Ostozhenka has always been an unusual architectural practice. On the one hand, it is an author-driven studio, much like most firms founded during the first wave of post-Soviet private architecture. On the other hand, it has several founding authors – more than most, one might even say. Its internal structure has always seemed distinctive: a close-knit group of strong individual personalities working together.

Valery Kanyashin was one of the company’s founders – or, at the very least, he had been there from the beginning. Many of Ostozhenka’s earliest and best-known projects appear in his portfolio. His death came as a profound shock to many. Reading the book, one senses that his colleagues are still processing the loss. The Masters exhibition at Arch Moscow was dedicated to Kanyashin, and it was there, in May 2026, that the book was first presented.



The publication itself is strikingly modest. Small enough to fit in one hand, it bears little resemblance to today’s oversized architectural portfolios with their emphasis on prestige and presentation.

There is, of course, a portfolio inside – and an engaging one. It includes numerous sketches that have rarely, if ever, been published, along with several projects, some of them quite recent and presumably kept out of public view under the now-familiar constraints of NDAs. That is only natural: an architect’s portfolio is the central record of a professional life, almost everything that remains. 
Yet here it is interwoven, in what feels like equal measure, with archival photographs and drawings, making the book read more like a family album than a monograph. It recalls the keepsake notebooks of the nineteenth century, but perhaps even more the handmade albums many of us assembled during our Soviet school years – where photographs, postcards, candy wrappers, sketches, and handwritten notes all coexisted on the same pages. The result is a livelier, more personal narrative than one usually encounters. The reader moves through Kanyashin’s projects, accompanied by his own texts, while constantly being drawn toward snapshots of discussions and gatherings, or pausing to decipher handwritten notes on sketches.



There are countless small discoveries. A note reads: “Strengthening and leveling the slab of the former bomb shelter”. Elsewhere appears the enigmatic phrase “Twin Peaks, Mnevniki”. A page bearing the signatures of the lead architects working on Headliner includes the reminder: “All lead architects are required to consult the building codes more often, so the project won’t have to be redone”. They are working notes – ordinary, spontaneous, and revealing.

Personal recollections and farewell tributes – which have also been published separately – appear in the closing section of the book.

The publication is deliberately anti-glamorous and issued in a tiny edition of just 150 copies, intended primarily for those who knew him. One might describe it as being in the spirit of the MARCH School, though it also reflects a broader contemporary approach to creative publishing. It has no spine. Instead, the pages are wrapped in a folded paper jacket covered with handwritten scribbles, making the entire object resemble an architect’s personal notebook even more closely.



Everything contributes to that impression: the format, the scale, the simple uncoated white paper that comfortably accommodates old amateur photographs alongside newer images, drawings, projects, and texts without any visual contradiction. It would not be surprising if the book became an example of a more informal, more human way of presenting an architect’s life and work.

What else can one say? On a deeply personal level, this is a moving farewell from Ostozhenka to Valery Kanyashin – an architect responsible for many of Moscow’s notable buildings and, to a significant extent, a co-author of what has become the city’s contemporary architectural identity. To many, he was not only a colleague but also a close friend. When the book was presented at the Central House of Architects, virtually the entire Moscow architectural community came together to honor his memory.