Lack of thoughtfulness hinders real estate development in Russia

Architectural competitions should not be an end in itself, their value consists in practical implementation of conceived ideas. However, in today's reality "the competition on the competition organizer" may be more important than competition itself", founder and chief architect of UNK project Yuliy Borisov said.

"The most recent high-profile example is, of course, a tender for the Parliamentary Centre. And it happened at a time when it was unclear why this had to be done? It was unclear what result had to be expected? It was unclear what funds do we have for all these works", he noted.

In the opinion of the architect, first of all we had to think about how this project would be perceived by the society in general, how would react the professional community, and what attitude would the customer show?
"We could also give thought about similar buildings - e.g. we could show the White house, the modern Centre Georges Pompidou and some more facilities and buildings. If the majority of people, say, liked the White house, then we would have to carry out the contest for a classic building. And we had to specify this clause in the Statement of Work. But next to customer opinion there should also be an opinion of a professional. Would the building in the classical shape correspond to the chosen place? Would it look good against the background of panel buildings? We have the same kind of story in St. Petersburg with the judges quarter," Yu.Borisov said.