apartment of the Moscow architect Mikhail Filippov Mikhail Filippov

Passing the gallery

A photo: Evgeny Luchin

Material prepared: Dmitry Kopylov

Project author: Михаил Филиппов

Magazine: N10 (55) 2001

It is sometimes difficult to understand an artist, often even impossible. Too “removed” his inner world from the usual course of things, too different from the narrow-minded consciousness Mikhail Filippov is one of the most fashionable architects in Moscow. It is almost pointless to write about the attic in which he lives with the family: dozens of articles have been published in domestic and foreign publications. Filippov himself can hardly remember where all the same about him and his house was not mentioned. But there is a topic that is really new - for the reader, and, importantly, for Michael himself. This story goes far beyond talking about how his famous attic on Chistye Prudy was conceived and how it acquired real existence. - I do not understand why it is so interesting for everyone to write about my apartment. Recently, I completed the work in the next room - it is a mirror copy of my home, but logically and stylistically much more complete, honed and “finished”. In this interior the main idea of ​​my house has been preserved - a lot of open space and a lot of natural light. The very layout of the room allows you to create two-level windows that can bring sunlight literally into every corner of the apartment. The picture that opens from the window is still attractive and inimitable - old Moscow, which soon, to my sorrow, will not. I myself am from St. Petersburg, but I love Moscow and, of course, I don’t want her to lose her unusually “warm” architectural flavor, unique to her. My attic is a vivid and clear example of incompleteness and, I would even say, "restlessness." Surrounding admire, talk about styles, the influence of the Dutch, the Dutch and "all sorts of other Swedes." Everything is completely wrong. I just made a neglected old attic house-workshop, in which I work and think, and also live. Unfortunately, and this is practically not mentioned, in the art of design and interior is not so rosy and good as many people think. Whatever the architect does, is accepted. The most annoying thing is that in pursuit of the West, which we all the same do not catch up with (and is it worth it?), Many try only to reproduce and copy the interiors that have already been created. I don’t say that it is bad or is incompetently copied, but our Russian architectural school, which at all times placed at the center of the sensation of a living person, who is not in the abstract, but in a very specific home, is much more perfect and human than the Western. In all my works I try first of all to find out and feel the identity of the person who has entrusted the construction of his own house to me. I am obliged before him to foresee changes that may occur in his life - marriage, the birth of children. The appearance of animals in the house and the unexpected arrival of distant relatives from Taldy-Kurgan. So, what I call the “incompleteness” of my house, although it still suits me and my family, will allow me to change a lot later, if not everything. Not everyone would agree to live in such an attic. But judging objectively, Filippov is great at home. And beautiful.