projects
Mariinsky II Theatre30 | 05 | 2013
Interview of Dominique Perrault in Kommersant Vlast
“The city received a poor theatre”
The entire interview with Dominique Perrault by Alexey Tarkhanov in No. 18 of Kommersant Vlast.
Released May 13, 2013.
"Dominique Perrault didn’t succeed in putting his name in the history of Saint-Petersburg as Rastrelli or Montferrand did."
Interview by Alexey Tarkhanov for Kommersant Vlast
The new Mariinsky Theatre opened its doors in Saint-Petersburg. The project was carried by Canadian architects of Diamond Schmitt Architects. In 2003 an international competition was organized for the project of this theatre and was won by the French architect Dominique Perrault.
I met Dominique Perrault before his appearance in Saint-Petersburg, I had interviewed him and I considered he was very talented. So I was doubly delighted with the victory of his project at the competition because I thought the opening through a new global architecture was very important for Russia. The 3 years Perrault spent working on the Mariinsky 2 project were exceptionally interesting for me. We met more than once to talk about his work and we gradually moved from the “vous” to the “tu”. I thought that the city would host the project with joy. But things turned out differently. First of all the project has been blocked by the state expertise judging it too audacious for our spaces and possibilities. The number of critics and mistakes reminded the destruction of the Lobatchevsy’s geometry by Euclide. Such buildings hadn’t been built yet in Russia and the expertise didn’t want to take risks. Then the architectural office opened by Perrault in Russia got rid of its founder. The project remained in the hands of his Russian partners who tried to carry out the work within their capacities and the Russian standards but it has been rejected again. What’s the use of handling kid gloves with an office without its international star?
Valery Gergiev found himself the Canadian architectural office that carried the project of his theatre and led the construction until its solemn opening. The aspect of the new Mariinsky is for me by far less interesting than the Dominique Perrault’s project but finally Valery Gergiev, the theatre and the inhabitants of Saint-Petersburg will be the only judges. One thing came to my mind: wouldn’t it be worthwhile to give Perrault the opportunity to talk about his project one last time, a project that could have been our pride but that only improved the lengths of service of the architect in the end.
Shortly before the opening, I asked Valery Gergiev why the project of Dominique Perrault hadn’t been carried out. He answered me that the building you had imagined, its golden shell, was technically impossible to build and that no one among the international experts was ready to stand surety for it, that it was too complicated. And you, what do you think about that?
You want me to contradict him. For me the accusation is so ridiculous that it doesn’t even worth answering to it. In the world, some buildings much more audacious than the golden dome, that scared Gergiev, are raised. Zaha Hadid is building a beautiful theatre in China with very complicated constructions, huge glass surfaces; Franck Gehry is finishing a set of museums in Paris for LVMH. This set will also have some astonishing, unusual and innovative structures. The golden dome would have not been more complicated.
But the experts, moreover international… Was Gergiev fooling when he was talking about it?
I didn’t meet those experts but I know that at the project completion stage we had entrusted the studies to a very famous German building company, Bollinger & Grohman GmbH. At that time, they had worked on difficult buildings in terms of technical studies, as for example the European Central Bank of Frankfurt. They worked a lot with the Coop Himmelb(l)au Group, a group for which the complexity reaches a certain artistic level. The Germans of Bollinger & Grohmann didn’t have any doubts about the construction of the dome. If they are not experts, who is expert ?
When did you start feeling that your project for the Mariinsky would have a difficult future?
We worked on it for three years. During the first year everything was remarkable. It was the best time we could dream of. We were collaborating with the management team of the theatre, the Saint-Petersburg’s authorities and the Russian architects. Our triangle was working perfectly. And out of this triangle but very close, we had the Ministry of Culture. And then the preliminary draft was approved, the requests of the theatre and of the maestro Gergiev had been taken into account and we had started to go into the details. It was also a constructive and positive work but as we were getting closer to the project’s completion, to the state expertise step, the relations got worse. In this matter it seemed to me that the interests of Moscow didn’t correspond with the interests of Saint-Petersburg, both from a bureaucratic and financial point of view. It also appeared to me that we were in the centre of a conflict between the construction management and the Ministry.
And the architectural project in all this?
We were some external persons, some foreigners, and we have been used by the different authorities to settle accounts among themselves. The building itself didn’t interest many people already. It was not in the centre of the discussions anymore but was only used to mask some conflicts that had nothing to do with architecture. So the state expertise became the perfect reason to stop our project. A very unusual and innovative project, I tell it without boasting, it’s recognized worldwide.
And why didn’t Gergiev want to support and defend it at the expertise stage?
I’m going to tell you something that may hurt his feelings. But that’s how I see the situation. Gergiev is a great musician but he can’t restrain his ego. When this project has been developed, it has been as successful as M.Gergiev as an orchestra conductor. And if it had been built it would have been more successful than Gergiev. The maestro couldn’t accept that the golden dome was considered as the theatre of Perrault and not the theatre of Gergiev. I’m convinced of that even if he won’t admit it. Then we added some political complications, personal settling scores and matters of taste that worsened the situation of course. All this is very sad because Russia and Saint-Petersburg could have had an amazing theatre. I respect the talent of Valery Gergiev but conducting some orchestras is something that can be done everyday, while building a theatre happens once in a lifetime. It’s a historic opportunity that he missed for rather mean and reprehensible reasons that honour no one.
From the beginning did you have to share the work with local architects?
We urgently recommended the creation of an agency recorded in Russia to lead the project, with Russian partners, engineers, specialists in studies, foundations, electricity, which is normal because we did it in the USA, in Japan and Luxembourg. I became doubtful when we were proposed to let them the entire project by restricting ourselves to the design. The wish of excluding the creators of the project implementation scared me. By the way I saw the construction of the concert hall that was being built at the same period near the Mariinsky Theatre. I observed the progress of the work in this place and in fact I thought that it was not the way we are supposed to build. Everything was done approximately and hastily. I thought it was important to have complete control over the quality, from the beginning to the end, from the design to the choice of the executing companies, the technical details development, the lighting, and the solutions to acoustic issues. After all everything allowing to distinguish an opera house from a mall. But we had a more occidental approach with the idea of controlling the quality of work from the very beginning to the moment we would cut the ribbon. But our partners, some officials, had a totally different view of this process: the project on one side, and the construction on the other side, without any direct and permanent link between the both.
Maybe they wanted to be free to modernize and simplify the project. It would have been easier, without being in conflict with the creators, to bring it up to current standards.
I’d remind that our project was not chosen behind closed doors. It has been the winning project of a major international competition. We worked on it, not for three days or three weeks, but three years and for our state partner it was an outstanding opportunity. At the end of those three years, they had all the plans and documents to continue the work. With us of with other executing companies that they could seek at that time if we didn’t suit them completely.
There was a time when you had to give up and shortly before you did it your partners started to accuse you, telling that your project was a failure, that you had fallen behind schedule on the submission of the documents, etc…
They started to feel from where the wind was changing and took the lead to defend themselves. But it’s not very interesting. Finally, they lost the project themselves because we had lost it. For our part, we could leave and work in some other countries, to build just as interesting and much bigger things. Before and after the Mariinsky 2, I designed and achieved some much more large and complicated buildings. I didn’t need to hang on to the work and the fees. It gave me the freedom that that my Russian partners didn’t have, and they had to compromise by working on a project exceeding the local standards.
It would appear that they were obliged to get rid of you after they were promised to recover the project, and when you were no longer on the project they have been sorted out.
I was not driven out. I just surprised a lot the Russian administration because I didn’t let them driving me out. I didn’t accept the achievement conditions of the project on both architectural and technical level. They were very surprised and even offended because they expected me to negotiate the financial terms or to discuss the procedures for weeks, but everything turned out differently. At some point they proposed me - in fact as a threat – to break the contract, it took me only one minute to make the decision.
What do you think about the achieved project?
I only saw some pictures in the press, I cannot judge the work of my colleagues from them; I would only say that if there was not any caption under the pictures indicating it was the Mariinsky Theatre, no one would have guessed it. What could I add? Probably that some people enjoy it, but many others don’t. There is no one to defend it, even Gergiev preferred to transfer the discussion from the architectural field to the musical one. But if Gergiev has a remarkable hearing, the same cannot be said for his view. We can’t be deaf and blind at the same time. That’s the sad part of it: people leave and architecture remains. And Saint-Petersburg, this city with a fantastic architectural memory, pride of the humanity, only got a poor provincial theatre.
And you can’t forget this failure?
I really tried to forget everything. These are not memories you like to remember. Some projects don’t work. Sometimes we loose a competition or we don’t get along with the client, but it’s just a matter of days. The Mariinsky was a piece of life and I won’t delete it from my memory.
How old were you when the project started?
I was 50 years old. Gergiev and I have the same age. This story started ten years ago and that’s how it ended. It’s truly sad, not for me as you can imagine it, but for the theatre. For several decades the contemporary architecture is been developed in the world: audacious, unusual, changing the culture – museums, concert halls, and library. It’s not easy to build them, sometimes it’s difficult to accept them, but everything is made with the ambition and desire of transmitting a new visual culture. And the Mariinsky would have been a masterpiece of contemporary architecture, it would have entered the school books. There was no reason why the result would be so average (???). Everything was made to have an opposite result. A prestigious orchestra conductor at the head of a famous theatre, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in this great country that is Russia…
And a famous and prized architect …
Yes and also a good architect, a project hosted with enthusiasm in the world. By the way, it remains for me an excellent recommendation; everyone knows my project for Mariinsky. All the conditions were met to create a masterpiece. Someone is responsible for this failure. Who? You think it’s me? I don’t think so.
So who is to blame? Gergiev?
For me of course, Gergiev. He could do everything, he was almighty, he just had to say “I want a theatre like this one” and the theatre would have been built. I don’t understand what was the interest of burying the project. The clients lost time and money. They spent three times as much as what was planned. Such a mistake is mathematically impossible. It would be interesting to know where so much money is gone, maybe the theatre has now three times more seats?
Alexey Tarkhanov
Kommersant Vlast – 13-05-2013
Interview by Alexey Tarkhanov for Kommersant Vlast
The new Mariinsky Theatre opened its doors in Saint-Petersburg. The project was carried by Canadian architects of Diamond Schmitt Architects. In 2003 an international competition was organized for the project of this theatre and was won by the French architect Dominique Perrault.
I met Dominique Perrault before his appearance in Saint-Petersburg, I had interviewed him and I considered he was very talented. So I was doubly delighted with the victory of his project at the competition because I thought the opening through a new global architecture was very important for Russia. The 3 years Perrault spent working on the Mariinsky 2 project were exceptionally interesting for me. We met more than once to talk about his work and we gradually moved from the “vous” to the “tu”. I thought that the city would host the project with joy. But things turned out differently. First of all the project has been blocked by the state expertise judging it too audacious for our spaces and possibilities. The number of critics and mistakes reminded the destruction of the Lobatchevsy’s geometry by Euclide. Such buildings hadn’t been built yet in Russia and the expertise didn’t want to take risks. Then the architectural office opened by Perrault in Russia got rid of its founder. The project remained in the hands of his Russian partners who tried to carry out the work within their capacities and the Russian standards but it has been rejected again. What’s the use of handling kid gloves with an office without its international star?
Valery Gergiev found himself the Canadian architectural office that carried the project of his theatre and led the construction until its solemn opening. The aspect of the new Mariinsky is for me by far less interesting than the Dominique Perrault’s project but finally Valery Gergiev, the theatre and the inhabitants of Saint-Petersburg will be the only judges. One thing came to my mind: wouldn’t it be worthwhile to give Perrault the opportunity to talk about his project one last time, a project that could have been our pride but that only improved the lengths of service of the architect in the end.
Shortly before the opening, I asked Valery Gergiev why the project of Dominique Perrault hadn’t been carried out. He answered me that the building you had imagined, its golden shell, was technically impossible to build and that no one among the international experts was ready to stand surety for it, that it was too complicated. And you, what do you think about that?
You want me to contradict him. For me the accusation is so ridiculous that it doesn’t even worth answering to it. In the world, some buildings much more audacious than the golden dome, that scared Gergiev, are raised. Zaha Hadid is building a beautiful theatre in China with very complicated constructions, huge glass surfaces; Franck Gehry is finishing a set of museums in Paris for LVMH. This set will also have some astonishing, unusual and innovative structures. The golden dome would have not been more complicated.
But the experts, moreover international… Was Gergiev fooling when he was talking about it?
I didn’t meet those experts but I know that at the project completion stage we had entrusted the studies to a very famous German building company, Bollinger & Grohman GmbH. At that time, they had worked on difficult buildings in terms of technical studies, as for example the European Central Bank of Frankfurt. They worked a lot with the Coop Himmelb(l)au Group, a group for which the complexity reaches a certain artistic level. The Germans of Bollinger & Grohmann didn’t have any doubts about the construction of the dome. If they are not experts, who is expert ?
When did you start feeling that your project for the Mariinsky would have a difficult future?
We worked on it for three years. During the first year everything was remarkable. It was the best time we could dream of. We were collaborating with the management team of the theatre, the Saint-Petersburg’s authorities and the Russian architects. Our triangle was working perfectly. And out of this triangle but very close, we had the Ministry of Culture. And then the preliminary draft was approved, the requests of the theatre and of the maestro Gergiev had been taken into account and we had started to go into the details. It was also a constructive and positive work but as we were getting closer to the project’s completion, to the state expertise step, the relations got worse. In this matter it seemed to me that the interests of Moscow didn’t correspond with the interests of Saint-Petersburg, both from a bureaucratic and financial point of view. It also appeared to me that we were in the centre of a conflict between the construction management and the Ministry.
And the architectural project in all this?
We were some external persons, some foreigners, and we have been used by the different authorities to settle accounts among themselves. The building itself didn’t interest many people already. It was not in the centre of the discussions anymore but was only used to mask some conflicts that had nothing to do with architecture. So the state expertise became the perfect reason to stop our project. A very unusual and innovative project, I tell it without boasting, it’s recognized worldwide.
And why didn’t Gergiev want to support and defend it at the expertise stage?
I’m going to tell you something that may hurt his feelings. But that’s how I see the situation. Gergiev is a great musician but he can’t restrain his ego. When this project has been developed, it has been as successful as M.Gergiev as an orchestra conductor. And if it had been built it would have been more successful than Gergiev. The maestro couldn’t accept that the golden dome was considered as the theatre of Perrault and not the theatre of Gergiev. I’m convinced of that even if he won’t admit it. Then we added some political complications, personal settling scores and matters of taste that worsened the situation of course. All this is very sad because Russia and Saint-Petersburg could have had an amazing theatre. I respect the talent of Valery Gergiev but conducting some orchestras is something that can be done everyday, while building a theatre happens once in a lifetime. It’s a historic opportunity that he missed for rather mean and reprehensible reasons that honour no one.
From the beginning did you have to share the work with local architects?
We urgently recommended the creation of an agency recorded in Russia to lead the project, with Russian partners, engineers, specialists in studies, foundations, electricity, which is normal because we did it in the USA, in Japan and Luxembourg. I became doubtful when we were proposed to let them the entire project by restricting ourselves to the design. The wish of excluding the creators of the project implementation scared me. By the way I saw the construction of the concert hall that was being built at the same period near the Mariinsky Theatre. I observed the progress of the work in this place and in fact I thought that it was not the way we are supposed to build. Everything was done approximately and hastily. I thought it was important to have complete control over the quality, from the beginning to the end, from the design to the choice of the executing companies, the technical details development, the lighting, and the solutions to acoustic issues. After all everything allowing to distinguish an opera house from a mall. But we had a more occidental approach with the idea of controlling the quality of work from the very beginning to the moment we would cut the ribbon. But our partners, some officials, had a totally different view of this process: the project on one side, and the construction on the other side, without any direct and permanent link between the both.
Maybe they wanted to be free to modernize and simplify the project. It would have been easier, without being in conflict with the creators, to bring it up to current standards.
I’d remind that our project was not chosen behind closed doors. It has been the winning project of a major international competition. We worked on it, not for three days or three weeks, but three years and for our state partner it was an outstanding opportunity. At the end of those three years, they had all the plans and documents to continue the work. With us of with other executing companies that they could seek at that time if we didn’t suit them completely.
There was a time when you had to give up and shortly before you did it your partners started to accuse you, telling that your project was a failure, that you had fallen behind schedule on the submission of the documents, etc…
They started to feel from where the wind was changing and took the lead to defend themselves. But it’s not very interesting. Finally, they lost the project themselves because we had lost it. For our part, we could leave and work in some other countries, to build just as interesting and much bigger things. Before and after the Mariinsky 2, I designed and achieved some much more large and complicated buildings. I didn’t need to hang on to the work and the fees. It gave me the freedom that that my Russian partners didn’t have, and they had to compromise by working on a project exceeding the local standards.
It would appear that they were obliged to get rid of you after they were promised to recover the project, and when you were no longer on the project they have been sorted out.
I was not driven out. I just surprised a lot the Russian administration because I didn’t let them driving me out. I didn’t accept the achievement conditions of the project on both architectural and technical level. They were very surprised and even offended because they expected me to negotiate the financial terms or to discuss the procedures for weeks, but everything turned out differently. At some point they proposed me - in fact as a threat – to break the contract, it took me only one minute to make the decision.
What do you think about the achieved project?
I only saw some pictures in the press, I cannot judge the work of my colleagues from them; I would only say that if there was not any caption under the pictures indicating it was the Mariinsky Theatre, no one would have guessed it. What could I add? Probably that some people enjoy it, but many others don’t. There is no one to defend it, even Gergiev preferred to transfer the discussion from the architectural field to the musical one. But if Gergiev has a remarkable hearing, the same cannot be said for his view. We can’t be deaf and blind at the same time. That’s the sad part of it: people leave and architecture remains. And Saint-Petersburg, this city with a fantastic architectural memory, pride of the humanity, only got a poor provincial theatre.
And you can’t forget this failure?
I really tried to forget everything. These are not memories you like to remember. Some projects don’t work. Sometimes we loose a competition or we don’t get along with the client, but it’s just a matter of days. The Mariinsky was a piece of life and I won’t delete it from my memory.
How old were you when the project started?
I was 50 years old. Gergiev and I have the same age. This story started ten years ago and that’s how it ended. It’s truly sad, not for me as you can imagine it, but for the theatre. For several decades the contemporary architecture is been developed in the world: audacious, unusual, changing the culture – museums, concert halls, and library. It’s not easy to build them, sometimes it’s difficult to accept them, but everything is made with the ambition and desire of transmitting a new visual culture. And the Mariinsky would have been a masterpiece of contemporary architecture, it would have entered the school books. There was no reason why the result would be so average (???). Everything was made to have an opposite result. A prestigious orchestra conductor at the head of a famous theatre, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in this great country that is Russia…
And a famous and prized architect …
Yes and also a good architect, a project hosted with enthusiasm in the world. By the way, it remains for me an excellent recommendation; everyone knows my project for Mariinsky. All the conditions were met to create a masterpiece. Someone is responsible for this failure. Who? You think it’s me? I don’t think so.
So who is to blame? Gergiev?
For me of course, Gergiev. He could do everything, he was almighty, he just had to say “I want a theatre like this one” and the theatre would have been built. I don’t understand what was the interest of burying the project. The clients lost time and money. They spent three times as much as what was planned. Such a mistake is mathematically impossible. It would be interesting to know where so much money is gone, maybe the theatre has now three times more seats?
Alexey Tarkhanov
Kommersant Vlast – 13-05-2013
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