Why did you decide to participate in the current Zodchestvo festival with your special project?
Narine Tyutcheva:
The main argument for accepting the invitation of the organizers was the theme of the festival - "RECONTEXT". Coincidentally, I have been doing the re-concept and rethinking of spaces within the framework of my professional activity for many years. In addition, this year the Rozhdestvenka bureau, together with the French school of restoration L'ecole de Chaillot and the Higher School of Economics, launched the RE-SCHOOL educational research project. We thought it would be correct to mark the appearance of this new site at the international architectural festival.
How is the theme of "Architecture" ideologically close to you?
It is symbolic that Zodchestvo became interested in the restoration theme just today. The actual problem of reconception, in my opinion, is as follows. There is a large gap between two directions: scientific restoration and preservation of objects, on the one hand, and new construction, on the other. Out of focus is a colossal volume of environmental architecture, which is not formally an object of cultural heritage, but nevertheless deserves some attention, which requires specific professional skills. Our bureau has accumulated quite a lot of experience in this direction. For two years, we have been preparing a comprehensive program that will allow us to transfer these skills to our students.
The shortage of specialists who would have mastered re-technologies is felt very acutely today. How not only to preserve the building, but also to bring it up to date? Overhaul technologies are still not quite suitable. It turns out that opportunities for a more professional and, most importantly, more creative approach are missed. The request for a slightly different type of work is colossal, and there is not enough staff.
In addition, it seems to me important to teach architects a broader view of the problem of reconception, the ability to determine the value of a building in terms of its role in the urban environment. The ability to take into account the economics of conservation and revalorization, to pay attention to value rather than value, is not yet very developed among architects.
Please tell us more about this
The term "revalorization" comes from the word value - value - and has a broader meaning than just added value. This meaning affects the humanitarian and cultural aspects, which certainly affect capitalization, but capitalization in this case becomes just a side effect. Because capitalization is just about money, and valorization or revalorization - assessment, rethinking of value - includes, among other things, a wide social context.
Sociologists say that the "consumer society" is giving way to the "impression society." How important is the emotional row when interacting with historical architecture?
The emotional row in architecture is the most important aspect. I repeat to my students many times that the goal of an architect is not to create walls, but to create what is between the walls. The walls are just helping to do this. We fill the space with meanings, plot, impressions, sensations … Manipulating emotions is one of our professional skills. Historical architecture has its own metaphysics, created by our predecessors and consisting of the fruits of the work of architects and builders and traces of a past life. It is very important to be able to recognize and hold on to this.
Can we say that RE-SCHOOL is a part of the process of re-conception of architectural education?
Of course, this is a rethinking of the educational approach, which is becoming multidisciplinary and networked. For the emergence of "RE-SCHOOL" three organizations have united with different characteristics in their competences. The French L'ecole de Chaillot is the oldest European school for preservation and research of heritage, the Higher School of Economics is a leader in economics, urban studies and sociology, and, in fact, our bureau, together with invited experts - specialists in revalorization and re-technologies. The educational approach itself also involves innovation. This is a year of intensive training plus work on a specific project site. We hope that in addition to educational results, we will also get practical ones.
The program we have created is quite suitable for a full-fledged two-year master's program. In its current form, it is designed for potential customers of projects - developers, heads of design organizations, government officials - who generate demand, but who sometimes lack understanding of the feasibility of an integrated approach, and is also available to architects, lawyers, economists, sociologists, art historians, employed in the field of heritage conservation in one role or another. Representatives of different directions are always involved in the implementation of the task of sustainable development of one object or urban space. Therefore, it is important that RE-SCHOOL students work within a multi-professional group, as, in fact, happens in life. This is an attempt to model a real process by including students.
Who do you consider as your audience at the festival?
I suppose that the festival will be attended primarily by practicing architects. For them, our special project is an interesting opportunity to improve their professional skills in the field of re-technologies. Still, the topic of conservation and sustainable development of the environment has a certain specificity, which not everyone knows. Both restoration technologies and conservation technologies, in my opinion, should be available to all architects who work in a historical environment, despite the fact that most Russian cities are historical.
In addition, it is very important to attract young people to our sphere. The restoration industry has become the lot of a very narrow circle of specialists and young people are hardly considered for work. It seems to me that this narrow-shop situation should be somehow overcome. Therefore, in fact, the presence at Zodchestvo is also an attempt to promote restoration skills among practicing architects.
About fifteen years ago, when the Rozhdestvenka bureau presented a project for the reconstruction of the Krasnaya Roza factory, there was not even a separate nomination for the genre in which we worked. Today the problem of preserving heritage has begun to acquire a serious scale. Of course, it's a pity that we, or anyone else, didn't open RE-SCHOOL earlier. But it's never too late for a good idea to come true.
