The concept needs to be made a separate design stage and protected by copyright. We have already approached Dmitry Medvedev with such a proposal.

Oleg Shapiro is the co—founder of the Architectural Bureau Wowhaus, co-author of iconic public spaces in Moscow and in Russia — Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design; Krymskaya Embankment, Gorky Park — about the main principles of designing public spaces, about the disadvantages of implementing concepts without the participation of authors and about whose opinion should be decisive in the fate of public spaces. An exclusive interview in preparation for the 100+ Forum Russia.

— Your Wowhaus Office specializes in the architecture of public spaces. What are the main principles that this architecture should follow today?

A successful public space both depends on the context and forms this context. If earlier any techniques, be it a dry fountain, a wooden pavilion, or a comfortable bench, were new and were perceived by people with delight, now we face a challenge — creating a new identity of districts and cities. Thanks to public spaces in post-Soviet cities, values are being manifested and new meanings are being relaunched. To create this new identity, a public space must be interesting enough, have personality, and be fundamentally different from others (that is, in Moscow, Kaluga, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg, they must be fundamentally different). And, of course, they must be anthropogenic, directed at people. So that people would not only feel delight, shock and surprise at their strangeness, but could also come here every day and feel comfortable.

— You often say that you are looking for an urban planning problem and offer solutions yourself. Is this a targeted search? How is the work structured?

It's not that we're specifically looking for them, but we're constantly working with the city to see them and try to solve them. Sometimes we come across systemic problems or even unconscious problems that are either not noticed or have become accustomed to not noticing. We analyze the most interesting cases in the Wowhaus internship, which exists on the basis of the bureau. We offer interns interesting and realistic tasks, and our leading architects help them solve them. Sometimes we offer these projects to the city.

— It is clear that it is important to plan the life of the facility. Your bureau's manifesto says that such programming should also include the possibility of reprogramming. Can you give me an example of when this reprogramming was required? What was the reason for that?

We program the object's life. We're thinking about who's going to come there and what they're going to do. But no matter how we program, life will make its own adjustments, and any real object will be broader in its capabilities than any ideas about it. People will do things there that we didn't even know about. We do not believe that the facility needs to be programmed and then reprogrammed — after all, these are living urban systems. We try to immediately create flexible conditions for our spaces to develop independently with the help of the same urban communities, for example. After all, only a self-developing object can exist for a long time and efficiently.

— Often the concepts developed by your bureau are then implemented without your intervention and control. Aren't you offended? And most importantly, are you usually satisfied with the end result?

If a concept is developed in our office and then implemented without our control, then most often it becomes unrecognizable. Actually, for this purpose, it is being developed without our control in order to change it to a side convenient for the contractor — and this is always simplification and deterioration, up to a complete loss of quality. Often, an object that was supposedly built according to our concept, but without our participation, we cannot fully consider as our object. Fortunately, we have relatively few such projects.

In an attempt to find a solution to this problem, at a meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Tula, we proposed that the concept be fixed in the urban planning code as a separate design stage (this is not the case now), as well as protected by copyright and, consequently, in the future, the right of copyright control.

— Let's imagine a hypothetical situation where there are four groups of influence: society, the professional community, business, and government. And there are 100 percent of the votes to make a decision on the fate of public space in any city. How should these votes be distributed? Should someone's opinion be decisive?

I would still transfer "business" to "society", since an ordinary urban park can be economically sustainable not only through commercial activities, but also through taxes, such as Central Park in New York. It would probably be correct to distribute the shares equally, but since the "professional community" receives education, upbringing, understanding and tools specifically for this purpose, I would give 40% to the "professional community", 30% to the "society" and 30% to the "authorities".

— And how the same issue is being solved in practice today. In your experience?

Well, of course, in practice everything is not like that — about 10% of the "society", 20% of the "trade union community" and 70% of the "government".

— You try to resort to "collaborative design". What are its pros and cons?

If the form, technologies, and tools for involving residents and urban communities are well chosen and appropriate to the task at hand, then this is definitely a plus. Are there any disadvantages? For professionals, this is more time and effort consuming. There is also, of course, a point that everything that is groundbreaking, everything new, unusual and close to art is always the product of individual creativity, and not collective discussion, because collective discussion always evens out and averages the result. So from a social point of view, collaborative design is always good, but from the point of view of achievements in art, it is not always.

— One of your most recent public projects is the project of reconstruction of the greenhouse of the Tauride Garden in St. Petersburg. More recently, it became known that in addition to the Ginza restaurant holding, which commissioned the concept for you, the Gazprom Social Initiatives Fund will fight for the project. How would you rate such competition?

It is clear that this is an important and interesting place for St. Petersburg, and it is perfectly normal that there are several strong players. Ginza in this case acts as a multi-brand holding company engaged in the development and management of territories, including modern public spaces. Perhaps it would be right for the concepts to be submitted more or less simultaneously, rather than with a monthly difference. But this is a pilot project for St. Petersburg, so everything is happening in an experimental way.

— You will become one of the speakers of the 100+ Forum Russia, what do you want to talk about with the audience?

The fact that modern architecture is becoming more socially oriented is why we consider ourselves its representatives.