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​An Architect about Architecture and Architects

In this article, we are giving a summary of a lecture by Alexander Skokan. The author’s subtitle is a subjective attempt to share about the professional problems.

11 January 2019
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Why am I an architect?

There were family prerequisites for that. My grand-grandfather, Peter Makushin, a patron of art, a prominent public figure, and an educator of Siberia, who founded the first publishing house in the city of Tomsk with a subsidiary in Irkutsk, and who also opened book stores and the first public library, built in 1916 in Tomsk, at his own expense, the “House of Science” for the public university.

A son of a country vicar, getting an education in the Ecclesiastical Academy of Saint Petersburg, he implemented this idea of his in the best architectural traditions: he organized a competition for the best construction project that was won by the then-young and unknown architect, Andrei Kryachkov.

Possibly, it was this event that influenced the choice of the profession for his grandson – the architect Peter Skokan, who became one of the students of the Ivan Zholtovsky Studio.

Peter Skokan, my uncle, a figure well-known at one time for his various gifts and killer charm, also influenced my professional choice to a large extent. Later on, it turned out that virtually all of the members of my family (children, nephews, and their wives) are architects. I hope that we will be able to save at least our grandchildren from this curse.

In the 1960’s, when I went to the Moscow Institute of Architecture my teachers were the famous avant-garde architects of the 1920-1930’s, Mikhail Turkus and Vladimir Krinsky; parallel classes were taught by Mikhail Barshch and Mikhail Sinyavsky. In an institute corridor you would oftentimes see Gregory Barkhin, the author of “Izvestia”, one of the best buildings in Moscow of the XX century, who would hurry to his class with giant books under his arm. And the son of Gregory, Boris Grigoryevich Barkhin, was the teacher of the group that I was in. It was him who fostered the rudimentary professional skills in us, or, simply speaking, taught us how to work.

After I graduated from the institute in 1966, I was sent on a “postgraduate work assignment program” (there was such a thing back in the soviet times) to work in Mosproject-2. The student romance was replaced by mundane reality. The studio where I worked chiefly designed housing projects for the “Facilities Administration Office” of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which, by the standards of those days, could arguably be considered to be elite housing. I was young, brimming with energy and enthusiasm, but the civil service did not allow me to fully explore my potential, and, this is why, when I was invited to join the “New Element of Settlement” working group, I happily agreed – it was a great honor for me to work alongside Aleksey Gutnov, Ilya Lezhava, Andrey Baburov and other legendary figures. It was at that time that I developed my skills as a team player, which came in very handy for my further professional career – now I see that any kind of successful work is about playing as a team, where you know exactly who plays which part, and where the players are united not only professionally but by friendly ties as well.

One must realize that back in the 1960’s, all the sources of information, for the exception of the official ones, were virtually nonexistent, and this is why communication between people was so utterly critical. Speaking to one another, we would be getting across our knowledge and our subjective points of view. For example, my friend Andrey Baburov noticed, and I remembered that you could only listen to piano pieces by Skryabin if they were played by Vladimir Sofronitsky. Only in that room in the basement you could discuss a new novel by William Faulkner or Max Frisch, and it was there that I was first exposed to jazz music arranged by Gil Evans, and I also made a lot of other discoveries and got a lot of other knowledge there.

Once the term of my mandatory work of the postgraduate work assignment was over, I enrolled at the postgraduate courses at VNIiTIA. My science adviser was Andrey Ikonnikov – a most venerable student and theorist of architecture. And, again, I was lucky because I found myself in what you might call the intellectual epicenter of the university, i.e. in the smoking area underneath the staircase; for two years, every week (the postgraduate students were supposed to show up once a week); I would listen to Andrey Leonidov (the son of Ivan Leonidov), Alexander Rappoport, my friends Andrey Bokov and Vladimir Yudintsev. Also, there were such great people working there as Selim Khan-Magomedov, A.Oppolovnikov, and Nikolai Gulyanitsliy.

A few years later, Vladimir Yudintsev and I again ended up working together. This time it was the research and development department of Genplan Institute of Moscow, which a while later was headed by Aleksey Gutnov. Thanks to Gutnov’s organizational and other talents, we had something like a special status and could busy ourselves with what was interesting to us and what seemed to us really important; we also would come up ourselves with the subjects of our design and research projects.

The main motivation for our activities was overthrowing the then-almighty governmental agency Genplan (which translates as “Master Plan”) that would divide the city into a few (seven or eight) independent towns-planning zones, each with a center of its own. The main ideologist of Genplan, Simon Matveev, whom we would inevitably corner in our discussions, would ultimately always extricate himself with an answer to the effect that “better a bad master plan than no master plan at all”. This young urge to do everything “OUR OWN WAY”, look at things at a different angle, allowed our team to make a lot of discoveries and come up with a lot of new lines of research, along which we would work later on.

We proposed to view a city contextually, as a part of a complex system of agglomeration ties, which, back in those days (and sometimes today as well) is obstructed by administrative obstacles that tend to separate the city from its surrounding territory, generally known as “oblast”. We also claimed that a city needed a polycentric structure of multifunctional business centers situated at several transport hubs, instead of just one. Also, right about that time, we discovered yet another promising branch – working with the historical city and its environment, which generally did not comply with any of the existing rules and regulations. “Discovering” this city that we had known for years from our everyday life but knew nothing about from the professional standpoint, we started our research from historical, morphological, functional, and even attempts at social analysis. We saw the problems of the city from a whole number of new different angles.

Back in the 1980’s, although they had to work a lot, the architects did not make much money, while their friends – painters, sculptors and graphic designers – sometimes made decent money when they chanced to land a lucrative contract. This is why the architects were so lured by the prospect of working in “Integrated Art Centers”, where they would enter in a creative symbiosis with artists and designers. Together, they would work on the expositions of museums and exhibitions, design theater stages, community centers, and industrial buildings.

Working together with these artists was a great professional school, an experience of free intuitive creative activity, without the architectural pre-programming.

Here I was taught by: sculptor Nikolai Nikogosyan, the Rukavishnikov sculptor family, and, finally, the sculptor of monuments and painter Ivan Lubennikov, with whom we did a few very important joint projects – the exposition of the Soviet section of the Auschwitz memorial museum, the XVII Youth Exhibition of the “Memorial” society, a few contests, and many other interesting projects.

Speaking of my great teachers, I cannot help but mention Leonid Pavlov, with whom I was looking lucky to work almost for a month in Weimar (Bauhaus) in 1978 within the framework of an international project conference. The clarity, the crispness, and the dramatic quality of his architectural gestures, talking to him in general, and the master’s charming ways really impressed me.

And, finally, 30 years ago, in 1989, the project of reconstructing Moscow’s Ostozhenka area brought about the appearance of our architectural firm, which later got the name of Ostozhenka.

It was on that project that all the experience that I had accumulated hitherto came in very handy, as well as my skills of working as a team player.

After working in Genplan with the territories of Zamoskvorechye, Stoleshnikov Lane, Pokrovka Street, and such like, working with historical environment was habitual and easy. Also came in very handy the idea of parceling that we discovered when still working on the Stoleshnikov Lane – the new buildings started to easily fit in with the historical environment it these historical guidelines were observed. Working with the Ostozhenka Street was also about an experience of working with initially timid clients and developers, who would at first politely ask: “how many square meters can we build here?”, and the communication with the then-forming class of government officials, many of whom had in fact recently been our brothers in architecture.

I also had a very interesting experience of working with overseas architects: Finns, Italians, English, Turks, and Yugoslavs (yes, if you remember, there was such a country – Yugoslavia), Dutch, and French.

Since 2003, it has been the time of major international competition, and our company has been participating in many of them.

This was the competition for Saint-Petersburg’s Mariinski Theater, the competition “Big Moscow” (2012), and the competition “Moscow River”. As for our last two competition projects, we did them together with our French colleagues (Ives Lion architects). Again, we made discoveries that were very important for us and our city – a railway, a river, a 100 cities and 140 little rivers). In these competition projects we also partnered with geographers, transport experts, sociologists, and one architectural historian, Andrei Baldin. Not trying to say anything final, and not claiming to be holding the ultimate truth, in conclusion of this talk about architecture and architects, I would like to try and formulate a few keynotes that seem important to me:

Keynote one: “APPROPRIATENESS OF ARCHITECTURE”

“Appropriateness” means that your architecture fits in with its place and its properties. At the same time, you must keep in mind that today the very notion of “place” is being constantly diluted, that is, the farther away we are, the bigger this place is, and we are now sort of in a different place.

On the one side, this is a result of our growing mobility – we have visited a great number of places in the world, and now it’s hard for us to stay committed to some specific place, even if it is our “small motherland”.

On the other hand, thanks to smartphones and other smart gadgets that have become an indispensable part of our life, we can be in this or that specific place only physically, while in actuality, looking into the screens of our smartphones, we can be in quite different geographic locations and life situations.

That is, thanks to digitalization, “gadgetization”, and other “smartphonization”, the properties of your physical location, from which you go online, for the obvious exception of sitting comfort, are no longer that relevant, after all.

In this connection, it will also be appropriate to touch upon another relevant topic: architecture and design.

Who are we? Architects or, rather, already designers? Designers of perfect objects, including buildings, their outward shells and interior spaces?

Design is exterritorial and cosmopolitan, it is not context-sensitive. A designer object (which you cannot say about architecture) will look great everywhere if it is perfect from the technical and aesthetic standpoint. Design is global. Globalism is partially a child of design.

An architect is by default more local, more “down to earth”. As a rule, the fruits of his labor are firmly rooted in the ground – even though they do talk about the architecture of ships, for instance, or about the architecture (and not design) of some institutions, like European Union, nothing more nor less, and quite recently, come to think of it, we had “architects of perestroika” and so on.

Not delving deeper into this discourse, I believe that with a fair share of certainty we can refer design and everything that is related to it to the class of global phenomena which exist with a certain contextual time frame – design by default is current. And architecture is something that is APPROPRIATE for a specific place, something that is inscribed into it, something that corresponds to its genius loci, its taste, its smell, and its history.

Keynote two: “EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE YOU”

Meaning, you don’t have to invent anything – you only need to see what is already there, something that has been around for ages: as the historical traces of property boundaries, old streets and roads, buried little rivers and ravines, derelict industrial parks and railway lines that would entwine large cities in the first half of the XX century – all of this is already there or was there, and this is something that any urban researcher worth his salt will never overlook.

Such “discoveries” are essentially nothing more than one’s ability to see the seemingly habitual things from a different angle or ability to reinterpret the existing contexts in the light of “newly emerging circumstances”. A textbook example of a stupid or malevolent “coming up with something that nobody else did before” is the 2011 annexation of new territories by Moscow, instead of searching for new hidden resources for further development within the city. At that moment, by the way, the smart urban designers did propose a concept of recycling the redundant city territories, which lay unused, as well as the land adjacent to rivers and railroad lines – the so-called “forgotten city”. This would have been an example of recycling the land, of reusing the city substance with consideration for the changes in its meanings and functions, a natural and inevitable process (Lizin Pond – Tyufeleva Coppice – AMO – ZIS – ZIL – ZILART).

The real problem only lies in our attitude towards the remnants or the traces of the previous use of this land – is it curious, disdainful or is it respectful? This is a test of how cultured we are, and therefore, the demolition of the Khrushchev five-story houses within the so-called “renovation program” is not just an architectural problem.

And, finally, the keynote that I would call “DIFFERENTLY”

This means doing things not the way everybody does them or not the way that is usually done here and now. Not jumping on the bandwagon but trying to do your own independent thinking. That is, trying to be not just inside the process but also outside of it – then you will have much more chances to see what goes on, and what forces are at play.

The trick obviously is to be able to switch between being inside and outside the process. 

Your “different” position, your ability to see things from a different angle will also allow you to see and even predict the future.

Because architecture is always about the future. The beginning of design and the end of construction are always separated by a time lapse – a month, a year, a decade, maybe, even a century. Architectural design is always about a passthrough into the future. Therefore, one of the key tasks of architecture and architects is not just creating appropriate things but also setting the image of the future. Regretfully, today this task is most often performed by people who, out of their calling or job description, are simply “security guards” who fence off things that already exist from the future, in which they only see threats and challenges. Not to mention the economists who calculate how much responding to these challenges will cost, and the lawyers who provide the necessary legal sevices to this die-hard approach.

11 January 2019

Headlines now
The Mirror of Your Soul
We continue to publish projects from the competition for the design of the Russian Pavilion at EXPO in Osaka 2025. We are reminding you that the results of the competition have not been announced, and hardly will ever be. The pavilion designed by ASADOV Architects combines a forest log cabin, the image of a hyper transition, and sculptures made of glowing threads – it focuses primarily on the scenography of the exhibition, which the pavilion builds sequentially like a string of impressions, dedicating it to the paradoxes of the Russian soul.
Part of the Ideal
In 2025, another World Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan, in which Russia will not participate. However, a competition for the Russian pavilion was indeed held, with six projects participating. The results were never announced as Russia’s participation was canceled; the competition has no winners. Nevertheless, Expo pavilion projects are typically designed for a bold and interesting architectural statement, so we’ve gathered all the six projects and will be publishing articles about them in random order. The first one is the project by Vladimir Plotkin and Reserve Union, which is distinguished by the clarity of its stereometric shape, the boldness of its structure, and the multiplicity of possible interpretations.
Object
The Fortress by the River
ASADOV Architects have developed a concept for a new residential district in the center of Kemerovo. To combat the harsh climate and monotonous everyday life, the architects proposed a block type of development with dominant towers, good insolation, facades detailed at eye level, and event programming.
Object
In the Rhombus Grid
Construction has begun on the building of the OMK (United Metallurgical Company) Corporate University in Nizhny Novgorod’s town of Vyksa, designed by Ostozhenka Architects. The most interesting aspect of the project is how the architects immersed it in the context: “extracting” a diagonal motif from the planning grid of Vyksa, they aligned the building, the square, and the park to match it. A truly masterful work with urban planning context on several different levels of perception has long since become the signature technique of Ostozhenka.
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​Generational Connection
Another modern estate, designed by Roman Leonidov, is located in the Moscow region and brings together three generations of one family under one roof. To fit on a narrow plot without depriving anyone of personal space, the architects opted for a zigzag plan. The main volume in the house structure is accentuated by mezzanines with a reverse-sloped roof and ceilings featuring exposed beams.
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Three Dimensions of the City
We began to delve into the project by Sergey Skuratov, the residential complex “Depo” in Minsk, located at Victory Square, and it fascinated us completely. The project has at least several dimensions to it: historical – at some point, the developer decided to discontinue further collaboration with Sergey Skuratov Architects, but the concept was approved, and its implementation continues, mostly in accordance with the proposed ideas. The spatial and urban planning dimension – the architects both argue with the city and play along with it, deciphering nuances, and finding axes. And, finally, the tactile dimension – the constructed buildings also have their own intriguing features. Thus, this article also has two parts: it dwells on what has been built and what was conceived
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New “Flight”
Architects from “Mezonproject” have developed a project for the reconstruction of the regional youth center “Polyot”(“Flight”) in the city of Oryol. The summer youth center, built back in the late 1970s, will now become year-round and acquire many additional functions.
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The Yauza Towers
In Moscow, there aren’t that many buildings or projects designed by Nikita Yavein and Studio 44. In this article, we present to you the concept of a large multifunctional complex on the Yauza River, located between two parks, featuring a promenade, a crossroads of two pedestrian streets, a highly developed public space, and an original architectural solution. This solution combines a sophisticated, asymmetric façade grid, reminiscent of a game of fifteen puzzle, and bold protrusions of the upper parts of the buildings, completely masking the technical floors and sculpting the complex’s silhouette.
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Architecture and Leisure Park
For the suburban hotel complex, which envisages various formats of leisure, the architectural company T+T Architects proposed several types of accommodation, ranging from the classic “standard” in a common building to a “cave in the hill” and a “house in a tree”. An additional challenge consisted in integrating a few classic-style residences already existing on this territory into the “architectural forest park”.
Overview
The U-House
The Jois complex combines height with terraces, bringing the most expensive apartments from penthouses down to the bottom floors. The powerful iconic image of the U-shaped building is the result of the creative search for a new standard of living in high-rise buildings by the architects of “Genpro”.
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Black and White
In this article, we specifically discuss the interiors of the ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh. Interior design is a crucial component of the overall concept in this case, and precision and meticulous execution were highly important for the architects. Julia Tryaskina, head of UNK interiors, shares some of the developments.
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The “Snake” Mountain
The competition project for the seaside resort complex “Serpentine” combines several typologies: apartments of different classes, villas, and hotel rooms. For each of these typologies, the KPLN architects employ one of the images that are drawn from the natural environment – a serpentine road, a mountain stream, and rolling waves.
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Opal from Anna Mons’ Ring
The project of a small business center located near Tupolev Plaza and Radio Street proclaims the necessity of modern architecture in a specific area of Moscow commonly known as “Nemetskaya Sloboda” or “German settlement”. It substantiates its thesis with the thoroughness of details, a multitude of proposed and rejected form variants, and even a detailed description of the surrounding area. The project is interesting indeed, and it is even more interesting to see what will come of it.
Object
Feed ’Em All
A “House of Russian Cuisine” was designed and built by KROST Group at VDNKh for the “Rossiya” exhibition in record-breaking time. The pavilion is masterfully constructed in terms of the standards of modern public catering industry multiplied by the bustling cultural program of the exhibition, and it interprets the stylistically diverse character of VDNKh just as successfully. At the same time, much of its interior design can be traced back to the prototypes of the 1960s – so much so that even scenes from iconic Soviet movies of those years persistently come to mind.
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The Ensemble at the Mosque
OSA prepared a master plan for a district in the southern part of Derbent. The main task of the master plan is to initiate the formation of a modern comfortable environment in this city. The organization of residential areas is subordinated to the city’s spiritual center: depending on the location relative to the cathedral mosque, the houses are distinguished by façade and plastique solutions. The program also includes a “hospitality center”, administrative buildings, an educational cluster, and even an air bridge.
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Pargolovo Protestantism
A Protestant church is being built in St. Petersburg by the project of SLOI architects. One of the main features of the building is a wooden roof with 25-meter spans, which, among other things, forms the interior of the prayer hall. Also, there are other interesting details – we are telling you more about them.
Object
The Shape of the Inconceivable
The ATOM Pavilion at VDNKh brings to mind a famous maxim of all architects and critics: “You’ve come up with it? Now build it!” You rarely see such a selfless immersion in implementation of the project, and the formidable structural and engineering tasks set by UNK architects to themselves are presented here as an integral and important part of the architectural idea. The challenge matches the obliging status of the place – after all, it is an “exhibition of achievements”, and the pavilion is dedicated to the nuclear energy industry. Let’s take a closer look: from the outside, from the inside, and from the underside too.
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​Rays of the Desert
A school for 1750 students is going to be built in Dubai, designed by IND Architects. The architects took into account the local specifics, and proposed a radial layout and spaces, in which the children will be comfortable throughout the day.
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The Dairy Theme
The concept of an office of a cheese-making company, designed for the enclosed area of a dairy factory, at least partially refers to industrial architecture. Perhaps that is why this concept is very simple, which seems the appropriate thing to do here. The building is enlivened by literally a couple of “master strokes”: the turning of the corner accentuates the entrance, and the shade of glass responds to the theme of “milk rivers” from Russian fairy tales.
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The Road to the Temple
Under a grant from the Small Towns Competition, the main street and temple area of the village of Nikolo-Berezovka near Neftekamsk has been improved. A consortium of APRELarchitects and Novaya Zemlya is turning the village into an open-air museum and integrating ruined buildings into public life.
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​Towers Leaning Towards the Sun
The three towers of the residential complex “Novodanilovskaya 8” are new and the tallest neighbors of the Danilovsky Manufactory, “Fort”, and “Plaza”, complementing a whole cluster of modern buildings designed by renowned masters. At the same time, the towers are unique for this setting – they are residential, they are the tallest ones here, and they are located on a challenging site. In this article, we explore how architects Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova tackled this far-from-trivial task.
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In the spirit of ROSTA posters
The new Rostselmash tractor factory, conceptualized by ASADOV Architects, is currently being completed in Rostov-on-Don. References to the Soviet architecture of the 1920’s and 1960’s resonate with the mission and strategic importance of the enterprise, and are also in line with the client’s wish: to pay homage to Rostov’s constructivism.
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The Northern Thebaid
The central part of Ferapontovo village, adjacent to the famous monastery with frescoes by Dionisy, has been improved according to the project by APRELarchitects. Now the place offers basic services for tourists, as well as a place for the villagers’ leisure.
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Brilliant Production
The architects from London-based MOST Architecture have designed the space for the high-tech production of Charge Cars, a high-performance production facility for high-speed electric cars that are assembled in the shell of legendary Ford Mustangs. The founders of both the company and the car assembly startup are Russians who were educated in their home country.
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Three-Part Task: St. Petersburg’s Mytny Dvor
The so-called “Mytny Dvor” area lying just behind Moscow Railway Station – the market rows with a complex history – will be transformed into a premium residential complex by Studio 44. The project consists of three parts: the restoration of historical buildings, the reconstruction of the lost part of the historical contour, and new houses. All of them are harmonized with each other and with the city; axes and “beams of light” were found, cozy corners and scenic viewpoints were carefully thought out. We had a chat with the authors of the historical buildings’ restoration project, and we are telling you about all the different tasks that have been solved here.
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The Color of the City, or Reflections on the Slope of an Urban Settlement
In 2022, Ostozhenka Architects won a competition, and in 2023, they developed and received all the necessary approvals for a master plan for the development of Chernigovskaya Street for the developer GloraX. The project takes into account a 10-year history of previous developments; it was done in collaboration with architects from Nizhny Novgorod, and it continues to evolve now. We carefully examined it, talked to everyone, and learned a lot of interesting things.
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A Single-Industry Town
Kola MMC and Nornickel are building a residential neighborhood in Monchegorsk for their future employees. It is based on a project by an international team that won the 2021 competition. The project offers a number of solutions meant to combat the main “demons” of any northern city: wind, grayness and boredom.
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A New Age Portico
At the beginning of the year, Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport opened Terminal C. The large-scale and transparent entrance hall with luminous columns inside successfully combines laconism with a bright and photogenic WOW-effect. The terminal is both the new façade of the whole complex and the starting point of the planned reconstruction, upon completion of which Tolmachevo will become the largest regional airport in Russia. In this article, we are examining the building in the context of modernist prototypes of both Novosibirsk and Leningrad: like puzzle pieces, they come together to form their individual history, not devoid of curious nuances and details.
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A New Starting Point
We’ve been wanting to examine the RuArts Foundation space, designed by ATRIUM for quite a long time, and we finally got round to it. This building looks appropriate and impressive; it amazingly combines tradition – represented in our case by galleries – and innovation. In this article, we delve into details and study the building’s historical background as well.
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Molding Perspectives
Stepan Liphart introduces “schematic Art Deco” on the outskirts of Kazan – his houses are executed in green color, with a glassy “iced” finish on the facades. The main merits of the project lie in his meticulous arrangement of viewing angles – the architect is striving to create in a challenging environment the embryo of a city not only in terms of pedestrian accessibility but also in a sculptural sense. He works with silhouettes, proposing intriguing triangular terraces. The entire project is structured like a crystal, following two grids, orthogonal and diagonal. In this article, we are examining what worked, and what eventually didn’t.