Archi.ru:
In autumn, your bureau took part in the Ecobereg competition in Kazan. Why did you decide to make a project for the urban environment, if your main activity is author's private houses?
Roman Leonidov:
Participation in competitions is an attempt to productively occupy the time of employees at times when we have gaps in the annual schedule. So that the soldier does not doze. The opening hours of the workshop have changed since the 2010s. Until 2014, our peak in the arrival of new customers was in October - February, and now it has shifted to January - April, which is a bit late. And the end of summer and autumn is a quiet time, you can take part in the competition. We took third place in Kazan. We already have a big project there, so we know the area on the Spit of the Volga and Kazanka rivers well. According to the competition assignment, it was necessary to offer an architectural solution to the problematic embankment, which is cut off from the Kremlin by the railway station. And the station is always noise, lack of landscaping, and so on. A new highway is being launched along this line, but the embankment needs to be tidied up so that people can rest.
What was the main idea of your project in the Ecobereg competition?
Arrange access from the Kremlin to the embankment. Make a "chamber" to her from the observation deck of the Kremlin. We set up a pedestrian road, and we close the road in an embankment, like in Barcelona. You cannot see the road because it is below. That is, it is there, but not annoying. This decision came a few hours before delivery.
The initial situation in Kazan is as follows: there is a wild marina on Strelka, Shanghai, which looks nothing. People swim there. The task was to split it into clusters, to divide the streams: children, cyclists, disabled people, yachtsmen … There was little time, it was difficult to dive. There is the Kremlin - a landmark. To make the embankment a landmark, you just need to connect it with the Kremlin with a convenient pedestrian road. And close it up with another dominant one. We have this suspension bridge that attracts attention. Now there is a road, but noisy and uncomfortable. And we are making a pedestrian road above the ground. In any case, you will follow this road after you have seen the Kremlin, if you do not plan to do shopping on the central streets. It is enough to put a couple of points for renting bicycles and scooters, and all this will boil.
And the suspension bridge - some quote from the air bridge in Zaryadye?
In a sense, yes, but also a reaction to the initial conditions. The semicircle appears naturally to keep the line and then bring it where it needs to be. The Kremlin will be seen from the bridge. Since it is extended, you will see everything in a changing perspective.
Why do you think there has been a beautification boom in Russian cities?
This is important for the authorities to attract the electorate. It is quick and visible right away: six months - and you have a playground, a bike path, and so on. Everyone wants a change. And nobody sees that the last 25 years have been a period of continuous change. Let's say the quality of the roads: there is no comparison with what it was 25 years ago. Previously, it was impossible to drive through the province without breaking a wheel. Now the roads are European. So, the authorities can show quick and obvious changes with the help of beautification.
Do you think the authorities are trying to attract people to cities because 25 percent of the city's coffers are taxes from individuals?
Not. Where to attract more? I think we are in for a variant of the American suburbia. I already spend four days outside the city. We will have it, like in American cities: there are intercepting parking lots where a person leaves his car and gets into a car in which four people are traveling, and only a car with four passengers has the right to drive along the fast lane. And the one who is alone in his chaise will trudge in the right lane.
Do they cooperate in the network through blah-blah-car or what?
No, it is not necessary, employees of the same company can unite. Plus you have to pay for roads - about $ 30 a day is obtained if you travel from the suburbs of New York to Manhattan. It's hard for one person, but if there are 5-6 people in the car, then it seems like nothing.
The landscaping consists of small forms and pavilions, often wooden, with a short lifespan. What is the attitude of an architect to temporary architecture? Isn't it a pity that in 20 years they will break?
All architecture is temporary, if we are talking about housing, and not about sacred architecture in a broad sense, from a temple to a museum, which has a chance to live a long time. Many of my buildings have been resold. Part of it was reconstructed, part of it was ordered to me to reconstruct, I am expanding them, adapting to new use. But I won't be sorry if they are destroyed. This is one of the secret dreams - to see how they break.
Isn't a house a "child" for an architect?
First yes, then no. The house has been under construction for 7 years, and you do not see the process, but they break it down quickly, and you can see how everything works. The artist sees the process and the result, but in our country the process stretches for years, so you can see the structure of the house only at the moment when it is being broken. I would take part in the dismantling. The rest of the time you are not able to glue it together into a dynamic whole picture. Durability doesn't matter to me. For me, the work on the house ends the moment I have made a pencil sketch. Here creativity ends, and painstaking work begins. Keeping the feel of the first sketch and carrying it through to the end is hard. Each house has its own destiny. Some are born in two years, quickly, and some break through for a long time, break the shell. For example, the customer has been building the ZEPPELIN house for ten years, and now we are going to finish it, because the composition of the family is changing.
Do you really not want the house to stand for five hundred years, like Palladio's villas?
What will this change against the backdrop of a five thousand year history of architecture? I am indifferent to this topic. I think my pencil sketches will last longer than built houses.
In the 2000s, there was a paradigm of attractive nonlinear architecture, and then it was replaced by an ecological orientation to a more modest one. Please comment on this trend. This trend is dictated by the difficult economic situation. Now it is cheaper to buy a ready-made house on a plot than an empty plot. The main thing now is to convince the client to demolish what was built there. Because any reconstruction of such houses is hell for everyone: an architect, a builder, a customer. This is a path of compromise that does not lead to good. And it is economically unprofitable. With the demolition of the house and the construction of a new one, the customer wins at least two years of construction and from 15 to 20 million rubles. There is a coefficient for reconstruction. Reconstruction is always more expensive, on average 1.5 times. And demolition costs from zero to 1.5 million rubles. During reconstruction, measurements should be made, then an examination should be carried out, because we always change something inside, after all, it is not clear for whom the house was built, what it was made of, or measurements show that it is crooked. Then it turns out that ventilation was not provided, but it seems like you want it, and the height of the interfloor ceilings does not allow. Difficulties begin with communications. When expanding a house, joining different foundations is also always difficult and even dangerous.
Accordingly, this increases the time and amount of project work. And the cost does not increase by one and a half, but by two and three times. And the most interesting thing begins when we went to the construction site, removed some of the plaster from the facades, and then anything comes up. And the adjustment of the project begins, an additional survey. If I can build a new house in a season, and give it an exterior finish in the next season, then with reconstruction - never. At least three to four years. And during this time, the children will grow up, for which the children were designed. Is it still possible to say that, due to the economic situation, the style has changed from an individual author's gesture to a calm wooden architecture?
No, this is a parallel story. There are both. Wooden cottages are an average topic, an attempt to formulate average statistical queries and answer them professionally, elementarily correctly, so that the image of the house is readable at the same time.
In the image of a typical wooden house, is there a connection with the archetype characteristic of the area? What should an architect pay attention to when designing typical houses? There are two archetypes - a birdhouse and a children's house with a pipe. Next, we manipulate the details. A terrace with a canopy is required, but no balcony. Judging by the practice of living in a country house, the balcony on the second floor is never used, except to go out to smoke at night. It is simply not needed, although it helps sell homes.
The main thing in the design of residential buildings is horizontal so that the human scale is clear. It is important to articulate the number of storeys, not to forget about the three-part in the composition. What makes good architecture different is that it uses all the basic compositional laws discovered a thousand years ago. They are not tied to style. As a person has legs, a torso, a head, so does a house. Legs - base. The body is one or two floors, the head is the under-roof space, the attic with the roof.
What are the features of traditional northern and southern Russian houses? Are they reflected in modern cottages?
For the Arkhangelsk huts, balconies with mermaids are characteristic, which frightened off everything bad. Above the balcony were the so-called "heaven", vaults with stars. But this is difficult to translate into modern architecture. Previously, everyone built for themselves, but following a common tradition. Now this tradition has disappeared, and they are building in whatever way, killing the landscape. The configuration of the house depended on the lifestyle. In Arkhangelsk, there was no gap between the buildings of the estate, everything was closed: the house, the farmyard, and the threshing floor, because people could spend weeks under the snow. And in the south, in the Stavropol region, it is very hot, so the terrace and the entrance were closed from the sun and steppe winds. In winter, people decorated the house, the peasant took an ax and made carvings. And now it doesn't work, because people from the city come to their homes.
And in the West, what about archetypal houses? Much has survived there, because the regional requirements are very strict. In the South, this is traditional brick and stone architecture without details, and in the North, say in Norway, grass roofs are very popular. Although this technique itself has existed since the 9th century.
What tendencies are there in author houses today?
A generation of young architects is growing, because the older generation is leaving for big architecture. But there are still fewer designer houses than we would like. People do not distinguish good from bad, they do not turn to an architect when building a house. You can find ready-made projects on the Internet now, but they don't even do that.
Due to the economic situation, the sizes of country houses have become smaller, are they approaching European ones?
The segment of large-scale houses has always been narrow, and it has survived. Rather, we can say that such extremes as a huge house of several thousand square meters on a small plot or huge lands 150 km from Moscow, where no one can reach, are gone.
Is it possible to say that with the change of generations of customers in the author's houses there is more modernism than classics?
No, as before, roughly equal parts of both. There are always conservatives and innovators.
