparation of the entire industry - both design and construction - is much higher. Therefore, there it is already a matter of technology. Therefore, they collect good cars and good buildings. To achieve the same quality, we will spend much more time. There, the skew in design is to create value and meaning in the project. In London, a decision on an ordinary facility may take eight years, in Germany - three or four years, we do not consider these issues. By some administrative procedure, the purpose of the land was transferred, then they made beautiful pictures, they follow some principles and that's it - you have a building permit. And then there is a dreary process of how to make this candy well, there are alterations and adjustments. Now this is slowly changing. The quality is growing because the consumer has declared that he does not need the investment square meters that he just bought.
Before the crisis, real estate was a form of money: I bought an apartment, they grew up a little, then I sold it, and nobody cared about the quality. Now people buy to a greater extent in order to satisfy their needs, and all people want to live happily and well, and they have already begun to figure it out. For example, I am very happy when our competing architects, together with developers, build good projects. Because this is a small penny for the common piggy bank: the general level rises, respectively, and my work will be in demand."
