Moscow, April 4, 2018 - Among your current projects, which one do you consider the most important and interesting?
- Everything I work on is important and interesting to me. Now these are several projects - from large urban development complexes to very small buildings, and they all complement each other to some extent. Each project manages to realize only a part of a certain global professional dream. In some cases, we are talking about an ambitious urban planning task. For example, now I am designing the tallest building in Europe, in the form of a blade or a canted pyramid 404 meters high (over a hundred floors) in Moscow City. In others, more intimate problems are solved, but aesthetically and professionally no less complex. Of these, I would name the project of my own house, which is already entering the construction stage.
Has this project been in the works for a long time?
- Some years. Over the years I have tackled it several times and put it off each time.
Does this project have a customer or is it the same dream project when you decide everything yourself?
- The customer is my wife. [Laughs]
Does she know what your house should be like?
- Of course. Both professionally and in terms of the value system, we are like-minded people. She knows which house we will be comfortable in.
But will your house be about this?
- Including … I hear a tinge of disappointment in your question - “How ?! Is the famous architect thinking about the notorious convenience? Yes exactly. Nothing is easier than sacrificing the convenience of living in a conceptual manifesto. But my responsibility as an architect for the correct arrangement of life in space is a basic professional position.
Is that all?
- Of course not. [Laughs] This is just one of the tasks that I undertake to solve in the project.
And what task have you set for yourself?
- To save money, of course. And he persuaded the family to invite another architect. [Laughs].
You know, Kenzo Tange built an outstanding house for his first family, which is widely published. Nevertheless, he destroyed it with his own hands, so that it does not remind of his past family life. After such a personal experience, Tange even advised architects not to start creating their own home, because in case of any miscalculations, all the household will complain, and the architect will have no one to complain to. This story was told to me by his son from his second marriage, architect Paul Tange. Tange lived with his second family in an ordinary high-rise
- Well, they will complain … An architect will always be responsible, this is part of the profession. Of course, I would never give a project of my own house to anyone. The idea of hiring another architect is nothing more than a joke.
In this project, I have a special situation. It is not always possible to change your mind and change the previously found solution. This requires time and customer confidence. The story of your own home has both.
Would you like this house to be on a par with other Skuratov projects?
- Of course. I wanted to make a professional statement that would not be inferior to my other projects. As a result, I hope, it will turn out to be my own, author's building. It's important for me. And although architectural design is a complexly organized collective work, in the workshop that bears my name, we make my architecture. And working on your home is no different in this sense from other projects. My word here is the main thing, for me it is important both from the point of view of responsibility for the result, and from the point of view of the integrity of a professional statement.
And the architects who work here, and there are more than fifty of them …
- They are used to it. I go into all the details at all stages of the project. Fortunately, there are enough highly professional and talented architects in the studio. They are more or less ambitious, but they do not argue with me where I do not intend to argue. They recognize the priority of my opinions and decisions, and I sincerely hope that not for formal, but for purely professional reasons.
In other words, it is important for you to create a personal architecture. Despite the fact that today many, especially young architects, voluntarily renounce authorship, preferring to work in a team and find the most optimal solutions. Artism is replaced by pragmatism, and the personal is replaced by the optimal and effective
- It seems to me that this is an artificial contradiction. Artistry and pragmatics are not mutually exclusive concepts. The choice of one to the detriment of the other comes rather from the inability to solve a complex problem than because of a conscious rejection of artistic quality in favor of functionality or vice versa.
In one of your interviews, talking about the project site you got, you said the following, “The surrounding buildings were so chaotic and repulsive. It was not clear whether it could be somehow streamlined, made at least somewhat compositionally and stylistically meaningful. " Do you think that in orderenii environment and is there a sense of architecture?
- Of course not. In general, order is a very conditional concept. Order is a myth. Order can only be on paper, but in a city there can be no complete order. There are some traces of human activity, a multiplicity of functions. Finding a certain existing logic in these traces or creating a new one is a fantastically difficult task for an architect. Any city is rather a mess, even chaos. The architect's task is to realize his own legends, myths and worlds that he dreams of. The task is also to infect the customer, the city authorities, the contractor and so on with your passion, interest and conviction, in order to build your invented world.
Perhaps your most striking realization can be called the House on Mosfilmovskaya. I know that your client has given you the task of constructing a building that no one has ever built before. And not only in Russia, but all over the world. You are often given similar tasks and do you yourself strive to invent an architecture that did not exist before?
- I can say that during this project we with the customer, Maksim Blazhko, reminded of two boys playing in the future. We were both very passionate about the project and we managed to realize a lot. With the same mood of creative challenge and excitement, I made Copper House on Ostozhenka and Art House on Yauza. It was then that I tried to rethink working with bricks, the interaction of bricks with metal. I was interested in the theme of the transformation of earth and clay into brick, the use of bricks with different surfaces and curvatures, the idea of the sculpturality of the whole object and its surfaces. These reflections were inspired by visits to ancient Russian monasteries in Solovki, Pskov, London Kensington and Bologna. This was a new statement after the more decorative Copper House. And Art House is already a kind of essence, a thing, one might say, an organism. It can even be compared to a living being, and when I drive by, I always imagine this house as something living.
The theme of a living being is very indicative in your house on Mosfilmovskaya. This is the reason for the easy turn of the building, which resembles a creature turning back
- Of course. At that time, I was worried about creating a fresh composition for high-rise buildings, which would be different from the established typology. I didn't want to just put up another tower. Therefore, I came up with a composition of two interconnected buildings of different heights, planted on many, as it were, moving legs. It was important for me to create a feeling of some kind of inner life, anthropomorphism, movement, tension, relaxation, and so on. During the design process, I tried to feel this building and literally communicated with it as if it were alive. The idea of humanizing architecture is close to me. The formation of an image, the emergence of strange metamorphoses is important for me. Facade and silhouette plastics are the most important tools of architecture. The complex on Novodanilovskaya and the house on Burdenko were made in the same language. I can say that I have achieved a certain satisfaction with such buildings and now I am looking for new ways to express what I have not done before.
Today I am attracted by simplicity and integrity. I want to build something extraordinarily clean, elegant. This is the kind of project I am currently working on. These are three towers on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment near Moscow City. All towers are slightly different, but they are united by a common simplicity of form, texture, and a single rhythm of composition. There is a lot of air and transparency in them, starting from the halls of the first floors, reaching a height of 30 meters.
Where do you get your ideas, where do they come from? I read that you browse a lot of professional publications
- I believe that mastering architectural skills is akin to learning a foreign language. To speak fluently in any language, you need to know a lot of words, the possibilities of their interaction. So it is in architecture.
What words could most accurately describe your architecture?
- Sense and Sense. But can words really describe architecture?
It is important for me to understand what is most important for you. Do you have doubts? No fear that something might not work out?
Not. Never. I'm not afraid. I know what I can do. Sometimes I need to try a lot of options, but I'm confident for myself from the very beginning. And I take each project very close to my heart, sincerely and deeply immersing myself in the process of finding a solution to each problem. I have to find my own solution. And having found it, I no longer hesitate. From now on it will be exactly the way I want it. “I know, I want, and I can” - I think that the harmonious balance of these factors is the basis of my professional happiness. Much of everything I do is dictated by the word “want”.
“But you won't tell the customer that
- Of course I will. We can certainly argue. But I'm trying to convince the customer, the city, my employees. If they don't understand me, I fight without fear of losing the order. The result is important to me.
