Archi.ru:
How, in your opinion, is the difference between the Russian and Soviet architectural schools from foreign schools? Does it have strengths?
Vsevolod Medvedev:
The situation has been familiar to me since the 1970s. In my opinion, it is far-fetched that the Russian architectural school differs from the European one. In a globalized world, everyone studies here and there: one semester, say, in London, the other in Holland. The same goes for our students. I teach at Moscow Architectural Institute, where moving around schools is possible from the fifth year. Most students try to do this. And we see where our students win and where they lose. They win in that they really want to learn and know how to draw.
Is the ability to draw still relevant today?
In today's Europe, the ability to draw in education is not very much in demand. While they are studying for two or three years for a master's degree, they ask why they received unnecessary skills at the Moscow Architectural Institute. And then, when they start working, all acquired competencies become their professional advantages. The fact is that it is impossible to develop spatial thinking without drawing, including academic drawing. A properly built connection between the brain and the hand allows you to materialize an idea and only then improve it with the help of technology.
But the ability to draw is far from being a cardinal advantage. The main difference between Europeans is knowledge from the first courses of computer programs, without which there is nowhere. Moreover, whole departments and laboratories work, give lectures, conduct master classes on the study of the newest design technologies. Is free! Model workshops and prototyping laboratories are already a common story for European institutes. This is not the case in MARCHI. What to talk about, even if there is no normal website! Have you seen the MARCHI website? It is impossible to find and understand anything there, as well as in reality. Students learn everything on their own without the help of the institute.
Another difference in our education is the lack of design practice. Now there are two design days at the Moscow Architectural Institute, and some lectures have been delivered to one of them.
Several years ago, the Moscow Union of Architects contributed to the opening of the Department of Comprehensive Professional Training. There were two lectures per month by practicing architects, workshops and excursions, as well as visits to workshops. Margarita Demidova was very successful in the new department. The first year relations with the institute were developing well, but then they began to reduce the number of hours of lectures - and now the question is whether there will be a department or not. The management did everything to ensure that this department ceased to exist as an effective tool for the student's immersion in the profession. And it is not just necessary, but necessary. It is interesting for the student to look at the live Skuratov, at the live Plotkin and feel how everything works in the real world.
Are students willing to attend these lectures and workshops?
Students go willingly, and architects read willingly. But the management begins to tell the architect the time, to unite the two architects in one lecture, begins to control them rigidly. And, of course, the architects don't like it, because they come for free. New beginnings were approved by the leadership in words, but in practice it turned out to be more difficult. Nikolai Ivanovich Shumakov fights, of course, for this program.
Is the professional community ready to participate in this?
Yes. It seemed that you couldn't drag architects there, but there is a response. Everyone who was invited came: Atrium, UNK, DNK, Skuratov, Gerasimov, Choban and others. There are lectures, their recordings. Students enjoy it, and this is more important than the usual student practice. I took part in geodetic practice in 1993, but I don’t remember anything other than the word theodolite. In my opinion, the practical course: office visits, lectures by practicing architects - should be expanded. Students must do real practice in these workshops. We must finally understand that MARCHI is preparing architects, not designers. All universities have their own task. At Moscow Architectural Institute it is necessary to expand the creative disciplines as much as possible and reduce everything else. For example, drawing, it is canceled from the third year, but it is necessary to extend it to the diploma, but in a more relevant form.
In Europe, for some reason, there is a myth that architecture students from Russia are savvy in the field of structures. This is not true. This is a train that stretches from the Russian avant-garde artists, from Shukhov, but is about to disappear. Education in related disciplines is not at all relevant and outdated in our country. And the time for such items as resistance to materials or engineering structures should be optimized. All the same, a student from an architectural institute will not be able to make a professional calculation. He does not have the right to do so, there are special universities that graduate these people.
What prevents positive change?
Inertia and disinterest of the leadership. The program does not change. It is impossible to do the same tasks for 50 years in a row. It is impossible to enter an architectural institute by passing exams that were taken 50 years ago. Hand over drawing and three-dimensional blueprints, which are outdated for a long time. It does not develop spatial thinking, does not provide skills in graphic aesthetics. The number of works that are carried out according to old templates is so great that there is no room for innovation.
But some kind of 3D modeling exam would be necessary from the first year.
The system that supports our education has outlived its usefulness, the necessary skills do not penetrate into our universities. They are blocked early. It's offensive. The advantages that the Russian school has are not very significant, but the disadvantages are very important and the competitiveness of our students is greatly reduced. The guys are forced to catch up and integrate into the Western system. The wonderful washes that hang in the Moscow Architectural Institute are loved by everyone, but this is already history, albeit a glorious one. So today the Russian architectural school does not have any unique features.
And how do you assess the increase in the duration of training?
It went badly. The sooner the student moves to practical activity, the better. Studying at the Moscow Architectural Institute for seven years is ridiculous. You have to study for five years. Combine the first two courses into one. Four years of normal bachelor's degree and one year of master's degree - thesis. This is a balanced and effective option, it will not let you relax, knowledge will be gained quickly, without wasting time. The first two courses are as mysterious as a hedgehog in a fog. When the guys come to the third year, it is not clear what they were doing there. Brilliant ability to wash capitals is, of course, necessary, but the student cannot draw a staircase and does not understand how the door opens. Then students study well in the third, fourth, and fifth years. And then they lose again.
Someone came up with the idea of stupidly copying the system of a master's thesis with a candidate's, and now they demand that the student write an abstract, so that there are publications, reviews, anti-plagiarism, a list of references, drawn up to the last punctuation mark. I have not defended my Ph. D. thesis, having passed the candidate minimum, but my colleague Mikhail Kanunnikov defended it. So he worked for two years after graduation, and then sat down and wrote a serious work that can be used. And now students in two years do something that has no value. In MARCHI, only a few can engage in real scientific activity. Yuri Pavlovich Volchok and five other people. And this is required of everyone, and the requirements are different for all departments. And the students run around with bulging eyes. And what to do in graduate school is not clear at all. The student will take a master's thesis, comb and defend. In general, a mystery with this Bologna system. It was implemented so harshly and thoughtlessly that they destroyed the previous process: two years of initial, three basic and a sixth year diploma. Moreover, everyone pretends that these works are smart, that they have been tested for plagiarism, and this is 90 percent plagiarism, because a student cannot do serious research. In two years, out of a hundred masters, two have grown. The rest did it in between work, get-together, and other things.
We have four people from the last group studying in Vienna. The system is different there. The undergraduate program is weaker there, and the master's degree is stronger. No PhD template. They do projects on the instructions of the head: they are engaged in serious design, and interdisciplinary. They go to the Venice Biennale, exhibit models in the center of Vienna, and recruit courses themselves. The project takes 90% of the time, for the rest of the loans you grab something: energy design, sociology, construction. But these are reference short courses. In Russia, graduate students write their own dissertation. And there masters, and in a team, which is important, are engaged in design on a topic that the leader formulates every six months. Teams change, the team includes senior, junior and middle students. And they learn from each other. And they do the diploma on their own. For three years they have a lot of architectural work.
Was it difficult for our students to enroll in a Western Master's program?
No, not difficult, but they are successful students. And yet there is no hard dialing. The leader can take five people, or maybe fifteen and twenty-five. He reviews portfolios and interviews. He has the right to form a team that is not constrained by the administrative framework. It would be nice to ask the students themselves. They make practicing architects. They do everything by hand, cut into all programs, print on a 3D printer. In terms of technology, they have made great strides. Not to mention, it's very cheap. A master's degree at the Moscow Architectural Institute costs 280,000 rubles a year. Two hundred and fifty thousand is 4000 euros, and in Vienna a master's degree costs 1400 euros per year. Europeans do not pay, and the Viennese administration may even return part of the money to the Russians if you have successfully passed the project.
Let's compare MARCHI with other Russian universities
There are no other purely architectural universities, but in all Russian universities everything is approximately the same. Here came MARSH, there is another task, but, in my opinion, it is also very, very controversial. They train supposedly multidisciplinary specialists, they hire not only architects. A person with a bachelor's degree in management or a doctor can come there and they explain to him what to do. [UPD: comment by representatives of the MARCH Architectural School: "Only applicants with at least four full years of study in the Russian bachelor degree in the specialties" Architecture "," Urban planning "," Reconstruction and restoration of architectural monuments " "Design of the Architectural Environment" or an international bachelor's degree in these specialties. MARSH also has other programs of additional, rather than higher education, open to different specialists].
A multidisciplinary specialist who has answers to all questions - this does not happen. This is proved by the projects of MARSH students. What I saw makes me sad. There is a long-term study on the mass of positions. It takes longer than the design process, it is presented as "we think", and then no matter what was designed, a chair or a city, the result is the same. Something impersonal, simple, gray, imperceptible, transparent, invisible. When every study comes to this result, it's time to think: maybe there is something wrong with the study? Such a result cannot be the answer to all problems. Personally, as a practicing architect and teacher, I am not satisfied with this result.
As well as the result of the MARCHI, although the MARCHI is still much closer. There I at least understand what to change. And MARSH is not an architectural school in its purest form. It's interesting, but not architectural. I think they need to change the name J. Architectural schools in Europe are not like that - they are more architectural, 95% of the time there is designing. In MARSH - 15% of design, in MARCHI - 30% of design.
What are the students of the Moscow Architectural Institute doing in the remaining 70% of the study time? Is it really drawing?
A huge amount of time is spent on related near-architectural disciplines to the detriment of architectural design. The delivery of the project and exams with credits are constantly superimposed on each other.
Are there any global, common, non-Russian problems of education?
Now all over the world there is a division into architect and designer. Because it is impossible to train a universal specialist. This is not claimed. A superficial knowledge of sociology is needed, but in any case, the architect does not create a project alone. Project teams are broader than 30 years ago.
In the next thirty years, many professions will be replaced by robotics, including the architectural and construction industry. As the draftsmen left, so the designers will leave. Specialists developing working documentation, technological solutions, in the very near future, will lose the competition to robots.
And architects cannot leave because the machine is unable to generate the creative process. The number of architects needed on the market will decrease, architects who generate ideas will survive, workshops of 300-500 people will become a thing of the past, hundreds of designers will be replaced by technology. Education in Russia and the world has no answer to this question. But you have to react. You cannot train the same specialists as before. In Europe, this is more actively discussed. When European masters defend themselves, no one is interested in prototyping, how long did you do it and how many slaves helped you. Only the idea is important.
Russia is reacting slowly to this. The most offensive thing is that it is impossible to convey this to anyone. Not only to the leadership of architectural institutes, but also to practicing architects, who, speaking of garlic, do not need creative competitors, because every architect thinks himself great, no matter what he builds. All the rest are also great guys, great fellows, but I - it is clear what kind of figure! He thinks. The competitive environment improves quality, everyone agrees on this, but no one wants it. When I fly to heaven in 300 years, then - please, but now let's not. Here we have a market formed of 20 companies - and that's good. And as soon as the robot becomes cheaper, all the students working in the workshop will be disposed of.
And a completely different story will begin.
Editing - Lara Kopylova
