What will you show the visitors of Zodchestvo within the framework of your special project?
VC.: I and my colleagues from NRU MGSU, SPbGASU and NNGASU will present project proposals for 15 student groups, which, within the framework of interuniversity project practice, in the shortest possible time had to build team relationships, change roles and develop new communication strategies.
This practice became possible thanks to an experimental summer course held by three leading universities in the country: NIUMGSU, NNGASU and SPbGASU. Students moved every 3-4 days to a new city. This accelerated the process of mutual enrichment between the group members, during which there was a constant interweaving of activities and the exchange of information. Our special project will illustrate how teachers tried to solve one of the most pressing problems in education - communication openness within the student - future professional - community and the problem of openness to society as a whole.
Does this mean that there are still problems in modern architectural education?
VC.: Yes of course. Architecture in practice is a participatory process involving interaction with many design stakeholders, but academic education does not fully prepare students for the necessary skills.
In the curriculum, such professional skills are already included in the subject headings and it is expected that students will hone them during the practice. However, it is worth dwelling on several points here. First, balancing a range of skill areas in the context of a curriculum is extremely difficult and requires careful planning. Second, within an established curriculum, communication skills are described in terms of the ability to present projects to others, rather than as a two-way interactive process. Third, the appraisal phase at the institute discourages students from sharing and developing ideas with each other, which could lay the foundations for an adversarial speaker-listener relationship that would then move on to a professional relationship with non-architects.
How does the theme of your special project resonate with the concept of transparency?
VC.: "Transparency" - communication, environmental, spatial and temporal, became the leitmotifs of the experimental summer course. The design sites were ambiguous polysyllabic urban sites with different horizons for solving the problems inherent in them.
What sites did the students work on?
VC.: The improvement of the central squares of the city-monument was proposed as a theme for the design in St. Petersburg, the new one was supposed to become transparent in the literal sense of the word. It was here that the overall pace and scope of future design experiments was set.
In Nizhny Novgorod, the teams faced a difficult urban planning task - to propose a concept for the development of the Okskaya embankment. Her identity pushed the participants to the idea of revealing the permeability of time eras in the space of the street-embankment - the transparency of time and environment.
The theme of renovation of abandoned railway service areas and their integration into the structure of public urban spaces determined the course of the participants' work in Moscow. The existing problems dictated the direction of the design - while maintaining the existing function of communication routes, let in additional ones and give a new quality to the environment - connectedness and permeability - to make it transparent for the city.
What is the relevance of the topic you are raising?
VC.: Architecture, while flourishing as a language, must engage the public, generate demand for it and the values it represents. The role of the architectural designer is, in practice, the role of the “integrator”, bringing people, processes and places together to create a consistent work environment. In professional practice, interpersonal relationship management skills enrich and expand the boundaries of project thinking.
The exhibition exposition of our special project will just demonstrate the intersection of educational programs - the transparency of educational systems that arises in communication and gives rise to new meanings.
The XXVII International Festival "Zodchest'19" will be held from 17 to 19 October in Gostiny Dvor. You can get acquainted with the detailed information about the event and register for the festival as a guest on the official website www.zodchestvo.com.
