Dmytro Sivak and his gray. Sadolin: Careful, painted!

Founder of the Sivak+Partners studio Dmytro Sivak has the role of an eloquent and witty designer whose irony borders on snobbery. Dmytro actively leads social networks, in which he discusses provocative topics, for example, compiles a list of design taboos.

However, in personal communication, the designer opened up somewhat differently. Perhaps because the background of the war sheds unnecessary pathos, and we all become simpler and more sincere.

Dmytro believes that design helps society cultivate taste, develop and strengthen self-esteem. He strives to create objects that will make people proud of belonging to the Ukrainian cultural context. To strengthen the brand of our country, to live and build right here.

Dmytro loves all colors. At first he chose yellow for our interview, but eventually changed it to gray because gray is more interesting to talk about.

 

B/W photo

My childhood was spent in Odessa, it was the 90s, an old house. I will not say that it is gray, but it is not bright either. Mom worked as a commodity expert and was engaged in, as they would say now, entrepreneurial activities. Times were difficult, and she was always concerned about how to make money: she brought some goods from abroad, she had her own farm on the seventh kilometer. Another career example was my father, who held a serious position on the Odesa Railway. I think I inherited my mother's entrepreneurial spirit. At the same time, the realization that people in my family independently managed to achieve something quite significant supported me and made me believe in myself in adolescence.

The superpower of gray is that it can be both a background and a figure

Thanks to my mother, I learned something about interiors even then - she occasionally rearranged our apartment. Nothing global, just changed the places of cabinets and chairs. But even then I noticed how it works and how much the space changes. It was interesting to flip through Polish magazines with large pink chandeliers.

 

A simple pencil

My choice of profession was not determined by my parents, but by the teacher of the drawing club, where I went during my school years. He was an unrecognized genius, a person with a unique worldview. He believed that one could not devote his whole life only to earning money - to be a lawyer or a dentist. In his world, all people had to be creative. Come after work and paint or sculpt. Otherwise, their lives had no meaning. But at some point, near the end of school, he must have realized that he might be leading us somewhere wrong. He advised not to become an artist, because this is the path of penury. But there are other professions that combine artistic work with income, such as architecture.

In the end, I chose between becoming a sailor, a lawyer, an architect and a businessman.

 

Concrete foundation

Before entering the Faculty of Architecture of the Odessa State Academy, I was a little worried that architecture is endless drawings. It turned out that these fears were in vain. The work of an architect is drawing, interesting meetings, communication, and only partly drawing.

Around the second year, I saw the projects of Zaha Hadid, Calatrava, and Frank Gehry and realized that I wanted to do the same. These architects were "Hollywood stars" for us. I suspect that each of the students then dreamed of their own architectural office with a large office for 200-300 people, about large modern projects in Europe.

I started working in the third year. But it was not exactly architecture - drawings for redevelopment. After graduating from the institute, I immediately printed business cards for myself, created a website with a portfolio and began the path to the dream big architectural company.

For about three years I have been creating projects that my consciousness has successfully displaced. It was a time of accumulating experience, plasterboard waves on the ceiling and awareness of design taboos. The first project, which I am not ashamed to mention, was a picture in the style of a loft. The direction was only gaining popularity, little was known about it here, and the picture with my project made it to the first page of Google search. After that I started calling myself a designer.

 

Line and dot

Our studio does not have any one defined style. The thing is that I like different directions. The portfolio includes minimalism, restrained monochrome projects, and there are eclectic complex combinations, even mid-century elements.

When you leave the line
and period, after removing all the excess, minimalism is exhausted

Personally, I admire minimalism. At the same time, I realize that the development of this direction inevitably leads to a dead end. When you leave a line and a dot, removing everything superfluous, minimalism is exhausted. All interiors become similar to each other, and you won't find anything new. You have already moved all the rectangles, crossed them with each other, and there is nowhere to develop further. Minimalism ends, and something else needs to be added to it. Maybe add yourself.

 

Between black and white

At the beginning of creating interior projects, I was stuck in black and white for a long time. The thing is that it is easier to work with it, easier to put together a composition. You can create an interior from shades of gray and add some accent to it - a wooden table or a red pillow - and the scale will be decided. I'm still not completely comfortable with colors, so I purposely force myself to work with them to develop this skill. Studio colleagues work with color more freely.

There is a stereotype that gray is a dangerous color that should not be abused. I categorically do not share it. The superpower of gray is that it can be both a background and a figure.

Gray has overcome the stereotype that he has little emotion

For the past ten years, designers have been teaching customers that white is not a hospital or sterility. People accepted it and started ordering Scandinavian interiors with white walls. Then something similar happened to black. It took some time to get used to the fact that black is not death or a coffin. Modern black interiors appeared, at some point this color became associated with bold and progressive views on design.

And gray has overcome the stereotype that it has little emotion. It is only at first glance so. Complex gray can hide shades of blue or green. And then this color becomes interesting, like an impressionist painting.

One of our new projects - ice cream cafe "Tayu" in Odesa - has a gray and white color palette. The main element of the design is a wavy stainless steel wall. From the very beginning, I was delighted that the client was ready for a bold decision. At the same time, there were fears that the room would be emotionally cold and uncomfortable, as if inside a refrigerator. The reflection effect that "stainless steel" has saved from this. In addition to its own gray color, it reflects other shades, for example, warm light. Thanks to this combination, as well as high ceilings with stucco and large windows, the interior has become interesting and even a little "Lukhuri".

 

Gray matter

I loved to read since childhood. I appreciate the beauty of language, the skill of combining words into intricate constructions and complex sentences. Now I spend 20-30 minutes reading every morning, make notes in the margins, take pictures of something important so I don't forget.

The Russian invasion forced me to make a choice and admit that I had been wrong for most of my life

As a person who was born and raised in Odessa, I am currently in the process of switching to the Ukrainian language. It is not entirely easy, because I want to delve into Ukrainian as thoroughly as I mastered Russian. As part of my work on myself, I purposefully read Ukrainian literature. Now they are the authors of the "Shot Revival", a period that passed me by in the school curriculum. I have now returned to it and am greatly impressed by the authors, their potential and the drama that happened to the generation of Ukrainian authors in the 20s and 30s of the last century. It is an indescribable pity that they were destroyed in this way.

The Russian invasion forced me to make a choice and admit that I had been wrong for most of my life, believing that we and the neighboring country shared some kind of cultural space. The decision to disconnect from Russian culture and delve into Ukrainian was a difficult and important step for me. Now I record video analyzes of interiors in Ukrainian, and finding the right words is becoming easier and easier.

 

Rorschach spots

For the past three years, I have been studying psychology in the field of Gestalt therapy. At first, I was critical of it, because there is a lot of unproven stuff. But there are also useful moments that work in practice and allow you to better understand yourself. It seems to me that it is useful for many, if not all people: to understand yourself and the world around you. The more you understand how your own psyche works, the more you move away from mystical ideas about the world.

There is a stereotype that every designer is a psychologist. This is delusional. The designer only seeks to understand what the client wants, psychology and childhood trauma are irrelevant here. Personally, learning gestalt helps me to work better in a team, improve our interaction, communicate better and feel people more vividly.

I love design so much as a main profession that practicing as a psychotherapist only claims the status of a hobby. This combination makes me the most uncommitted and sincere therapist who earns for others. I have two clients now. Maybe over time there will be three or four of them.

 

Black mirror

I may sound crazy right now with the "Repent, the apocalypse is near!" sign, but I have a feeling that artificial intelligence and neural networks will put us out of work in a few years. Everyone I know considers my warnings excessive, they are convinced that this is another tool that will help a person work more efficiently. But the leap that neural networks have made over the last year makes me predict a different scenario.

I think that in a few years we will see a sharp spike in unemployment and drastic changes in the labor market. That is, the interior project can be obtained in a few days, and it will cost three dollars. Just like the most interesting movie with the best actors, with a plot that you will definitely like. Artificial intelligence will be able to simulate everything, the only question is that people will not have three dollars to buy it.

However, artificial intelligence is unlikely to be able to provide high-quality psychotherapy. Maybe then I will realize that I did not spend my time studying psychology in vain.

 

When the ashes are scattered

Over time, my dream of a large European company evolved. The fact is that there are already many good architectural studios in Europe that provide solutions to current problems. And there are problems in our country, even though I'm swimming. We have much more room to improve everything. There is a lot of bad taste, bad architecture and terrible interiors. My dream now is to develop architecture and design in Ukraine. I want to create many projects that will change the image of my city and the whole country. I want to be a part of this culture, to enrich it, so that people want to be involved, feel proud of it.

The feeling that artificial intelligence and neural networks will leave us without work in a few years

It is not so important what the scale will be. The project of a public toilet, a stop for transport, a museum or a spaceport — all this is difficult, responsible and important.

 

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