Summing up the results of the year, Moskomarkhitektura invited architects, developers and urbanists to participate in the survey, the purpose of which is to assess the views of the professional community on new projects, approaches and challenges that have appeared in Moscow and the regions this year, highlight pain points and outline ways to solve the problems that have arisen. … The results of the survey will be announced on December 17 within the framework of the "Comfortable City" conference, which starts online today.
Below are some of the opinions.
Nikita Tokarev, director of the MARCH architecture school
What do you think has changed in workflows in 2020? Has your online efficiency improved? Have communications become more complicated within the team and with third-party partners?
A lot has changed at Universal University. We had to implement in weeks what we had planned to spend years on: telecommuting, flexible working hours, electronic document management and, in the long term, avoiding paperwork, learning management system. Many training courses appeared in a mixed format and completely online, two schools changed their focus, two new ones were opened as part of the University. The next step is the restructuring of our workspace. All these achievements will continue with us regardless of COVID. It is still difficult to judge the effectiveness, the whole year was spent on extinguishing fires. The efficiency lies in the fact that we have dealt with them. I think there is a more difficult and longer period of decline in activity ahead. Communication became more intense: students began to attend classes more accurately, there were more listeners at open lectures, and it was easier to gather critics to discuss projects. At the same time, communication has become more difficult due to the multitude of channels: mail, social networks, corporate chats and information portals, telephone, and an endless stream of online events. The more valuable is a live meeting, a day without a screen, a switched off phone, an exhibition or just a walk.
Has online education complicated and how, if so? Does online learning affect the understanding and absorption of architectural knowledge? Is it possible with online learning to create student architecture teams and student professional fraternity?
Of course, the transition to online has complicated the life of architectural schools and not only here. For architecture that remains material, full-scale learning on the screen is impossible. At least if we want to preserve its connection with people, landscape, climate. Online learning for architects is more an accident than a mainstream of education. We need models and real building materials, workshops, joint trips. Live communication is critical, creating shared values and culture, friendship, atmosphere, social capital. This is what is most important in education, and then useful skills. In addition, not everyone has the opportunity to fully study and teach at home; health suffers from hours of sitting in front of the monitor. We continue to study in person and will do so as long as possible. At the same time, we at MARSH also benefited from the online format. We were able to invite colleagues from other countries and cities to discuss projects, those who would not come to us in Moscow. We made a virtual exhibition and gathered an order of magnitude more visitors than would have come to Artplay. We have held many remote meetings, open lectures and discussions, in particular the (De) Schooling in Architectural education series. For the presentation and discussion of architecture online provides unlimited opportunities, which we will use in the future. But for other areas of education, for example, "Territorial Development Management", mixed face-to-face and distance learning is what you need, as it allows you to reach the audience in different regions of our huge country.
Do you consider the law on architectural activities to be an important event of the year? Do you agree with its latest version? What do you agree / disagree with?
The law will become an event if it is passed, of which I am not sure. He is trying to regulate too many areas. In addition to the professional activity of an architect, this is also urban planning activity, municipal and public service, especially state and municipal procurement through creative competitions for architectural projects, professional and creative organizations of architects, organizational forms of architectural practice. In this form, the law will most likely not work and may lead not to the development of architecture, but to increased administrative and financial pressure on architects. And architects have enough difficulties even without the law! The only creative profession, architecture receives a complex and cumbersome certification system, like nowhere else in the world. In those countries where there is certification, it is passed once, and not 3-4, and it does not require 10 years of experience to pass it. Those Russians who studied abroad will not be able to claim the status of an architect at all. But for the protection of the architect's copyright, the legalization of creative competitions, the removal of the creative industries from the FZ-44, where the cheapest offer wins, the law does little without changes in other laws. It is no coincidence that there was no open discussion of the law. It was limited to the leadership of the Union of Architects, NOPRIZ and the Academy of Architecture. I think that the main debate on the law is still ahead, as we see a lot of negative reviews from our distinguished colleagues.
In an ever-changing work environment, what keeps you balanced and moving on? What were your professional footholds this year? What was, in your opinion, the most important thing in MARSH activities this year?
The most important thing is that we made excellent projects, saved students and teachers, and successfully recruited a new stream for undergraduate and graduate programs. The reason is probably that the school for us and the students is not just a place for acquiring knowledge, knowledge around the sea, but a community of like-minded people united by common values. This is the fulcrum.
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Kirill Tesler, Head of the Vector Architectural Bureau, Associate Professor, NRU MGSU
What do you think has changed in workflows in 2020? Has your online efficiency improved? Have communications become more complicated within the team and with third-party partners?
2020 has finally forced everyone to embrace the digital reality of the modern world. If earlier it was possible to work in the old fashioned way and deny technology, now it is no longer possible. The year has become a problem only for those who have systematically lagged behind the technological leaders of the market over the past 10 years. Our bureau was initially built on a modern technical base and striving for progressive technologies. We work on a cloud server and some of our employees are located in other cities and countries. Therefore, we did not have to transfer people to a remote location, since they did not initially visit the office in the classical sense of the word. On the contrary, our work has become even more efficient, as partners and customers have accepted our terms of the game. Of course, live communication is irreplaceable, but social responsibility for the health of others is still more important.
Has online education complicated and how, if so? Does online learning affect the understanding and absorption of architectural knowledge? Is it possible with online learning to create student architecture teams and student professional fraternity?
Offline seminars and workshops are required for educational programs. In our profession, not everything can be shown online. Not all students have high-quality high-speed Internet that allows them to freely exchange large amounts of data. It is not always possible to "read" the reaction of the audience to their lecture. However, these are all "childhood diseases" of online programs that can be solved in 2-3 years of work. Now I am teaching a group of 120 people in streaming practice, allowing the children to form teams to complete assignments and participate in joint discussions. This allows them to establish teamwork and learn not only to listen, but also to manage the team. The stimulus for constant communication forms professional skills and unites the team.
Do you consider the law on architectural activities to be an important event of the year? Do you agree with its latest version? If not, what do you disagree with?
The fact that now they began to pay great attention to architecture and the profession is a great success. An architect has become a person and can defend his rights and views. Any public discussion regarding the legislative regulation of the issue of architecture is beneficial to the profession and the formation of public opinion about the contribution of the architect to the development of the country. I believe that such documents should not be adopted without proper discussion and elaboration. Much still needs to be clarified and specified. Errors made in such documents do much more harm than the absence of the document itself.
In an ever-changing work environment, what keeps you balanced and moving on? What were your professional footholds this year?
The pursuit of excellence. Only constant development and search for the ideal allows us not to stop there. In our office, we are constantly looking for new ideas and styles, experimenting with graphics, looking for new interactions between functions in buildings and public spaces. We are constantly updating our team, looking for new staff and fresh ideas. Each of the participants in the process can speak up and offer their own vision of the object. Dialogue within the team, dialogue with the city and residents, dialogue with the customer is another important aspect of success.
This year has brought us many interesting projects. The geography of projects is wide enough, but most of all, of course, are concentrated in Moscow and the Moscow region. We are completing the construction of a residential area in the Moscow region, fully designed in the BIM environment. We continue to work actively on Yauza Park. We have completed design work on two new sites in Otradnoye and Yuzhny Medvedkovo, where unique public spaces will appear, developed jointly with residents of these areas. We have created a platform for communication with residents and the formation of the park's community. Collaborative design technologies have been successfully used by us in the Moscow region for many years, and for three years now we have been actively using them in Moscow. This is a new experience for the capital, which is becoming a new standard for the quality of urban spaces.
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Sergey Georgievsky, urbanist, general director of the Agency for Strategic Development "CENTER"
What do you think has changed in workflows in 2020? Has your online efficiency improved? Have communications become more complicated within the team and with third-party partners?
Indeed, communications have changed due to the pandemic and due to certain economic realities. A huge number of companies have moved their offices to a digital platform. This has led to big changes in the market and will have big consequences, as the physical need to be in the office fades into the background. It turns out that the need to move to large cities, for example, Moscow, in order to make a career and take part in any project, for example, to work in an architectural bureau or an analytical company, disappears. Thus, people can stay in their small homeland, in small and medium-sized cities in the regions, while fully realizing their professional, career and financial ambitions. This expands the possibilities, i.e. people can spend less money on rental housing, not change their location, stay where they live - while receiving competitive wages.
True, in the future there will probably be a change in the level of payment for the services of such workers, since the employer also understands that if he does not need employees living in Moscow, where the level and cost of living is above average, it turns out that he can hire professionals who meet the same criteria., from the regions, it can receive the same quality and efficiency, but at the same time incur much lower costs. Of course, in this case, there are certain risks, but so far we are seeing that people working in large corporations in large cities have gone to "remote work" and returned to where they left for Moscow, while their wages remained at the level big cities. This is undoubtedly a positive factor for the economy of regions and non-capital cities.
Do you consider the law on architectural activities to be an important event of the year? Do you agree with its latest version? What do you agree / disagree with?
The Law on Architectural Activity is, of course, one of the most important events that has become the subject of discussion, many discussions and polar points of view. The law introduces a certain level of regulation into the industry, it defines the rules of the game and sets the boundaries. On the one hand, certainty is well-defined rules of the game, which should ensure the quality of services, the responsibility of market players, continuity and a certain system. On the other hand, the law, in its current version, contains some contradictory norms. For example, the law infringes upon the rights of architects studying abroad in relation to those who studied in Russia. In architecture, international cooperation and foreign education are highly valued as they provide an opportunity to bring new technologies, approaches and visions to the industry. Not everyone is ready to receive two higher educations, and not everyone can afford it. The law today proposes a solution in which people who do not have a Russian diploma in architecture can no longer realize themselves in the profession, which infringes on their rights. The Bologna Process set certain standards in the field of education, and Russia has been integrated into this process for many years so that our specialists could receive any education, and Russian diplomas were equated with documents of European and American higher educational institutions. And now, some provisions of the new law on architectural activity contradict this movement and restrict people with foreign education who plan their activities in Russia.
There are a number of other points that raise questions, in particular, the rather rigid licensing system (which is introduced in the edition that I studied), which creates a huge number of obstacles in the way for young architects who would like to open their offices. The logic of this decision is clear: the law sets a certain level of quality. But this decision does not allow the market to develop. If such a law had been in effect 10 years ago, we would have missed a huge number of young architectural names that “grew up” and took place not only in Russia, but also abroad.
In an ever-changing work environment, what allows you to maintain balance and move on? What were your professional footholds this year?
For us, as an analytical company that works in the field of urbanism, urban planning and architecture, the pandemic is not as critical as for companies from other industries. An analyst can work effectively from anywhere in the world. Of course, field research is very important in our work, but modern technologies allow us to "find ourselves" anywhere in the world, to study anything without leaving home. Nevertheless, thanks to the pandemic, we saw that our company can work in any conditions: we can do analytics, develop strategies and concepts, conduct competitions, ensure the involvement of citizens and experts in them, organize public discussions, hold meetings of expert councils and juries using Zoom, Skype, Mind platforms. I will not hide, for most of our clients it was very important how we as a company will behave in this difficult period: will we disperse? will we reduce the state? stop working for a while? will we announce the structural changes in the company? or not? The first question that we received during the pandemic, and especially after it, was the team that actually accumulated the experience and knowledge that we are implementing, whether it works in the same composition, in the same rhythm, schedule, etc. etc. Considering that our agency for the pandemic only expanded the scope of its knowledge and increased the number of projects, as a result, we reached 120% load from the first stage of the pandemic, and when they tell us that there is no work, we are surprised at this interpretation: there is a lot of work, but you need to be able not only to see it, but also often create it yourself, and most importantly - be able to bring it to a result.
It should be noted that customers in Russia are not always ready to work with virtual companies. On the one hand, the remote format and online tools are often welcomed as a new approach, but on the other hand, our clients have very strict requirements, they want the company to have a fully functioning office and all the communication tools they are used to. We have managed to fulfill these requirements. And this gave us the opportunity to keep the staff, get new clients and implement several interesting projects. The company is operating at full capacity and thinking about expansion, while many of our competitors have stopped and got scared.
We are grateful to the Governor and the Government of the Samara Region, who were the first to decide to implement with us an innovative format of working with the legacy of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in a pandemic, the management of Tatneft and the Mayor of Almetyevsk, who demonstrated an extraordinary level of technological preparedness for any threats and challenges in their work. over the master plan for a new territory for the development of the city, to the Agency for Strategic Initiatives for the opportunity to implement a unique anti-crisis project for the development of ecotourism, which helps all of us to remember the deep values, national heritage and connection with nature and, of course, to the chief architect of Moscow, who demonstrated by his example, how possible, using modern electronic platforms, to work on the most complex projects even more efficiently online, and supported us on this path.
Probably the main factor that we overestimated for ourselves is the factor of fear, which arises from both sides - from expert organizations, professional market players, and from customers. The ability to overcome this fear is probably the main guarantee of success in any crisis and pandemic, when you are ready, willing and able to work, you can offer your customer new non-trivial solutions and can convince him of their effectiveness for the project. On the one hand, we had to get out of the usual comfort zone, but at the same time it became the key to yet another success-story of the CENTER.
What was the most important thing in the agency's activities this year, in your opinion?
Probably, if we talk about projects, the most striking projects for us were competitions in Almetyevsk, Samara and projects that we implemented with the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI), Mosinzhproekt and Moskomarkhitektura. The project in Almetyevsk is a master plan for a new part of the city, a special city that has demonstrated the possibilities of life outside the metropolis at a completely different quality level. The townspeople and authorities of Almetyevsk are an example of a rare request in our country when people do not want to live in a metropolis, but they are sure that they deserve to have everything the same, but in a small town, having the opportunity to create an environmentally friendly life in every sense of the world next to natural territories.
The project in Samara, working with the legacy of the FIFA World Cup, was a big challenge for us. The readiness of the governor and the government of the Samara region to solve together with us the difficult task of the World Cup legacy became the starting point in our project. Samara became the first region that decided to invest in the global international process, starting with analytics and developing a concept for working with the territory adjacent to the stadium. I am sure that this is a very successful experience and it can be applied in the future to other similar territories, in the cities where the championship is present. In general, the Samara project is a decision on a national scale that inspired us greatly throughout the entire pandemic period.
The third most important project of this year is cooperation with such a prominent development institution as ASI with the support of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation and Rostourism. With him, we made two anti-crisis projects: a competition for the development of protected areas and ecotourism in the country and an acceleration training program for the creation of tourist and recreational clusters. With ASI, we touched on the topic of domestic tourism and the national wealth of Russia and brought it to the federal level. Few people have thought about it in recent years on such a scale, and after all, stunning natural beauty, landscapes, wealth are concentrated on the territory of our country - everything that could surprise the whole world, but even Russians have not seen most of this national treasure. While working on the project, we found that most people in the country would rather name the names of US national parks than Russian ones, and do not even imagine what beauty we have in certain regions. And this project only exposed this situation, it showed the Russians the scale of the natural heritage that we have, and we set ourselves the task of making it accessible without violating or destroying the regimes of its use.
It's nice when from year to year it is possible to preserve the already established tradition of Moscow to create unique solutions for new Moscow metro stations through open international competitions together with Mosinzhproekt and Moskomarkhitektura. The victory of such companies as the world famous Zaha Hadid Architects and the legendary Assad dynasty once again confirmed the importance of this process in creating the future legacy of one of the most beautiful subways in the world.
This is what we have completed this year. Now we are working on no less interesting projects - in Krasnoyarsk with RUSAL, in Dagestan with the Republican Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture, with the Moscow Government under the My District program. And soon we will tell you about new projects.
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Nikolay Pereslegin, partner of Kleinewelt Architekten
What do you think has changed in workflows in 2020? Has your online efficiency improved? Have communications become more complicated within the team and with third-party partners?
Based on the example of our bureau's work, I can say that remote work is not easy. We managed to maintain a balance and survive the first wave of quarantine without losses - we did not cut staff and did not cut employees' salaries. But, naturally, maintaining this stability has become a very difficult task. Communication within the bureau team in general and within the teams for each project in particular has become more complicated. If earlier on any question it was possible just to come to the next table for a couple of minutes, then at a remote location the solution of each issue takes much longer. But, what is important, the efficiency of work did not fall, but even increased, as did the number of projects in progress. All thanks to an excellent well-coordinated team that quickly adjusted to the new working conditions.
Do you consider the law on architectural activities to be an important event of the year? Do you agree with its latest version? What do you agree / disagree with?
The "Law on Architectural Activities" has definitely become a resonant event this year. There are still many ambiguities in the wording, after reading questions, there is a feeling that the chosen focus is aimed at not the most urgent problems. The goals and objectives are excellent - the development of architectural art, the definition of the rights and obligations of the architect and the customer, the regulation of relations, and so on. But in fact, the wording remains vague.
When it comes to the creative profession, it is important not to overdo it by driving it into reporting and qualifications. In fact, now we are talking about a sufficiently large number of formalities that an architect must at all costs comply with in order to continue working, and, in addition, also have the opportunity to climb the career ladder. In my opinion, the law should not only oblige, but also protect. In this case, the scales with responsibilities are much heavier than the scales with rights.
In an ever-changing work environment, what keeps you balanced and moving on? What were your professional footholds this year?
Focus on results. This allows you to calibrate your path to your goal, even when chaos reigns around. Looking at the target, it is easier to maintain balance, like a tightrope walker who does not look into the abyss at his feet, but strives to the other edge of this abyss.
As for the points of support in the work, this is, first of all, a team. It is impossible to imagine that we would have achieved anything without the unanimous zeal in work that everyone has demonstrated.
And, of course, it is much easier to maintain any balance when your family is waiting for you at home, which will always support you.
In your opinion, what was the most important thing in your company's activity this year?
Ability to adapt. It turned out that we have a certain talent for this. It was very difficult for everyone to rebuild, but practice has shown that we are capable of a lot! I am proud of my colleagues!
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Philip Yakubchuk, Head of Regional Projects MARSH Lab
What do you think has changed in workflows in 2020? Has your online efficiency improved? Have communications become more complicated within the team and with third-party partners?
In my opinion, nothing has changed, but just legalized what has long been ripe and that we in MARSH Lab, as, probably, many, have long been practicing in our daily work. MARSH Lab is a laboratory of the Moscow School of Architecture, we have been living in a continuous experiment for all 5 years of the laboratory's existence. Yes, we are based in MARSH, but we are the cops who rarely go to the police station. Our main work has always been and is taking place in the regions, in constant trips to the cities of the country, where we have organized countless times pop-up offices and pop-up project teams, which in the shortest possible time provided high-quality concepts for the development of territories, and sometimes real changes in urban spaces in just 10 days.
Airplanes, cars, houses of culture, bowling alleys, nightclubs, mansions, museums, business incubators, shopping galleries, buses, city squares, squares, restaurants, beaches became our office … In such conditions, the team must act as a single cohesive organism. With a wide geography of work and a large number of people involved in projects from different cities, the Internet plays an important role and the ability to work together on documents in the cloud and go to video communication. Four years ago, we annoyed everyone with our insistent demands to work in Google presentations, today no one needs to explain the advantages of such tools, thanks to which you can put together a coherent project album out of nothing in a short time, seeing each other's work in one file. So online I feel completely at ease. Communication has become easier because online is no longer exotic, even for conservative organizations like municipalities.
Do you consider the law on architectural activities to be an important event of the year? Do you agree with its latest version? What do you agree / disagree with?
I think this is an important professional event, to which I personally, I confess, reacted irresponsibly. It is quite possible that I will regret it again. At the same time, I think that the domestic professional workshop of a new formation is only being formed, and is being formed in the form of a living community. In this sense, for me, a much more important and significant professional event of the year was the big academic rave, which half-spontaneously happened in Derbent in September 2020, in which more than a hundred took part through different communities such as Novaya Zemlya, MARSH Lab, Architects. young and promising architects and urbanists from among those who are shaping a new urban and spatial agenda in the country. Suffice it to say that at a party in Derbent "DJ" is Misha Shatrov. Who knows will understand.
The very fact that people organized themselves independently, and not because there was some kind of forum, is very gratifying for me. And this also suggests that public money spent on all kinds of official forums and the competition "Small and Historic Cities" (All-Russian competition of the best projects for creating a comfortable urban environment in small towns and historical settlements), led to the formation of a real urbanistic and architectural community that is capable of primary self-organization. This means that these funds were not spent in vain. Much more vitality emanates from this lively event than from bills. And I think that in the near future the architectural and urbanistic workshop of the new generation will determine the law on architectural activity and flexibly form legislation according to its urgent needs.
In an ever-changing work environment, what keeps you balanced and moving on? What were your professional footholds this year?
For me, on the contrary, working conditions stabilized during quarantine. Before and after quarantine, I constantly move between cities and make 2-6 flights a week, working on various projects. During quarantine, it was enough to switch between cities mentally, without the help of planes. An ever-changing reality is our usual mode of work, I am used to it and enjoy it.
Keeping balance during quarantine work was elementary. It was enough to allow oneself to sleep at the first call of the body, so that after three weeks the body would come to a three-phase sleep without any alarms: it fell asleep at about 20:00, woke up at about midnight and then at 4: 00-5: 00 in the morning, and then went to daytime sleep about noon. I delegated the issues of sleep, food and optimal stress to the body, and it itself did what it took to be in good shape. I know of nothing more stabilizing than sleep without rules, a morning walk in the forest, prayer and a daily letter. It turned out to be more difficult to transfer this to life after quarantine, when dependence on society and other circumstances increased. I am currently working to integrate my findings in lifestyle into everyday life without quarantine.
In conditions of constant work trips and stress, the most important stabilizing factor is attention to your inner state and understanding that I am more important than any of my projects and all of them combined. This understanding allows you to quickly master any difficult situation. It is very important to be able to disassociate from your work, your business, to understand that my job is me, but I am not my job. This is a very important hierarchical principle, allowing at a critical moment to understand that I am not defined by my project, the project can end with success, or maybe failure, and neither one nor the other is an assessment of my "I". We are created in the image and likeness, and one of the biblical names of God is translated into Russian as “I am, who I am; I was who I was; I will be who I will be. " One must be able to define oneself, and business is only a test instrument for self-determination, which allows one to test the correctness of a hypothesis. At the same time, it is important to be able not to define yourself in any way, because to define - from the word limit. It is very important to have self-esteem in all circumstances and put your own internal criteria first, and not the external attributes of success. Self-esteem allows you not to compare yourself with other people, but by comparing yourself to yourself, with interest to observe the work of others. It also allows you to win back your personal space from the world and protect it for yourself: the space of your sleep, your silence, your loved ones, your favorite activities.
My most important fulcrum this year is God and the sense of his immutable value, which He has put into me. This value is not my merit and at the same time always remains with me.
In your opinion, what was the most important thing in your company's activity this year?
The most important thing this year in the activity of MARSH Lab, in my subjective opinion, was our victory in the competition for a master plan for Derbent as part of an international consortium led by Novaya Zemlya. It happened technically in 2019, but 2020 passed under the sign of this event for me. We have been able to work with an amazing strong team, which became a deep professional and personal transformation for me personally. Working with such teams as Novaya Zemlya, April, Praktika, Derbent Architecture Department, Derbent Project Office, CENTER, Druzhba Bureau is a real university for me, and I am very grateful to everyone who made this possible. At the same time, we again showed excellent results at the competition of the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation for Small and Historic Cities, thanks to the efforts of Lena Gonzalez, Misha Shatrov and Nikita Tokarev. Also, as part of the Universal University, we conducted a wonderful Art Residence program for regional teams for the development of art clusters, outlining new development areas, taking into account the fact that the development of creative industries is a new trend in public policy. The year was hard for us and very fruitful!
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Tatiana Osetskaya and Alexander Salov, founders of ARCHSLON bureau
What do you think has changed in workflows in 2020? Has your online efficiency improved? Have communications become more complicated within the team and with third-party partners?
First of all, it is important to note that 2020 is a challenge to all accepted foundations and the usual state of affairs. We all had to reconsider many of the processes taking place not only in business, but also in culture, art and private life.
Architecture is a team effort, and communication and personal contact are extremely important in our team's work. Due to the fact that previously we did not consider remote work as an effective tool, we had to adapt and adapt to the prevailing circumstances. The main burden in online work falls on the manager - it is necessary not only to convey the task without the help of verbal tools, but also to do it as efficiently, clearly and quickly as possible, without spending all the available time on remote distribution of tasks. It is worth noting that there were fewer difficulties than we expected, and in general (with proper refinement of the details and nuances of the process), we could say that remote work was effective for us. However, it is worth clarifying that with the lifting of the strict restrictions, we immediately returned to our home office and continued working at our usual pace. Some colleagues remained remotely, but the main team continued to work in full-time format.
Do you consider the law on architectural activities to be an important event of the year? Do you agree with its latest version? What do you agree / disagree with?
This is a very serious and important question. We do not think that there will be architects who would be satisfied with the current state of affairs and the status that an architect has in the existing legal field.
The law is definitely needed. Any law is a living organism, it changes, supplements, develops along with a rapidly changing life. It is important to understand that the main thing is to give a start, a starting point at the beginning of the regulation of architectural activity in Russia, and this is exactly what the current version of the law does.
In an ever-changing work environment, what keeps you balanced and moving on? What were your professional footholds this year?
Only blind faith allows you to maintain balance and move on. Belief in architecture, in creativity, in the cause to which we devote our lives.
For us, the fulcrum is completely independent of external factors. Fortunately for us, our support has always been the service of the profession and the shoulder of a partner. All other factors are temporary and transient and can change even during the day. Our stability is, first of all, support for each other and unconditional faith in the profession.
In your opinion, what was the most important thing in the bureau's activities this year?
This year, and indeed as at any time, it is important to have a goal and strive for it. The current situation leaves an imprint only on those tools that we can use to achieve a particular goal. For example, during the quarantine, my colleagues from the SA lab and Synthesis laboratories and I realized that we were critically lacking in creative communication, interesting content and festivals that went on without stopping in “peacetime”. We came up with an online festival 360 Fest and successfully implemented it even without ever meeting during the preparation, which fully corresponds to the concept of online. There can be many such examples. It is only important to understand that circumstances cannot change the goal, they can change the path along which we go to our goal.
