Have you been thinking or did you participate somehow in this ongoing discussion about why the ecological buildings are not quite attractive and vice versa – beautiful buildings are not so ecological?

I think that question is really odd. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I only design beautiful buildings. And if you think my buildings are ugly, you don’t understand. It is not the discussion that interests me, we are developing the 21^st century vernacular architecture, every single design decision has come from analysis of making the building fit the purpose and reducing environmental impact and reducing the carbon footprint and reducing ecological footprint. And when you do that, it has inherent beauty. Beauty means something that helps humans survive. And when smth is considered in all aspects it will be a proper piece of holistic design, it will be beautiful.

Do you think the many-stories buildings are ecological?

They can be. But right now they are absolutely not. We have designed many low-zero carbon high-rise buildings. They haven’t been built yet. It is possible to do high buildings that are at a very low environmental impact. But mainly you have to design them aerodynamically, they have to harvest wind, they have to harvest sun, they have to be built to super insulation standards, they have to have very advanced cooling systems, ventilation – there are a lot of things. You can make very green buildings, but nobody’s done it.

Because it’s too expensive for now?

No, it’s not even that expensive. It’s just that anybody who has money and access to the large amounts of resources doesn’t see the point in reducing environmental impact. It is true. Why isn’t the Gasprom building a low-carbon building? Because they want to sell gas.

So what do you think have to happen to make people change their mind and attitudes and the relation to this matter?

Probably we have to shame them. It’s just someone who has the conspeacurace carbon footprint, who is an unashamed consumer, is basically antisocial and frightening the survival of species, and will find it increasingly hard to reproduce themselves, with means of the opposite sex. So you have to make them an object of ridicule, it has to hurt. You can’t legislate for that, people just have to decide: it is anti-social, it is deeply unsexy and unfashionable to continue with waste and the pollution that we see today.

What about the third-world countries, how they ever going to afford these kind of standards, these kind of approaches?

Well, we do a lot of work in developing countries, particularly involved in the urbanization of China, and – they are MORE advanced than we are. They have advanced economy … on low-energy supply chains, their laws are becoming more advanced, you may well find that they overtake the technical advanced industrial nations, because they are able to decide which way to go, at the same time it is engaging in the industrialization process. So they go down the green industrialization route. The old countries which have invested too much in the 20^th century will be looking very stupid!

Do you think all these expensive and hi-tech involving things are going to be postponed and put aside during the economy crisis?

It is not a technological question. None of the technologies that we are using, that you see around here – none of them are innovative, none are difficult, all of them are already well-proven, it is about motivation, and it’s about economy as a scale. And it’s how you low the costs. It is a software problem, not a hardware one. The problem is in your head.