Massimiliano Fuchsas: "The future is our only context"

Within the framework of the Polytech on Strelka program, the main star of Italian architecture Massimiliano Fuchsas gave a lecture and told Olga Mamaeva (“BG”) about why Moscow does not need it and how to defend independence in the profession.

- You have repeatedly said that in childhood you dreamed of becoming a poet. What you do in architecture is an attempt to fulfill this dream with other means?

- If I say yes, it will turn out immodest. People should solve it. In any case, I would like what you are talking about, my buildings could be called poetry. The work of the architect is not only to build a certain structure made of concrete, iron and glass. The task of the architect is also to endow it with some kind of meaning and, if you want, poetry.

- At the lecture at the Strelka Institute, you talked a lot about the fact that the architect should first of all be an artist. Is it a very romantic idea of ​​the profession that is completely subordinate to the market today?

- Why? Of course, the architect each time performs a specific engineering project, taking into account certain wishes of the customer, but this does not prevent him from being an artist, creating volume, proportions, inventing various metaphors. Despite the powerful market offensive, the architects have some power.

“But you probably had to go to certain compromises, especially when the customer is not a private person, but for example, the Government of Georgia, China or even your native Italy?”

- Never. The architect is free, he can say “yes”, he can say “no”.

“You understand that this is not so.”

- Why? The more often the architect says “yes”, the worse he is as a professional. Only by defending his own independence, he is able to show a really high result.

Architects no longer build a marvelous new world. They just help people make life a little better.

- Certainly. But only a unit like you or Zahi Hadid can defend independence. The remaining architects who do not have stellar status are usually forced to adapt to the customer. For Russia, where architects are generally extremely inaudative people, this is especially characteristic.

- I, too, became far from right away, but from my very young age I learned to defend my professional position. And still the first thing I say to any customer: if you want architecture, you turned to the address if you are only interested in business, look for someone else. Yes, perhaps you will lose several customers, you will not earn money, you will remain out of work, but keep professional dignity and reputation. After some time, all this will work for you. And then, do not think that the situation you described exists only in Russia. Everything is the same everywhere. Throughout the world, there is more construction than architectures. All over the world, greedy developers want to invest a minimum of money in the project, and get the highest quality result. All over the world, the customer is trying to manipulate an architect. It’s just that someone succeeds, but someone does not. If we ourselves do not learn to be tough, we will remain silent performers of the will of the customer.

-In Russia, like around the world, the onset of modern architecture often occurs extremely aggressively, in violation of the existing cultural-historical, spatial context. Gradually, this becomes ethically acceptable, many of your colleagues (for example, Frank Gory) say that the architect has every right to neglect context. So has it or not?

- I think the context generally has much less meaning than is commonly believed. There are no modern and incompetent architecture. It happens only bad and good. The future is our only context, and not the past at all. No one will ever return to the past, we are not able to change it, but the future is completely in our hands. After 20 years, there will be 9 billion people on Earth. They all need to live and work somewhere. This is what context should be worried about us. The historical heritage, of course, must be preserved, but the word “context” should not stop anyone. Otherwise, we are dead in place and we will not leave anything after ourselves.

The more often the architect says “yes”, the worse he is as a professional.

- So many star architects say. How do you feel about this word - "star"?

- With a certain share of irony. Andy Warhol back in the 1960s correctly noticed about 15 minutes of fame that everyone would receive.

“You got it for more than 15 minutes.”

- Seriously, I never defined myself as a star. When I gave a lecture on the Strelka, I spoke with the students as an ordinary architect, just as a person who can do something and wants to share this skill with others. To call me a star or not to call me - other people decide. Not me.

- What seems to you more important - to invent your own handwriting and steadily follow it or every time invent a new solution?

- A good question. Probably still the second. How do you think?

-It seems to me that if you don’t know who the author of the Center for State Services in Tbilisi, the Myze -on-on-Maine shopping complex and the world of Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv, you will never think that all this was created by one architect.

- Yes, perhaps. I am going through the median path, on the one hand, given the historical heritage, which must be respected, on the other, creating what people need here and now. The fact that I am building a building every time that I did what I did before is explained simply: I listen to people who live in one place or another. How do I know what they need? They tell me about this, I delve into, remember, and then embody in the project. So it turns out that every time it is something completely different, new. And then, each place has its own specificity, its own spirit, which cannot be hidden. He will break through one way or another. Understand, I just want to be part of my time. And time is changing. I do not want to be an intellectual living in the sterile space and not feeling the smell of time and place. Ethics that businessmen often spil on is the most important for me.

- You often talk about ethics and humanism in architecture. What do you mean by these rather general words?

- This is very simple: I want to give people what they need, through the only tool to me - architecture. Unfortunately, I have no other funds. When I design a new building, I think that it should be primarily convenient, inspiring, capable of satisfying all the needs of people who will live or work in it. The issue of self -expression of the architect is in second place, if not in third. This is the humanistic aspect.

The context is generally much lesser than is commonly considered.

- What buildings express this idea best?

- The next that I build. True, it has not yet been born in my head. I do not like to talk about past projects.

- Let's talk about the future. For Moscow, you have yet come up with only one project ( the Uzideo-Educational Center of the Polytechnic Museum and Moscow State University named after Lomonosov , created together with the Russian Bureau of Speech and won at the international competition last year.-Ed. ). Do you want to build anything else here?

- Moscow is too strong the city, with frantic energy and the speed of life. She does not need old Massimiliano with his stupid advice. We do not live in the 15th century and not in the 1930s, when people believed that architects could change the world. Now the concept is completely different: architects no longer build a marvelous new world. They just help people make life a little better. The city makes decisions itself, no one can advise anything to such a giant as Moscow. Only some point decisions are possible that will help residents of a particular area cope with certain problems.

-In the case of the Polytechnic, you are satisfied with everyone or did you want to change something after a while?

- I am rarely satisfied with my projects, but here we, it seems, managed to find a more or less accurate solution.

- Why is such an unusual material - patched copper?

- Green, yellow, copper are the colors of the old Moscow, which were actively used in construction in the XV -XVI centuries. The dome of your churches, roofs of houses, Kremlin towers - I wanted to continue this topic in our project.

-So, the context still matters?

- (Laughs.) No.