The secret life of houses. How an architect can survive the "maturity" of a project with dignity

Usually, the architect lives in the object from the moment of receiving the assignment from the customer (sometimes an advance payment) and until the publication of a photo session of the constructed object in the architectural media.

Often, the architect's attention to the object after completion is returned by an unexpected nomination in architectural competitions, and sometimes by complaints from the customer or residents, or sometimes depressing and annoying proposals to "glaze", "furnish", "finish".

But the ideal project, which is drawn in the architect's imagination, exists after commissioning without any transformations. Except that in a few decades, thrifty restorers will bother him in search of the original drawings.

architect

Olga Chernova, chief architect of archimatika projects

But for the rest, it's the other way around: life at home begins from the moment it is commissioned and occupied! It is extremely naive, even infantile, to assume that the inhabitants of the house will not change, and with them their needs, tastes and opportunities. This means that the functional, technical and aesthetic program of the house will also change.

After all, only mummified museum exhibits do not change: if you still hope that none of its inhabitants will want to change the house you designed, just imagine that it is inhabited by mummies...

How should the author of the project be in such a situation, if the inevitable objective truth is that his work, speaking the most politically correct language, will necessarily be subject to transformation?

In this case, the experience of an artist, sculptor or even a writer is not suitable (despite the "difficulty of translation" into other languages ​​and sometimes the paradoxical difference of reading the same text by different people). But I will allow myself to be presented as a suitable, in my opinion, analogy of the experience of a parent whose child continues to grow and change, even if the parents want to "stop the moment."

Residential complex "Vremena goda", Kyiv. Photo: Segodnya Multimedia

So what does an ordinary parent do when faced with a task that is overwhelming for an outstanding writer and artist?

Brings up!

Explains what is good and what is bad, and demands strictly to do good and not to do bad! And when, thanks to the fulfillment of the prescribed rules, the child turns out to be alive, healthy, and literate, it is possible to discuss "which university to enter."

Within the framework of this analogy, I would like to offer some advice on "primary housing education".

 

Internal device

The redevelopment of an apartment built 60 years ago is a natural component of major repairs. After all, our way of life requires a radically different organization of apartment space, different from those in which our grandmothers and grandfathers lived. But why do people remodel apartments in new buildings or relatively recently built houses? There are 2 reasons for this: a) the architect together with the developer cheated, did not give the buyer the opportunity to choose exactly the layout option that corresponds to his needs and capabilities, and forced him to adjust the unsuitable; b) the composition of the family living in the apartment has changed, but due to some life circumstances, instead of moving to another apartment, this family turns out to be locked in the same space like a prisoner and tries to escape by "picking through the underground passage" - reshaping it available ways.

If you hope that no one will want to change the house you designed, just imagine that it is inhabited by mummies

What should an architect do in these two situations? In the first case, obviously, they will stop and not publish the drawing of the apartment, if it is not clear who and how will live in it! In the second, the indirect answer is the same, since no one would have to adapt the old housing to new needs, if there was more choice on the market! And the change of housing would not be associated with so much administrative, legal and fiscal gloom. But even in the case of layouts that perfectly correspond to the demand, it is necessary to rewrite the laws so that the process of changing housing becomes as unburdening as possible.

Sleeping area on Poznyaki in Kyiv. Photo: domik.ua

External signs

Outdoor units of air conditioners on the facades are a temporary "allergic rash" as a response to engineering helplessness in matters of climate regulation of living spaces. This will pass (after all, truly Talented Engineers will find a way to regulate the air temperature in the apartment in other ways).

Glazing of balconies is outright idiocy: he dug a tunnel to freedom from his cell and immediately glazed it!

"Halabud" superstructures above the terraces are another example of militant idiocy! A terrace in a high-rise building is a luxury that only a very wealthy person can afford. The main feature of a well-off person is precisely that he can afford what he wants: not "adjust, redo, reward", but allow, that is, get what he wants IMMEDIATELY, and not buy it at a discount and then for years, roll up his sleeves, puff and bother!

"Tsar-balcony" in the house on ul. Bolshoi Vasylkovskoy 54 in Kyiv. Photo: Yevgeny Nikiforov / theBabel

Unforgiving parking throughout the territory adjacent to the residential complex is an urban legacy of the slavish idea of ​​communism: this is how every "free parker" lives with the same belief that the land does not belong to anyone, that is, if he is not immediately beaten on the ears for it , he can openly use it and even demand this "freedom". However, the truth is that the territory of the residential complex is in the communal property of the residents, and by throwing his car park on this territory, our "free parking lot" leaves his neighbors with the opportunity to use this territory for their intended purpose. For this, firstly, you should ask for permission, and secondly, you should pay the neighbors for it! And the additional payment for the opportunity to park your car on the territory of the residential complex will allow the operating organization to take better care of the territory, as well as increase the comparative economic feasibility of buying or renting a parking space in the parking lot, and will also limit the number of free parking on the territory of the residential complex, which, in fact, and will remove the problem.

Numerous advertising signs and other options for violating the architectural plan by the owners of built-in commercial premises are simply humiliation of the residents of the complex. Agree: only representatives of the poorest strata of the population are ready to agree to hang a sign with an advertising offer on themselves for money and walk around with it in a public place. The facade of the house is an architectural projection of your appearance in public. Are you really ready to hang a sign with the inscription "Beer" or "Beauty Salon" on yourself even for a fee and go out on the promenade?

Numerous advertising signs are simply a humiliation for the residents of the complex

Residential building in Kyiv

Cluttering of common areas. Initially, this was a mistake of the architect and the developer, who instead of a high-quality design space created gray utilitarian gloom. But then residents who accept to live with this sadness are included! Actually, the same methods with which they liven up the dreary spaces of their cottages, glazed balconies and even the apartments themselves, simply filling them with garbage. It is not necessary to place in the halls and lobbies of multi-apartment buildings old chairs and half-dead overgrown plants, which your aesthetic sense has deemed unworthy of placement in the apartment! Believe that your neighbors have at least a no less high bar in this matter! If you really want to ennoble the common space (and not save money on the removal of furniture to the landfill), splurge and do something that you and your neighbors will be proud of!

The permissive attitude towards the performance of their functions by concierges and other employees of the operating organization is, alas, an almost ubiquitous factor in the degradation transformation of housing. The municipality limits the upper bar of the cost of payment for home maintenance services by residents, ostensibly to protect their interests, but in fact it simply makes it impossible to get decent pay for the work of people engaged in home maintenance, and, therefore, allows their degradation! Or do you know at least one gardener, plumber or concierge who agrees to work altruistically?

And, finally, the most terrible thing is the creation of condominiums with flowerbeds with old toys or "sculptures" made of tires... If in our country there is a process of transferring the management and maintenance of housing by post-Soviet residential complexes to managing organizations created by the residents themselves, then a new management culture must be created! Otherwise, we will get another incarnation of "shvonderstva" - with songs at meetings and eternal destruction in parades. It is an indisputable fact that ZHEKs are a system that is completely incapable of improvement, and the only force supporting at least some activity (including private ZHEKs) is inertia. But it turned out that this state of things is not the worst yet! When brave activists chosen by the neighbors intercept the work of ZHEK, a total systemic stupor suddenly arises in the place of a dull inertial movement!

It is an indisputable fact that ZHEK is a system that is completely incapable of improvement

If my words seem overly categorical, please give an example of at least one condominium that emphasized or, God forbid, improved the architecture of the residential complex. In this case, architecture is by no means an end in itself - it is only an indicator of the quality of their activities: for example, the construction of a fence around the territory of the residential complex, topped with barbed wire, "so that homeless people do not rummage through garbage cans", is no less barbaric than the process of compacting apartments by "shvonderov committees" » a hundred years ago.

Photo: by Lance Asper on Unsplash

Of course, just like a person who grows up from the short pants of parental instructions, begins to set his own tasks and goals - the residents of the house can and should eventually become the customers of the transformation of their housing.

But only after they become educated adults!

And how the architect's inner peace affects the garden, read in Olga Chernova's material "Mind Control".