Serdar Yanikov: What "therapeutic places" for visual are there in the world?
Daria Belyakova: London at night - top view. Mediterranean Sea under the Sun - Bottom View. Alps. And the center of Moscow at 6 am in the summer.
You have an amazing appearance, you are a model. Tell me, why would you work at all?
The more I work, the more strength I have. From the third grade of school, my clear goal is to be an architect. There is this type of people - I need to load myself so that there is no time at all.
But this is sheer stress
It's enough for me to read 10 minutes - all the stress goes away.
What do you recommend me to read?
Sartre's nausea.
Your work haunts you, do you dream?
Of course. Ideas often come at a borderline state of drowsiness.
Which of your recent actions can you call an adventure?
All my achievements happened due to the fact that I did not say a sober "no" to crazy ideas: learn Italian in 9 months and go to a university in Milan, pass materials and mechanics, holding a brush and a palette in my hands for the last 4 years, open an office in Moscow being a student in London (every Thursday plane here, every Sunday - return).
What happens if you get angry?
Emotional toughness.
What character trait hinders you in life?
Emotional toughness if you make me angry.
“Unfortunately, we cannot advertise our strongest projects: clients do not allow us to nominate them, moreover, they do not allow them to be published”
How did you meet Oksana Lavrentieva?
On Facebook, she wrote that she was looking for an architect to make the office of Independent Media. I was sitting in a London cafe, saw the post and replied that we were ready. Without connections, without cronyism, we were invited to the project. It was not implemented, but later Oksana proposed to design the Terekhov flagship boutique at the Metropol Hotel. Initially, we talked about the heavy Vrubel's Terekhov - very theatrical, which would make the boutique special. It is not easy to connect with the brand identity. It was necessary to take a risk, which the client and I did not. As a result, the boutique turned out to be light, airy, feminine.
You have strong office projects. Have you ever received an award like OfficeNEXT?
Not. Unfortunately, we cannot advertise our strongest projects: clients do not allow us to nominate them, moreover, they do not allow them to be published. My bureau, it's not about an office, it's about design in principle - furniture design, space design, and architecture. I have been in Moscow with a bureau for less than a year. We had closed tenders, we made residential buildings up to 30 thousand square meters. Now we are designing a building. Not very big, but this is just the beginning.
Why do you need furniture design?
It's simple. Our office in Moscow urgently needed furniture. To order from somewhere is expensive and time-consuming, and in order not to spoil our object with accessible Chinese fakes, we made it ourselves. Then they analyzed the market and realized that there are almost no designer furniture for the middle segment in Russia, the market is empty. Now our furniture is in almost all of our objects.
How do you feel about plagiarism?
There was a time when Pinterest was strictly banned in the bureau for a couple of months. I began to notice that other people's ideas can be deposited in my head, the original source is forgotten and then given out as my own. Your employee brings an idea, and you, as a person who cannot master the whole world of architecture and design, see it for the first time, say: “How cool! You are a genius!" And then you accidentally find it on Pinterest, when the project has already been presented to the client and sold as unique. The saddest example of other bureaus is the facade of the Paul Smith store in London, which was made by 6Architects. There are several such replica facades in Moscow: the entrance lobby in the OKO Tower, the Academy restaurant on Ordynka, and a couple of other objects. Only in London were these elements hand-cast in bronze. Analogs are much simpler. I admit that the heads of the bureau might not have known about this plagiarism. When I opened links:"Oh my God!"
And it's all about her
Daria Belyakova
Age: 26 years
Family: not married
Education: school № 1243; Moscow gymnasium number 45; Moscow State Academy of Arts in memory of 1905; Politecnico di Milano, Faculty of Architecture; ASchool of Architecture (London)
Works and projects: the interior of the office of the Big Three consulting company, the office of the President of Rostelecom, the RWB office at Bolshevik, as well as the Alexander Terekhov boutique at the Metropol hotel, coworking space of 15 m2 in Granatny Lane, TABLE restaurant, cafe Financier and other like
- minded architects: those who work at different scales think about tactility, atmosphere, details, but within the framework of a clearly articulated concept: 6a Architects, John Pawson, Carlo Scarpa, Gunnar Asplund. As for the theory, I studied with P. V. Aureli. For this, I had to first enter the Architectural Association, and then get to him on the course.
Photo: Nikolay Zverkov, archive of press services
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