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Nikita Yaveyn. Interview by Lyudmila Likhacheva

Nikita Yaveyn is one of participants of an exposition of Russian pavilion of XI architectural biennial in Venice

10 September 2008
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What for you is the most important thing in architecture?

Its possessing technique. This is a word that I picked up in childhood from my father, the architect Igor’ Georgevich Yaveyn, from his conversations with colleagues. They made no attempt to define the term in a scientific fashion, but in their mouths it could be equally the highest praise and a sentence of condemnation: ‘Golosov is simply a decorator; he has no technique.’ And everything became clear without another word having to be said.

Your father belonged to the generation of Constructivists, for whom technique was as much a key concept as it was for contemporary writers such as Shklovsky, Eykhenbaum, and Tynyanov. Shklovsky’s manifesto ‘Art as technique’ was published in 1919. Subsequently, both groups were branded by official Soviet ideology as formalists… But let’s get back to our own days. Where do you derive your techniques or architectural ideas?

From the context. I would even say, from a variety of contexts. Only this should not be taken too literally. What I mean is the situation that surrounds the building which is to be built. Context for me is equally the history of a site and a mythology that’s connected to that site, the evolution of this or that type of structure, and the way that all this is reflected in literature. The jumping-off point may also be an analysis of the building’s functional programme. Although for us function is usually not the only determinant of architectural form. It’s not enough to give proper depth.

And what does proper depth require?

For this a technique has to work in several dimensions simultaneously. Take, for example, our Ladozhsky vokzal [the Ladoga Railway Station in St Petersburg]. This is a building with a number of motivations, a number of sources. The first is a matter of function: the projection of flows of movement through the floor plan and in space. This layer is embodied in a modern high-tech aesthetic. I regard rootless high-tech as a good thing, but we wanted something more. We wanted to fit our station into the long series of precursors, to reach back to the railway stations of  the 19th century and, through them, to
the Roman thermae and basilicas which served as a source of inspiration to the authors of the first stations. This is, you
could say, world history. But there are also regional roots: motifs taken from the forts of Kronshtadt and Ivan Fomin’s competition design for the Nikolaevsky Railway Station (which is a ‘brand item’ as far as Petersburg Neoclassicism is concerned).

But the ordinary person may be ignorant of these ‘brand items’, and so will miss the associations which you have programmed. You may have been thinking of the Basilica of Maxentius, but people see the main hall as ‘proletarian Gothic’. You talk of the forts at Kronshtadt, but they mention inhabitable bridges. Do such alternative readings make you uncomfortable?

Not at all. On the contrary, the more categorically someone says that this resembles a G othic cathedral, the better. This means that the architecture has started living its own life. Form is animated by the cultural meanings which it acquires uring the course of its reincarnations in history. Take the pyramid, for instance. This is not perceived as a pure abstraction,
but merely as a geometrical figure. It is a symbol of stability, calm, majesty – from Egypt to Empire and so on.

As far as I know, this is one of your favourite shapes. It’s present in many of your designs – the skyscrapers beside Ladozhsky vokzal, the campus of the Higher School of Management at Mikhaylovka, the Leningrad Region Administration building, etc.

I find the so-called ‘geometrical primary elements’ – and, in particular, the ideal ‘Platonic bodies’ – rather more interesting
than all the latest fads in non-linear architecture. Their potential was studied by Ledoux, L’vov, Stirling, and the Russian Avant-garde. You could say that these extremely rich deposits have been explored, but by no means exhaustively revealed.

But doesn’t architecture of this kind become vulnerable if it is not read properly but treated as a kind of ‘building set’ consisting of geometrical parts?


I agree. Here we are slightly balancing on the border line, due to our constant aspiration to clean up the form and squeeze
out of it a certain geometrical or spatial extract and, at the same time, to make our associational moves clear to the viewer.
And it’s here that the viewer’s erudition becomes important… Although I think that our viewer is an ordinary person who lives in all kinds of cultural space, and he or she will find the meanings invested in the architecture obvious – or at least, the main meanings.

Perhaps there’s no point in overloading architecture with meanings? Peter Zumthor, for instance, has written that messages and symbols are not primary to architecture. That architecture needs to be cleansed of meanings brought in from outside, which cover it like a patina, so that it can once more become ‘shiny and alive’.

For all their apparent simplicity, Zumthor’s works are fraught with metaphysics and almost transcendental meanings. And,
unlike the ‘globalists’, he is inspired by the specific qualities of a site and does not reproduce a formal technique, once he
has discovered it, in different parts of the world. It’s another matter that he expounds his philosophy with excessive pathos.
Konstantin Mel’nikov behaved in the same way, and he is still unsurpassed in terms of the richness of meaning in his images, the originality of his ideas, and the free flight of his fancy. For instance, he explained the origin of the form of his Rusakov Club as follows: ‘The site was very small, so I had to create consoles.’ And now we find in this three-dimensional plot a multiplicity of plot lines – there’s the materialization of the processes of looking, form turned inside out, variations on the theme of the triangle, architecture as sculpture, and ‘the megaphones of Communism’… And that’s always how it is with Mel’nikov. There are at least four to five possible interpretations and each thing has four or five meanings. And at the same time you get compact floor plans, brilliant organization of interior space, and maximal useful floor areas coupled with minimal total volumes of buildings. All in all, Mel’nikov is the quintessence of what I’m aiming for.

And yet the main thing for Mel’nikov was the invention of new forms. They say he simply could not understand how he could use anything discovered before he came along. But you, I think, go in more for interpretation; you appeal to the architecture of previous ages.

Wait a moment: Mel’nikov cannot be characterized in such simple terms. He is, above all, a profound and original thinker and only secondly an inventor of new forms. Here’s another thing he said about the Rusakov Club. He said that previously theatres were tiers, boxes, and so on; but he had been commissioned to design an auditorium with nothing more than an amphitheatre. The argument was that this was what was required by democracy and social equality. He wanted to get away from this spatial simplicity and so divided part of the amphitheatre into three box-like structures. This means that you have
both togetherness and separation of the audience and spatial richness within the framework of a single stalls space. So what
was this: innovation or interpretation?
Incidentally, in his day my father came up with the idea for an ‘amphitheatre of boxes’ – a synthesis of the ancient amphitheatre and the tiered box theatre. My brother and I have employed this idea in several competition designs. It has never yet been realized, but I don’t doubt that it will be eventually. Modern architecture owes a big debt to that generation of Constructivists. During the Stalinist persecutions, they retreated into the creative underground, but they never renounced their ideas; instead, they passed them on to their pupils.
Personally, I’ve inherited from the 1920s a love for placing different functions on different levels. In our ‘Kvartal za gerbom’ project at Peterhof [outside St Petersburg] we are creating a microlandscape with two levels, private and public. We are reconstructing Apraksin dvor as a city on three levels – the lower one for cars, the middle one for pedestrians, and the upper for office workers etc. In our Ladoga Railway Station the suburban trains are underground, the long-distance trains above ground level, and only public transport and railway maintenance are at ground level itself. Sometimes we even go too far with this technique, lapsing into a kind of level-mania. But this is already like the scene of a crime to which you can’t help
returning. Function is pressurized, so to speak, in order to produce complex spatial structures in the spirit of Piranesi.

But at the same time the floor plans are almost classical, and sometimes almost absolutely symmetrical. Is this a legacy of the classical tendency in Constructivism?

Spatial complexity is possible only when you have floor plans that are clear and simple. It’s just as in a print by Escher: brainteasing compositions are put together from elementary geometrical particles.
But the classical tendency in Constructivism is a very Petersburg thing. Classical Petersburg is such a powerful tuning fork that all movements in architecture have been only too glad to resonate to it. Here you find the various styles at their peak; any momentary flashes have been smoothed out. This city has melted everything down into a single artistic whole. It is customary to say that the Petersburg school is conservatism or even an obsession with the past. But this is not where its heart lies. In Petrograd and then in Leningrad there was an intense quest going on at the border of two seemingly such heterogeneous phenomena as Classicism and the Avant-garde, with the aim of reducing them to a common denominator, a single root, to the primary essences of architecture. Aleksandr Nikol’sky used to say that a bathhouse is circular and a swimming pool circular because a drop of water is circular…

So, when you’re working [in St Petersburg] on Petrogradskaya storona or in the region of the Sovetskie streets, everywhere where Neoclassicism and Constructivism are borderline, you can’t help wanting to produce a fresh take on the
experience of your precursors, to continue the line which they began. In general, it’s right that architecture should grow from
inside and not be brought in from outside. It’s important to understand what the site itself wants.

What do you mean?

A site can contain a hidden impulse for transformation which you try to guess, reveal, and realize. This was the case with the five high-rise buildings by Ladozhsky vokzal. An unshaped, chaotic situation in a tense hub for all kinds of activity was simply crying out for intervention, for an appropriate response to the urban-planning challenge. This project was in fact our own initiative: the client’s idea was for a single skyscraper or two at the most.
The Linkor Business Centre is a reaction to the anonymous mediocrity of the buildings on an important section of the embankment. Here we permitted ourselves an energetic form and a slightly literal figurativeness. But this figurativeness is not one-dimensional: the ‘bottom’ of the ship forms a canopy over the car park, and its contours are not absolutely ship-like – they are more an allusion to Corbusier’s porticos. Finally, the idea for Linkor [the Russian word means ‘battleship’] would never have arisen were it not for the presence nearby of the river, the Battleship Avrora, and the Nakhimov Naval College.

Do you permit yourselves such radical gestures only in new buildings or in reconstruction projects as well?

Linkor is the reconstruction of two industrial blocks. Our skyscrapers can also be regarded as reconstruction, but on the scale of a large piece of the urban environment. Almost everything done by Studiya 44 is to one extent or another reconstruction, given that we are not in the business of building new towns on greenfield sites. As for the nub of your question, my answer is that I am not a fan of contrasting oppositions in projects which are situated in the historical centre or
involve listed buildings. Some people may think this kind of approach eye-catching, but it reminds me of conflicts between
children and their parents when the former are fighting to establish their own identity. Projects involving listed buildings are in
some respects more difficult than new construction, since they require a colossal amount of specialized knowledge. But when you have this knowledge, then such projects can actually be easier because you’re dealing with an existing organism which doesn’t have to be grown from an embryo – you merely have to correct it without harming it, and then add some things, but things with the same ‘DNA ’. In our reconstruction of Nevsky 38 we tried to preserve as much as possible of what was valuable, that which constitutes the building’s soul, without introducing any new figurative elements, with the exception of the arcades. The ideology for the reconstruction of the General Staff Building has been evolved from archetypes taken from the historical Hermitage and interior space in St Petersburg – enfilades, hanging gardens, exhibition rooms lit from above, and views into the distance.

You worked on the project for the General Staff Building with Rem Koolhaas. What was his contribution to the project?

Rem Koolhaas’s OMA/AMO was one of three consultants to the Hermitage on the Guggenheim-Hermitage project (the two others were the Guggenheim Foundation and Interros). Their criticism and comments  were a great help in honing the ideology for the project for the reconstruction of the General Staff Building. But an even greater help was Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage – in that he created conditions for the evolution of the project. There aren’t many clients who, instead of hurrying the architect along, join him in thinking and researching.

The process of ‘growing’ a design clearly takes a long time. But how does this happen in an office with a staff of 120? Who generates the ideas? Is it always you?

Not always. In the case of the General Staff Building, it’s mainly been my brother, Oleg Yaveyn. Sometimes my part in the process is limited to words – during the first stage, when we’re discussing the concept, and later, when I correct something during design work. But it all begins with me gathering together a group of architects to analyze all aspects of the brief – the
site, function, construction programme. This leads us to a general idea which, as a rule, exists initially in a verbal form. Subsequently, it’s translated into handdrawn sketches or working models and only then does the team sit down at the computer.
Do you always proceed by reasoning? Can it never happen that someone takes up a pencil and conceives a desire that on this site…

Never. This is not an intuitive process. There’s no room for artistic self-expression.

Everything has to be thought through and analyzed? So this is more cognition than creation?

Cognition, certainly. As soon as we start playing at creativity, the result is worse than work done by other people. I have to confess, I am by no means always satisfied with the sketch stage. Which is to say, the idea comes quickly, but then it has to be properly dressed up, it has to accumulate resonance and meanings. Not even details, but meanings. And the details appear in the footsteps of new meanings. We are growing a thing. We watch how it develops. And, at the same time, we develop ourselves. And it’s only at the third or fourth level of cognition that a degree of freedom appears. Free drawing begins only during execution of the working drawings. Which is why our working drawings are always better than the concept stage. The realization may be worse, but we are always happy with the working drawings.

What do you consider to be a complete success?

When the client’s greed and caprices have not ruined the architecture during its construction. When it has proved possible to obviate the initial difficulties and restrictions and arrive at a figurative solution. When you end up with something that is not one-dimensional, but multilayered and with a multiplicity of meanings. And finally, when this project is understood and appreciated.

And a final question – don’t be alarmed! What do you find troubling?

The fact that architecture has started living according to the laws of show business, haut couture, and object design. It’s when each season you have a new ‘product range’ coming off the podium and the previous range automatically becomes unfashionable and old hat. It’s when architecture is compared with makes of car and clothing. To my mind, this is vulgar. For me architecture, like culture, is a fundamental category.
Today globalism imposes not even a style, but an image which determines everything – from the curving shape of a building to the ‘star-like’ behaviour of its creator. And everyone comes out with exactly the same glamorous clichés. Well, with the exception of a few figures who stand out from the crowd (Botta, Siza, Moneo, Zumthor, Nouvel) and regional schools (such as the Hungarian), whose existence is known to only a few.
Here in Russia, as is the case with all new converts, the state of affairs is both more terrifying and more comic. Currently, every governor in Russia knows that skyscrapers are in fashion and that they should be spiral. And if a skyscraper is not spiral, then it is indecent and provincial.
Gunnar Asplund said there are buildings which it’s impossible to change and that this is awful. On this basis, many of the products of the globalist range have short service lives. To buy disposable objects for the price of a masterpiece is as stupid and wretched as to go chasing after fashion with your trouser legs rolled up.
Back in 1967 wise old Mel’nikov warned us that when there is an abundance of materials and ‘everything shines’, you need great courage in order to work with space, light, and ideas and not just with gloss and constructional tricks. In order to use the enormous opportunities available for more than just vacuous effect, you need much more ‘profundity, concentration, and penetration’.
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10 September 2008

Headlines now
Living in the Architecture of One’s Own Making
Do architects design houses for themselves? You bet! In this article, we are examining a new book by TATLIN publishing house. This book – unprecedented for Russia – features 52 private homes designed and built by contemporary architects for themselves. It includes houses that are famous, even iconic, as well as lesser-known ones; large and small, stylish and eccentric. To some extent, the book reflects the history of Russian architecture over the past 30 years.
A City Block Isoline
Another competition project for a residential complex on the banks of the Volga in Nizhny Novgorod has been prepared by Studio 44. A team of architects led by Ivan Kozhin concluded that using a regular block layout in such a location would be inappropriate and developed a “custom design” approach: a chain of parceled multi-section buildings stretching along the entire embankment. Let’s explore the features and advantages of this unconventional method.
Competition: The Price of Creativity?
Any day now, we’re expecting the results of a competition held by the “Samolet” development group for a plot in Kommunarka. In the meantime, we share the impressions of Editor-in-Chief Julia Tarabarina, who managed to conduct a public talk. Though technically focused on the interaction between developers and architects, the public talk turned into a discussion about the pros and cons of architectural competitions.
Terraced Design
The “River Park” residential complex has confidently and securely shaped the Nagatinsky Backwater shoreline. Featuring a public embankment, elevated courtyards connected by pedestrian bridges, and brick façades, the development invites exploration of its nuanced response to the surrounding context, as well as hints of the architects’ megalithic design thinking.
A Kremlin’s Core and Meteorite Fragments
We continue our coverage of the competition projects for the residential district that the development company GloraX plans to build along the embankment of the Rowing Channel in Nizhny Novgorod. ASADOV Architects approached the concept through a deep dive into local identity, using storytelling to pinpoint a central idea for the design: the master plan and composition are imagined as if a meteorite had struck a “proto-Kremlin”. Sounds weird? Find more details below!
The Volga Regatta
GloraX plans to develop a residential complex spanning 14 hectares along the Volga River in Nizhny Novgorod. The winning design in a closed-door competition, created by GORA Architects, features housing typologies ranging from townhouses to terraced high-rise slabs, a balance of functions, diverse ways of engaging with the water, and even a dedicated island (no less!) for the city residents.
Life Plans
The master plan for the residential district “Prityazheniye” (“Gravity”) in Naberezhnye Chelny was developed by the architectural company A.Len, taking into account the specific urban planning context and partially implemented solutions of the first phase. However, the master plan prioritized its own values: a green framework, a system of focal points, a hierarchy of spaces, and pedestrian priority. After this, the question of what residents will do in their neighborhood simply doesn’t arise.
A New Track
We took a thorough look at D_Station, a railcar repair depot dating back to 1906, recently reconstructed while preserving its century-old industrial structure, upon the project by Sergey Trukhanov and T+T Architects. Though work on the interiors – set to house restaurants and public spaces – is still underway, the building’s exterior already offers plenty to see. Visitors can explore the blend of old and new brickwork, appreciate the architect’s unique interpretation of ruin aesthetics, and enjoy the newly built pedestrian route that connects the Citydel Business Center’s arches to Kazakova Street.
Four Different Surveys
The “Explore the City” competition, organized this year by the Genplan Institute of Moscow, stands out as a pretty unconventional one for the architectural field but aligns perfectly well with the character of urban planning work. The winning project analyzed contemporary residential complexes, combining urban planning insights with a realtor’s perspective to propose a hybrid approach. Other entries explored public centers, motivations for car ownership, and housing vacancy rates. A fifth participant withdrew. Here’s a closer look at the four completed works.
Scheduled Evolution
ASADOV Architects unveiled the EvyCenter pavilion, a microcultural hub for fostering personal growth, organizing workshops, and doing gymnastics. Additionally, this pavilion serves as a prototype for a scalable country house, drawing inspiration from the “Loskutok” project, and constructed from CLT panels in a factory. This marks the beginning of a developer project initiated by the architectural firm (sic!), which is seeking partners to expand both small Evy settlements and even larger Evy cities, which are, according to Andrey Asadov, aimed at fostering the “evolutionary” development of the people who will inhabit them.
The Golden Crown
The concept for a dental clinic in Yekaterinburg, developed by CNTR Studio, revolves around the idea of a “mouth full of gold”: pristine white porcelain stoneware walls are complemented by matte brass details. To avoid an overly literal interpretation, the architects focused on the building’s proportions, skillfully navigating between sunlight requirements and fire safety regulations.
Flexibility and Integration
Not long ago, we covered the project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential complex, designed by APEX. Now, we’ve been shown different fence concepts they developed to enclose the complex’s private courtyards, incorporating a variety of public functions. We believe that the sheer fact that the complex’s architects were involved in such a detail as fencing speaks volumes.
A Step Forward
The HIDE residential complex represents a major milestone for ADM architects and their leaders Andrey Romanov and Ekaterina Kuznetsova in their quest for a fresh high-rise aesthetic – one that is flexible and layered, capable of bringing vibrancy to mass and silhouette while shaping form. Over recent years, this approach has become ADM’s “signature style”, with the golden HIDE tower playing a pivotal role in its evolution. Here, we delve into the project’s story, explore the details of the complex’s design, and uncover its core essence.
Gold in the Sands
A new office for a transcontinental company specializing in resource extraction and processing has opened in Dubai. Designed by T+T Architects, masters of creating spaces that are contemporary, diverse, flexible, and original, this project exemplifies their expertise. On the executive floor, a massive brass-clad partition dominates, while layered textures of compressed earth create a contextually resonant backdrop.
Layers and Levels of Flight
This project goes way back – Reserve Union won this architectural competition at the end of 2011, and the building was completed in 2018, so it’s practically “archival”. However, despite being relatively unknown, the building can hardly be considered “dated” and remains a prime example of architectural expression, particularly in the headquarters genre. And it’s especially fitting for an aviation company office. In some ways, it resembles the Aeroflot headquarters at Sheremetyevo but with its own unique identity, following the signature style of Vladimir Plotkin. In this article, we take an in-depth look at the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) headquarters in the Moscow agglomeration town of Zhukovsky, supplemented by recent photographs from Alexey Naroditsky – a shoot that became only recently possible due to the fact that improvements were finally made in the surrounding area.
Light and Shadow
In this article, we delve into the architectural design of the “Chaika” house by DNK ag architects, which was recently completed in 2023 as part of the collection of signature designs at ZILArt. As is well-known, all the buildings in this complex follow a design code, yet each one is distinct. This particular building stands out not only for its whiteness and minimalism but also for the refined use of a limited number of techniques that, together, create what can confidently be called synergy.
Casus Novae
A master plan was developed for a large residential area with a name of “DNS City”, but now that its implementation began, the plan has been arbitrarily reformatted and replaced with something that, while similar on the surface, is actually quite different. This is not the first time such a thing happens, but it’s always frustrating. With permission from the author, we are sharing Maria Elkina’s post.
Treasure Hunting
The GAFA bureau, in collaboration with Tegola and Arkhitail, organized an expedition to the island of Kilpola in Karelia as part of Moskomarkhitektura’s “Open City” festival. There, amidst moss and rocks, the students sought answers to questions like: what is the sacred, where does it dwell, and what sustains it? Assisting the participants in this quest were landscape engineer Evgeny Levin, artist Nicholas Roerich, a moose, and the lack of cellular connection. Here’s how the story unfolded.
Depths of the Earth, Streams of Water
In the Malaya Okhta district, the Akzent building, designed by Stepan Liphart, was constructed. It follows a classic tripartite structure, yet it’s what you might call “hand-drawn”: each façade is unique in its form and details, some of which aren’t immediately noticeable. In this article, we explore the context and, together with the architect, delve into how the form was developed.
Fir Tree Dynamics
The “Airports of Region” holding is planning to build an airport in Karachay-Cherkessia, aiming to make the Arkhyz and Dombay resorts more accessible to travelers. The project that won in an invitation-only competition, submitted by Sergey Nikeshkin’s KPLN, blends natural imagery inspired by the shape of a conifer seed, open-air waiting spaces, majestic large trees, and a green roof elevated on needle-like columns. The result is both nature-inspired and WOW.
​A Brick Shell
In the process of designing a clubhouse situated among pine trees in a prestigious suburban area near Moscow, the architectural firm “A.Len” did the façade design part. The combination of different types of brick and masonry correlates with the volumetric and plastique solutions, further enhanced by the inclusion of wood-painted fragments and metal “glazing”.
Word Forms
ATRIUM architects love ambitious challenges, and for the firm’s thirtieth anniversary, they boldly play a game of words with an exhibition that dives deep into a self-created vocabulary. They immerse their projects – especially art installations – into this glossary, as if plunging into a current of their own. You feel as if you’re flowing through the veins of pure art, immersed in a universe of vertical cities, educational spaces – of which the architects are true masters – and the cultural codes of various locations. But what truly captivates is the bold statement that Vera Butko and Anton Nadtochy make, both through their work and this exhibition: architecture, above all, is art – the art of working with form and space.
Flexibility and Acuteness of Modernity
Luxurious, fluid, large “kokoshniks” and spiral barrel columns, as if made from colorful chewing gum: there seem to be no other mansion like this in Moscow, designed in the “Neo-Russian-Modern” style. And the “Teremok” on Malaya Kaluzhskaya, previously somewhat obscure, has “come alive with new colors” and gained visibility after its restoration for the office of the “architectural ecosystem” as the architects love to call themselves. It’s evident that Julius Borisov and the architects at UNK put their hearts into finding this new office and bringing it up to date. Let’s delve into the paradoxes of this mansion’s history and its plasticity. Spoiler: two versions of modernity meet here, both balancing on the razor’s edge of “what’s current”.
Yuri Vissarionov: “A modular house does not belong to the land”
It belongs to space, or to the air... It turns out that 3D printing is more effective when combined with a modular approach: the house is built in a workshop and then adapted to the site, including on uneven terrain. Yuri Vissarionov shares his latest experience in designing tourist complexes, both in central Russia and in the south. These include houseboats, homes printed from lightweight concrete using a 3D printer, and, of course, frame houses.
​Moscow’s First
“The quality of education largely depends on the quality of the educational environment”. This principle of the last decade has been realized by Sergey Skuratov in the project for the First Moscow Gymnasium on Rostovskaya Embankment in the Khamovniki district. The building seamlessly integrates into the complex urban landscape, responding both to the pedestrian flow of the city and the quiet alleyways. It skillfully takes advantage of the height differences and aligns with modern trends in educational space design. Let’s take a closer look.
Looking at the Water
The site of Villa Sonata stretches from the road to the water’s edge, offering its own shoreline, pier, and a picturesque river panorama. To reveal these sweeping views, Roman Leonidov “cut” the façade diagonally parallel to the river, thus getting two main axes for the house and, consequently, “two heads”. The internal core – two double-height spaces, a living room and a conservatory, with a “bridge” above them – makes the house both “transparent” and filled with light.
The White Wing
Well, it’s not exactly white. It’s more of a beige, white-stone structure that plays with the color of limestone – smoother surfaces are lighter, while rougher ones are darker. This wing unites various elements: it absorbs and interprets the surrounding themes. It responds to everything, yet maintains a cohesive expression – a challenging task! – while also incorporating recognizable features of its own, such as the dynamic cuts at the bottom, top, and middle.
Urban Dunes
The XSA Ramps team designed and built a three-part sports hub for a park in Rostov-on-Don, welcoming people of all ages and fitness levels. The skate plaza, pump track, and playground are all meticulously crafted with details that attract a diverse range of visitors. The technical execution of the shapes and slopes transforms this space into a kind of sculptural composition.
Proportional Growth
The project for the fourth phase of the ÁLIA residential area has been announced. The buildings are situated on an elongated plot – almost a “ray” that shoots out from the center of the area towards the river. Their layout reflects both a response to Moscow’s architectural preferences over the past 15 years, shifting “from blocks to towers”, and an interpretation of the neighboring business park designed by SOM. Additionally, the best apartments here are not located at the very top but closer to the middle, forming a glowing “waistline”.
The “Staircase” Building
In designing the “Details” residential complex in New Moscow, Rais Baishev spiced up the now-popular Moscow theme of a “courtyard” building with an idea drawn from the surrealist drawings by Maurits Escher. He envisioned the stepped silhouettes and descending slopes as a metaphysical mega-staircase, creating a key void within the courtyard that gave the project an internal “spine”. This concept is felt both in the building’s silhouette and on its façades.