— Moscow Interior and Design Week took place for the third time. What is the idea of global?
— It seems to me that now such events are very important for designers and those who promote everything related to this in our country. All kinds of initiatives need to be supported – the hour has come when the state’s interest in design is revealed, and this moment cannot be missed. We must explain what design is, together with both the state and the private sector. Attend, promote and assist at all events. As they say, do your best and come no matter what.
— Have the previous weeks helped participants get new orders and move forward?
— The designers got pretty good PR. Also, participation in the Weeks is free, which is great; It is not always possible to exhibit on a large platform. Designers do not have much money: They have to produce and order when the material is available or the material is not available. So even if there is no direct order immediately after the exhibition, even if there is no immediate response, people will still learn that there are designers in Russia, they will understand that there are good alternatives to brands that have left Russia, they will understand that this design in general is not elitist or too expensive, not accessible to everyone .
Besides Design Week, I see a lot of movement, I see how manufacturers begin to unite, organize competitions, find designers to make large series, switch to mass production. There is a demand now. This week is a response to the community’s demand and the designers’ request to help them.
— In this sense, the Moscow Design Museum probably also helps – are the works of modern designers also exhibited there?
— At the exhibition “History of Russian Design”. We are showing the curatorial selection in the exhibition “Favorites” in the New Tretyakov Gallery. We collect the best product from each designer. And we always rotate the exhibition – it is updated every three months.
They came up with something new and installed it three months later. We now have a joint exhibition with the Yandex Museum; It’s about technology. Before that, we had an exhibition with the Moscow Interior and Design Week, contemporary designers were featured in all sections – seeing that the author was inspired by the 20s – 30s, we combined the avant-garde with the avant-garde. We framed the Soviet section so people could see the parallels: our history influences modern design.
— So, are the ideas of your exhibitions based on parallels?
– Yes. For example, we exhibit those that are created experimentally and those that are mass produced. We study this phenomenon when something very cool is invented but is not released. Why didn’t they? What did you want to publish? What was mass produced and what was produced in single copies?
— Do you think a Museum or Design Week can improve taste?
— Yes, in our country, we are still developing people’s aesthetic ideas about what an interior should be like and how design should be. But Russian taste is still bad.
– What’s wrong with our taste?
– I thought about this for a long time. Why do we love gold, simit? In the first years after the revolution, the cultural revolution began. And by Lenin’s order, the Hermitage and Tsarskoe Selo were opened as museums so that workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors could see how the exploiters lived before the Revolution. Entrance to the museums was free. And this had the opposite effect; people came and said: “Wow, this is beauty.”
I feel that when the 90s came, the sailors, workers, peasants among us broke out and remembered going to the Hermitage with their classes as children. And those who could fresco themselves with portraits and malachite rooms began to order Italian furniture – there was always Italian furniture in the Kremlin.
— In the early 2000s, an artist friend of mine painted the doors with baroque figures upon order.
— My artist friends from Stroganovka constantly painted clouds and angels on five-story buildings and nine-story panel buildings!
— Could the arrival of IKEA in Russia in 2000 have influenced mass taste?
— At the end of the Soviet period of our history, we experienced standardization and unification that everyone was tired of. And suddenly, at some point, freedom appeared, everyone threw away their walls – great walls, high-quality walls – and bought the same ones from IKEA, only in a different color. Also – sectional, combined walls. But only with different handles and different colors.
My father, a Soviet engineer, said: “I will not buy IKEA. Because this is solid wood. “I know this furniture is of good quality and I won’t take it anywhere.” As a result, we sanded, painted, changed the handles – they have an absolutely perfect set, as if it were a new set at home.
“But there it was possible to completely furnish the apartment.”
— Yes, we still have hypermarkets, there are also IKEA manufacturers sold in marketplaces. It is also available in hypermarkets. I recently learned that these factories will merge and become a large hypermarket. The problem is that the design is IKEA. Now manufacturers have come to me – they are friends with factories working for IKEA – we will hold a competition with furniture designers for them. They understand that something needs to change, that there will be copyright issues.
— The Moscow Design Museum still does not have its own building – you are located in the New Tretyakov Gallery. Would you like to have your own building?
— I would like to have a large state design museum with a good collection. There are these in every country. As a private museum, a private cultural institution, I am doing my best as the Moscow Design Museum. I will work as long as I have the strength, we are now residents of the New Tretyakov Gallery. By the way, we now have a very nice exhibition for children: “What is Design?” Using the example of a designer and a topic, we explain what web design is, what graphic design is, what fashion design is. There are moderators there who give free excursions, you can sign up for them.
As for the building, of course I want it to exist. It seems to me that a kitchen factory would be suitable for the Design Museum. There is a kitchen factory in Leningradka – it would be an ideal place for us. Design is everything around us, it is material culture, so you can organize infinite exhibitions, expand your collection infinitely, conduct research, publish, make films. This is a completely unresolved issue for us.
—What is your favorite period of Soviet design?
— My favorite period is the 60s, when the Soviet design system was created and design institutes appeared within all ministries and state committees. Later, industrial design departments were opened in large cities – Sverdlovsk, Leningrad, Moscow. In the 60s, we understood what design culture is, that a designer must necessarily participate in the creation of any object, both in light industry and in heavy engineering. This is an interesting, unexplored period.
Luckily, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of Soviet designers who gave me their archives and supported the museum on a voluntary basis, helping us identify objects and constantly giving us interesting things. They saved a lot of materials after the collapse of the system in the 90s. Some of them were gradually moved to the museum, and I am very grateful to them for that.
— How did Soviet design develop in the same direction as Western design, at least in the interior?
— There are common trends in the world and all designers are in communication with each other. Why do I love the 60s? Because there was clarity. Our institutes, such as VNIITE – All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics, subscribed to all Western journals, all articles were translated. Our Soviet designers participated in international exhibitions and held numerous international exhibitions in the USSR. There was an exchange of ideas and of course trends permeated.
And new materials have a very strong impact on the development of design. When plastic appeared, everything began to be made from it. Everything became very bright when new chemical dyes appeared in the 50s and 60s. But the nice thing about the 60s was that our domestic design emerged at that time. Some things were copied in the post-war period and the 1930s. There was no design school, some subjects were easier to master, as they say. And in the 60s, after the founding of VNIITE, the Furniture Institute – many different institutes were opened in 1962 – the original Soviet design was born. It was a time of thaws, a time of hope, everything was easy, a new type of housing appeared.
— Do modern designers need to know the history of Soviet design?
— If I were a modern designer, I would look at history. For example, what constructivists do. Minimal housing cells are in principle quite consistent with the structures built by our developers. The 18-meter studios are more minimal living cells than constructivists could ever dream of!
By the way, both constructivists and designers of the 60s always talked about reasonable consumption, saving resources and recycling materials. They created folding furniture – chair beds, sofa beds, folding tables, partitions for zoning rooms.
Now we have small-sized houses and ideas for reasonable consumption. This cycle is repeated. There are also economic difficulties, remember.
During the avant-garde period in the 20s and 30s, factories could not operate due to sanctions. For example, we were not provided with ceramic and porcelain additives, there was nothing to heat the stoves, the situation was terrible and producing anything was heroic. In the 60s, the country was just recovering from the wounds of the war; To improve the quality of life, defense production of civilian products had to be restarted. Maybe this is our paradigm: Change and leaving the comfort zone forces us to find new solutions and work with double power. And now is just such a time.
— Can we say that the main trend will now be recycling of materials and recyclable furniture?
— Yes, I think many people now want the children’s bed to be pulled out when it is necessary to accommodate, for example, three children in one room. Also recycled materials and reasonable consumption.
By the way, what is reasonable consumption? This is buying quality things. This applies not only to consumers but also to producers. They should make high-quality things, not think that the mattress should break faster – so they buy a new one. And by the way, that’s what IKEA did, our Russian designers offered them projects, but they were told: “Your product is very long-term, we should not have a product that will last longer than three years.”
— Modern designers often create gray neutral interiors. Is this also fashionable?
– It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with gray, white and black, they are all very beautiful. But it is necessary to have bright accents. Panels, mirrors, bright curtains, an unusual chair resembling an art object – all this can be an accent. Basic products can be purchased from large furniture factories, and at exhibitions such as Moscow Interior and Design Week you can find unique design products that you never knew about. Things that will add character will make your interior special, unique and like no other.