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Sergey Kiselev. Interview by Yuliya Tarabarina

Archi.ru is the official information partner of the Russian pavilion on XI Venetian biennial. This material begins a series of interview to architects-participants of an exposition of the Russian pavilion which will be published in "the Venetian" catalogue. So it has turned out that the exhibition of the architectural company "Sergey Kiselyov and partners" which have been named by "architects of year" last summer becomes a part of "Arh-Moskvy" starting in the nearest Monday.

23 May 2008
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You founded one of the first private architectural studios during perestroika, and it subsequently grew into a large architectural firm. How did you begin?

An important factor was a trip to America made by the first delegation of Soviet architects to visit the USA since 1935. The party included: Yury Platonov, who had recently been elected Chairman of the Union of Architects ‘from the floor’; Aleksandr Kudryavtsev, Rector of the Moscow Institute of Architecture; Academician Dzhim Torosyan; and myself (representing the country’s young architects). We were literally given the red-carpet treatment from New York to San Francisco and received with great honour. This trip literally revolutionized my outlook on life. It was then that I met the architect Sydney Gilbert, who was Vice-chairman of Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility, our host organization. This acquaintance had a great impact on me.

American architecture of that time really influenced you?

No, not architecture, but how the process was organized. Sydney was no ‘star’, and at the time the big names in architecture paid us Russians no attention. But he was a brilliant organizer. Everything in his office was beautifully arranged, and we subsequently used this experience in our own work. And the second important thing was that he brought us commissions. We organized a kind of exchange of delegations between our offices. Subsequently, we signed an agreement by which we undertook to work only with Gilbert’s firm in America and were in turn his only partner in Russia. He began supplying us with commissions to design Russian offices for foreign companies (it was at that time that they began setting up operations here). Mainly, this was interior design. It was a good start and it allowed us to gain experience. Then we stopped being interested in interior design, and in 1996 we passed all these contacts to Boris Levyant, who retains an interior-design department to this day.

So you started specializing?

Yes, in the end we specialized. Like many, though, we started with interiors, and did a great number of them. For the joint-stock enterprise Burda Moden alone – which at the end of the 1980s was curated by Raisa Gorbachev in person – we designed offices in Moscow and another 16 cities. Then in 1992 we did the urban-planning concept for the development of Mosfilmovsky district. The concept went before a session of the Government of Moscow. Subsequently, we had the heads of other municipal districts queuing at our doors, so to speak. This was followed by reconstruction and even restoration projects, including the restoration project for the Senate in the Kremlin. Then came contextual construction projects and restoration of historical buildings, including of the building which contains our office. At the time, in the mid 1990s, we invested our labour by doing several projects free of charge in exchange for the chance to have our own office in the city centre. Our logo still contains the words ‘architecture, design, planning’, implying that we are a large universal company. However, it’s now extremely rare for us to take on interior-design jobs, and only in buildings which we have designed ourselves. And ‘two-dimensional’ planning, i.e. urban planning, is something we’ve likewise not done for a long time, although Vyacheslav Bogachkin, one of my colleagues from the 90s, and I graduated from the Department of Urban Planning at MARCHI. We gradually realized that urban planning is another type of activity: it is management, zoning laws, and regulation. So, even though we design street blocks of 10-15 hectares, I don’t regard this as urban planning, but as building design on a large scale. Ours is ‘box’ architecture. We design only for the city. Single-family houses and out-of-town settlements are not our thing. In the final analysis, we specialize in large architectural objects that are financially independent from the authorities.

Why?

At the beginning of the 1990s we made an attempt to work for public money. The civil servant who was responsible for allocating the commission suggested that we return to him part of the money for this commission. We thought him a thief, turned the job down, and decided, as far as possible, to have nothing more to do with such officials. We decided we should work with people who have their own money or borrow it, rather than for public money.

Have you had any desire to change or expand your established area of specialization?


I have said repeatedly that we’re a little tired of commercial commissions. Of course, we want to do non-commercial architecture – or, at the very least, architecture that prioritizes image. Currently, what we mainly do is satisfy the client’s objectives, and clients usually want the maximum – to spend as little as possible on construction and sell for as high a price as possible. We would like to design a building with a cultural function – one where profit is not the main criterion of success. But no one has approached us with such a proposal. Probably, we’re too dry, too far from art. Perhaps it’s in vain that we have created this image for ourselves, refraining from emphasizing the aesthetic aspects of our work for fear of being told that we won’t be able to cope. Perhaps this is from fright. Unjustified fright.

Nonetheless, in 2007 you were named ‘Architect of the Year’ at Arch Moscow and, what’s more, picked up all possible awards for best buildings for the same year.

I was surprised when we were honoured as best architects. When we were awarded the prize for best project from the point of view of developers for Avant-garde a year earlier, that was more comprehensible.

You often talk in this vein – emphasizing the pragmatic side of things while leaving aesthetics to art critics. At the same time your work clearly shows rules and principles – with regard to both style and behaviour – to which you adhere quite strictly. Could you say a few words about these principles?


There are two of them and they both begin with ‘u’ in Russian – appropriateness and ability. Appropriateness means ‘don’t harm’ the site or the city. It’s the social responsibility that the architect should feel with respect to the city in which he works. And ability is that which makes it possible for architects to satisfy their clients’ requirements.

But these are opposites: everything for the city and everything for the client!

Yes, and there’s a third principle: compromise, the ability to find a balance between the above two principles. My ‘sworn friends’ are often ironic on this subject. Kiselev, they say, can find his way between the raindrops; he’s an affectionate calf sucking two mothers. But I’m absolutely sure that an urban architect should have a talent for finding a compromise between the greed of the client and the constraints imposed by the city. The better the balance he can find, the better the buildings that he designs for the city. The ability to reach agreement, to explain why certain things cannot be done, to satisfy the client materially and spiritually, and at the same time not to behave offensively in the city: these have been the main principles that have governed us when building in the historical city centre. Currently, we’re trying to do exactly the same in our large projects, but they are on a different level of technical complexity. Here a different philosophy and different aesthetic apply: you have to create an absolutely rational building. This in itself entails an aesthetic component.

What do you mean by rationalism?


Nothing should happen without good reason. As a student, I read a textbook on formal logic for teaching colleges. I really liked it. It made clear that everything flows from and follows something else. This makes it difficult for me to accept from my colleagues arguments such as ‘That’s the way I see it’. There have even been conflicts, and gradually we’ve been left only with architects who can explain their decisions and formulate why they have drawn something this way and no other – why there’s a projection here, why green is the colour used here and red the colour here. This can be difficult; solutions occur intuitively, but at the same time I think it very important to think through the result, to make it well-considered – rather than an automatic movement of the hand. Architecture, as I see it, is a more complex species of activity than simply art. It involves organizing life, functions, flows, and movements of people and vehicles. Note that in Vitruvius’s triad of ‘benefit, strength, beauty’, beauty comes last. A great many of my colleagues and many art critics read this triad in reverse order, emphasizing the aesthetic component. There’s reason for this: art is higher and it’s art that moves culture forwards. The two other components are self-evident. But I think it’s very important in the city to see the other components as well as the aesthetic. A city is something more complex than simply the sum of its buildings. It’s an organism that has to be managed. Its processes need to be organized by means of laws and rules, written and unwritten. For me, for example, the environment as a whole is very important – the potholes on the roads, advertising banners strung across houses, and dirty rubbish bins. Not to mention the crumbling facades.

You have created a large architectural firm with a large number of projects and several leading architects. At the same time, your scrupulousness is well-known: some time ago, you even refrained from having your surname necessarily put first in the list of members of the creative team – so as to show the degree to which you had taken part in a project. Why?

There are traditions and rules of decency. At a certain moment there gets to be so much work and so many helpers are involved that it becomes more their project than yours. In general, having a project in production is awful. It ought to be your project, but you’ve lost control of it, and it becomes more someone else’s than yours. So I refrained from putting my own surname first on buildings which seemed to me to have been conceived by other people. This concerned Skuratov and Bogachkin, above all. They were self-sufficient. These guys have set up their own offices and now have every right to put their names at the top. At the same time, my ‘complexes’ in this regard have been largely eliminated by a whole series of buildings which have likewise won acclaim and in which the main melody and idea have been mine. They are: the oval block in the Central Telegraph project, Subaru Centre, Avantgarde, Ermitazh Plaza, and other structures where it was I who determined the main principles. In the case of Avantgarde I proposed making the building multihued, of three types of panels, proposed correcting the tension in the lines of its rounded outline, and proposed putting it on legs like a cupboard… On the other hand, in large foreign companies it’s accepted procedure for the owner always to write his name first. It’s like the artistic director of a theatre – who may not direct every production, but nevertheless determines the main themes. We espouse certain aesthetic principles. It’s unlikely, for instance, that something decorated with capitals will ever come out of this office.

You don’t do Classicism. To design the Neoclassical house in Levshinsky pereulok, you called on Il’ya Utkin. What else defines your aesthetics?


As Okuzhava said, ‘everyone writes as he breathes.’ I’m of the firm opinion that all architecture is a portrait not just of its author, but also of the age and the country in which it is created. A civilization should be reflected in architecture that matches its degree of progress. If the idea of appropriateness is extended to include position in time, then I sincerely think that Classical architecture is absolutely inappropriate when we have other technical capabilities, another language, and another mentality. There are, of course, specific tasks that make it necessary to use traditional techniques, but this is mainly for restoration work.

So for you Classicism is conservatism?

Yes. It goes without saying that the different types of architecture may be talented or the reverse, but still I think it strange to create Classical architecture in this day and age. It’s something I just cannot understand.

To return to principles, what was your motivation in leaving design institute in the 1980s to set up your own architectural office?

First, there is such a thing as honesty. It is impossible to sit for eight hours a day earning 150 rubles and then earn 800 during the evenings. It just doesn’t make sense. Clearly, your main working day will be less intense and you’ll begin using these less busy eight hours to do what you should be doing in the evening after work. This is one such principle. There was another interesting point, though. I had always been apolitical and even took pride in the fact that till the age of 27 I hadn’t even read the Komsomol charter. Then I was invited to join the Communist Party. I categorically refused until Yury Platonov, who had become a member of the Party’s Central Committee, talked me into it by arguing that as Communists we should reconstruct the country. I joined, but then, as soon as I realized I’d made a mistake, I quickly left of my own accord. You could say these were acts of the same order – to leave the Party and to resign from design institute. This was in the spring of 1988. At the time this was a serious matter: I was taken aside and asked how I’d dare return my Party membership card.

All for the sake of being honest?


Strictly speaking, yes. There are colleagues of mine of whom it’s said at planning-approval sessions, for instance, that their figures need to be checked. Whereas my figures never have to be checked. Reputation is the most valuable capital there is; this is our slogan to this day.

Is this a help or a hindrance?


A help. I think this was wise – to stake our money on reputation from the very beginning. This is our principle, you could say. Why was I awarded ‘Architect of the Year’? I really don’t know! I suppose that over the years we have earned ourselves a reputation which has led both the architectural authorities and clients to think highly of us. Judging by the number of commissions we have, our reputation is well-deserved. Now it works in our favour, and all we have to do is maintain it.


23 May 2008

Headlines now
​The Power of Lines
The building at the very beginning of New Arbat is the result of long deliberations over how to replace the former House of Communication. Contemporary, dynamic, and even somewhat zoomorphic in character, it is structured around a large diagonal grid. The building has become a striking accent both in the perspective of the former Kalinin Avenue and in the panorama of Arbat Square. Yet, unfortunately, the original concept was not fully realized. In 2020, the Moscow ArchCouncil approved a design featuring an exoskeleton – an external load-bearing structure, which eventually turned into a purely decorative element. Still, the power of the supergraphic “holds” the building, giving it the qualities of a new urban landmark with iconic potential. How this concept took shape, what unexpected associations might underlie the grid’s form, and why the exoskeleton was never built – all this is explored in our article.
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”.