Against the background of the unprecedented boom of private residence construction caused by the pandemic, “Build YOUR House” immediately became very popular. Hitherto, on Roman Leonidov’s YouTube channel we could only see videos about his projects and buildings with the author’s comments. The new program is about letting the viewers follow the process of designing and building a specific house, which a young architect will perform in collaboration with a specific client under Roman Leonidov’s guidance almost real-time: each week, they will upload a video with the process of designing (and later on construction), and its results. The show is devised pretty much like a TV series: the first season is the construction of the first house, the second season is the second house, and so on. Watch the video with the announcement of the project. 

Previous to that, a competition of land site owners was announced, as well as a competition of young architects. The entrance conditions for the owners were the attractive views that the site commands, but, more importantly, the owner’s consent to public exposure of the design process. As for the young architects, to assess the level of their competence, they were offered a test project. Out of the pool of applications submitted by land owners, Roman Leonidov selected three finalists: from Kiev, from the Urals, and from an old dacha settlement near Moscow. Out of young architects, three architects reached the final: Pavel and Veronica from Moscow and Alexander from Ekaterinburg.

During an exciting live streaming session, the final round of the competition took place, the winner being chosen by the audience. Roman Leonidov introduced the contestants and shared about the land sites, while the young architects made a three-minute motivational speech. There was also a curious challenge for the young architects that Roman Leonidov came up with. He asked them questions as if coming from the client, and the applicants had to give quick answers because silence or hesitation on the part of the architect in such a dialogue spells losing the client – the maestro warned. Most of the audience’s votes went to the architect Alexander Chechulin who broadcast empathy and a positive attitude. The less eloquent contestants scored second and third places respectively. The competition of land owners was won by the Urals resident. Later on, however, it turned out that he was not ready for extensive public exposure, and the game was joined by Andrey, the land owner from Kiev, who scored second place.

The stream. Selecting the participants of the project



By the moment of our interview with Roman Leonidov the work on the house near Kiev already began, and two videos were posted demonstrating meetings with the client and work on the project. Here you can watch the first meeting with the architect.

These videos are very interesting because the viewers not only see the faces and read the comments but at the same time see the drafts by the young architect, which Roman Leonidov corrects in front of our eyes with magic markers, explaining his corrections.

Meeting with the architect #2



As for me, I learned a whole lot of useful information about designing a country residence from these two videos alone. Strictly speaking, this format even seemed overly generous to me. I am not sure whether it will lead to more frequent invitations for the architects to design a country residence but it will surely raise the levels of architects’ competence, land owners’ culture, and the aesthetic value of a country residence in Russia.

Roman Leonidov about his “Build YOUR House” project