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Hello, good afternoon.

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I'm ...

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... feeling so excited about attending
such a remarkable event,

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which the one percent
might find interesting

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who have needs beyond food and TV.

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That's great!

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I am going to tell you about something

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about which we all think to some extent,

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perhaps, even, without really
giving ourselves over to it.

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What makes a city beautiful,
how do we go about creating one,

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and how do we make one ugly?

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And on which criteria is it to be decided

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that one building is right
for one given site, but not another?

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Why talk about this, when you're
probably not all architects,

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just a tiny percentage of you?

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Well, today especially, architecture
is a subject of public debate.

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Since I conduct this discussion
with municipalities,

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the representatives of the people
in various cities,

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I can see how great
and how keen the interest is

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in regard to which kind of architecture
we should regard as beautiful.

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And when I talk about this,
I always start by showing this photograph.

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It may seem not to be about architecture,

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but if we are talking about the principle
of traditional historical harmony,

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then these Smolnyanki, young ladies
at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens,

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they just bring it to life

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with the harmony here, absolutely uniform:

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the ladies in evening gowns,

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the gentleman playing the piano

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in a tailcoat,

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this is a picture of a city
in tailcoat and evening gown.

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It is just like, 100 years ago,
our cities looked.

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They were cities like this,
in tailcoats and evening gowns,

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looking, in fact, the same
as the city folk did.

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When we look at an historical street,
many of us still think today

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that this historical street
is an example of absolute harmony.

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If there is a house of the 18th century,

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and you want to put up a house next to it,

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then it should reflect the style

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of those put up two centuries earlier.

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But the world today is developing
in a different way.

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Seeing that,
as the esteemed presenter said,

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I'm not only an architect
but an active graphic artist

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who draws architectural works
and popularizes this art form,

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I always verify my feeling
for a beautiful city

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by analysing my drawings.

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And clearly, all these cities here
are traditionally beautiful.

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You all know them,
or maybe you'll find out more later:

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those were Saint Petersburg,
Venice, Ghent, and Amsterdam.

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And here, at the end of the 19th,
the beginning of the 20th century,

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there arises the conflict
with the modern world,

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when a city stops being totally horizontal

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and absolutely harmoniously beautiful,
undeniably beautiful.

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This is late 19th,
early 20th century, Chicago.

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I was absolutely delighted
looking at the photos shown earlier.

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Undoubtedly, it was unreal courage.

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I was scared to death sitting
in a front-row seat:

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I imagined how scary it must be
doing it yourself.

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That he wasn't afraid
must have been a superhuman feat.

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I had very great respect for that,

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but was interested in
one more point he made.

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When looking at the pictures of nature,
we were all totally persuaded:

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it is very beautiful,

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nature is always beautiful
without exception.

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But there is so much ugly architecture.

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These high-rise complexes may be
more beautiful or less beautiful,

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and it is becoming more subjective,

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and the beginning of this subjectivity
was laid out right there in Chicago,

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where the first skyscrapers appeared.

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This is late 19th, early 20th century,

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and, going forward ...

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this is modern New York City,

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where the principles of modern beauty,

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contrasting beauty,

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allow the bringing together
of the incongruous.

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This is the 19th century,
the first third of the 20th century,

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the then state-of-the-art construction,

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the trendy SHoP building in New York.

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These are engineered add-ons
over brick buildings.

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And here we have the architectural form.

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It speaks out in order to stand out.

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In order to stand out,
it needs a background.

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If you appear naked or half-naked,

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you need to have around you
people in strict evening dress.

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Otherwise, if everyone came like it,
no one would stand out.

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And here, in like manner,

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contemporary architecture
is looking for such a role,

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for a city framework

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in which it can show itself off
without restraint.

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This wonderful sculpture
everybody probably knows:

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it's by Jeff Koontz, an outstanding
contemporary artist.

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He chose Heracles to say
modern culture is this.

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We need Heracles, not to admire him,

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but to admire the fantastic glass ball,

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and to appreciate the contrast.

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But at that moment,
as the speaker put it so wonderfully,

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when everyone wants to be first,
problems present themselves,

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because when everyone wants to be first,

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we descend into chaos.

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Everyone cannot be first,

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and, unfortunately, modern architecture,
today, cannot get along with itself.

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When we were coming here,
at least when I was,

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crowds of people were wandering

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between the different
separate buildings in this area,

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and we were just slaves
to this most recent architecture,

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where everyone lived for themselves,
and there was no ensemble.

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Today's architecture is
some kind of conjuncture

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between the desire to stand out
and yet to be befitting.

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And this is a very important feature
that I bring out in my drawings.

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All this ornament
of the urban environment,

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it's just designed to understand
the beauty of this bridge.

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This is the skyline of a traditional city,
we know these cityscapes,

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of London, of Moscow, of Milan, of Paris.

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They exist to make us realize
that these two buildings stand out.

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Or a contemporary structure:

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it needs this street
in order to make itself undeniable.

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And these sources of contrasting harmony,

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we can be proud of them
because they came from Russia.

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Today, the whole world is using them.

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They derive from Constructivism,

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because no past trends, no past movements,

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worked with such contrast
to the historical environment

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as Constructivism did.

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Take, for example,
Ivan Leonidov's construction.

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We know how it should have stood
in Moscow's structure.

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If, today, an architect
put forward such a design

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to the Committee for Architecture
and Urban Planning of Moscow,

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of which, by the way, I'm a member,

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I doubt his work
would be met with applause.

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This is what it would look like
in the historical environment, but ...

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we need to realize that
although this was only a design,

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it remains an indisputable icon
of the 20th century.

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And we see that such thinking today
has a huge impact all around the world.

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This is a vista of Paris that you can
only see from the Pompidou Centre,

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but tomorrow it will be
visible everywhere.

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This is another example of Constructivism,

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designed by Krinsky,

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it was intended for a corner
of Lubyanka Square.

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This is how it should have been seen

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from Myasnitskaya Street
looking to Lubyanka Square.

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And these buildings should have formed
a ring around Bely Gorod,

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that is, on the intersections
of the Boulevard Ring

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and the radial streets,
Tverskaya Street, for example.

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This building should have been
opposite the Strastnoy Monastery,

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which has now been demolished.

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So, here we are talking about
contrasting harmony

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where the new architecture
was not built from scratch,

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but was unreservedly boldly,
almost negligently rashly,

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inserted into the historical
context of the city,

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a worldwide trend today.

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And this is a purely Russian trend.

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Neither the Bauhaus, nor other trends
in the architecture of the 1920s,

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entered the fabric of the city
in such a bold manner.

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So here we have
what that trend looks like today.

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This is what's proposed
for the rue de Rivoli -

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everyone's been to Paris
and knows where it is -

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this highly refined location
by the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre.

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This is how Vincent Callebaut
envisages the green city of Paris

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in the near future.

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And in my drawings
and architectural designs,

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I always try to talk,
to analyse this subject,

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to talk about the different
strata of a city.

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In my architectural works, I try to prove

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that, today, contrast
is the most important feature

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of the modern cityscape.

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Contrast is the the key element
of the modern cityscape postcard.

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This is my building in Berlin,

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the Hotel nhow on the banks
of the River Spree,

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before that we saw an aquarium
at the Radisson Blu Hotel also in Berlin:

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a huge construction contrasting
with its surrounding atrium.

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This is a close-up view of the huge,
21-metre cantilever by the Spree.

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Here is another cantilever construction

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where there is contrast between it

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and the walls of the historical
brick building it envelops.

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We can see that it is
far from conventional harmony,

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but I think it's interesting,
it's beautiful today,

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and we must have the courage
to allow this in our cities.

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This is the Museum
for Architectural Drawing,

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so named by the speaker.

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In the historical part of the city,

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it doesn't rise above
the surrounding buildings,

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but it is strikingly contrasting,
it is strikingly sculptural.

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And here's what the new
apartment block looks like

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that I built quite recently
by the Berlin Wall.

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I am sure you know
where the Berlin Wall ran,

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on which there are the outstanding
paintings of Dmitri Vrubel,

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the Honecker-Brezhnev kiss, it's there.

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The same harsh contrast

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of high and low,
different colours, cantilevers.

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And this is when the question arises

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of just how we can arrive at
not having the whole fabric of the city

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look too jagged,

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of getting the buildings of contrast,

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and those of the traditional
harmonious environment,

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to work together

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so that the whole city is not far off

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the picture we have
that is close to all of us.

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This is just the perfectly ordinary square
in front of the Bourse du Travail in Nice.

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One thing I'll say is that it is only
with rigid rules and regulations

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imposed on the built environment

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surrounding these historically
important buildings,

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when not only the height is regulated,
but all parameters are regulated,

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a wall's surface area,
the number of windows,

203
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the use of the ground floor,
the availability of public space,

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that we can create
an environmental architecture

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that forms the new framework

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avoiding the discordance
that we saw in the first picture,

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when everyone wants to lead
and chaos results.

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And here an immense role
is played by the detail,

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so if there are any architects here,

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or if most of you aren't architects

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you must also bear in mind,

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that if we have a Palladian palace,

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the Palazzo Thiene,
or the Palazzo Rucellai,

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it is always about detail.

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When contemporary architecture
says that you can do without detail,

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it's wrong, and it doesn't work.

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But, the detail can be very different,
as we can see in these pictures.

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Here there's the Hagia Sophia
in Constantinople,

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Istanbul today;

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a building by Frank Lloyd Wright
in San Francisco;

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a wonderful mansion
by Palo Portaluppi in Milan;

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all kinds of ways to create ornamentation,
to create a rich pattern structure.

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These are my other objects,

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environmental, without a specific
complex structure,

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no sculpture,

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but there are plastic details

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that allow the creation
of an environment, refined in detail,

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not one that screams out,

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which later could become a necklace
into which you can later insert a diamond:

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those 15, 20, 30 percent
of unique developments

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around which you can graft an environment

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rich in detail like this.

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This is very, very important,

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as it is also to design buildings
down to such tiny details as door handles,

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because that is exactly
what someone will notice:

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they don't look up 100-200 metres;

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they look at a height of 1.5 metres,

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towards what lies directly ahead,

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where they see all these details
that they admire,

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that enrich their eyes,

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and it's like that
that they embrace architecture.

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Here, architecture
should not be left bare,

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it needs to be saturated
with a fine texture,

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which is that which we love.

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It should penetrate the interior,
it must go inside,

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to create a refined surface there.

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Ideally, with this, a sculptural form,

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what we see looking at it from a distance,

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and the subtle texture of the detail
that we only see when closer to it,

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should combine with each other.

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And, indeed, this is
what gives us the opportunity

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to identify interesting
architecture from a distance,

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and then, getting closer,
observe the smallest details,

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and based on these tiny details,

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to love architecture from any distance.

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and to love our modern cities.

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I wish you,

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the architects present in here anyway,

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to be daring in your ideas,

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but to also always bear in mind

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that the lifespan of a building is longer

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than the time you took
to come up with the idea.

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We should create a fabric for the building
that is a fabric that lasts longer,

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and, at the same time,

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we need to take pains
in implementing those details,

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to be demanding of one's clients
and others involved.

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And I'd like that the majority
of those involved in the process,

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those people who discuss
the work of architects,

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to pay greater attention

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to different trends
in modern town planning,

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contrasting trends included,

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and not demand that we be
always pseudo-harmonious,

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because to be modern means
to have the potential to do more.

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Thank you for listening.

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(Applause)