Architexture| Sergei Tchoban| TEDxPokrovkaSt

Sergei illustrates this talk, which covers the issue of the coexistence of the historical urban environment and modern architecture, not only with examples of existing buildings, but with his designs. Under the very apt title of the talk, "Architexture", he explains the significance of such concepts as texture and detail for modern architecture, qualities that give buildings harmony and tactility and put them on a human scale.

Sergei Tchoban is a Russian and German architect. He works in different cities in Europe and Russia.

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Hello, good afternoon.

I'm ...

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

which the one percent
might find interesting

who have needs beyond food and TV.

That's great!

I am going to tell you about something

about which we all think to some extent,

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

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

and how do we make one ugly?

And on which criteria is it to be decided

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

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

just a tiny percentage of you?

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

Since I conduct this discussion
with municipalities,

the representatives of the people
in various cities,

I can see how great
and how keen the interest is

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

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

It may seem not to be about architecture,

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

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

they just bring it to life

with the harmony here, absolutely uniform:

the ladies in evening gowns,

the gentleman playing the piano

in a tailcoat,

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

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

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

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

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

that this historical street
is an example of absolute harmony.

If there is a house of the 18th century,

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

then it should reflect the style

of those put up two centuries earlier.

But the world today is developing
in a different way.

Seeing that,
as the esteemed presenter said,

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

who draws architectural works
and popularizes this art form,

I always verify my feeling
for a beautiful city

by analysing my drawings.

And clearly, all these cities here
are traditionally beautiful.

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

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

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

there arises the conflict
with the modern world,

when a city stops being totally horizontal

and absolutely harmoniously beautiful,
undeniably beautiful.

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

I was absolutely delighted
looking at the photos shown earlier.

Undoubtedly, it was unreal courage.

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

I imagined how scary it must be
doing it yourself.

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

I had very great respect for that,

but was interested in
one more point he made.

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

it is very beautiful,

nature is always beautiful
without exception.

But there is so much ugly architecture.

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

and it is becoming more subjective,

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

where the first skyscrapers appeared.

This is late 19th, early 20th century,

and, going forward ...

this is modern New York City,

where the principles of modern beauty,

contrasting beauty,

allow the bringing together
of the incongruous.

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

the then state-of-the-art construction,

the trendy SHoP building in New York.

These are engineered add-ons
over brick buildings.

And here we have the architectural form.

It speaks out in order to stand out.

In order to stand out,
it needs a background.

If you appear naked or half-naked,

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

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

And here, in like manner,

contemporary architecture
is looking for such a role,

for a city framework

in which it can show itself off
without restraint.

This wonderful sculpture
everybody probably knows:

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

He chose Heracles to say
modern culture is this.

We need Heracles, not to admire him,

but to admire the fantastic glass ball,

and to appreciate the contrast.

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

when everyone wants to be first,
problems present themselves,

because when everyone wants to be first,

we descend into chaos.

Everyone cannot be first,

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

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

crowds of people were wandering

between the different
separate buildings in this area,

and we were just slaves
to this most recent architecture,

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

Today's architecture is
some kind of conjuncture

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

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

All this ornament
of the urban environment,

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

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

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

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

Or a contemporary structure:

it needs this street
in order to make itself undeniable.

And these sources of contrasting harmony,

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

Today, the whole world is using them.

They derive from Constructivism,

because no past trends, no past movements,

worked with such contrast
to the historical environment

as Constructivism did.

Take, for example,
Ivan Leonidov's construction.

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

If, today, an architect
put forward such a design

to the Committee for Architecture
and Urban Planning of Moscow,

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

I doubt his work
would be met with applause.

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

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

it remains an indisputable icon
of the 20th century.

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

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

but tomorrow it will be
visible everywhere.

This is another example of Constructivism,

designed by Krinsky,

it was intended for a corner
of Lubyanka Square.

This is how it should have been seen

from Myasnitskaya Street
looking to Lubyanka Square.

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

that is, on the intersections
of the Boulevard Ring

and the radial streets,
Tverskaya Street, for example.

This building should have been
opposite the Strastnoy Monastery,

which has now been demolished.

So, here we are talking about
contrasting harmony

where the new architecture
was not built from scratch,

but was unreservedly boldly,
almost negligently rashly,

inserted into the historical
context of the city,

a worldwide trend today.

And this is a purely Russian trend.

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

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

So here we have
what that trend looks like today.

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

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

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

This is how Vincent Callebaut
envisages the green city of Paris

in the near future.

And in my drawings
and architectural designs,

I always try to talk,
to analyse this subject,

to talk about the different
strata of a city.

In my architectural works, I try to prove

that, today, contrast
is the most important feature

of the modern cityscape.

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

This is my building in Berlin,

the Hotel nhow on the banks
of the River Spree,

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

a huge construction contrasting
with its surrounding atrium.

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

Here is another cantilever construction

where there is contrast between it

and the walls of the historical
brick building it envelops.

We can see that it is
far from conventional harmony,

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

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

This is the Museum
for Architectural Drawing,

so named by the speaker.

In the historical part of the city,

it doesn't rise above
the surrounding buildings,

but it is strikingly contrasting,
it is strikingly sculptural.

And here's what the new
apartment block looks like

that I built quite recently
by the Berlin Wall.

I am sure you know
where the Berlin Wall ran,

on which there are the outstanding
paintings of Dmitri Vrubel,

the Honecker-Brezhnev kiss, it's there.

The same harsh contrast

of high and low,
different colours, cantilevers.

And this is when the question arises

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

look too jagged,

of getting the buildings of contrast,

and those of the traditional
harmonious environment,

to work together

so that the whole city is not far off

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

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

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

imposed on the built environment

surrounding these historically
important buildings,

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

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

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

that we can create
an environmental architecture

that forms the new framework

avoiding the discordance
that we saw in the first picture,

when everyone wants to lead
and chaos results.

And here an immense role
is played by the detail,

so if there are any architects here,

or if most of you aren't architects

you must also bear in mind,

that if we have a Palladian palace,

the Palazzo Thiene,
or the Palazzo Rucellai,

it is always about detail.

When contemporary architecture
says that you can do without detail,

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

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

Here there's the Hagia Sophia
in Constantinople,

Istanbul today;

a building by Frank Lloyd Wright
in San Francisco;

a wonderful mansion
by Palo Portaluppi in Milan;

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

These are my other objects,

environmental, without a specific
complex structure,

no sculpture,

but there are plastic details

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

not one that screams out,

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

those 15, 20, 30 percent
of unique developments

around which you can graft an environment

rich in detail like this.

This is very, very important,

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

because that is exactly
what someone will notice:

they don't look up 100-200 metres;

they look at a height of 1.5 metres,

towards what lies directly ahead,

where they see all these details
that they admire,

that enrich their eyes,

and it's like that
that they embrace architecture.

Here, architecture
should not be left bare,

it needs to be saturated
with a fine texture,

which is that which we love.

It should penetrate the interior,
it must go inside,

to create a refined surface there.

Ideally, with this, a sculptural form,

what we see looking at it from a distance,

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

should combine with each other.

And, indeed, this is
what gives us the opportunity

to identify interesting
architecture from a distance,

and then, getting closer,
observe the smallest details,

and based on these tiny details,

to love architecture from any distance.

and to love our modern cities.

I wish you,

the architects present in here anyway,

to be daring in your ideas,

but to also always bear in mind

that the lifespan of a building is longer

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

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

and, at the same time,

we need to take pains
in implementing those details,

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

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

those people who discuss
the work of architects,

to pay greater attention

to different trends
in modern town planning,

contrasting trends included,

and not demand that we be
always pseudo-harmonious,

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

Thank you for listening.

(Applause)