So, why we are here? Why did you choose this place?

That's a stupid question. I'm temporarily officeless, and this place helps out and supports me.

I created this atmosphere, and I'm as comfortable as I can be here. First, I put together the collage (well, along with my wife). I don't know where the main idea came from; I wanted to make pilasters with a Corinthian order.

You can see they're out of proportion with respect to the room. They're 80-cm-high, and the room is 3.20 m. They should be smaller, obviously. There's this Danish furniture store that used to be a bank that really inspired me.

What's it called?

I don't remember. I can send you a link later. I really liked the idea of a leaky, whitewashed ceiling. We chalked it up, washed it out with water, and it turned out very vividly. In general, we only used natural materials (I don't know why, it just turned out that way). The walls have a special lime-based paint, there are wooden floors, all that. And then, little by little ....

This is Kazan, not Copenhagen, so I decided that the glass should be knocked out here and there; I inserted wooden pieces, lining. Rusty pipes ... see, like Apartment [the Apartment 63 restaurant, which is now out of business], just more bohemian, more grown-up. It's like the difference between the place where you first got drunk on vodka in the stairwell when you were very young, but then, eventually, you grow up and, like, move into a squat or something.

But it's under different ownership?

Nope, the same team.

Just all grown up.

Well, they've gotten older anyways!

Really, it's a compilation of various historical references. Constructivist lamps (they're French, very cool). I wanted to do everything completely differently. You know how it is...

People just copy and paste individual pieces and ideas from Pinterest. It may look hip, of course, and that kind of interior design may do just fine, but I find it bland.

Creating an atmosphere is important for me. The atmosphere is first and foremost. Space comes in second. It should be intricate, you should have at least two options: you can enter from here or you can enter from here, and it should be compelling, with different scenarios. Everything should be proper, according to canon. The second way to design is to write stories. When I design an interior, it's less like creating an interior and more like I'm writing a story, with characters and a plot.

Of course, I try to avoid mainstream trends in interior design and do what I want. That's not always possible, but who cares?

I always used to feel like I needed feedback. I wanted to hear "I think this, or I think that" from somebody. I finally just realized, screw it. I'm better off not to listening to anyone.

For one thing, people say all sorts of things about stuff they don't understand. They have no idea what they're talking about. I mean, I have clients, customers, friends of friends, and they always pass some kind of judgement, and it's always—how can I put this—terrible. I can't even listen to them, because it's so far from the truth; they're not objective. And really, can you even be objective when it comes to art? I look at it like that.

I treat interior decorating as an art, which is a problem for me as a businessman. I can work fast enough; putting together an apartment in a year is normal, right? Jean-Louis Deniot takes six months just to draw a floor plan.

Why am I in Kazan? That's my least favorite question. I can't stand when people ask me that. Why am I in Kazan? Jeez.

A lot of circumstances led to me being here, the first of which is simply masochism. I'm in terrible pain here. Yesterday I walked around the neighborhood of Fuchs and Yapeeva. It has a very beautiful terrain, so hilly. I saw (like I always do) the potential ways in which that relief could be used in architecture and how it was just being to make these steps. Kazan is hilly.

How can I see all this? How can I see all of this and keep my sanity? But I'm in Kazan because I was born here, I grew up here, studied here, my parents are here, my wife and son, my ancestors were buried here. I lived in Moscow for quite a while, in some other places. When I travel, I understand that I'm comfortable here (in Kazan). Well, maybe not aesthetically.

I really hate Moscow. No, I mean I don't like it. I used to love it! It used to be that when I would return to Kazan after being in Moscow, I would suffer. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had no place here. I was out of my comfort zone everywhere. But then, at some point ... places started popping up. And now I'm out of my comfort zone in Moscow.

For me, the most important thing is to have your own spot. A little corner. A place of my own where I can establish my creative processes, vital activity, everyday life. But it has to be by my rules. If not, I start to wilt. Like, I can't even visit someone for more than three hours unless I'm really drunk.

That's the first reason why I'm in Kazan.

The second reason, well I've thought about moving to other countries.

I've already lived in Moscow. St. Petersburg has a bad climate that my wife can't stand. I can't move to a village because my son has school, at least up to high school; then it's his choice to make. I'm not really a fan of education, but I guess you have to do it. I don't really want to move abroad. I like speaking Russian.

The Tatar language is fun to listen to. There are some languages that are just fun to hear: Tatar, Italian, and Spanish. Some aren't so fun: German or Dutch (the worst).

I really don't want to live in a big city, but there's nothing I can do about it. That's the way it's heading. I can tell by, for example, how much time we want to spend at home. We're a small city, although maybe not that small. We have a population of over a million, but it doesn't seem that big to me. A city that size in China would be considered tiny.

Judging by how much Kazan wants to spend and expend, if you look at the ambitious things they're trying to accomplish, like the Expo at the airport, the airport itself, the railways, and bridges, I get the impression that Kazan wants to become a big city, but I don't think it will be a very nice big city.

So, you see Kazan through the eyes of an architect. You have no other eyes to see it with.

Unfortunately. I look at it as an architect, as a person who can see all the big mistakes in urban development. In this sense, Kazan is starting to look like Istanbul. On the one hand, it's very pleasant and, on the other, it's so unpleasant! When I look at a picture ... like I said, the most important thing in any public space is the atmosphere. That is, earlier, Kazan was like a store. A little shop. And now it's more like a shopping mall, like ... like the Yuzhny Shopping Center. A place you go to get what you need, buy it as quickly as possible, and leave right away before you can look at anything else. There are plenty of places like that in Kazan.

It's not even the architecture itself, but the utilitarian approach to everything. Right? Because there is no approach. Architecture can always be saved by the beauty of its surroundings: trees or a clean facade. All of these houses are surrounded by rows of fences, enclosures, and so on, like a cemetery. And what was the question? Like, "What does Kazan mean for you?"

Yes.

Yeah. There are a few of places that I like. I keep to those places.

Ulyanova Street. There's not even a specific place I like, but just the overall condition of that area. You know, I like to hang out on hills, like at the intersection of Astronomicheskaya and Kremlevskaya streets at sunset, in winter at around half past three. That's where it's at!

It has a certain atmosphere due to the lighting, a particular ... well, it's probably a silly artistic take. I mean, everyone says, "Um, like ... from the point of view of like, I don't know, utilitarianism, Kazan has become more convenient."

Back when there was a tram on Karl Marx Street. I liked, you know, standing in the last wagon in the evening in the late winter or in the fall as it drives down Karl Marx Street like, at nine o'clock in the evening, and it's snowing. There are no cars, no people. You're riding down an empty, snowy street.

Is this your ideal city?

Well, yeah [both are laughing].

What was the Kazan of your childhood?

You know, the Kazan of my childhood was basically Gorky. If you mean early childhood. I very rarely left Gorky to go downtown. Public transportation wasn't very good back then. Where would I even go? My parents and I would go to visit my grandfather. He lived on Tatarstan Street. I really liked going there. On the one hand, it's downtown, but, on the other, it's a strange housing development, mostly prefabricated housing.

Is that the Muslim Quarter? Closer to Park Tinchurin?

Yes. It's right next to Park Molodozhenov, over there. The buildings are prefabricated, five-story. I liked it. I remember it very vividly: we visited my grandfather and I would hang out on the balcony. There was a large wooden house between the prefabricated buildings with a yard and a garden. I really liked to gaze at it from above, from the balcony. I would study the arrangement of the roofs, all the chimneys. And there were always children playing there; I could just tell that they had their own world. They ... well, they seem to be living in a parallel dimension. I mean, a grid of concrete buildings and then, suddenly, a wooden house!

Then my grandfather died and I moved to Moscow. I don't know when that house was torn down. Well, it's gone now. A parking lot.

So, the Kazan of my childhood was Gorky and the forest near my building, which is now a training ground for tanks, and that's it. And then, by the time I started high school and began getting ready for college, Kazan had already changed.

How did you choose your profession?

I didn't really have any options. I wanted to either learn a foreign language or become a hitman. I really wanted to be a spy. Right? And I'm not sure how intentional it was, but my dad and I talked a lot about my future. And he, without telling me what I had to choose, talked me out of being a translator or a spy.

I had no other options. Everyone in my family was an architect, and it seemed like a cool job.

When I was very young, what I really wanted to do was drive a tractor. I found out later that almost everyone on my dad's side—they were from a village—operated farm machinery. Then, after watching the 1990 World Cup, I started thinking about becoming a soccer player. I wanted to play soccer, whatever it took, and beat the Germans [laughing out loud]. Again with the damn Germans!

But is it genetic memory?

I don't know. Whatever. Of course, it is, definitely! No question. Everyone on my father's side is from a village and I wanted to drive a tractor. Everyone in my wife's family worked on the railroad, and my son loves trains. He's crazy about them! Nobody ever told him about her side of the family, but he's crazy about them, he loves the subway and its music, trains and everything, that's all he cares about! How can you explain that? It's his passion. He knows everything about the railway!

Well, I never became a soccer player because I had a bad coach ... he wasn't very understanding. And, in short, that killed my desire to play soccer, because I just felt like, who cares? One time at practice we were standing in line, 7–8 years old, and the coach was going insane. He held the ball like this and walked up and down the line going on about something. Here and there he'd kick the ball into us unexpectedly ....

Randomly ...?

Yes. He would randomly beat children. That is, he'd go back and forth, then suddenly ... "don't let your guard down!" This is from the, you know, "don't let your guard down, kid!" school of teaching. And I was one of those random people. He hit me really hard, practically in the face. After that I was afraid of the ball. I was eight.

So, now I was afraid of the soccer ball. Being assaulted is one thing; another thing that I always lament about in any educational program...

Do you remember what school it was?

Where I played soccer?

Yes.

School No. 24! The Tenth Subdistrict.

Tenth?

Either that or the Ninth. The Ninth, that's right. I lived in the Eighth. That was another problem. It wasn't safe. I had to walk there in the dark. In any case, being a soccer player didn't work out.

I guess not.

Well that's why. I really loved soccer. I played for a long time, and I could run fast; I was tough. But what do I think my main problem with education was? In childhood—and nothing has changed—I think (and I only understood this later) that nobody ever taught me methodology. The most important thing in regards to education is to learn where you start, where you are going, and how it will happen. There's a method!

No one ever explained that to me. You just start running around the stadium and kick the ball. Why and how do you kick it? Well, a couple of times he did say "Don't kick like that. Kick like this." That's all I learned about soccer in three years. The same thing happened later with music. I started learning to play the guitar. I figured, screw soccer, I'll be a rock star. After music school I haven't picked up a guitar more than maybe three times in the last twenty years. Twenty-five actually [laughing].

You mean you needed a coach at school, not a teacher?

Probably. Maybe. It's hard to tell now. But when someone comes to me to work at the bureau (architects/designers), I can see that they have the same problem. They just don't know how to work, what to do. You tell them "Here's a project, do it," but they don't know how, where to start, where to go, or what's in-between. They have kind of scattered knowledge; they are capable of something. They can put together the details, but they don't really see the whole picture.

And my dad (before my parents started working at a school) also worked as a graphic designer, in the Baumansky District Food Department. That was what the organization was called. The city was divided into districts, and each had a company that distributed produce to stores.

His district, Baumansky, which is now called Vakhitovsky, had the Baumansky District Food Office. He worked there as a graphic designer, and he designed kvass barrels. Or, for example, soda vending machines.

Cool!

Yeah. Once we rode the 49th bus along Tatarstan Street and it turned onto Moskovskaya. We were going to our summer house. Well, we were going from Gorky to the train station; back then it turned on Kirova Street instead of Moskovskaya. And on the corner of Kirova and Tatarstan there were three sparkling-water vending machines.

They were usually gray, weren't they? With these blue… well, they were classic...

And then the paint started peeling off and they needed to come up with a new design. He showed me how he did it. He came up with a great design, it was very cool; these vending machines looked awesome.

In fact, they were the best vending machines in the city; I had never seen anything like them! They had diagonal stripes from light green to dark green, like, khaki. And they had a very cool font. It said "SPARKLING WATER" in very cool font, and the A was like a five-pointed star. It wasn't green, it was sort of blue. This was in 1987 or 88.

I always checked out those vending machines whenever I went past them. They impressed me.

My mother was born and raised on Zhukovsky Street, and she lived in that house for a very long time; it's been demolished now. There is now only one single-story wooden house remaining (it caught fire). The neighboring house in the courtyard of School no. 116 was ours. They also worried about how the city was changing, of course. But this was, say, in the 1970s, after modernism had already begun.

My dad lived on Narimanova Street, and Tatarstan Street in an example of real Soviet modernism. The building on the corner of Tukaya and Tatarstan (I think it's a sewing factory) is the centerpiece, and it's not a bad example of architecture for our city. And he, my dad, remembers the old wooden Tukaya movie theater; he watched it be demolished. He says he could even redraw the blueprints for it. He worked at Rem.proekt, a remodeling and reconstruction company. As you know, Kazan developed inwardly: buildings were put up between the streets, and the yards as well. It was all inward.

They left the old buildings up, but reconstructed them inside for housing, office buildings, or stores. That is, with the exterior, as it were, of this facade and the design of the yard, and inside they were repurposed. And that was the first shot across the bow for them...

This has nothing to do with building new territories or transforming industrial zones, which are all over Kazan; it's about clearing out the historical center and building something like the Barcelona residential complex. This is what I consider architectural terror.

It's really hard for me; it's one of the most difficult things for me to accept that is taking place in the city. I just can't deal with it at all.

That's what I mean when I say, damnit, how can you be an architect in a city that just ruins everything? And then rebuilds on those ruins. I get that it was impossible to save all the wooden buildings in Kazan. But did they have to demolish, for example, these barracks? That's insane! They're beautiful.

In 2016, I ended up in an old residential building on Gorky, which had been purchased by Ak Bars or someone to remodel. I'm sure you've seen it. Sasha Grom (the photographer) shot there; you've definitely seen it!

There are these Medusas/gorgons in the entrance, Art Nouveau. A very beautiful staircase, modern doors. Just the friggin lay-outs in the apartments, their long corridors/galleries.

I walked around, hung out there a little bit. And I realized that it had wooden ceilings, and all this stucco molding will just die, I mean disappear—nothing will remain, down to the last piece of stucco molding.

There's probably no one in Kazan, no craftsman, no investor, who would just say "Guys, let's just restore it. Or at least try to recover as much of it as possible." They just don't exist. And the worst part is that there's no real precedent to build something of the same quality. That's why I was very surprised by the Kazan Palace by Tasigo.

Here you have a book that tells an entire story. You can read it and pass it on to your children for them to read. This city is a book. Kazan is a hundred-page book and only five pages are left to read, you know what I mean?

Using those five pages, you want to convey to the next generation what kind of city it used to be.

Continuation