When I was four, my mother took me to an art studio. The teacher said something like, "He's awful young. He won't be able to sit still. It's a two-hour class." But I sat there quietly for the entire two hours, drawing. And that was it; I started going there.

My mother is a German and English teacher, and she also taught at an art school. Apparently, that left its mark. My grandmother was good at drawing, too, I think.

As a child, I sculpted plasticine bricks and built buildings from them. I had a whole town. I loved watching the construction process.

When did you have to choose what you wanted to do?

In the sixth grade I told my parents that I can't do everything. We had been relocated from downtown to the neighborhood of Azino because they were tearing down our dilapidated housing; it was ... tragic, even, in a sense, because everything had changed: how we got around, our surroundings ... I would take my drawing board to school in the morning so that I could go straight to art class later. Those drawing boards are huge, and I had to carry it on the bus with me. In class, too, everyone was, like, "Oh, a drawing board; that means Timur has art class today."

We had forty-two people in our class, and we were all friendly, probably because there were enough roles for everyone to play. I studied at School No. 39; we had a lot of freedom—we didn't have to wear a uniform. This was the epoch of the alternative scene: guys wore wide pants and dyed their hair different colors. I highlighted mine. All this affected the formation of our personalities.

Our history teacher was cool, Irina Protashuk. She tried to open ups everyone's interest in the subject. She gave us an interesting task: draw up our genealogy. I always knew that I had deep roots and complicated ancestors. My mother and I began collecting material.

Later, I went with this project to the Gifted Children forum in Moscow. Our clan, the Utyamyshevs, were merchants, patrons of art, and theologians who built many mosques. Their familial home is the village of Maskara in the Kukmorsky district. There are now two mosques there, which one of my ancestors built, and now I am working on restoring them.

We also had an excellent art teacher, Tatyana Olimpieva. She still teaches, as far as I know. She has a fire in her eyes and a creative impulse. She's very cool!

When we got into the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (KISI), everyone tried to scare us off and discourage us: "You'll never get any sleep; all you'll do is draw!" But everything worked out—I graduated from high school with straight A's, passed my exams and entered with my friends that I had studied art with.

I remember how I was even in KVN [a Russian sketch comedy competition] in my freshman year. Everyone at the institute was surprised: "The architecture department is taking part in KVN?" Because everyone knows that architecture students don't have any time for that. For example, they have these uninterrupted design sessions, when a project takes from three to seven days, and it happens that physically there's just not enough time. People work day and night. And, at the same time, we did everything by hand.

For me, I'm much more productive working at night: it's quiet, and there's no one to distract you. Sometimes that's when the inspiration comes.

I started working after my second year. They hired me at a studio, there wasn't much money, of course, but I was given a project to turn the first floor of a residential building into a hairdresser's: I made a plan, a facade, an entrance group. I remember that moment, when they printed out the documents, and the architect signed it, the leader ... and there was my signature—that was really cool [laughing].

My next projects were in Italy, because I left in my third year. The mayor held a competition for a trip to Switzerland; we had seen how people had been accepted, and we went. For us it was fantastic, because this was like 2007, and I didn't know anyone who had gone abroad to study. Then they came to our university and told us about this opportunity; there was a grant from the Ministry of Education, which I applied for and won. Thanks to our international department and the Italian center at KISI, we learned the language in two or three months. An Italian came and interviewed us, and then we were off to Pisa.

It was a new experience. Before that, I had never gone anywhere except for Turkey. When you find yourself in a new environment, it's like being in a museum: you start learning everything, from how Italians walk their dogs and communicate with children to their architecture and education.

One thing that immediately caught my eye was that their high school has many subjects that we study only in universities in Russia, like psychology and philosophy.

Second, the material presentations seemed to me to be of very low quality in comparison with ours, but then I began to understand why. In Kazan, in our first years at school, when we were working on visualization, it was possible to present a very beautiful picture, but behind it, as it were, there may not have been particularly elaborated forms and functionality.

For Italians, it's the essence that is important; how you present it, that's already in second place.

What I found dissonant was that, in the corridors of the university, I saw dissertations that freshmen in Kazan could have made. But when I went out into the city; traveled to other cities; and saw what kind of architecture they had, in particular, modern architecture, compared with what we were building in Kazan, I thought: why do we have such cool projects, but we can't implement it like this? …

Studying in Italy radically changed my life, my vision.

Then the grant ended, and I returned to Kazan and thought: "You know what? I could've learned more." So, in our fourth year, a classmate and I applied for admission to Florence, to the School of Architecture. We agreed with our dean that we would study in parallel, and he supported us. Many thanks to him for that, too.

I remember when we came to start, we left the train station in Florence and went to look for our hostel. I was standing between the market and the train station and there wasn't a single Italian around! Not a single Italian. There were Indians … anyone you could think of, but no Italians. And I was like: "Jeez, where are we? Did we make a wrong turn somewhere?"

The university was also in an old building downtown, in a former monastery that had been turned into a prison. It still had small cells with bars that were used as rooms for personal studies. But what I liked even less was when we began to talking with local students, they were all "No, don't come here; it's very difficult."

WE SAW 35-YEAR-OLD STUDENTS WHO SAID: "I'VE BEEN STUDYING FOR 8 YEARS ..."

They don't expel anyone. You just have to pass exams, and you can stretch it out as long as you want, even if it takes your whole life. I started having my doubts; that wasn't what I wanted.

In Pisa, we met with other Russians who also studied there. I asked them about it, and they told me: "Don't be in a rush to abandon your goal. See how enrollment goes." In the end, I decided to study there.

The lectures lasted two or three hours and they were in Italian. For the first hour you sit listening; the second hour already not so much; and the third, it's like listening to the radio—you tune out the words. As I learned the language more and more, it became easier.

I lived in Florence for three years. I didn't graduate there, because I went to Kazan to write my dissertation, and that was such an active regime; then I returned and could very clearly see that the Florentine mentality was pulling me into a quagmire. I explained it to myself this way: they're born here, they have this huge legacy. They have no reason to do anything new; they just need to preserve it all correctly, show it and sell it. And they do that very well.

By my third year I began to notice that I was being pulled into this quagmire, and I wanted to change that.

So, I began to travel. I fell in love with Milan, although you can't say it's a beautiful city or there are many sights to see. But it hooked me in with something, its life, probably: it's an industrial financial center. It has all the same comforts in regards to food, climate, and society, but it's a more European city. I entered the Politecnico di Milano University in 2011. It's great, inspiring. I wanted to create there.

Alongside my studies, I was invited to one of the best studios of architecture and urbanists in Italy. It was one of the ten teams working on Greater Moscow—Medvedev had added a huge piece of territory to Moscow and there was an international competition to develop it. We were invited, as Russians, to participate along with the Italians working on it. We were right in the middle of history; it was a great experience. We were lucky because it's quite difficult to find a job as an architect in Italy.

What's the main thing that Milan taught you?

How to discover cities and people, discover anything. The Italians told me: "You're going to Milan? We don't envy you. It's such a gray city." And I went, without expecting anything from it. The upside is that, since you're a foreigner, no one expects anything from you. It's like in Kazan, they'd shame a local for having never gone to the Opera House, but they don't expect that of foreigners.

And I started studying it, enjoying it. I got a bike and rode around the city, found new areas, cool new places.

Why did you decide to return?

On the one hand, I had a job and pretty much everything suited me, but it had no particular prospects for the future. For that time, the salary was okay for a student's lifestyle, but anything further, like, starting a family, would be more difficult.

Dilbar Sadykova [founder of Global Shapers Community Kazan] invited people from outside Tatarstan to her forum. There was a meeting with President Rustam Minnikhanov, who brought us all together, I remember. I showed him my dissertation, which I had defended in Milan, on Russian cities, Moscow, Kazan and Chelny as three typologies of a city. The topic was about democratic public spaces. The President instructed us to get to work, and the very next day we were received by Denis Kalinkin [First Deputy Head of Kazan]. Tatyana Prokofieva was also there; she was the chief architect of Kazan. We met there, I told what I was doing, and we agreed that we might cooperate.

I also worked at Strelka [an urban consulting company in Moscow] for a short period—they had started the My Street program and invited me to work with it. This was probably in 2015. I can't really say that I'm one of those people who loves Moscow. I'm more one of those people who, perhaps, a stereotypical attitude about it. It's clear that it's a city full of opportunities, but not for me. Strelka's office is on Krasny Oktyabr, and I lived there. And it felt like you weren't even in Moscow, but on an island. I went to work in the morning and, in the evening, at 10 o'clock, I went out, ate dinner, and went to bed. I spent almost half of my money on food, although I was making decent money. The most important thing at that time was, of course, contacts and connections: the leading urbanists would get together there.

Six months later I was invited to speak at an urban forum in my hometown. It was held in the Korston Hotel & Mall. I gave a report on smart cities using Innopolis as an example. I presented it to Ilsur Metshin, the mayor of Kazan, he was, like, "okay, we'll think about it." I got a call from his office that same day: "Tomorrow at so-and-so time, Mr. Metshin will be waiting for you." And he said: "That's the kind of experience and resume we need."

I was offered a part in the zoo project. We started remotely and, after two or three months, I returned to Kazan.

What did you feel upon returning?

I had mixed feelings. But mostly joyful. My family was nearby, and friends, because I still never made those kinds of friends in Italy. It's good to be useful in your hometown at least. The first snow fell in September that year, everything was gray, and there was not enough sun—that's what I remember.

I became Tatiana Prokofieva's deputy. She supported me; she herself had lived and worked in America for ten years and returned. That brought us together. Of course, working under her leadership was great experience, and I'm grateful to her. I had urban planning jobs, and initially they put me on the master plan; at that time, they were starting to develop a new master plan.

Now I began studying Kazan in the same way I did Milan: for example, one weekend I got on a tram and went to Sotsgorod and to Orgsintez and back—I had never been there, like most people from Kazan. I made myself a list of museums I hadn't visited yet.

I remembered one time, Emil [Sirazetdinov, chief architect of Nizhnekamsk] and I flew to Paris for four days to see architecture, study it for ourselves, and get our feet covered in calluses from walking around the city so much. On the way back, I missed the last train from Milan to Florence. All the hotels were packed, and there was nowhere to go. I called my friend with whom I had studied in Pisa. I knew that his parents live in Milan. I told him what happened, that I was alone there, at night, hotels are booked and asked if he had any friends that would let me crash at their place. He told me: "Well ... I'll make some calls, I'll try ..." In the end, he writes, sorry there's no one, and I ended up sleeping at the station.

In Russia, people come to each other's aid when they have any trouble, even if they seem unfriendly. In Europe, the opposite is true—everyone seems so friendly and sympathetic outside, but they leave you to solve all your problems yourself.

We noticed this even when we studied in Pisa: our professor invited us to his home only on the last day before we left. That was strange for us, because at the same time an Italian student from their university came to our university in Kazan, and he was being torn practically into pieces by everyone wanting to taking him out to dinner. It's clear that we have a desire to show the best side of everything to foreigners, but that's not the case in Italy, and we were even a bit hurt at first, like: "Well, is it us, or what?" At the lectures, no one said: "Foreigners study here for four months; pay attention. If you need help just ask." At the same time, in Kazan, everyone fell over themselves helping the Italian student.

Then we realized that it's not because they're jerks, it's just that for them there's not the same curiosity. There are a lot of foreigners as it is there, for one. And, second, it's a European concept that there's a public space and personal space—this is yours, your circle, and it's very narrow. If you need to meet someone, you meet in a cafe. We're now also moving towards this, of course, but then they invited him home.

Italians know how to enjoy life. However you feel about it, I think it's the way to go. For example, you see a janitor or a cleaner, but they treat their work as something important; that is, they're doing a useful job.

This kind of thing also wins you over and teaches you something.

You see a lot of people with disabilities there, not because there are more of them, but because they're simply more involved, they're more comfortable out and about, and there are facilities for them.

Our people in Russia are so embittered and uncivilized, and then, when they go abroad, they immediately become cultured. The main question here is, what makes the biggest difference, the environment—your surroundings—or yourself? It's probably both. But these European values seemed very close to my heart: treat everyone with respect.