Is the slogan "form follows function" relevant today, or are buildings being built as a universal shell, and function may change over time?
Anton Barklyansky: Everything has become mobile, unstable, the city is changing rapidly. You can try to keep the city in its original form, creating a "reserve", or you can help the arrival of a new one. To keep the place alive, it is important to pay attention to the life scenarios. Therefore, it is not so much the form that is important, but what events we enter into it, how we create opportunities for the arrival of new functions.
What are your scripts about?
For example, our project of housing and reconstructed historical passages "ASTRA". What is important, there we created opportunities for organizing a large number of entrances around the perimeter and laid a flexible division of areas - so that the premises could be divided and combined. We understood that we needed not only a cafe, but something additional: fitness, dry cleaners, a bakery with croissants, which could allow a resident living in the house to have a full range of services. We made a map of functions, found out what was absent in the area, in order to add, and the residents had everything they needed within walking distance.
There are now more cafes per square kilometer than on the main streets of the city. It was quiet, but now the place is alive.
Or take our project of an office building on the pedestrian Permskaya street in Perm. We noticed that there was not enough activity on the street and we built the project in such a way that it would increase it. We have organized three entrances, one of which is in the cafe of the complex. Provided windows to the floor, a mini-square at the main entrance. So the entire front of the site was involved in interaction with the street. We also provided a flexible scenario for using offices, something in between an office and a coworking space. For example, we have laid out a common dining area in the office, which is usually not found in office buildings. And here you have the opportunity to go down to the common space, have lunch, including cooking your own food, cross with someone, read a book.
It turns out that the successful scenario depends little on the form, and the architect turns into an urbanist? Or is the image of the building still important?
Of course it is. For the building to have an identity, to be visible against the general background. The architectural image, together with the layout and scenario, help to build communication between the object and society, attract potential users, and should also make the street more attractive.
The customer of the office building in Perm was expecting an image from us, among other things.
Next to the historic two-storey brick house, several modern volumes appear, but with pitched roofs and small streets similar to the historical buildings. We tried not to adapt to the aesthetics of the past, but came up with the idea of using a metal mesh to create the image of a cloud. And against its background, the historical house is dense, material. In the evening, the new buildings will glow because they are transparent and delicate.
And if there are no historical buildings, how can you create an interesting script?
Many of us enjoy being in a historical environment, and it is created by certain planning principles that can be used. For example, you can build one mall with two entrances, and it will not create the same environment. Or you can turn it out into the street so as to make up a large volume of small ones oriented to the street. Then the street will continue to live, and new opportunities will be added to the layer of historical principles of development: a large interior space of the mall, which will make it possible to organize large events, bring more people together, attracting interest.
Tell us about a recipe for your objects that was planned from scratch
For Irkutsk, we made a competitive project of a quarter with a concert hall and housing. We planned housing there, and social life, and open and closed areas, offices and a market. The main idea was to organize a city living room on the first floor of the concert hall, where anyone can come, where it is warm, a beautiful view of the river. It is not yet a concert hall, but it is no longer a street. The living room would allow residents to create more complex walking scenarios: here you can, for example, stay after the skating rink, warm up in a cafe, and the evening will continue on. And the city could hold its events and exhibitions here. Tourists could come here to get information about the city, to get acquainted with its inhabitants. Therefore, the name is “living room”.
The concept also provided for a market - a place where you can buy fresh food, have a snack, and meet with friends. This format has become popular now. In Rotterdam, the MVRDV group built a market - this is exactly the same mix of functions: a parking lot below, a grocery store above, a market at the square level, and above all this is covered by a residential building. The market there is pleasant: tenants are selected, there are rules on how to behave. The market does not compete with the grocery store: they have different tasks.
We talked about scenarios involving historical buildings or from scratch, but do you have examples where the initial situation was without bonuses, and your scenario changed your life for the better?
In the Perm University Campus, the main saga was with the territory. This is 340 hectares, pine forest. The city of Perm is on the other side of the river. Often in world practice, campuses are included in the city, as in Singapore, when faculties are right in the city, and you can find housing and shops nearby, and the campus and the city mutually enrich each other.
And in Perm they decided to make a campus on the other side of the Kama. Unhappy students have to travel about ten kilometers across the Kamsky Bridge. And on a huge forest territory, dormitories, a town of teachers, educational buildings, laboratories are far from each other. The place is not safe, there is some kind of ring road and nothing else, the forest is dark. Our main proposal was to build a pedestrian alley through the forest, on which all existing objects are strung, and then new ones. This alley is the scenario: you can move there on scooters, skis … So far, a small fragment has been built.
Do your scripts somehow relate to the avant-garde utopias of the 1920s? There were housing projects for students of 4 m2 for two, as in the commune house of Nikolaev, with the complete socialization of everyday life
Residential buildings are really developing towards multifunctional complexes, where all kinds of services are available. When on the territory there are opportunities for spending time outside the walls of the apartment - there is where to go for a walk, work, spend leisure time, then the number of square meters ceases to be so significant - other criteria become important. And here's the question: to make a house with large apartments and kitchens, where all the functions are inside, or a house with studios, but around an environment with many functions? Perhaps such a complex will be more advantageous than the standard one. Life in it will boil, and people from other houses will come. And small apartments will be sold instantly. This trend is leading to Japanese capsules.
Well, this is overkill. Doesn't the amount of air above your head matter?
The question is how much time do you spend there. If you just sleep, maybe a capsule will be enough? The main thing is a well-developed infrastructure, which is an attractive element.
How can a customer explain that commercial functions are needed? After all, premises for them are not sold as quickly as residential ones
Not only are commercial functions needed, it is also important to purposefully create the right infrastructure. That is, it is not just to rebuild a certain number of square meters of commerce, but to anticipate the needs of residents and make sure that these functions come there, to manage the process. Developers will come to this someday, because apartments without environment will not be sold. This is already happening in China. Houses built without infrastructure are worth and are not for sale.
In Asia, in general, there are many multifunctional complexes that are combined with housing or with a hotel business. It is easier for residents to go downstairs for services.
Does the noise disturb the residents?
People themselves choose either suburban silence or the joys of city life. In addition, architects can separate flows and offer a competent planning solution. In the residential complex "ASTRA" we made a quiet courtyard for residents, which is not visible from the outside. There are cafes and offices around the perimeter, and only on the second level is the courtyard. Another option: in Singapore, for example, it often happens that in a large office center you go up to the 10th floor, and there is a five-story residential building.
Do you think we will come to such a multi-tiered city?
Probably, megalopolises have been developing in this direction for a long time. At least in Moscow, where the building density tends to rise and the cost of land is high, there are prerequisites for the complication of the environment. In Hong Kong and Tokyo, huge retail spaces are linked by underground and above ground footpaths. In Hong Kong, ferries run between the island and the mainland, and galleries above the carriageway run directly from the ferries inland. For many blocks! They crash into all these buildings. First you walk down the street, then you enter the shopping center. You can go through it to another block, to another shopping center.
There are many underground passages in Singapore, but you do not notice that you are underground - this is a shopping street. It is comfortable there, because there are eternal +30 on the street. There you, relatively speaking, can go out of the house in slippers and, without going outside, walk a few blocks and end up in a shopping center or have lunch with someone. Why it didn’t appear in our country, with our frost, is not clear.
The trends are such that the city is becoming more complex, becoming multi-tiered. Functions are combined in one place, transport allows you to move quickly. High-speed trains from Tokyo to Kyoto bring functions closer. In Japan, there is seamlessness when you move from the suburban high-speed train to the subway, and you are already in the city center.
Global trend: connectivity of unique multifunctional spaces in the city, and many different modes of transport that increase accessibility. The city is trying to create places where people want to go. Buildings accommodate many functions in a city within a city. And the city is lined up vertically, not just horizontally.
Will such development destroy the street, as micro-districts have already tried to level it?
The levels only allow the flows to diverge more conveniently. It is pleasant for a person to walk through a space where something is changing, and not just across a field with objects. The street becomes more complicated, both transport and pedestrian paths appear on the upper floors. There are more functions per square kilometer, and as a result, it is a more successful place.
Tenants will come if there is a flow, and people will come if there is a place. Architects must create such opportunities for a vibrant city life - with interesting planning solutions.
