People in the Know: We Spend Someone Else’s Money

They say about architects that the pencil is in the hand of the client. Whatever they want, you draw…is it upsetting? Well-known Russian architect Sergei Kiselyov answers with a shrug of the shoulders: “You need to understand that we are spending other people’s money. They trust us – we are happy, but sometimes customers only really believe in themselves." Respect, not only for someone else’s money, but also for the architectural nature of the city and monuments of historical heritage underlie all of Kiselyov's projects. It is no wonder that he and his team have won every possible architectural award, including from developers.

Twenty years ago a young graduate of the Moscow Institute of Architecture left the prestigious (at the time) Russian Design and Scientific Research Institute of the USSR and opened an independent practice. Now the Sergei Kiselyov & Partners architect bureau is considered one of the leading in the country. It has more than 300 premises on its account, many of which have won prestigious awards. Last year at the Arkh Moscow - 2007 exhibition, the workshop was nominated for the "Architect of the Year" award, in accordance to the rules of which a special exhibit of the bureau was presented at the Moscow Biennial of Architecture in the Central House of Artists.

How did you manage to build such a large company?

I have no idea. (Laughs). To begin with there were three of us, then seven, and now we have almost 40 architects working at the bureau. The success of one project attracts other customers, and at the moment we understand that we need more people still. And s that’s how we’ve grown.

And who are you now – top manager, art director or do you draw every building yourself?

With such a volume of orders there is simply not time to do that. Inevitably you become "art director." At the initial stages I supervise over every project, but, unfortunately, I don’t always have time to do this. It demands immersing myself into the initial material, which is collected not by me, but by the team. It demands a certain mood and conditions, which are not often present under conditions of high workload.

If you are the “art director”, who then is the “conductor”?

My partner Igor Shvartsman. We have two directors and two zones of responsibility. Igor is a top chief project engineer. To manage a project like that of Mirax Plaza is more difficult than designing any building. In particular, under this project he had to coordinate many organizations and other accompanying projects. In this respect, the success of our company in many ways is down to Igor. Each of us, in our own zones of responsibility, has huge authority, but strategic decisions we make together.

You have said that often there is not time for you. So who draws your remarkable buildings?

In our workshop there are seven teams of architects, each is headed by a chief architect. There are four more chief engineers who conduct all the bureaucratic work, leaving the architects to be creative. A team, at the start of the development of a project, prepares several draft designs. And I then choose the most promising from my point of view, and make any corrections. I do try to make suggestions of course, but fortunately it has been very rare for me to have to. More often I agree - in fact our team has become very strong. Why change someone else’s good idea for the sake of your own self-affirmation?

Does your firm have a good reputation in the market?

Yes, we are on the list of the 10 most demanded firms among developers. But popularity has two sides to it, one of which is a huge workload.

And what prevents this from being lower - greed?

I satisfied all my material ambitions a long time ago. When you work alone the question of your workload is solved easily. You can just stop and go to the Canary Islands, but when 40 good people to some extent depend on you, you have to be considerate. Although we are all free people, only the accounts department and the secretaries have a fixed salary. And for architects, if they have work, they have money. And the work schedule is flexible: some come at 9am, others leave at 3am.

On what criteria do you work: how do you decide which projects you will undertake and which you won’t?

First of all we undertake projects that, by our calculations, will end in construction, and not just analysis or a picture. The result of the activity of an architect should always be construction. Pressure is also a factor, sometimes interest in a project is the final decision maker. For example, designing neutral offices for rent is already rather boring. We want to design a public building. Or with a representative function. I remember how we worked on the project of the Anton Chekhov theatre with warmth.

Nevertheless office buildings have brought you glory. For example Mirax Plaza.

Yes, this was exceptional. We designed the 368,000 sq.m complex in 365 days, it took exactly a year to the day! By the way, Mirax has received an award for Best Developer of the Year for that building.

In fact the land plot there had issues...

Yes, the story of the project goes like this. Several years ago we created the a project for the biggest IKEA in the world for the former owner of the land plot. It was a huge dark blue suitcase measuring 52,000 sq.m with parking. But the customer could not get approval for the project because the mayor was categorically against it. And in general Luzhkov was right. In this location, with the impact it would have on transport, such a building was impossible. But, having done this exercise of designing IKEA, we were so involved in this highly difficult project, that when the same customer invited us to draw up the concept for an office complex, it was easy for us because we understood all aspects of the land plot. We knew where the metro passed, we knew where the drainage system was laid, we knew how the railway would be re-laid – and in short, all the restrictions. We squeezed out as many meters as we could, and were then force to go upwards. And so the skyscrapers were not for the sake of the architect’s vanity, but for the sake of solving a problem.

Probably, that’s why customers choose you?

I don’t know, I can only guess. You had better ask them. But we always create a goal not to just create a quality project, but a quality building. Our design documentation has very minor remarks when sent for approval. They there even have a list of the design organizations which makes the least mistakes, and so are at the top of that list. Our work on documentation and level of detail is much higher than in other companies. During the design process, few mistakes are made, and therefore during construction, correcting these mistakes do not require additional expenses. As a result our customers receive highly profitable projects.

Have you received all architectural awards, including a nomination for "Best Building in the Eyes of the Developer"?

I didn’t mean just that. For example, we had an absolutely ordinary building on 2nd Trizhenikov pereulok which didn’t receive any awards, but, according to the constructor, the apartments in the building were sold out very quickly.

Your buildings widely differ by color and shape. Why have you suddenly decided to make “Avant Gard” so bright and elegant?

The subtle colors were a forced measure while we were working in the historical center of Moscow. Now we have left the center and have started to work more with color. I like how my Berlin colleague Mattias Zauerbruk and his charming English wife Khatton work. They create very cheerful, flexible, bright architecture. And this has affected our outlook: our over rational and rectangular buildings have become more cheerful, more flexible, and brighter.

Do you have other colourful buildings besides Mir Detstvo?

We are currently working on several "colorful" projects: an office center will be constructed in the area of Vodny Stadium metro station, another in the area of Ulitsa Odesskaya, and another project for an apartment building in Novosibirsk. In the apartment building project critics can see similarities to the ministry of ecology building in Berlin.

And in general, does plagiarism exist in architecture?

Of course. For each person it is natural to want to create something new. But it is difficult to think of new things. Ideas sometimes lay on the surface: you create something, bring it to your colleagues to show them, and tomorrow you receive a copy of a 3-year old article where this theme has already been used. But I did not see this magazine, I thought it up myself!

You would probably want to kill such a colleague...

And sometimes you hear: "It looks like something else. Look: here there are windows, and there are windows." A person comes to a conclusion on the similarity of sketches on the basis of separate elements, without considering that absolutely different ideas lay in their foundations. If we talk like that, then all buildings have windows. It is continuous plagiarism! Although now it is fashionable to construct buildings without windows at all.

And you, on the contrary, use a lot of glass.

In modern architecture, glass has become the main material. And in the future, there will be more. But its use has always caused a functional problem. For example, in Krasnaya Roza (a business block in Khamovniky) we created a long building because underneath there was a car park and we tried to squeeze in as many car parking spaces as possible. But a long building is not characteristic for an old construction, and so we have visually divided the façade into several sectors of different heights, and the result is a row of several small buildings, and a glass cloud soars above them.

And how did you manage to realise the idea of a double glass facade for the Hermitage Plaza office center – it’s expensive?

There, according to regulations, there should be a building with no more than three floors, as it is next to a monument – Usadba Ostermanov-Tolstykh. Then we thought up to dress the main building in glass and managed persuade everyone that with such a variant seven floors would look normal. If you look at the Hermitage Plaza from the monumental building thanks to the use of glass you can see not the building above the wing but a striped sky.

And the customer did not try to change everything back?

They tried. But every time another manager came to us with a requirement to remove this, we would say: "Yes we can remove this, but another four floors will have to be removed with it." By the way, in this complex both facades are so different, that the building cannot be expressed in one photo of one facade.

Brokers review the Krasnaya Roza business block as the eighth wonder of the world. What is so special about it?

Krasnaya Roza has a unique combination of old and new. All 6 hectares of the territory were designed at the same time, as a single project. We spent the whole of 2003 only on developing the general concept, searching for a balance between the value of historical buildings and modern functional constructions. The success of this project is first of all a merit of the competent customer, KR Properties. History is very expensive but keeping the spirit of the time, the historical atmosphere of the block, the customer has managed to increase the liquidity of the real estate premises.

It’s probably still the largest premises in the Central Administrative District (CAD)?

In 2003 170,000 sq.m was the largest development project, but now we are building 350,000-400,000 sq.m, but not in the CAD, of course. But its not only size. We have calculated that our bureau has participated in the reorganization of 17 industrial enterprises, but more often it has been complete demolition and new construction. With Krasnaya Roza we tried to keep as much as possible, and where it was impossible to recreate the historical facades, we simulated them by means of laying and moulding old bricks manually. Here there will be high quality offices and unique modern infrastructure, including a fitness center with a pool, restaurants, clubs, and the whole complex will be provided with underground parking. That is true new quality of office life.

And what will happen with the Vsevolozhsky building on the territory of the factory?

We expect full scientific restoration. Now work is being done on the framework, the furnaces are being dismantled - everything that it is possible to keep, will be kept. In the future it will be the representative office of KR Properties and will have historical interiors and period furniture.

For 20 years you’ve worked a lot in the historical center. Were you never frightened about the difficulties connected with restrictions which always accompany construction in a neighbourhood with monuments?

We never aspired to any specialization, it just developed that way. But work in the historical city is really extremely complex. It is practically impossible to express it in monetary terms. It doesn’t matter how much you ask for, it would still not compensate the volume of unnecessary dialogue, going to the offices and meeting with officials which accompanies the approval process of a project that features a historical building.

And what’s the maximum an architect can ask for his work?

The smaller the building and the more complicated the work, the higher the designer’s royalties will be. They can reach 10 per cent, if it’s private country houses. But because the area of the buildings is small, it turns out to still be not much. And some shed of the lowest category of complexity, even its design costs only 1.5 per cent turn out to be more profitable because its area is 100,000 sq.m. And I completely understand colleagues who refuse to potter about with small buildings that measure 1,000 sq.m when next to this order an offer lays to design an office building measuring 250,000 sq.m - and without any headache because there are no restrictions on height. But work in the historical center demands higher qualification and wider experience.

But you have experience - you in fact have even restored the president’s residence in the Kremlin.

We didn’t restore it, we were engaged architecturally. Work was carried out over three years and we were responsible for coordination. Little remains in the Senate building from (architect) Mikhail Kazakov: the Yekaterinsky hall, Ovalny, two staircases and the facades. A restoration workshop was engaged in this. And we managed everything else, including the court yard and winter gardens.

If the original interiors were lost how were representative designs of the premises created?

The heads of the administrative office of the president went to palaces in St. Petersburg and filmed everything that they liked.

Did you enjoy this work?

Yes, we liked it: to go to work at the Kremlin and park on Vasilevsky spusk

Is it more profitable to work for the president than other customers?

If you mean financially then they paid us with promissory notes, which we then converted at a small loss. And we were only paid after we threatened the general contractor with court proceedings.

You therefore don’t do anymore work with state structures?

During perestroika we were offered a project. And the official with whom I communicated with said: the project costs this much, we will give this money to you, but it will be necessary to give us back this much in cash. We thought, and thought and decided that we don’t want to be involved in that. To be engaged in that would be immoral. And anyway we always had a lot of clients, even after the financial crisis. The cost of projects fell, but not their quantity. Practically from the moment of creation we were very busy: once every two weeks we would spend the night at work and we remain as busy.

What is you firm’s style or stamp?

At our bureau everyone understands that architecture is a serious thing, and not just the drawing of pictures. And it should combine numerous parameters organically: functional, constructive, social and ecological aspects. We want to make perfect things, and the form of this perfection varies, it depends on the task and the location, therefore we don’t have one united art language or firm style. A building can be both colorful and black and white.

You treat architecture so responsibly. Maybe you know why the image of Moscow changes not always for the better? For example they knock a monument down and construct something ugly.

Money, money and once again money. Architects do not make decisions about the demolition of monuments. The authorities do that. Ugly buildings can be blamed on architects. As Zhvanetsky wrote, something needs to be fixed in the conservatory. I was just at GAK and I was crying. In the results book there were a few failures and this is because students work too much and have no time to study.

Do you like what your western counterparts suggest? In particular, Norman Foster? Many people think that his ideas are not suitable for Moscow.

I was at Foster’s office. It is like a factory, about 700 architects work there. Therefore I can only assume that, probably, not the best team deals with Moscow. Although this would be insulting. But I can’t say that Foster’s projects aren’t suitable for Moscow or that they are bad. I was at a public meeting when there was a discussion on the Rossiya hotel. It seemed to me that at that time it was a quite suitable decision. I also looked at his suggestion for the reconstruction of the Pushkinsky museum, and I would agree with his suggestion here as well. As for the Rossiya tower in Moscow-City there should be a trefoil as the land plot is triangular. This is the key factor, and in the future would require not many updates. A skyscraper, of course, should have high art expression, but first of all it is high-tech construction. In other words, I consider Norman Foster well.

Are you concerned about the destiny of a premises after it has been put into operation ? What’s happening with your building?

This is a different subject! Unfortunately, the culture of operation in our country is still at a low level. Despite a law that requires the approval of the architect for re-lay out and other construction work, nobody does this or regulates it. I don’t know of a precedent whereby an architect has commenced legal proceedings for their building being spoiled. Several years ago there was an article in the Proekt Rossiya magazine on how our Subaru center project, which received an award, was spoiled. The new owner of the center simply wanted to make his office larger – a bear skin wouldn’t fit on the floor of his office. However, a woman from our building on Yakovoapostolsky pereulok recently came and asked: "Can I double glaze the balcony?" Well, it’s only a small thing but it’s nice that she asked!

Sergey Kiselyov was born in 1954 in Lvov. In 1977 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture. From 1973 to 1988 he worked at Russian Design and Scientific Research Institute of the USSR, and in 1988 opened his own practice. He is now the director of the Sergey Kiselyov & Partners Architectural Workshop, is a member of the Russian Academy of Arts, is an advisor of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction, is a professor of the International Academy of Architecture is a correspondent for the Moscow branch of the International Academy of Architecture, and is a member of the Architectural Council of Moscow. Kiselyov was the winner of the Moscow Architecture Award in 1995-2001, the winner of the Zolotoye Sotecheniye competition 1997 and 2006, the winner of a Moscow government competition for the best restoration and reconstruction of monuments of architecture and other objects of historical value in 1999.

Sergey Kiselyov & Partners was established in 1988 and was one of the first independent architectural groups in Russia. The company has now worked on more than 330 objects. During its existence the company has changed its organizational structure several times: in 1987-1989 it was an architectural bureau of the Kontur cooperative society; in 1990-1991 it was ТМА-7 V/O Arkhproekt; in 1992-1994 it was ТМ Sergey Kiselyov & Partners; in 1994-2002 it was OOO Sergey Kiselyov & Partners; and from 2002 to the present time it was OOO Sergey Kiselyov & Partners Architectural Workshop. From 1991-1997 the company, within the limits of an exclusive agreement with American Sydney Gilbert, used the trade mark SPGA Sergey Kiselyov & Partners, and actively worked in the field of corporate interiors mainly for western clients.