По-русски

​Sergey Oreshkin: our motto is pure architecture that keeps its identity with a healthy share of naivety.

The leader of A.Len Architects Sergey Oreshkin shares about the evolution of his company, working in the regions, and defending his creative ego.

26 June 2014
Interview
mainImg

Archi.ru:
– How did it all start for A.Len? 

Sergei Oreshkin:
– In the west, it is often the case that an architect makes it big out of the blue, and pretty quick. Many of the famous European architectural companies made themselves known via various competitions when still in the budding years – Bjarke Ingels from BIG, the guys from Snøhetta, to name but a few. Another group consists of large companies that came around after the Second World War: gmp Architekten, Foster, and so on. These were created by people who are well into their seventies now. Russia, on the other hand, is a different matter – we have different ways of growing. For example, we've got architects who made it big after they landed a job at this or that project institute because they quickly secured large-scale serious projects. This is one narrative. The other narrative – and this is how it worked for A.Len – is when a company grows by degrees: you start with designing small private residences, then your orders grow ever bigger until you get to the peak of your career, which I hope is our case. I began studying architecture at 14 (college-work-army-university), and finished at 28; now I am 54. Right after I graduated from the university (probably, I looked mature still at that tender age) I was offered a position of the chief architect of the cities of Vologda and Cherepovets but I opted for the project institute where, it should be said, they valued me very highly. Meanwhile, after I started my own company [A.Len was created in 1991 – editor’s note] at the outset of our career we had to do small-time orders – private residences, little settlements, and we never were out of work. This was a great educational experience for us, and in this connection I often recollect Frank Lloyd Wright whose career was a revelation to me. The path of Wright has something in common with ours, when you know the author for his mature works, and then you learn that he designed private residences in his formative years.

– In which direction does your company evolve, and how would you describe the current stage of your development?

– The question that I am asking myself today most of all is whether we will be able to keep up the further growth of our company in spite of all the economic crises that keep shaking this country. I am also worried if I will have enough health and creative energy to face the new challenges. You grow by degrees – experience comes with years, and only way later on down the line you begin to feel at home with the profession, begin to know what should be done and how, and the difficulties of construction no longer scare you away. Today I have a feeling that we are indeed getting to a whole new level. It’s strange but this economic crisis also brought a feeling of relief to us. Maybe it’s because you cannot make any forecasts anymore: we have work – fine, we don’t – no problem, we will create some ourselves. Today, we design things the way we want. If, at the moment, the client is not OK with what we are showing to him, that’s alright as well because we’ll be able to prove our point later; if the client likes what we do – great! Such attitude helps us to elevate our company to a higher level. If you try too hard to please the client you will hardly be able to get the best result you’re possibly capable of. Luckily, today’s clients have also changed for the better – they are ready to listen to what we say. And as for the projects that can possibly spoil our portfolio and be detrimental to our reputation – we just don’t do them. Right now, we have a great period, and we’ve got some young talent, the guys that really live on architecture. I would say that we are going through a phase of “defending our creative ego”.

– And what is the essence of your creative ego?

– Oh, it’s the classic narrative: when you’re under forty, you want to impress people, but when you grow older and wiser you want to do things that are well-balanced, clear and dignified, and at the same time well-reasoned. But it will be a pity for me if, trying to achieve this clarity, I lose the young straightforwardness and even some certain naivety. I believe this is very important to me. When still in my college years, I was after creating unpredictable things. And today, 90% of the Russian architecture is depressingly predictable. And don’t get me wrong – an unpredictable building doesn’t necessarily have to be all lopsided or eccentric-looking, not at all! Today, we see a lot of young (and not only young) architects that, say, working in the economy-class segment, their only resource a bucket of stucco, come up with the right things. This is practically the way it was in the 1930’s when they had little resource but the architects worked with the volume, town-planning ideas, and, as a result, an unbelievable emotional effect was achieved. So, today our motto is: maturity without losing the well-balanced architecture, pure architecture that keeps its identity with a healthy share of naivety.

– The name of “A.Len” stands for “Architectural Leningrad”. Is it worth our while looking for some little nostalgic notes in it, and how did it come around, anyway?

– Our company was founded in the early 90’s when Saint Petersburg was still called Leningrad. Pretty much any company name was an acronym back then: Lenspetssmu, Lentech, A.Len, for that matter. These companies marketed themselves as regional. Later on, we decided to stick to our name, and I was never into waving my personal name around. Today, our company name clearly states that our company is not a young one.

– Do you have any favorite projects or buildings?

– I stand by my performance, and we haven’t failed a single project. There are things that grow better with time. You do have a feeling of regret from time to time when somebody gets in your way – it is either the approving organization or the construction company that is eager to make its “contribution”, and ultimately leaves the project devoid of any individuality. Sometimes we cannot convince the client that the solution which we are proposing is in fact the best one – but such instances are getting fewer and farther between because we always act in our client’s best interests.

You do change with age, of course: at thirty I would have done it this way, at forty in another – nobody does architecture from nineteen to eighty in exactly the same style. The whole point that I’m trying to make is that, probably, my most favorite works are the latest ones. Because you are into them! The project of the residential complex “Me, Romantic” which we did in the economy class is something that I really like. It was underestimated but I already noticed that some of the ideas that we came up with when we were designing that project have already inspired some of my architectural colleagues.



I would also mention the Gasprom business center on the Varshavskaya Street – its morphology has already been tested by various architectural teams, each one of them doing it in their own unique way: this is a grid shell inside of which we placed a huge ball of volumes. It is a rather mysterious project, just as its client.



Sometimes you have a nostalgia trip and try your hand at Art Nouveau: we are currently doing a house for YIT developers in the Chapaeva Street – it’s the fairy tale sort of a “castle” house, a pileup of volumes and masses, this “knitted” or “lacy” kind of architecture. Then, there is this romanticism of the Petrograd side, and I sometimes feel like working in this line. This is not quite our approach because we associate ourselves more with the avant-garde tradition but I think there is definitely something about the romanticism architecture.



Then there is this house at the Konstantinovsky Avenue – we drew it like an obvious piece of European modernism. We used copper and natural stone, and what we ultimately got was a very lively and picturesque façade. This house even has a fan club of its own because such architecture is rarely to be found in this city. It is mostly drawn by quite young architects that do not even always get to doing the real city projects, while if we are to look for acclaimed architects working in this line, they are only to be found in Moscow: Skuratov, Levyant, Skokan. The modernism of this house is based on the Russian avant-garde and constructivism, 3D design, and working with the form.



Another interesting project is the house in the Graftio Street – it is a “slab” of a house, yet, at the same time, it’s a “cabbage” of a house – it has a lot of layers, each of which slightly peels off and exposes the next one, the depth of the space. It has something from Paul Rudolph, something from Richard Meyer. This house keeps on winning various awards, and last year it was awarded the Diamond Diploma of The Worldwide Club of Petersburgers



– Do you enjoy building your projects in the historical center?

– Yes, of course! This is the place where the magic aura gets straight under your skin. There are two basic approaches here: either you want to stand out from the historical background or you want to merge with it. It’s either contextual or non-contextual work. And it is the non-contextual architecture that usually gets slammed, with the architect labeled as a parvenu, but, on the other hand, you can recall positive examples as well: the “dancing house” by Frank Gehry in Prague, or the “mirror house” by Hans Hollein in Vienna across from the cathedral. There is also another approach: you come to the place and find out if it’s in need of accentuation. If it is, you come up with some sort of a centerpiece, and if the environment is saturated as it is, and you see that building something bold would lead to over-saturation, you try to handle it as delicately as you can. For example, we did this “Egoist” house – there is a really rich environment there, everything is decorated, and we wanted to ultimately get a peaceful house; Leonid Lavrov later on termed it as “eclectic constructivism”. In effect, it was indeed originally designed as a constructivist building but later on in the course of the negotiation with the city officials and the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Landmarks we had to listen to them and make a few changes so as the house would meet their requirements.



– You work a lot in the regions. What’s different about working in the regions from working in Saint Petersburg?

– We’ve been getting a lot of invitations recently – Saransk, Ufa, Kazan, Yaroslavl, Novosibirsk – and these are the result of our professional acclaim. For the regional clients this means prestige; sometimes they even mistake us for a Moscow company. In the regions, a Saint Petersburg architect gets a lot more respect than he does in his hometown. In this city, the client may start teaching you how to draw façades and do all sorts of nasty stuff; it’s different in the regions.

– What are you working on now? 

– Currently, we are doing a large-scale residential area in Ufa; it’s a very interesting project, and I’m sure it will turn out great. We do not get down to actual work until we have studied a whole lot of historical literature in order to find out just what had been going on upon this particular land site in the past centuries. In Ufa, we got a location that for some reason would scare the local architects away. It turned out that there used to be a Kremlin on that spot, a few rivers would bleed into one, a new 3000-strong mosque had recently been built, there is a mountain nearby, everything is pretty odious, and the terrain is just terrible, to cap it all. But we still entered that competition. Ufa has a very progressive atmosphere in it; if the city keeps up the great work it will in no time rival Moscow in terms of architecture. People there draw some really right things. This is the way that back in the day the strong Nizhny Novgorod school was formed which has seen better days, regretfully. Under the governor Boris Nemtsov and the then-main-architect-of-the-city Alexander Kharitonov it was flourishing. Today the bright architectural works in Nizhny Novgorod are ever fewer, and at those days it was brimming with architecture – a comparatively small city with about a dozen of competing architectural companies, five of them being really good. Currently, Ufa is in the same situation as Nizhny Novgorod was about 15 years ago.



– What is your opinion of the architectural competitions and contests?

– For the last two years, we've been actively participating in competitions, no fewer than 10 ones a year. We appreciate this experience: an average competition does not weigh us down at all, we can do whatever we want, and some of the competition projects come out really brilliant.

– You have a Livejournal blog (oreshkin.livejournal.com), why did you decide to start it?

– We process a very large flow of information, some of which, I believe, could be interesting to a large number of people. I make a lot of posts when we do a competition project – this is the first sign that we are up to something; and some of the materials “leak” into our blog. This is a great tool; it is chronologically organized, it is current, and you form the subject with the tags. Our Livejournal blog is also an education tool for the budding architects, and my colleagues read it too. Initially, it was my personal blog about my work in A.Len but now it predominantly covers the materials that serve as the basis for the architectural design. We select the architecture that does not bring about any issues in terms of quality. If somebody is interested, they could read our blog and see where A.Len is going, what we like and what we don’t like.


26 June 2014

Headlines now
Resort on the Kama River
Wowhaus has developed a project for the reconstruction of Korabelnaya Roshcha (“Mast Grove”), a wellness resort located on the banks of the Kama River.
Nests in Primorye
The eco-park project “Nests”, designed by Aleksey Polishchuk and the company Power Technologies, received first prize at the Eco-Coast 2025 festival, organized by the Union of Architects of Russia. For a glamping site in Filinskaya Bay, the authors proposed bird-shaped houses, treehouses, and a nest-shaped observation platform, topping it all with an entrance pavilion executed in the shape of an owl.
The Angle of String Tension
The House of Music, designed by Vladimir Plotkin and the architects of TPO Reserve, resembles a harp, and when seen from above, even a bass clef. But if only it were that simple! The architecture of the complex fuses two distinct expressive languages: the lattice-like, transparent, permeable vocabulary of “classical” modernism and the sculptural, ribbon-like volumes so beloved by today’s neo-modernism. How it all works – where the catharsis lies, which compositional axes underpin the design, where the project resembles Zaryadye Concert Hall and where it does not – read in the article below.
How Historic Tobolsk Becomes a Portal to the Future
Over the past decade, the architectural company Wowhaus has developed urban strategies for several Russian cities – Vyksa, Tula, and Nizhnekamsk, to name but a few. Against this backdrop, the Tobolsk master plan stands out both for its scale – the territory under transformation covers more than 220 square kilometers – and for its complexity.
St. Petersburg vs Rome
The center of St. Petersburg is, as we know, sacred – but few people can say with certainty where this “sacred place” actually begins and ends. It’s not about the formal boundaries, “from the Obvodny Canal to the Bolshaya Nevka”, but about the vibe that feels true to the city center. With the Nevskaya Ratusha complex – built to a design that won an international competition – Evgeny Gerasimov and Sergei Tchoban created an “image of the center” within its territory. And not so much the image of St. Petersburg itself, as that of a global metropolis. This is something new, something that hasn’t appeared in the city for a long time. In this article, we study the atmosphere, recall precedents, and even reflect on who and when first called St. Petersburg the “new Rome”. Clearly, the idea is alive for a reason.
On the Wave
The project of transforming the river port and embankment in the city of Cheboksary, developed by the ATRIUM Architects, involves one of the city’s key areas. The Volga embankment is to be turned into a riverside boulevard – a multifunctional, comfortable, and expressive space for work and leisure activities. The authors propose creating a new link with the city’s main Krasnaya (“Red”) Square, as well as erecting several residential towers inspired by the shape of the traditional national women’s headdress – these towers are likely to become striking accents on the Volga panorama.
Valery Kanyashin: “We Were Given a Free Hand”
The Headliner residential complex, the main part of which was recently completed just across from Moscow City, is a kind of neighbor to the MIBC that doesn’t “play along” with it. On the contrary, the new complex is entirely built on contrast: like a city of differently scaled buildings that seems to have emerged naturally over the past 20 years – which is a hugely popular trend nowadays! And yet here – perhaps only here – such a project has been realized to its full potential. Yes, high-rises dominate, but all these slender, delicate profiles, all these exciting perspectives! And most importantly – how everything is mixed and composed together... We spoke with the project’s leader Valery Kanyashin.
​The Keystone
Until quite recently, premium residential and office complexes in Moscow were seen as the exclusive privilege of the city center. Today the situation is changing: high-quality architecture is moving beyond the confines of the Third Ring Road and appearing on the outskirts. The STONE Kaluzhskaya business center is one such example. Projects like this help decentralize the megalopolis, making life and work prestigious in any part of the city.
Perpetuum Mobile
The interior of the headquarters of Natsproektstroy, created by the IND studio team, vividly and effectively reflects the client’s field of activity – it is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure companies, responsible for logistics and transport communications of every kind you can possibly think of.
Water and Light
Church art is full of symbolism, and part of it is truly canonical, while another part is shaped by tradition and is perceived by some as obligatory. Because of this kind of “false conservatism”, contemporary church architecture develops slowly compared to other genres, and rarely looks contemporary. Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts in this field out there: the cemetery church of Archangel Michael in Apatity, designed by Dmitry Ostroumov and Prokhram bureau, combines tradition and experiment. This is not an experiment for its own sake, however – rather, the considered work of a contemporary architect with the symbolism of space, volume, and, above all, light.
Champions’ Cup
At first glance, the Bell skyscraper on 1st Yamskogo Polya Street, 12, appears strict and laconic – though by no means modest. Its economical stereometry is built on a form close to an oval, one of UNK architects’ favorite themes. The streamlined surface of the main volume, clad in metal louvers, is sliced twice with glass incisions that graphically reveal the essence of the original shape: both its simplicity and its complexity. At the same time, dozens of highly complex engineering puzzles have been solved here.
Semi-Digital Environment
In the town of Innopolis, a satellite of Kazan, the first 4-star hotel designed by MAD Architects has opened. The interiors of the hotel combine elegance with irony, and technology with comfort, evoking the atmosphere of a computer game or maybe a sci-fi movie about the near future.
History never ends
The old railway station in Kapan, a city in southern Armenia, has been given new life by the Paris-based design firm Normal Studio. Today, it serves as a TUMO center.
A Deep, Crystal Shine
A new luxury residential development by ADM architects is set to rise in the Patriarch’s Ponds district, not far from Novopushkinsky Square. It will replace three buildings erected in the early 1990s. The project authors, Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova, have placed their bets on the variety among the three volumes, modern design solutions, and attention to detail: one of the buildings will feature smoothly curved balconies with a ceramic sheen on their undersides, while another will be accented by glass “sculpture” columns.
Grigory Revzin: “What we should do with the architecture of the seventies”
Soviet modernism came in two flavors: the good, author-driven kind, and the bad, standardized kind. The good kind was “on the periphery”, while the bad kind was in the center – geographically, in terms of attention, scale, and everything else. Can we demolish it? “That would be destroying public consensus out of thin air”. So what should we do? Preserve it, but creatively: “Bring architecture into places where it hasn’t yet appeared”. Treat these buildings not as monuments, but as urban landscape. Read our interview with Grigory Revzin on the pressing topic of saving modernism – where he proposes a controversial, yet really intriguing, way of preserving 1970s buildings.
A Roadside Picnic of Urban Planning Theorists
Marina Egorova, head of Empate Architectural Bureau, brought together urban planning theorists – the successors of Alexey Gutnov and Vyacheslav Glazychev – to revive the substance and depth of professional discourse. At the first meeting, much ground was covered: the participants revisited the theoretical foundations, aligned their values, examined a cutting-edge case of the Kazan agglomeration, and concluded with the unfathomable intricacies of Russian land demarcation. Below, we present key takeaways from all the presentations.
Perspective View
CNTR Architects has designed a business center for a new district in Yekaterinburg, aiming to reduce the need for commuting and make the residential environment more diverse. The architectural solutions are equally focused on creating spatial flexibility, comfortable working conditions, and a memorable image that could allow the building to become a spatial landmark of the district.
Malevich and Bathhouses, Nature and High-Tech
The Malevich Bathhouse complex is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025 on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The project, designed by DBA-GROUP under the leadership of Vladislav Andreev, is an example of an unconventional approach to the image of a spa in general and of a bathhouse in particular. Deliberately avoiding any kind of allusion, the architects opted for streamlined forms with characteristic rounded corners, a combination of wood with bent glass, and restrained contemporary shapes – both inside and out. Let’s take a closer look at the project.
Rather, a Tablecloth and a Glass!
After many years, the long-abandoned Horse Guards Department building in St. Petersburg has finally received the attention it deserves: according to a design by Studio 44, the first restoration and adaptation works are scheduled to begin this year. Both the intended function and the general scope of works imply minimal alteration to the complex, which has preserved traces of its three-century history. All solutions are reversible and aimed, above all, at opening the monument to the city and immersing it in a lively social scene – hence the choice of a cultural center scenario with a strong gastronomic component.
​Materialization of Airflows
The Nikolai Kamov International Airport in Tomsk opened at the end of August last year. We have already written about the project – now we are taking a look at the completed building. Its functionality is reinforced by symbolic undertones: the architects at ASADOV sought to reflect local identity in the architecture as fully as possible.
The City as a Narrative
Sergey Skuratov’s approach to large urban plots could best be described as a “total design code”. The architect pays equal attention to the overall composition and the smallest of details, striving to ensure that every aspect is thoroughly thought out and subordinated to the original vision. It’s a Renaissance-like approach, really – a titanic effort demanding remarkable willpower and perseverance. The results are likewise grand – architecture that makes a statement. This article looks at the revived concept for the central section of the Seventh Heaven residential district in Kazan, a composition so thoroughly considered that even the “gradient of visual emphasis” (sic!) across the facades has been carefully worked out. It also touches on the narrative idea behind the project – and even the architect’s own doubts about it.
A Garden of Hope for Freedom
In October, at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal, the Prison Yard Garden opened on the site that had served as a prison from the 18th century until the Khrushchev Thaw. The architectural concept was developed by NOῨD Short Film, and the landscape design by the MOX landscape bureau. In fact, there are two gardens here – very different ones. We try to understand whether they evoke the right emotions in visitors, while also showing the beauty of June’s ruderal plants in bloom.
A Laconic Image of Time
The Time Square residential complex, built on the northern edge of St. Petersburg, appears more concise and efficient than its neighbor and predecessor, the New Time complex. Nevertheless, the architect’s hand is clearly felt: themes of “black and white”, “inside and outside”, and most notably, the “lamellar” quality of the facades that seems to visibly “eat away” at the buildings’ mass – everything is played out like a well-written score. One is reminded of both classical modernism and the so-called “post-constructivism”.
The Flower of the Lake
The prototype for the building of the Kamal Theater in Kazan is an ice flower: a rare and fragile natural phenomenon of Lake Kaban “froze” in the large, soaring outlines of the glass screens enclosing the main volume, shaping its silhouette and shielding the stained-glass windows from the sun. The project, led by the Wowhaus consortium and including global architecture “star” Kengo Kuma, won the 2021/2022 competition and was realized close to the original concept in a short – very short – period of time. The theater opened in early 2025. It was Kengo Kuma who proposed the image of an ice flower and the contraposition of cold on the outside and warmth on the inside. Between 2022 and 2024, Wowhaus did everything possible to bring this vision to life, practically living on-site. Now we are taking a closer look at this landmark building and its captivating story.
Peaceful Integration on Mira Avenue
The MIRA residential complex (the word mir means “peace” in Russian), perched above the steep banks of the Yauza River and Mira Avenue, lives up to its name not only technically, but also visually and conceptually. Sleek, high-rise, and glass-clad, it responds both to Zholtovsky’s classicism and to the modernism of the nearby “House on Stilts”. Drawing on features from its neighbors, it reconciles them within a shared architectural language rooted in contemporary façade design. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
An Interior for a New Format of Education
The design of the new building for Tyumen State University (TyumSU) was initially developed before the pandemic but later revised to meet new educational requirements. The university has adopted a “2+2+2” system, which eliminates traditional divisions into groups and academic streams in favor of individualized study programs. These changes were implemented swiftly – right at the start of construction. Now that the building is complete, we are taking a closer look.
Penthouses and Kokoshniks
A new residential complex designed by ASADOV Architects for the Krasnaya Roza business district responds to its proximity to 17th-century landmarks – the chambers of the Hamovny Dvor and St. Nicholas Church – as well as to the need to preserve valuable façades of a historic rental house built in the Russian Revival style. The architects proposed a set of buildings of varying heights, whose façades reference ecclesiastical architecture. But we were also able to detect other associations.
Centipede Town
The new school campus designed by ATRIUM Architects, located on the shores of a protected lake in the Imeretian Lowland Ornithological Reserve, represents an important and ambitious undertaking for the team: this is not just a school, but a Presidential Lyceum for the comprehensive development of gifted children – 2,500 students from age 3 through high school. At the same time, it is also envisioned as a new civic hub for the entire Sirius territory. In this article, we unpack the structure and architecture of this “lyceum town”.
Warm Black and White
The second phase of “Quarter 31”, designed by KPLN and built in the Moscow suburb town of Pushkino, reveals a multifaceted character. At first glance, the complex appears to be defined by geometry and a monochrome palette. But a closer look reveals a number of “irregular” details: a gradient of glazing and flared window frames, a hierarchy of façades, volumetric brickwork, and even architectural references to natural phenomena. We explore all the rules – and exceptions – that we were able to discover here.