apartment with a total area of ​​160 m2 Dmitry Bykov, Ekaterina Kondratieva The interior of the apartment, made in a style that can be described as constructivism with a touch of Japanese contemplation

Passing the gallery

A photo: Alexey Knyazev

Text: Mikhail Sukharev

Architect: Dmitry Bykov, Ekaterina Kondratyeva, Anna Zhemereva

Workshop Leader: Fedor Galimullin

Magazine: N5 (61) 2002

So, probably, Lissitzky and Tatlin could have designed in their time if they had lived in England or Japan. Constructivism with a touch of refined dandyism and Japanese contemplation. This "sterile" geometry seems cold and inhuman, but in practice it turns out to be functional, comfortable and therefore humane. In the creative manner of architects from the workshop "DIA" there is an influence of several directions at once. This is the accentuated tectonics of constructivism, and the comfort of functionalism. Here you can find both futuristic intonations, and simultaneously recall the expression of cubism and the severity of minimalism. But in general, the serenity of the artistic image is something oriental - a contemplative, meditative beginning. But this is not the adoption of a foreign language. This is an original and exquisite creative synthesis - those imaginative series that have long become the property of modern world culture. Traveling around the apartment, as if you are inside the correct crystal. His slender face rapidly demarcates the space. The ribs of rectangular prisms are perfect, like stretched strings. Among this rigid geometry, fluid, changeable substance — thin transparent fabrics — looks elegant. They tighten the floor-to-ceiling windows, as if composing the opposition to the leading straightforward topic: the windows are almost in Japanese, all over the wall, covered with translucent silk of large curtains. The glass sparkling planes of the shelves effectively cut through the space. The architectural center of three pylons became the compositional center of the living room. They froze, as if stopped by the will of the architect, in a strict but artistic manner. In the inner space of these "scenes" placed home theater system. The TV is resting on a dark, polished shelf encircling snow-white pylons. The door to the dressing room is a solid frosted glass from the ceiling to the floor. The setting of the doors was invented very ingeniously: the door “enters” into a narrow slot in the wall and appears from the other side, as if ignoring this serious obstacle. The number of internal doors and partitions is reduced to a seemingly risky minimum. But the result justifies itself: all the main spaces are viewed through, and from several angles at once. The direction of the color solution is also very non-standard. From the entrance to the apartment the visitor is greeted by a warm, noble, velvety terracotta: this is how the planes of the walls are painted, facing the door. Whereas from the inside, the apartment is perceived as brighter, almost monochrome: the interior is built on contiguous shades of sand jute, wood, light-colored carpet and silver tile.Dmitry Bykov: “Designing for a family is much more difficult than for an individualist: such an apartment is subordinated to one person and all the elements work only for him. ".