Ilya Utkin: "We Learned From Piranesi And Palladio"

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

Method. “What I do is negatively called mimicry by young architects”

Twenty years ago, you said that your mission was to heal the city. Is this mission still alive today?

I still believe that global improvement of the historical environment is not needed. The ambitions of individuals who want to break stereotypes are meaningless. There is no need to break the traditional ways of perception. There are many gaping wounds in the city that have been left by war or someone's ambition. And these places need to be healed. A year ago, at the School of Heritage, Natalia Dushkina and Rustam Rakhmatullin held a discussion "New architecture in the old city." Sergei Skuratov and I acted as antagonists. Sergei Skuratov argued that an architect has the right to change the environment as he sees fit, without asking anyone. I objected in the sense that an architect should be sensitive to all layers of time. Young architects call it negatively: mimicry. In their opinion, to gently integrate into the space is bad, but to intervene creatively in it is good. But this does not mean that Skuratov and I are fighting, it is just that everyone has their own opinion.

How do your buildings: a house in Levshinsky Pereulok, a residential area on Sofiyskaya Embankment and the Tsarev Sad hotel complex, relate to the mission of treating the city? Have you treated Wednesday?

Rather, he tried not to screw it up. In Levshinsky, I painted a house so that it looked like it was built long ago. The line of its balconies is located at the same height as the line of the eaves of the house opposite. By the way, there was a curious incident recently. The owner of this two-story house came to me, said that he wanted to demolish everything and put in its place exactly the same house as mine, the same height. I was surprised, because I started from this house when designing …

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  1/6 House "Noble nest" in Levshinsky lane © Sergey Kiselev and Partners, © Utkin Studio

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  2/6 House "Noble nest" in Levshinsky lane © Sergey Kiselev and Partners, © Utkin Studio

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  3/6 House "Noble nest" in Levshinsky lane © Sergey Kiselev and Partners, © Utkin Studio

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  4/6 House "Noble nest" in Levshinsky lane © Sergey Kiselev and Partners, © Utkin Studio

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  5/6 House "Noble nest" in Levshinsky lane © AM Sergey Kiselev and Partners, © Utkin Studio

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  6/6 House "Noble nest" in Levshinsky lane © Sergey Kiselev and Partners, © Utkin Studio

As for Sofiyskaya Embankment and Tsareva Sad, it should be borne in mind that other organizations were the general designers. I entered the project of Sergei Skuratov on Sofiyskaya embankment when there was a ready-made construct, four buildings were already standing. Skuratov won a competition with a modernist project, but the customer wanted classical facades, and Sergei called me. In an existing project, I had to try to draw other facades, respect the scale and proportions to the environment. Unfortunately, not everything works out the way I want: customers distort the project without asking. It seems to me that the color of the Hagemeister bricks is too dark compared to planned, and the stone is too cold.

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  1/5 residential complex on Sofiyskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

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  2/5 residential complex on Sofiyskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

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  3/5 residential complex on Sofiyskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

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  4/5 residential complex on Sofiyskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

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  5/5 residential complex on Sofiyskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

The hotel complex "Tsarev Sad" also has a complicated history. There was a closed competition (see results - editor's note), in which my studio and two other teams won. I tried to reproduce the complex morphology of the Kokorevsky courtyard quarter. As a result, the customer instructed me to design the stylobate part overlooking the Moskvoretsky bridge (the rest is done by other authors). The architecture with powerful rustication was supposed to play the role of a retaining wall. And the wall should support the garden, but the garden as such has not yet worked out. The cast-iron pots, which were in the project, were abandoned, the "brutal" cast-iron lattices were canceled. The ventilation boxes, which were in the basement, were carried upstairs. What the result will be is unknown.

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  1/5 Hotel complex "Tsarev Garden". © Ilya Utkin

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  2/5 Hotel complex "Tsarev Garden". © Ilya Utkin

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  3/5 Hotel complex "Tsarev Garden". Winner of competition. "Utkin Studio". Illustrations provided by the organizers of the competition. © Ilya Utkin

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  4/5 Hotel complex "Tsarev Garden". Utkin Studios project. General view © Ilya Utkin

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  5/5 Hotel complex "Tsarev Garden". © Ilya Utkin

In the project of a residential complex with the reconstruction of a power plant in the Trekhgorka area, I also acted on the basis of a tough situation and tried to mitigate it. In fact, it was impossible to build there. On Krasnopresnenskaya embankment, next to the architectural monument, the city allocated a strip of housing, entered there a task for 100,000 m², and off we go. Previous authors of the project put up the towers, but they were banned. DKN contacted me and recommended me to the customer, the Tashir company. I suggested post-constructivism to play in a round tower ensemble. The highlight of the project is a triple house with arches through which Trekhgorka is visible. The experts took it reluctantly. I still had to design a tall house. It still turned out 60,000 m², almost two times less than required. However, I tried to do something humane. And then a conflict arose between the owner of Trekhgorka Oleg Deripaska and the Tashir company. And everything stopped.

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  Multifunctional residential complex on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

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  Multifunctional residential complex on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment © Ilya Utkin

Origins. "I remember these knights on the bridge and naked beauties"

When did you form as an architect?

I began to learn to perceive beauty in my grandfather's library. Although my grandfather, the architect Georgy Wegman, was a Constructivist in his youth, he kept the facsimile albums of Piranesi and Palladio, as well as Le Corbusier, Vers L'Architecture in the original, in French. These were books with an amazing presentation: all those coated pages with a special smell … I loved looking at paintings and etching graphics. These were my children's books. I remember these knights who fought on the bridge near Böcklin, naked beauties, boats, sailboats, architectural views.. My friend and colleague Sasha Brodsky had a lot of the same experience: he is from an artistic family, I am from an architectural family. What he didn't have at home was mine. We perceived with interest the Pyranesian views of Rome with plans and inscriptions, the fantastic spaces of the karcheri. We were united by a preference for historical architecture and a love of etching. Some of it ended up in our paper projects.

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  1/5 “Town bridge”. 1984-1990 © Alexander Brodsky, Ilya Utkin

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  2/5 “Intelligent Market”, 1987. © Alexander Brodsky, Ilya Utkin

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  3/5 "A Monument of the year 2000". © Alexander Brodsky, Ilya Utkin

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  4/5 Bridge in Tacoma. 1990 - 1991 © Alexander Brodsky, Ilya Utkin

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  5/5 Bridge in Tacoma. 1990 - 1991 © Alexander Brodsky, Ilya Utkin

Who did you study with at the Moscow Architectural Institute?

I studied with Konstantin Vladimirovich Kudryashev and Boris Grigorievich Barkhin. But including Piranesi and Palladio.

You wrote an article about Piranesi in 2010, where you explained why architects love this visionary author. For what?

This was an article about the Piranesi exhibition in Venice, which we went to with Sasha Brodsky, and she amazed us. An engraved print, like architecture, cannot be reproduced by book printing. The large engraving has its own scale. You need to go to her. At first, the whole image is perceived, and as you approach, you notice more and more details, up to a bizarre web of patterns of the author's stroke. The unevenness of the paper breathes, making the images voluminous and alive. One such etching can be looked at for hours, walking along the ancient pavements, looking into the arches of aqueducts. Piranesi created a whole world. This is why he continues to inspire architects and other creative people. In that article I wrote how I once explained to students the complex process of making an etching and realized from the skepticism on their faces that they would never do it. And it will be easier and different. And I can’t do it any other way. There is no art without hard work and skill.

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Palladio, you have published an article where you quote the words of the great Italian architect, namely: “When we, contemplating the beautiful machine of the universe, see what wondrous heights it is filled with, we no longer doubt that the temples we are building should be like the temple that God created in his infinite goodness …”. And you write something like "please consider me a Palladian." Explain in which of your works the influence of Palladio is strongest. In villas? In temples? In the general understanding of architecture as a reflection of heavenly harmony?

Unfortunately, I am far from the great Palladio … In reality, I have to look for orders with great difficulty, indulge the whims of customers with irrepressible requests and try not to spoil the already spoiled environment.

Your buildings are pleasing to the eye, with delicate and beautiful details. Everyone is used to the fact that modern architecture is striking in size and explodes in context. In general, the philosopher of the Frankfurt school Adorno argued that after Auschwitz, poetry is impossible, and since the beginning of the twentieth century, art has depicted a descent into the abyss, a black square, etc. And you have traditional two-story houses, miniature hipped-roofed temples … Is there a contradiction with the spirit of the times in your architecture, understandable to any city dweller?

This is an old story, which is considered modern and outdated. This debate began in the 1970s, before we thought about it when we did the first contests. I just wanted to get away from the postulates of modernism, from memorized compositions of concrete and glass. In collaboration with Alexander Brodsky, a lot of projects were made for various competitions. We used hand-drawn graphics and were inspired by architectural images that bring back aesthetic values. And it was modern. Then this phenomenon was called postmodernism.

I would not equate postmodernism with paper architecture - a poetic one that brought back the soul and metaphysics to architecture. Bumarkh, according to Khan-Magomedov, is Russia's contribution to the world culture of the twentieth century, along with the Russian avant-garde and the Stalinist Empire style. You and Alexander Brodsky first won paper contests, and then toured the whole world with installations, until in 1994 you founded your own studio. How is paper architecture related to today's buildings?

Communication is in the way of design. Paper architecture taught us how to work, set a specific task, create sketches, and then choose from them. All architects who participated in the competitions became individuals. They have a style, they know how to work.

Ideas. "There was a creative thaw, and then a decade of lack of culture"

You wrote in 1998 an article "Monster Hour" about the so-called attraction architecture. The Gehry Museum in Bilbao had just appeared a year before. The article had a curious analogy of architecture with Hollywood films. I remember the ending of the article: "The monster often kills its creator, but the end is optimistic: a young guy saves the Earth from alien monsters, and a beautiful girl marries him." If the 90s is the hour of the monster, how do you rate the 2000s?

In the early 2000s, there was a moment of creative thaw, creative communication and passion. There was a discussion in the magazines. There was a feeling that all of us - architects, curators, art critics - were participating in some kind of conference, arguing about styles, about what the city should be like. The conversation was interesting, I wrote some articles, subscribed to magazines. And then it all came to naught.

What happened in the 2010s?

In the 2010s, a decade of lack of culture is raging. Sometimes I get to meetings and realize that the environment of designers, managers and developers has become culturally degraded. It is not clear what universities they graduated from. I explain to the customers that their designers are illiterate, and they answer that they have no reason not to trust their designers, because the projects are being successfully sold. Hear nothing. There was no time for subtle gradations and philosophy. I would be living. The design fee has decreased several times. The number of orders for private houses has decreased, because you can buy a ready-made project on the Internet. However, over the years, I managed to design and build several classic villas, a couple of residential buildings and my own house in the village.

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  1/5 Villa. 1995 © Ilya Utkin

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  2/5 Villa. 1995 © Ilya Utkin

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  3/5 Village house © Ilya Utkin

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  4/5 Frolov House © Ilya Utkin

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  5/5 Frolov House © Ilya Utkin

Recently, in the summer, we made a typical court case. I don't even know exactly who the customer is. These are government agencies that communicate through intermediaries, some kind of managers. Architects are not invited to meetings. The money has been allocated, it has to be cut, and the architecture has to be ordered for a penny. They quickly did everything and carried them somewhere.

And yet, where are we now? What idea drives architecture? Environmental? Reconstruction?

Now the architecture is not ideological. It is economic. Sometimes some ideas are woven into it, like the one that, due to technology, architecture can save someone. But the essence remains the same - commerce. In the twentieth century, architecture dreamed of changing people and space. And in previous centuries it was full of ideas. The builders of medieval castles perpetuated the owner; Renaissance architects were inspired by Platonism, served divine harmony; Ledoux invented "speaking" architecture. Now the ideological component is completely lost.

Temple. "Christians Live the Same Story Over and Over"

How do you understand the concept of a modern temple? How is it implemented in your buildings?

I have long wanted to build a temple, I have many projects. One thing I understood for sure: you can't make architecture that only you need. It is necessary to create such a temple, which in the understanding of parishioners and serving priests will be a temple. There is no temporary progress in the concept of Christianity. All repeats. Christians go through the same story many times. I am not against modern churches, I enjoyed watching magazines with Catholic American churches. Tadao Ando has a beautiful concrete temple with a cross. But these are just compositions on a theme. And the temple I'm designing is traditional. It is associated primarily with the liturgical action. It should look like a temple on the outside and inside, not like a factory or a concrete palace. By morphotype, fit into the surrounding space - with a bulb, a dome or a tent. It is perfectly acceptable to look for proportions and materials within historical stereotypes. The historical temple architecture is so diverse that you can choose whatever you want, depending on where the building is located: in the city or in the field, in the forest or on a hill.

The situation with the church in the Novodevichy Convent was a happy one for me. This is a recreation as the site is protected by UNESCO. It was planned to build another author there. It was already agreed, but it turned out that it is not suitable. Then the doctor of art criticism Andrei Leonidovich Batalov asked me to draw a project. They showed it to Metropolitan Yuvenaly, he at first refused. And then the temple was appreciated by Igor Alexandrovich Naivald, a philanthropist and temple builder. I introduced him to the Metropolitan, and things went well. The temple is working, but not yet fully completed. Below there should be a museum of the historical temple of the Beheading of John the Baptist, which stood very close to the wall, and the French, who entered Moscow in 1812, thought that there were saboteurs inside, and it was blown up. The new temple is much smaller than the historical one and vaguely resembles the original.

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  1/3 Temple of the Beheading of John the Baptist near the walls of the Novodevichy Convent © Ilya Utkin

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  2/3 Temple of the Beheading of John the Baptist near the walls of the Novodevichy Convent © Ilya Utkin

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  3/3 Temple of the Beheading of John the Baptist near the walls of the Novodevichy Convent © Ilya Utkin

I participated in the Tikhon Shevkunov competition for the Temple of the New Martyrs at the Sretensky Monastery at the request of my youngest daughter Maria. On assignment, the temple had to be placed in a historical building. And the peculiarity of my decision was an interior temple without facades. Only the dome was visible from Tsvetnoy Boulevard. The New Temple of the New Martyrs is just the case when it was possible to design something not quite traditional, in the style of the twentieth century, since the temple is dedicated to events that have contained all the horrors of the past century. There were many projects, but Tikhon Shevkunov and Patriarch Kirill were chosen …

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  1/3 Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Blood © Ilya Utkin

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  2/3 Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Blood © Ilya Utkin

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  3/3 Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Blood © Ilya Utkin

As a result, the historical buildings were demolished and a gingerbread house, as elegant as a Christmas tree decoration, was built.

Exhibitions. "They decided to punish me by depriving me of my job"

What is the role of exhibitions in your work? Which ones are the most important and favorite?

Exhibitions are part of the architectural work. For two decades since the 1980s, we have done exhibitions and installations with Brodsky in America and in Russia. To solve a space, to show some idea, to tell about something - this is a normal installation exhibition program. It lasted a long time, then I got bored, but now I can do exhibitions with my eyes closed, so I understand everything.

Then came the turn of classical exhibitions. In 1995, a major exhibition "Melancholy" took place at the Regina Gallery. It featured 100 photographs of collapsing buildings in Moscow and an installation. The action was directed against the mayor of Luzhkov. My health was negatively affected by the contemplation of these ruins, although I tried to find compositional beauty in them. At the 2000 Venice Biennale, Melancholy was repeated and supplemented, and thanks to it, the Russian pavilion received a special mention from the jury.

And then Luzhkov's Sabbath began, when the hotel "Moscow", "Voentorg" and "Detsky Mir" were demolished almost simultaneously. Natalya Dushkina wrote several books and started an exhibition at the Museum of Architecture on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of her grandfather, architect Alexei Dushkin. I solved it in the form of a huge workshop, put huge easels with huge washings, giant tables. Serious architecture was shown there in order to indicate the greatness of the architect of the past and to show that these monuments of the Soviet era should not be destroyed.

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  1/5 Exhibition of the architect A. N. Dushkin at the Museum of Architecture. Shchusev. 2004. © Ilya Utkin

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  2/5 Exhibition of the architect A. N. Dushkin at the Museum of Architecture. Shchusev. 2004. © Ilya Utkin

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  3/5 Exhibition of the architect A. N. Dushkin in the Museum of Architecture named after A. N. Shchusev. 2004. © Ilya Utkin

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  4/5 Exhibition of the architect I. F. Milinis in the Museum of Architecture. Shchuseva © Ilya Utkin

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  5/5 Exhibition of the architect I. F. Milinis in the Museum of Architecture. Shchuseva © Ilya Utkin

It was then that Arkhnadzor was formed. And the director of the Museum of Architecture David Sargsyan understood what his strong point was in preserving Moscow architecture. There was a letter from the cultural community to the president about the inadmissibility of the destruction of monuments. Nikolai Molok put it in Izvestia, we collected signatures. And then we were "executed" for this. They decided to punish me by depriving me of my job. So Dushkin was a powerful and dangerous exhibition. It sounded, everyone began to talk about historical architecture, to defend old Moscow. This topic was discussed on TV, the chief architect of the city, Alexander Kuzmin, was summoned to the carpet.

Then I made an exhibition of my grandfather Wegman, published a book about him, about a second-tier architect. And it turned out that he was in the first row. Khan-Magomedov burst into articles and pulled them all out, Milinis, Hiddekel, Wegman, and Krutikov, publishing a series of books about the avant-garde. Khan and I spoke at the end of his life. There was also an exhibition about the architect Markovsky, the father of my wife Elena Markovskaya. And the last exhibition is dedicated to my father, architect Valentin Utkin. He has amazing watercolors, we covered the whole "Ruin" with them. There are about five hundred of them in the catalog, made mainly in the 1960s. Watercolors used to be a must for architectural presentation. The institute taught watercolors, architects went to the open air to paint. And now architectural watercolor as a tradition has disappeared.

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  1/4 Exhibition "Watercolor World of Valentin Utkin" at the Museum of Architecture named after Shchusev. © Ilya Utkin

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  2/4 Exhibition "Watercolor World of Valentin Utkin" at the Museum of Architecture. Shchusev. © Ilya Utkin

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  3/4 Exhibition "Watercolor World of Valentin Utkin" at the Museum of Architecture named after Shchusev. © Ilya Utkin

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  4/4 Exhibition of Valentin Utkin at the Museum of Architecture. © Ilya Utkin

Town. "My concept of the city is traditional, historical"

Describe your understanding of the city?

These are by no means sleeping areas, where skyscrapers seem to be inserted into greenery, but greenery never works, additional skyscrapers are being built instead. And there is a "cage" that is impossible for housing, as in Chinese cities, where all the free space is occupied by houses. My concept of the city is traditional, historical. The best option for the city is streets and squares.

What is the optimal ratio of street width to facade height?

Than at the same streets, the lower the houses. Then they turn out to be expensive and private. The smaller the house, the more expensive it must be made, because a person observes the facades from a close distance. The architect is required to understand the scale of the detail. My ideal is a classic city, not a constructivist one. My goal is not the engineering romance of Corbusier, but the romance of beauty and composition. This ideal is embodied, first of all, in the recently completed Kadashevskaya Sloboda - a traditional low-rise city quarter with the historic Church of the Resurrection of Christ.

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  1/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  2/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  3/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  4/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  5/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  6/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  7/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  8/9 Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi Photo © Ilya Utkin

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  9/9 3D view. Residential complex "Patron" in Kadashi © Utkin Studio

If a developer offered you to build a skyscraper, what would you do?

I had such a project in the late 1990s, on Alekseevskaya: a mountain house, austere, without a warrant, simple brick walls, and at the top is the Acropolis.

And if you were building a city in an open field, what structure would it have?

The structure would be traditional: street - square. The main building is calm, background. The emphasis is on administrative and cultural sites and other representative buildings. Viewpoints, greenery, parks, everything as it should be. When there was a boom in the development of Rublevka, I did projects for villages. One of them, on the island of the Pyalovskoye reservoir, looks like an airplane in plan. Developers came to me with a finished project of monstrous high-rise buildings. I offered them a low-rise complex of the same area, even one and a half times larger.

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  1/5 Project of the village on the Pyalovskoye reservoir © Ilya Utkin

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  2/5 Project of the village on the Pyalovskoye reservoir © Ilya Utkin

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  3/5 Project of the village on the Pyalovskoye reservoir © Ilya Utkin

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  4/5 Project of the village on the Pyalovskoye reservoir © Ilya Utkin

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  5/5 Project of the village on the Pyalovskoye reservoir © Ilya Utkin

Why don't developers go for low-rise construction? Because of the cost of networks?

Architecture is a commercial product! Every penny is counted in it. There is no need to think about the towers: put the piles in and raise the floor above the floor. It's a hundred times cheaper and easier to negotiate. And then the inhabitants of these towers become people with a broken psyche, who do not understand why they are depressed. And this city crushes in size and ugliness.

In the article "Creative credo" you contrast the Venice Architecture Biennale as a bulwark of globalism to the beautiful city of Venice. Indeed, the curator Fuksas's slogan “less aesthetics, more ethics” seems artificial. You write: “Venice itself gives the answer to the questions posed. The architecture of the city was created over the centuries, through the labor and love of the townspeople. Love is ethics, beauty is aesthetics. Together they form the basis of human architecture. The logic and essence of the international architecture of modern globalism is devilishly simple - it asks the soul for satiety and comfort. " Please explain what you mean

The international architectural elite is not a bunch of monsters killing historic cities, destroying nature, disfiguring the psyche of people. These are cultured people who need to justify their activities. So they come up with different "concepts" like Fuksas' slogan; or that I didn't like the Eiffel Tower at first, and then I liked it; or that the city must develop all the time; or - very often - that there were no mobile phones before, but now they are.

When I had an exhibition in Venice in 2000, guys and girls worked there, everyone was so cheerful and happy. I asked: "Why do you feel so good?" They thought: "There is a lot of water, there are no cars, the boats are floating." I say: “Fools, here architecture has such an effect on you. That's why you are so happy."

Are you interested in studying the avant-garde works of Russian and foreign colleagues-contemporaries? Is it fun? Who exactly are you watching in Russia and abroad?

To be honest, I stopped watching architectural news, because I see a constant repetition of what I have passed, and if something surprises, it causes unpleasant emotions. This is an occupational disease: with age, I became sensitive to the perception of architecture. Recently, I have been pampering myself with the contemplation of natural compositions and natural landscapes..

Getting down to this question, I don't hope to get an answer, nevertheless. Which of the modern architects of the traditional direction do you consider like-minded or, on the contrary, antagonists? Why, in your opinion, Russian neoclassicists do not unite, unlike Western ones, do not create educational institutions, and quite rarely participate in major architectural competitions?

Unification is unlikely, too different masters, with their own predilections. In Russia, the realities are different, and the time is different: creative work has depreciated and boiled down to applied computer visualization, which can be done by a schoolchild. There are several more architects who understand the classics and know how to design it. Yes, we would take part in competitions, only we are not invited. The mainstream of architecture now gravitates towards a production style, expressed in square kilometers of residential and office space. The current architectural circle has already been formed by the existing construction bureaucracy, it is she who chooses and dictates its conditions in this market. So if you are lucky and manage to do something in the backyard, it will be unique and expensive.